Guild Wars 2

First of all, this is not a suggestion to increase or decrease the difficulty of dungeons. So any elitists or speedrun farmers feel free to leave now.
I’ll start off by saying I love dungeons. They are well created, and offer fun and challenging group content balanced for a 5-man party. There is not much wrong with the actual gameplay. What I have problems with is the process before and after the dungeons. This is finding groups is difficult, and the reward system being unrewarding and giving little incentive to continue to play dungeons (or their different paths).

Group Finder
Current situation: The only way to effectively find a party is by using /map chat. This clutters /map chat with unnecessary LFG messages. The spam filter doesn’t help making life easier for those who have trouble finding people to play with as it starts filtering out entire sentences after a few times.
What we “need”: (I don’t like using the word “need”, “want” might be a better word choice) is a more effective way to find groups.

Solution: The solution is pretty obvious. Have a tool similar to the one that we had in the original Guild Wars. Let us choose what we search a group for, let us write a line for more details for what we are looking for and that’s it. It doesn’t have to be anything mega fancy, just something good enough to find people to play with without constantly having to advertise LFG in /map chat.

Rewards
One of the most hated things in the current dungeon set-up is the way tokens are handled, and there is not one universal solution to this problem. I’ve come up with several different ideas, that might help feel the dungeons more rewarding. As well as giving players more incentives to running more than 1 path for each dungeon.
Before that, let’s first see what’s currently going on…

Current situation: Exotic dungeon rewards cost tons of tokens, that take tens upon tens of runs to obtain. Tokens are soulbound, so it is not possible to run the same dungeon on different classes for a little variety, and there is little incentive to take the other (longer and more difficult) paths.

Now I’ve thought up some different ideas on how to improve the current situation.
Idea 1: The obvious one. Lower token cost of exotic dungeon rewards. Not necessarily the best single solution, but it would be a step into the right direction.
Idea 2: Another obvious one. Make dungeon tokens some sort of account-wide currency (much like how Gems are handled). This way players bored of running the same instance with one and the same class over again have more freedom with profession choice.
Idea 3: Daily dungeon path bounties. Have at each dungeon one path give a bunch of bonus tokens (2x or 3x bonus tokens for finishing the path once per day only). This will give players more incentive to run a different path every day, without penalising those who don’t want to.
Idea 4: Being similar to Idea 3, but have a weekly dungeon achievement. Like select 2 different dungeons every week, and have those give players bonus tokens for completing all 3 paths in both or either selected dungeon. This would players give more incentive to try out dungeons they might otherwise not be tempted to do.
Idea 5: Reward players for doing all 3 paths. Not just once, but every time a player finished all 3 paths in a dungeon, give a bunch of bonus tokens as reward. This will give players more incentive to run all 3 paths in a dungeon instead of farming the same path over again. Of course without penalising those who do only farm the same path over again.
Idea 6: Mentor bonus. When a group brings a player new to that dungeon instance with them, everyone in the party will receive bonus tokens. +20 or +30 bonus tokens for a completed run only (stacks; the more new players in a party, the more bonus tokens are received). The newbie status counts account-wide, so no mentor bonus is given if a player has already done that same dungeon on a different character. This would give players more incentive to bring along new players on their dungeon runs, instead of shunning them because they might slow down your run.
Idea 7: Story-mode bonus. Once a day give players a +20 token bonus for completing the story-mode instance in a dungeon. Maybe even give a normal +5 token reward for every completed story-mode run. This would give players more incentive to go back to story-mode to maybe help out a new player.

Then to the final part of suggestion list.
A pretty simple one. Give reward tokens more use. Maybe have crafting recipes that use up dungeon tokens (each type of token used in different recipes). Maybe let players exchange tokens for crafting materials. Or maybe give them a use in the Mystic Forge.

Might add more ideas if I come up with extra things.
Open for opinions, ideas, suggestions, constructive criticism etc.
Not wanting: Flamers, haters, trolls, spammers, fanbois etc.

