Guild Wars 2

laharl.8435:

The only complete path I personally ever solo’d was p2, it took no exploits. For me, it took longer than a pug. But I duo often, no exploits, and it’s almost always faster than a pug. You really don’t know what you’re talking about at all.

I’ve done several dungeon paths solo, so maybe I do know what I’m talking about. And nowhere did I mention PUGs. Were you trying to reply to someone else?

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

If you sell with friends, you gotta divide your profit up.

And you can do it in a fraction of the time, which means you can do it again (and again, and again) in the the same time that it would take you to solo. The way GW2 works (with boon / condition stacking), two players do more than 2x the damage of a single player (and 3 players do even more, etc.). And on top of that, there’s the fact that 2 players will get twice the loot, twice the gold, etc..

Soloing dungeons is great as a personal challenge. It’s not efficient in terms of time vs. profit.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

even having to communicate can slow down the process.

That must be some really slow communication, if decreasing the damage output of the party by 80% results in an increase in speed.

spoj.9672:

And those of us who can solo legit, can solo the paths faster than a pug.

It’s basic maths. If a single player in your party can do the same damage you can, you kill the bosses in half the time. If they all do about the same damage, you kill the boss in 1/5th of the time (in fact, less than that, because everyone benefits from each other’s buffs). Maybe you’re just really unlucky and keep getting PUGs made up of four naked level 2 players who don’t move…?

Anyway, who said anything about PUGs? Are you so unpopular that you can’t get 4 friends or guild members to play with you?

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Gathered some statistics did ya?

Yes. Just ask them, most of them have no problem admitting it.

No one is going to do a full path legitimately solo (except as a challenge to themselves, but in that case they won’t be doing it for gold), it’s just too slow. You make more money by doing it normally, in a full group, because you can do a lot more paths in the same time. Whenever you see a single player (almost invariably a thief, mesmer or elementalist) “selling the last boss”, he obviously blinked out of the map and skipped everything.

dutchiez.7502:

Some people complete frequently exploited paths legitimately. Banning everyone who has sold/bought any of them is just stupid.

It’s one thing to sell a slot in your group or charge a fee to guide others through a dungeon. That is obviously absolutely fine.

It’s quite another to “sell the last boss” (i.e., sell the dungeon chest to someone who didn’t do the dungeon) – that’s an exploit to circumvent the fact that dungeon tokens can’t be traded legitimately. If you really think that it’s acceptable for players to pay gold for tokens (without having to participate in the dungeon at all), then you should file a bug report about the inability to sell those tokens at the trading post.

Personally, I block and report anyone advertising “selling last boss 1%” or similar in LFG. It’s an exploit to circumvent the selling of tokens, the sellers know it’s an exploit, the buyers know it’s an exploit, and Arena Net knows it’s an exploit. Will they ever fix it? Considering some trivial events have been bugged since beta, my hopes aren’t too high. But a bug doesn’t become a feature just because it’s not fixed, and an exploit doesn’t become legit just because Arena Net pretends not to see it.

Will they ever ban anyone? Directly, I doubt it – they’re too scared of losing players. But more and more people are banning themselves (i.e., leaving) due to Arena Net’s inactivity, so in the end the result will be the same, except their image will also suffer, and people won’t trust them in the future. Other games / companies have gone through similar processes.

LittleLepton.8915:

I’m extra grateful to my dungeon sellers who sell me dungeons. They solo Lupi, all waypoints are open, it’s a wonderful time and I appreciate their efforts and award them with my gold.

Dungeon sellers aren’t “bad” and you should eat your words because that’s very judgmental.

If Arena Net meant for players to be able to get dungeon tokens in exchange for gold, they would simply have made the tokens tradable. Dungeon tokens (and achievements, etc.) are clearly meant to be rewards for players who are able to actually play their way through them.

You’re exploiting a flaw in the way the game gives rewards (i.e., it gives the full dungeon chest even to players who didn’t participate in any fights inside the dungeon), and most of the people you are paying are exploiting map bugs to get to the last boss without actually fighting the enemies, or are kicking other players before the last boss so they can sell their “slot”.

I’m not sure what’s sadder, that Arena Net has clearly given up on fixing its own dungeons (and pretends not to know about the exploits) or that some people buy a game and then prefer to pay other people to play it for them.

I guess it was inevitable that GW2 would get flooded with WoW-style “grinders”, who lack skill, don’t really like to play, and just want to accumulate pixels or increase some numbers. Well, it was fun during beta, and the first couple of months (despite all the bugs – most of which are still there anyway).

The problem is on the server, so basically you need to wait for the server to reset your character’s state (i.e., there’s nothing you can do, except wait or submit a ticket to have someone manually reset it). It usually “fixes itself” in a few minutes.

How are you attacking players in Lion’s Arch?

Yamagawa.5941:

A channeled skill tracking a stealthed opponent has been there since day one.

Actually, it was changed (about 9 or 10 months ago, IIRC), by a patch that aimed to fix issues with thieves appearing cloaked for longer than they should in PvP and WvW.

A consequence of that patch (in PvE) was that mobs continue to track and attack players for several seconds after they cloak. Before that, if you cloaked, the mob would stop tracking you almost immediately, and the next attacks would fail (or, at least, would be aimed at the place where you were when you cloaked, they didn’t keep “following” you).

Apparently, one of the recent patches made this even worse (I haven’t played thief lately, so I haven’t checked, but that’s what some friends tell me).

I could understand letting players’ attacks track enemies for a second or two after they cloak (due to lag, the attacker won’t see you cloak exactly when you do, so it makes sense to let the shots track for a bit longer), but mob AI is running on the server, and should stop tracking you as soon as you cloak. Naturally, AoE attacks would still hit, and so would normal volleys, if you just stay in the same place, but they definitely shouldn’t keep tracking you while you’re cloaked. It just feels fake and “cheaty”.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Yeah it should probably be account bound. But they need to increase the cost.

IMO, what they need to do is add some actual gameplay requirement. Anyone can get gold simply by buying gems. Being a commander should require at least some demonstration of PvP / WvW skill and experience, not just access to gold.

And yes, it should definitely be account-wide.

Also, give players an option to block commander icons. Even commanders on our blocklist show up on the map…

Olba.5376:

Not to mention that the developers have said multiple times that they would prefer for their players to look at the action rather than the UI.

Sadly, with most fights being so easy simply by having everyone stack in a corner, these days you have to look at the UI (condition icons, cooldowns, HP bars), because the actual “action” is a mess of effects. And if one players chooses not to stack and the other four do, the one who didn’t is the one that’s going to end up dead.

Anyone can put a piece of tape on the screen and draw marks at 75%, 50%, etc., anyway, so fights aren’t really made any harder by not having a built-in health % display.

A more interesting change would be to make % based events variable (ex., instead of going into phase 3 at 50% HP, Lupi could switch at any point between 55% and 45%).

When any game becomes a grind (for materials, gold, ilevel, whatever), its population starts becoming more and more biased towards “grinders” (I mean people who only care about increasing some numbers, not smartphone-wielding gay gentlemen). And grinders, as a rule, see other players as a tool to advance their own (somewhat autistic) goals.

The ironic part is that most of those grinders are actually horrible players, with very little awareness, who can only do fights in a specific way (which often isn’t even the fastest, and certainly not the most fun), and all they do is repeat that again and again and again (and then whine whenever something changes and their repetitive “tactics” stops working).

Sadly, with the introduction of ascended junk, Arena Net has made it pretty clear that they will be catering to that crowd, so PUGs will probably be getting worse, not better.

Solution? Join a guild run by someone civilised (or start your own), and / or make good (ideally preemptive) use of your block list.

Paciunek.2496:

Everyone can heal themselves

Ultimately, most dungeons can be soloed. What’s your point?

Five players casting group heals do more healing than five players casting solo heals.

TBH, part of the “selfishness” is Arena Net’s fault for not having a more detailed combat log. If players could see how much of their damage and healing comes from other players, they’d have a bit more of a clue about why teamwork pays off.

Riss.1536:

I’m willing to pay a cash shop item that permit you to have two home servers, one in Europe and one in NA.

Well, there is an item that lets you do that. It’s called a second account.

It has the added benefit of letting you send mail to yourself (as long as it’s to a character on the other account), so you can easily make space in your inventory.

Of course, you can’t share achievements or account-bound items, so it’s not really a replacement for letting players guest in the other region (as we were told we’d be able to, before release).