+1 for the “Group Finder”. I honestly thought that this was already in the game and got disappointed that it wasn’t. Write in chat is .so. Old….. It would make it 1000 times faster (for us that havn’t 5 friends who’s playing gw2 and/or is online) to find group and everyone in the whole zone(?) dosn’t need to see ppl writing in the chat “LF-this and that”

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

basicly your saying give more tokens and set down the token cost.
its not really a solution but nice with some idea’s

the main issue’s is that the only reason to do it now is the skin and using x000 hours just for the skin is a bit crazy, and if there is nothing else there the dungeon dies as soon as people got it.
they need to give some kinda rewards which is continually good and which is a reason to keep running them.

besides that let the hardest to get gear in the game have the best stats, not the same as everything else ^^

i think making a universal type of token for ALL dungeons so that you and your friends could do whatever dungeon you found fun and then get the look you like to have so your doing it to have fun and not to grind tokens (i think its fun to do 40 runs of 8 different dungeons with 3-4 diff parts in each=16-24: i think doing the same instance 40 times is really boring after like the 4 run :/)

I would love to see dungeon specific loot drops added to the game. Different skinned items unique to each path, either random drops or chance of dropping in the chests in that particular path. Same stats as every other exotic, but recipes, different stat outlays than the dungeon token pieces, etc, another layer of itemization to give players more incentive to run different paths, and a reason to run different dungeons for more than just the tokens. If everything in the game is built around running endgame content for cosmetic rewards, i want more cosmetic rewards.

Segas.5346:

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

Actually, I think it’s a vocal minority that are so against a group finder while most people quietly wonder why there isn’t something so basic in the game already. Most people were over sitting outside of dungeons and spamming chat back in 1999 with Everquest. I think most people would rather be out, I don’t know, playing the game. Finding a group should be easy while the dungeons themselves remain difficult. They force cooperation and tactics. Spamming one channel with the same message until you can scrape together a group isn’t being social, it’s just a waste of time.

I like the idea of having extra rewards for completing weekly dungeon goals and extra rewards for completing X amount of paths. Account wide token rewards are also an interesting idea. I’m not sure about reducing the cost of the armor or increasing the amount of the rewards though, it seems to be fairly well balanced at the moment.

Small Note:

Token Gems ARE account-wide.

There is a group finder, it is the last tab in “y” No need to spam map, but people will continue to anyway.

Looking For Dungeon finder needs added. I took my 2 hours to find a group for a dungeon last night. This is also and easy way to put in cross server play for dungeons to make sure it works before you open up guesting.

The dungeon loot level scaling needs work too.

curtegg.5216:

The dungeon loot level scaling needs work too.

What exactly do you mean by this?

Milennin.4825:

Group Finder
Current situation: The only way to effectively find a party is by using /map chat. This clutters /map chat with unnecessary LFG messages. The spam filter doesn’t help making life easier for those who have trouble finding people to play with as it starts filtering out entire sentences after a few times.
What we “need”: (I don’t like using the word “need”, “want” might be a better word choice) is a more effective way to find groups.

Solution: The solution is pretty obvious. Have a tool similar to the one that we had in the original Guild Wars. Let us choose what we search a group for, let us write a line for more details for what we are looking for and that’s it. It doesn’t have to be anything mega fancy, just something good enough to find people to play with without constantly having to advertise LFG in /map chat.

Absolutely.

Also refer to the system in AION, I think it is closer to what we want. As AION was an open world/zone based game just like GW2, its party search tool was SERVER-WIDE, not zone restricted like GW1. And you could post for various things, not just “x” dungeon or “x” pvp thing.

To everyone who thinks this is anything like WoW’s system of pushing the button and getting teleported into a random dungeon with a random group: you are all wrong. The tool proposed by Milennin and I would simply allow for people to better organize themselves and find players to play with. It would not diminish the mmo experience by letting people stand in one place while being randomly teleported/grouped all over the world for dungeon speed runs. Absolutely not.

Just made a similar topic before reading this. Oh well I guess the issue can’t get enough exposure, it is absolutely hurting the game by limiting players ability to find like minded players to group with.

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

This ^

Why would an extra chat channel be a good idea? It will just be yet another chat channel to keep track of, and your post would quickly be lost/drowned out by other posters/spammers. And most people probably wouldnt keep their eyes on the channel.

If you played GW1, you know that the “trade” channel was the same thing. It was impossible to keep up with all the spam in trade chat, but quite easy to navigate the “board” of postings (where all the posts from trade chat would also be placed).

My 2 cents

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Learn-from-other-games/202418

This message was brought to you by a Kitten who can see the Search Button

I wouldn’t mind a better group finder as long you still have to go around the world and actually go to the dungeon door and unlock the nearest waypoint(s) to that place first. That way, you still promote a certain amount if exploration.

Also consider that some gates can be contested. If that gate is contested on the party leader’s server, then that party should do what they can to uncontest it. That means reclaiming control of the gate of the Citadel of Flame, gaining access to the Crucible of Eternity from the Inquest, and making a path on the way to Arah. Heck, even award a token or two just for participating in that alone.