Ahlen.7591:

The gear is INCREDIBLY accessible. If you play for only an hour a day, you should have at least 2 ascended weapons, and full trinkets by now.

You mean since release? In other words, if you’ve been playing for about 500 hours ? To get two weapons ?

Yeah, “incredibly accessible”…

Sirendor.1394:

Account.9832:

4. New infusions introduced that simply add a visual effect to the weapon or armour they are placed on (ex., fire / lightning / poison / smoke / frost / blood / etc.)

Sounds good, implementing it might be hard though.

Not trivial, but not all that hard.

All they need to do is create one generic version of each effect for each weapon type and for each body part of each race.

That would be the default effect, applied if the actual item doesn’t come with “effect nodes” (i.e., information about where to place particle emitters, etc.).

Ascended armour and weapons would, naturally, be created with customized versions of the effects. If the armour was transmuted to an older model, the effect would go back to the generic one.

Since Arena Net probably has data about item popularity (i.e., how many players wear item X), the most popular skins could eventually get updated to have customized effects, if the default one didn’t look quite right on them.

Linnael.1069:

Like really, what is your testing team even doing?

You’re one of its members, you tell them.

After today’s patch, my T3 medium Sylvari armor (Firstborn) has become purple, although my character’s skin is green and brown, and the dyes are green and orange. I tried every possible color on the coat, can’t get it to match the character skin at all, weird colors keep appearing.

Meanwhile, the T1 medium boots (Evergreen) still clip through the character’s feet, and still show some unchangeable green areas (although my character’s legs are brown, and all the dyes are brown and yellow).

How about letting us actually dye the armor the color we choose, instead of making some weird arithmetic between the character’s color and the dyes, that somehow turns yellow, green and brown into purple (and / or makes half the boots green although my character’s legs are brown)?

Or, if for some reason you can’t or don’t want to fix them, add a way to return the items to the vendor and get a refund.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Not yet beyond memory. We’re looking into tech solutions for displaying the paths you have run.

Presumably, internally, you have that information, right?

So why not simply display it as sub / meta-achievements? No need to add a different UI element, just use what you already have:

1. Create an achievement for each path.
2. Populate it with the internal data (a one-time operation).
3. Turn the current dungeon achievement into a meta-achievement, requiring the path achievements.
4. Profit! (i.e., players can open the dungeon meta and check the sub-achievement to see which paths they haven’t done)

In fact, if your achievement system supports meta-metas (i.e., more than 2-level achievement dependency), I’d suggest going a bit further and do this:

1. Create new achievements for killing each boss in each path.
2. Make the path completion achievement (for each path) depend on having all the relevant boss achievements (for new players; for existing ones, copy from internal data).
3. Make the dungeon completion achievement depend on getting all the path achievements for that dungeon.
4. Profit!

So, for example, for Caudecus’ Manor, you would create the following achievements:

BA1. Killed the Prototype Golem
BA2. Killed Captain DeLana
BA3. Killed Gunpowder Morgan
BA4. Killed Bloody Victoria
BA5. Killed Frost
BA6. Killed Bridgette
BA7. Killed Mad Martha
BA8. Killed Turmaine
BA9. Killed Sure-Shot Seamus
BA10. Killed Wahlen
BA11. Killed Vallog
BA99. (optionally other mini-bosses you consider fundamental)

Then add the meta-achievements:

PA0. Story mode meta-achievement requires BA1 and BA2.
PA1. Asura path meta-achievement requires BA3, BA4 and BA5.
PA2. Seraph path meta-achievement requires BA6, BA7 and BA8.
PA3. Butler path achievement requires BA9, BA10 and BA11.

And finally the meta-meta-achievement:

CMA. Caudecus’s Manor dungeon meta-achievement requires PA0, PA1, PA2 and PA3.

Opening CMA in the achievement UI would display the PA achievement as “children”, and opening each of those would display the relevant boss kills as children. This way players could easily see which paths they were missing or, in case they had done some incomplete runs (ex., joined half way through a dungeon, or left before the end), they could also see which bosses they had missed.

Ben Newell.1759:

There is no leadership of the party, it is an ownership of the instance. Instance ownership is not tied to the party; you are effectively guesting into someone else’s instance, which is only allowed to members of the party. When the owner leaves the party, the instance is closed.