What I don’t see working well would be a queue-up automated matchmaking system. With the way how parties are set up, you wouldn’t have to declare a specific role (eg Tank, Healer, DPS), meaning that you wouldn’t have to wait a long time for a specialized role to queue up. Queue times would be virtually non-existent. It would put too much strain on the dungeon servers I would imagine.

pdg.8462:

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

This ^

so.. its ok to queue for a pvp group but not for a pve group?

so.. its ok to queue for a pvp group but not for a pve group?oh, and if you dont want to queue, dont queue

so.. its ok to queue for a pvp group but not for a pve group?oh, and if you dont want to queue, dont queuekeep spamming if you want – or, if you already have ppl to run with run with them

so.. its ok to queue for a pvp group but not for a pve group?oh, and if you dont want to queue, dont queuekeep spamming if you want – or, if you already have ppl to run with run with themoh and i have no idea why my post is repeating 3 times…

so.. its ok to queue for a pvp group but not for a pve group?oh, and if you dont want to queue, dont queuekeep spamming if you want – or, if you already have ppl to run with run with themoh and i have no idea why my post is repeating 3 times…i see only one time when i edit…

Totally love idea about Group Finder. GW 2 motto is “fast fun”.
I wonder why Group Finder isn’t here yet!

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

And you really think people will use that “looking for group” channel? Seen that in other games and NO ONE uses it. Everyone will still use the /map channel like they do now.

They really need to change the way tokens are rewarded, I hate the change that tokens are now only rewarded upon completion of the dungeon, not that we was exploiting the first couple of bosses like other people was. Sometimes, just don’t have the time or something happens that prevents completion so the entire run is a total waste.

Currently, Dungeons for most people are just a waste of time and this is another problem that needs looking at immediately. What the OP mentioned are some good ideas.

Exploration Mode needs a daily lockout period Basically, you can run each path once per day however, with that change significant rewards need added.

1) Loot Loot Loot! Exploration mode loot is tragic, spending significant time clearing trash and downing a boss to be rewarded with a blue junk…really sucks. Exploration Mode chests needs to have a minimum of Rare Level items in it, consider even having unique looking items in these chests for adding incentives. Also increase the drop rate of rare materials like lodestones etc from trash mobs, anything to keep the player interested.

2) Put the token rewards back on individual bosses, add in a small chance for tokens to drop from trash mobs, this will help off-set the stupidly high cost of token gear. I like working for upgrades, but the current situation is more like slave labor.

3) Like what the OP mentioned, having daily dungeons for story modes // Weekly dungeons for Exploration path clears, rewards the player with extra tokens. Daily Dungeons reward say 20 tokens, Weekly rewards 50 tokens.

4) Fix all the speed run exploits asap ~ this is partially why everything is so messed up because of people exploiting. The legitimate players suffer because of exploiters.

I think a good looking for group (cross server) is something that should have been implemented at launch. I was surprised that it did not exist. I love Guild Wars 2 and it’s generally fun to play, but its starting to feel a lot like grinding(completing maps) and I would love to change it up with a dungeon. Me and my friends that I talked into getting the game hardly ever play anymore. A group finder where I can click a button to queue up to run a dungeon would be a welcome change of pace(even better if I can queue with a friend or two).

Also i think any game where end game is rewarded by cosmetic changes in gear is silly. The drive to popular pvp/pve games is the race for better gear(WOW,Battlefield 3). I know that myself and two of my friends that I played GW1 thought the cosmetic differences in armor(not stats) where not enough to keep us interested and we ultimately switched to WOW.

Also(somewhat off topic), I have a warrior and ele around 60 and I have to say that playing the ele is somewhat challenging and frustrating while my warrior can easily get through the PVE content. I probably speced the ele wrong or am not using the right weapons, but I tried a few things and nothing seems to be all that impressive.

Also crafting seems worthless other than for leveling and the Auction House seems to benefit the buyer and not the seller due to being over proliferated.

I think a LFG system would be a great idea. my warrior is lvl 40 now and it would be nice to find a group while questing or something elsewhere instead of standing outside the dungeon or in a city yelling LFG.

Someone here mentioned a LFG channel and even though someone already replied to him/her, I’d like to add my 2 cents to that. WoW tried a LFG channel. For the most part it failed. People still went to trade chat yelling LFG or LFM because not many people joined the LFG channel.

Anyway, A LFG system would be great. However, one point that can be made against it is that because the dungeons are few (6 in total i think) the devs might now feel it’s viable. But if more dungeons were added then it will be necessary to add the LFG system. I hope I’m making sense, I kinda just woke up and haven’t had coffee yet

Segas.5346:

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

Have you ever clicked on this guy to join a pvp instance in GW2? News Flash! There’s already a “Game Browser” in GW2, it even has a “Play Now” option to automatically join a random group. So don’t fool yourself into thinking instance/dungeon finders only exist in other games and GW2 is different. They really just need to adapt that system so it works for dungeons too and not only pvp instances.