And are there plans to change that? It’s one of the things people have been complaining since release (in fact, since beta). I’m not aware of any other game that does this (kick everyone if the first player who entered has to leave).

Can’t be too hard to either a) use a dedicated “party” entity or b) reassign ownership of the instance to another player if anyone is still inside it when the original owner leaves.

As the saying goes, “a smart man learns from his mistakes; a smarter man learns from other people’s”. GW2’s dungeon mechanics in general seem to have been developed without looking at how other MMOs do things, and haven’t really improved since beta (unlike other areas of the game, such as the graphics engine, which is much better now).

Adine.2184:

Thats the thing though , 1 free transfer once per year? When most people would only transfer servers once maybe twice in the course of playing the game in a life time ANet wouldnt make any money on that policy .

World transfers are not a relevant source of income (as should be obvious from your own assertion that most people would only transfer once or twice in their lifetime – in fact, many never do). The fee is there mainly to discourage people from constantly transferring to whichever server is winning in WvW.

Arena Net originally promised that players would be able to join their friends on any server, whenever they wanted. Then they made it impossible for US players to guest on EU servers and vice versa, and added a limit of two guest servers.

For the first few months, it was possible to transfer from EU to US servers (and back) several times a day, so we know it wasn’t a technical issue.

If they’re going to change the rules after people have bought the game, the least they can do is give them one transfer per year (that’s still infinitely less mobility than we were promised – I used to go back and forth between an EU and US server twice a day, every day, during the first few months of GW2, to play with two groups of friends).

Axe – Ricochet – 700 DPS

Depends on what you reflect…

Ayrilana.1396:

Account.9832:

And you think that making the bombs spawn faster (for the door) or reducing the number / HP of trash mobs (coming out of the clown car) would “dumb down” the game? Personally, I fail to see what’s the intellectual challenge of those two activities…

I’ll post the points that prompted me to make my original post. I didn’t care about the two that you just mentioned.

Account.9832:

It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses

Er… so you don’t care about “reducing the HP of trash mobs”, but you do care about “adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses”…?

Aren’t those two the same?

Some mobs (and bosses) have too much HP and fighting them gets boring. Reducing their HP (or reducing the number of mobs, which in some cases adds up to the same) would simply make the encounters shorter, it wouldn’t “dumb down” anything.

Making a fight longer isn’t the same as making it harder or more challenging. Conversely, making it shorter is not the same as “dumbing down”.

If you meant just the part about the buttons (not my post), then I think the actual button mechanics are fine, but I don’t like infinite spawns (I just find them unrealistic and silly), so I’d just replace the current mobs with unkillable versions (ex., highly armoured guards or robots), so that players had to multi-task. The problem with the current version is that some groups assume they’re supposed to kill the mobs (after all, they’re killable), but then new ones pop out of nowhere (they don’t even tunnel from the ground, because the ground in that part of the dungeon is a grate).

Adine.2184:

How many times do you expect people to be transferring servers?

Answer is in the post you’re replying to:

sleepyheadz.3462:

one way I would suggest is to allow a one time free transfer per year or something along those lines.

And it seems pretty reasonable, especially since they don’t allow guesting in a different region (contrary to what they promised during the pre-order period).

Devon.9685:

those who are NOT lvl 80 get discriminated against.

I’m pretty sure that, if someone is simply selling the final chest, they don’t care what level you are. All they want is your gold.

If you’re just talking about the WoW-like “level 80 only” mentality of some low-level / story mode PUGs, that’s a different issue. This thread is specifically about the sale of dungeon tokens for gold.

jsduke.6537:

I have no problem with the current system. The token system makes sense, and people selling party slots is not a big deal.

There’s a difference between selling your services as a guide and simply selling the last chest (so players can get the tokens without participating in the run).

If Arena Net considers that the latter is not an exploit, they should simply allow players to sell the tokens directly (because that’s effectively what’s going on, in a convoluted way, through the LFG system).

maxinion.8396:

selling paths at the end is legal.

Did I ever say that it wasn’t? Please try to reply to things I actually posted, and not to someone else’s made-up quotes.

maxinion.8396:

I like how the guy ignores the thread about the support ticket

That “support ticket” is from NCsoft’s German support. They didn’t design the game, Arena Net (in the US) did.

All the support techs can say is whether something is against the TOS or not (and no one suggested that it was). They cannot comment on game design issues (as they usually point out at the end of their e-mails).

The issue is whether Arena Net thinks dungeon tokens should be tradable or not (that’s effectively what “buying the last boss / chest” means – you’re buying dungeon tokens for gold).

If that is intended (and not considered an exploit by the game’s designers), then I would expect them to make the tokens tradable directly. Since they didn’t, their intentions are ambiguous.

In fact, I posted in the suggestions forum, proposing exactly that:

Instead of making players who just want tokens “buy” the last dungeon chest, Arena Net should simply allow players to sell that service directly (i.e., player A runs the dungeon and then sells the tokens to player B ).

That way, LFG can focus on people actually looking for a group to run dungeons (while, naturally, being perfectly free to pay for a guide, or to charge a fee to guide other people, whether in dungeons or any other game contant).

If you agree with the selling of dungeon tokens, please post in that thread.

Fossilized Amber.1352:

I’m sorry but this isn’t a problem that you can prevent.

True, but you can minimize its consequences.

Instead of giving players 60 tokens at the end of the dungeon, give them between 10 and 20 tokens after killing each boss (depending on how difficult the boss is), and only if they actually participated in the boss fight (ex., if they did a minimum of 5% total damage or 5% total healing).

That way, even if a couple of jerks decide to start kicking other players on boss 4/4, those players will have around 45 tokens from the previous bosses.

And before anyone says “but then people will just do the first boss over and over”, remember that a) the first boss in most dungeons is harder than the last, and b) GW2 has a diminishing returns system, so if you kill the same boss a second time before the daily reset, you’d get less tokens.

It’s really not rocket science; most other MMOs handle this just fine.

colesy.8490:

you want to use a completely moronic interpretation

You really have some rage issues.

colesy.8490:

Complaints about path selling in this subforum

There he goes again with the straw man…

“Path selling” (assuming you mean selling dungeon tokens to people who don’t actually participate in the dungeon) is, as I wrote, merely a consequence or result of the broken dungeon reward mechanics. And the same goes for the worthless achievements – they’re just a consequence.

Do I need to write (again…) that I think people are free to buy or sell whatever they want...?

Try a different straw man argument, at least.

colesy.8490:

where you run past a champion and it deaggros, […]

What does that have to do with anything I (or anyone else) wrote, in this thread…? You’re clearly angry about a lot of things and at a lot of people, but please try to stay on topic.

colesy.8490:

If you can’t even remember what you wrote, then that’s your problem, not mine.

Is that supposed to sound clever? I can remember what I wrote just fine; you’re the one (deliberately, as is now obvious) mixing quotes from different people to misrepresent what they said.

colesy.8490:

That was clearly also not Arena Net’s intention (otherwise they would make the tokens tradable).

If it wasn’t intended they’d have “fixed” it

Ahaha, you must work in user support. “Everything is working as intended, as demonstrated by the fact that it is the way it is.” Yeah, because there are absolutely no bugs or exploits in games…

I guess you’re just trolling, and I for one am done feeding you.

colesy.8490:

That says dungeon runs (i.e., charging to let someone join your party, to actually play through the dungeon).

That’s a terrible interpretation which you’ve concocted

It’s not an “interpretation” at all, it’s what the linked message said, as anyone can see by clicking on link:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Please-fix-people-selling-dungeon-slots/page/5#post1162080

A dungeon run is not the same as a dungeon chest. The word “run” clearly implies some participation in the dungeon.

Anyway, as mentioned several times (but you insist on a straw man argument), my issue has nothing to do with people buying or selling slots (that’s just a consequence of the design flaw).

It has to do with the fact that people who have to leave (or get kicked, or disconnected) before the last boss get almost no reward (even if they played through 99% of the dungeon), while people who did absolutely nothing get the full dungeon completion reward (final chest + bonus chest), simply because they joined before the last boss died (and don’t even need to participate in that fight).

I made it pretty clear that I think people are free to buy or sell whatever they want. My post it not addressed at players, it’s addressed at Arena Net.

colesy.8490:

if you even dare to be a white knight and kick path sellers, then I hope they record it and everybody who sees the picture/video smashes the report button

You seem to have some serious rage issues.