YES we need dungeon finder , it is so important to this kind of games ….. ARENA NET we need DF

Any news when/if we get group finder for dungeons?

Segas.5346:

LFG Tool? Hope not…better add a new channel people can join if they like. One-button already exist in most MMORPG, most people play here since it’s different.

Bet this guy is rethinking after all those months. LOL

I don’t normally post on forums but this topic, in my opinion, is the biggest thing that keeps me from playing GW2. There needs to be an easier way to find groups for dungeons. I have done the channel spam in WoW and got rid of that game years ago because of the boring time sinks. I don’t have as much time to play games these days and wouldn’t mind running a dungeon in GW2, but I won’t stand around and spam a channel or sift through spam to find a group. This is where I choose to hop onto another game to spend my limited time. The system in Rift was great, it allowed me to run around and do what I wanted and potentially jump into a dungeon. Something really needs to be implemented.

Exactly, there were two reasons why I stopped playing GW2: 1) long queues for WvW 2) no group finder for dungeons. So two main features of GW2 were not playable in practise.

ohhh for the love of god please add a dungeon group finder! This is one of the main reasons why I have stopped playing GW2, I hate standing in a major city posting over and over and over in the chat looking for a group, I can’t stress enough how much better the game will be with it implemented!

Milennin.4825:

Idea 1: The obvious one. Lower token cost of exotic dungeon rewards. Not necessarily the best single solution, but it would be a step into the right direction.
Idea 2: Another obvious one. Make dungeon tokens some sort of account-wide currency (much like how Gems are handled). This way players bored of running the same instance with one and the same class over again have more freedom with profession choice.
Idea 3: Daily dungeon path bounties. Have at each dungeon one path give a bunch of bonus tokens (2x or 3x bonus tokens for finishing the path once per day only). This will give players more incentive to run a different path every day, without penalising those who don’t want to.
Idea 4: Being similar to Idea 3, but have a weekly dungeon achievement. Like select 2 different dungeons every week, and have those give players bonus tokens for completing all 3 paths in both or either selected dungeon. This would players give more incentive to try out dungeons they might otherwise not be tempted to do.
Idea 5: Reward players for doing all 3 paths. Not just once, but every time a player finished all 3 paths in a dungeon, give a bunch of bonus tokens as reward. This will give players more incentive to run all 3 paths in a dungeon instead of farming the same path over again. Of course without penalising those who do only farm the same path over again.
Idea 6: Mentor bonus. When a group brings a player new to that dungeon instance with them, everyone in the party will receive bonus tokens. +20 or +30 bonus tokens for a completed run only (stacks; the more new players in a party, the more bonus tokens are received). The newbie status counts account-wide, so no mentor bonus is given if a player has already done that same dungeon on a different character. This would give players more incentive to bring along new players on their dungeon runs, instead of shunning them because they might slow down your run.
Idea 7: Story-mode bonus. Once a day give players a +20 token bonus for completing the story-mode instance in a dungeon. Maybe even give a normal +5 token reward for every completed story-mode run. This would give players more incentive to go back to story-mode to maybe help out a new player.

1. If it’s obvious, then it’s already been considered, no need to repeat
2. Same as above
3. Wouldn’t work, at least with those numbers. If it’s 2x or 3x, people would just proceed normally and wait for the easy paths to be chosen to get the bonuses. That, in turn, is no different from the current mode, except people get more tokens. Which is not a real solution.
4. The issue with achievements is that if you start giving them out for a lot of things, people will start screaming for their favorite activity to get boosted. And that’ll just make everything worse.
5. The thing is, you’d have to make it worth their time. This means that the extra reward has to not only make the tokens/time even out, but it will also have to give out some more tokens to offset the difference in required effort.
6. How do you count when a person is a rookie? No runs? One run? Single digit runs? You have to be really careful with a system like that, because you could easily abuse it so that the bonuses stack to a point where the amount of runs you have to do for your gear is toned down to a ridiculously low level.
7. True, Story Mode needs boosting. But even here, you run to the same issue: It’s just not worth people’s time.

The sad thing is, people will always repeat the activity that gives the best rewards in relation to time and effort spent. And sadly, often the easy stuff is also the fast stuff, which results in it giving out the best rewards for the time spent. Or the effort required to get the better rewards is perceived as too high and it gets ignored.