And why would I (or anyone else) “kick path sellers” ? That doesn’t even make sense. I wouldn’t be in their party in the first place, because I would never pay to buy a path and I’d never try to sell one.

Calm down a bit and think before “smashing” your keyboard.

colesy.8490:

None of my suggestions in the original post is related to payments; it’s about fixing the broken way in which GW2 awards tokens (and achievements).

Just because you disagree with it doesn’t mean it’s broken.

If you think players who did not kill a single mob in a dungeon should get the dungeon completion chest, I suspect you’re in the minority. That was clearly also not Arena Net’s intention (otherwise they would make the tokens tradable). It’s simply an (exploitable) consequence of the changes introduced in dungeons a few months ago.

colesy.8490:

[lots of stuff]

Please include the name of the people you are quoting before each quote. You’re mixing things posted by several people, and I’m a bit tired of people “accusing” me of saying something I never did, because they read some mangled quote in someone else’s message.

Posting a screenshot (where you can see the combat log and some numbers on the screen) would probably get the developers’ attention faster.

Open Task Manager, go to the processes tab, find GW2.exe, right-click and select “set affinity”. It will probably make the game much slower, though (less FPS).

So you have a system with a CPU that can’t be loaded more than 50%… ?

You can use the graphics options to limit the game to 30 frames per second, and you can probably also force the game to run on a single core (assuming you have a multi-core CPU), which will lower it even more.

But why not simply buy quieter fans?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

someone told me today that the miniature collector title is for sale, too.

Account.9832:

How is that in any way related to this topic, or even this forum?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Title of the thread is “Achievements for Sale.”

No. As you know perfectly well (unless you can’t read), the title is "Achievements for sale and other dungeon flaws ". The word “other” makes it pretty clear that the reference to achievements was specifically about dungeons.

And the forum is also very clearly labelled “Dungeons”.

If you want to talk about pet achievements, feel free to create a thread in the appropriate forum.

TKiller.6829:

Account.9832:

I’d like to see where they said that. Got a link?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Please-fix-people-selling-dungeon-slots/page/5#post1162080

That says dungeon runs (i.e., charging to let someone join your party, to actually play through the dungeon).

It says nothing about selling a party spot so people can join at the end and get the tokens without participating in the dungeon run at all.

As I said above, I’m absolutely fine with people charging (or paying) for anything they want.

I just don’t think people should get tokens simply for being in the party when the last boss dies. They should only get tokens for bosses they actually fight, regardless of having paid or not.

None of my suggestions in the original post is related to payments; it’s about fixing the broken way in which GW2 awards tokens (and achievements).

GW2’s camera in general is an instrument of torture. The downed camera is the same thing, but on steroids.

Olba.5376:

If your problem is with people selling dungeons, the right answer would be to make it impossible, rather than impractical.

My problem is with Arena Net. When they make a dungeon reward system that is so easy to exploit, people are obviously going to exploit it.

They should either fix the system (by tying rewards to what players actually do, not just to the fact that they’re in the party when the final boss dies) or make it clear that they don’t consider selling dungeon rewards an exploit, and make it possible for all players to do it openly.

Depths.4051:

who’s going to pay to finish a dungeon, takes half the reward out of what you got.

A quick look into LFG will provide the answer: quite a lot of people.

Basically, it lets you get the final dungeon chest plus the daily path bonus chest (that’s a total of 60 tokens, you only miss the 3 you would get from each boss) in seconds, without any effort.

Depths.4051:

The armor is more of an achievement than anything else, displaying that you did that dungeon enough times to earn a trophy.

Maybe it was supposed to be, but it isn’t (see above, you can buy 60 tokens per path, every day – in fact, you can even buy more, but you won’t get the bonus chest).

Depths.4051:

If rewards were lowered for people joining later, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to join a party later in the dungeon,

By that logic, with the current system, no one would want to do a dungeon from the start.

If the reward is matched to the number and difficulty of the bosses you actually kill, it doesn’t matter when you join, you always get a fair reward.

Depths.4051:

Selling the tokens in the market seems like both taking away the achievements from dungeons

See first post. People are already buying and selling the tokens (and the respective achievements). Arena Net’s dungeon mechanics make it possible (and easy) to do so.

So, either make it impossible for people to get dungeon tokens without moving a finger (by requiring that they actually participate in boss fights to get the tokens), or just let people trade them openly.

The current system is hypocritical and punishes honest players.

I would love to see ascended gear changed in the following way:

1. Same stats as exotic, only difference is they have two upgrade slots (one for infusions, one for runes).

2. Defensive and offensive infusions removed from the game (materials / tokens refunded).

3. Idiotic number-grind mechanic (agony) removed from the game.

4. New infusions introduced that simply add a visual effect to the weapon or armour they are placed on (ex., fire / lightning / poison / smoke / frost / blood / etc.)

I think any competent player would gladly trade the slight stat advantage that ascended gear has (which you don’t really need, if you know how to play – and which just makes it harder for the developers to balance the game content) for the ability to customize the visual effects on his or her gear.

If only these forums allowed us to post polls…

GW2’s economy is fundamentally poisoned by the fact that the “gem-gold exchange” is a black box, where players can’t set their own prices (or pick who they buy from or sell to).

Before release, Arena Net said it would “put the gold selling market in the hands of the players” (as Eve does with PLEX / AUR), but they apparently changed their minds and decided to become the “official gold seller” instead, hiding behind a “gold exchange” that is based on unpublished formulas and hidden data, and is subject to undisclosed changes at any moment.

Until that changes (i.e., until players can actually trade gems directly with each other, setting their own prices, as originally promised), don’t expect any other part of the economy to behave in a realistic or trustworthy way.

Ultimately, it’s just a game, so it’s no big deal.

mtpelion.4562:

ArenaNet is not allowed to spy on gamers to find out what they knew and when.

They are certainly allowed (more than that – required) to keep track of their in-game activities. Of course, they can’t tap players’ phones or search their mail, but some things can be pretty obvious just from their in-game behaviour.

John Smith.4610:

I can’t go into details, but we have plans for insider traders.

Unfortunately, “I can’t go into details” is typical game publisher code for “we’re not going to do anything about it but we’re also not going to say anything, so people think we’re doing something about it”. Of course, that applies mainly to games with subscriptions (where the publisher doesn’t want to lose income, so they value cheaters the same as honest players). GW2 isn’t really subject to that kind of pressure.

Still, if you do intend to punish them in some way, announcing that would act as a deterrent.

Will you ever “go into details” ?

Today, while I was in Sorrow’s Embrace (path 3), one of the players in the party lagged and got booted out of the instance by the server. He came back in just as we were finishing off the two dredge that guard the door to the final room. When those died and the door opened, rather than spawning at the door, General Zadorojny and his guards spawned at the dungeon’s entrance (near the player that had just entered), and started killing the NPCs there.

There seems to be some sort of bug either messing up his spawn location or connecting his spawn to the location of players, instead of the map location where he’s supposed to be.

“No, no, no! We should go to the armory, that’s where Zadorojny is likely to be.”

Not this time…

I’m attaching a screenshot.

Ayrilana.1396:

Actually I did read the thread

And you think that making the bombs spawn faster (for the door) or reducing the number / HP of trash mobs (coming out of the clown car) would “dumb down” the game?

Personally, I fail to see what’s the intellectual challenge of those two activities…

Ah, the classic “dumbing down” reply, clearly typed without reading any of the posts in the thread. That took a while.

Or maybe the poster thinks that spending 10 minutes killing identical mobs makes one “smarter” than if it took a mere 5 minutes.

Razor.6392:

it was composed of other 1st timers, I do not want that since it’s bound to fail horribly.

If everyone had that mentality, no one would ever have done any dungeon, because there were no “experienced players” to guide the first party. If you read the wiki articles and watch a few videos, you’ll know more about each encounter than any player did during the first couple of weeks.

Just avoid “quick runs” if it’s your first time, because other players will be skipping most trash, and if you don’t know what to expect you’ll probably get snared / killed / lost (the overhead map is almost useless).

I tend to skip most trash, but I’ve done a few runs where I killed almost every single mob in there, and it wasn’t as slow as you might think (then again, that depends on your party, of course). Few groups took more than 15 seconds to clear.

So, if you find a party saying “killing trash” or “full clear”, join that one. Or just create one where you include that in the description. After you’ve done a couple of full clears you’ll have a much better idea of where to go and how to skip things.

I think one of the things missing from GW2’s dungeons is… proper trash.

It makes no sense that a fully kitted out group of “heroes” (i.e., the players) should take so long to kill unnamed guards (i.e., “trash”). In fact, in GW2 it’s sometimes easier to kill bosses than the group of 3 or 4 mobs before them, which is just silly.

So I wouldn’t necessarily reduce the number of mobs in the bombs / clown APC parts, I’d just make them really weak. Mowing through big hordes of weak mobs is fun and helps make your own character feel more powerful. If, instead of reducing the number of guards to half, you simply halve each guard’s health, the fight takes about the same time but becomes more enjoyable.

Only named mobs (“mini bosses”) and bosses should be more powerful than individual players. The challenge in other encounters should come from the number of enemies (ex., 5 players vs. 20 guards), never from the fact that a lowly guard has 10x the HP and 5x the DPS of a fully kitted out player.

This is, IMO, one of the fundamental principles of dungeon design, which GW2’s developers don’t seem to understand. Trash is there to make players feel powerful, not to make them waste 10 minutes getting HP bars down.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

someone told me today that the miniature collector title is for sale, too.

How is that in any way related to this topic, or even this forum?

Also, last time I checked, minis were tradable between players, and sold at the gem store. Dungeon tokens aren’t (but in fact you can buy tokens for any dungeon, due to the way the game gives the dungeon completion chests even to players who haven’t killed a single boss). If Arena Net wants those tokens to be tradable, they should simply allow us to sell them at the trading post. I have over 1500 tokens for most dungeons in my wallet, and I’d gladly sell them to anyone who wants the dungeon gear, if those are the rules.

Casmurro.9046:

I dont think that kicking before the final boss is that common as you say

I didn’t give any statistics about how “common” it is. I merely said it’s trivial to do (and I know it is done, because it happened to two friends of mine this month), and the current dungeon mechanics make it worthwhile, because the person who joins gets all the final rewards without having to do any work. See points (2) and (b) in my original post.

Nosoyelarty.7268:

PD: I sell dungeon paths when i teach or do training runs of arah

If you’re doing “training runs”, presumably the people you bring are actually doing the dungeon and fighting the bosses, no?

So how does that relate to what I wrote (about people selling the last boss - ie, selling the tokens / achievement to buyers who don’t participate in the dungeon at all)? Was that just a strawman argument, or were you replying to someone else?

spoj.9672:

Anet specifically said its ok to sell this service as long as no exploits are used and no scamming comes into play.

Arena Net said it was OK to charge players gold in exchange for letting them have the dungeon tokens and achievement from the last boss, without having to participate in any dungeon encounter?

I’d like to see where they said that. Got a link?

I think that, overall, the fractal design is okay. It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses, and increasing the respawn speed of the bombs (or making the mobs drop bombs when killed), so the fractal becomes shorter. In terms of mechanics it’s certainly more interesting than most of the original dungeons. It’s just too long.

Or did you have some specific gameplay mechanic in mind?

Can’t you assign two keys to every action? Ex., can’t you assign both “1” and “cltr+J” to skill button #1? Or won’t the secondary assignment work in downed state?

illo.5106:

You forgot:

The “rewards” mentioned in (a) include the the achievements (and there’s already a thread about that in the “dungeons” sub-forum).

Either Arena Net wants those things to be sellable or not. If they don’t, they can easily fix the dungeons to give the tokens (and achievements) only to players who are actually present at (and participate in) every boss fight. The game already has mechanisms to check that.

For a company with such a history of knee-jerk responses to “exploits”, they don’t seem to care much about this one, so I can only assume that they’re okay with players selling dungeon tokens and achievements, in which case they should just make those available at the trading post, or even at the gem store.

You can already get any dungeon’s tokens for gold (and you can always get gold for gems); the trading is just happening outside the trading post (through the LFG system), so the current state of affairs is hypocritical on Arena Net’s part.

P.S. – Yes, people are paying gold for the tokens, because they’re the only way to get Arah (or any other dungeon’s) gear. The title “Dungeon Master” is also absolutely worthless these days (most people who “wear” it simply bought it), but that only requires one run of each path. The dungeon gear requires multiple runs, and keeps people paying for quick tokens (announce “buying last boss in dungeon X” in LFG and some group kicks one of its members just before the last boss, invites that buyer, and he gets tokens in seconds, without having to kill anything in the dungeon).