Guild Wars 2

if that’s the case it’s cross account then. I would be very happy to get 60 then 30 tokens regardless of if i changed characters or stayed on the same one. the part that bothers me is that if choose to stick on path one if say i’ve cleared the others and just want to keep repeating to go towards the armour once the initial bonus wears off… eventually i’ll be getting only 2 tokens per run despite my consistent efforts. I’d honestly be happy if rather than get 60 and down, we allways got a steady 20-30.

Before the implementation of DR, we were only getting 20 odd tokens per run. in the first week, the system was killing it for us. the difference now is that before we get to the 20, we get 60, then 30… I’m yet to play since the patch but if this is how it works out i’ll be happy. as long as it never drops below 20 and i start getting bundles of 5 like what i got 50% of the time last week. if you’re used to 60 and nothing less, you were being affected by the bugs in the system in an unfairly generous way.

I did a run of CoF last night. Starting to feel slightly uncomfortable with the playerbase of this game. 4/5 people are allways so open to exploit and don’t care about the consequences, and when i explain how it’s not right, they reply with stuff like “I don’t have the time to do it properly”, “it’s a game, who cares”. Or they try to undo your reasoning with a question like “Have you ever downloaded music?”. it’s that same sense of hopelessness for society you feel when you find out all your friends are taking drugs. Now, don’t get me wrong i’m not uptight… I just think that it defeates the prestige and sense of accomplishment in having certain sets of armour when it can be obtained so easily without a conscience.

Exploiting is kinda like using steroids to dominate sporting events, or cheat codes to finish a game. You might finish out ontop but it speaks nothing of your merits.

FINALLY cleared this boss with a PuG. Our team began as a warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Theif (myself), Elementalist. after about 45 minutes of trying the strategy in the videos and advised from other players of weakening to 30% then designating crystal smashers, we decided to test the spawn rate on the crystals. we all set out breaking them and then attempting to run in and finish him off when they got low. that failed and the engineer and guardian both left. i went outside and picked up another theif and an elementalist, and we decided to just ignore any form of potential strategy, or what it looked like we were meant to do, and just cut him down with brute force. that worked in 1 shot. it still wasn’t easy, people went down but in the end the boss died. the winning formula was 2 eles, 2 theives and a warrior. this to me confirms it can be pugged, though it definately wasn’t easy. It was good to finally beat this son’uva. it seems the challenge here will be making it a little more dependant on strategy, but lower the spawns of crystals to make it actually possible.

So what if loads of people exploited. that’s no reason to join them… and that’s the kind of attitude they ride with. I’ve been concerned about this myself and asked them. As it is, the exploiters themself without much evidence will probably get away with it, but if you just stick to your principals and turn a blind eye when your team mates decide they just want to be ub3r 1337 mad dogs without doing the time, as long as you’re not encouraging them or actively seeing through the particular exploit like say… Magg in CoF, if you dont also jump through the gate but you’re in the team when the other party members do, and they kill the boss against the intended design…. then nothing will happen to you. you are safe as houses. just report the glitch itself and in time they wont be able to do it, and you’ll be able to resume completing the dungeon legitimately without having to fear whether or not they’ll cheat as there wont be a way to do it.

Munchkin, I wont give you some elitist answer as is the trend and use this as a chance to criticise your idea, but rather offer something to think about. As an elementalist, you can DPS pretty hard. the trick with light armored classes is that their lack of defense is essentially to compensate for their power. it’s expected that you shouldn’t have to take much damage because you’re able to compensate with your skills and bring foes down before they get a chance to touch you – hence why you’re only light armored. The most defensive set of stats and runes can only polish light armored defense so much, it’s really a waste. Your strengths on the other hand, mod around those and it’s much more effective… in your case the best defence would be a good offense.

as for your solutions:
The first one.. sometimes it’s better to have certain things attainable certain ways, if you can get setup perfectly too easily it takes the fun and challenge out of it. That aside, There’s still the fact dungeons have cooler skins in my opinion than crafted armor.

Second one… There is some prestige in holding armor from a certain dungeon, if someone could say get the Arah armor from doing CM over and over, it would mean alot less to own it. you adressed that partly yourself though.

Third solution: I see what you mean, good intentions and i like that it would get people going to different dungeons, but in terms of practicality – it kinda ties in with the answer to suggestion 2. though from owning the peice itself, like the coat for example… people would know you had to go to a certain dungeon to get it. but it’s more rewarding when it’s the skin rather than the peice, because in the end when there’s that one prestigious dungeon… you’re only representing your completion of it with one peice. when you’ve got the whole set from it, that’s saying something. if you can get the whole skin but some of it came from CM or AC… it’s not as valuable to players who find those two dungeons easy.

@MrLee i replied to you just before that and explained. you’re not wrong, it is definately meant to be a fight where you hold off as long as possible… but whether you’re attacking or just surviving… that’s atleast honest and not simply taking avantage of cracks in the design.

@spreadhseets if you’ve got a better strategy besides glitching or being able to fight through it, please dazzle us with this intricate and creative tactic. I didn’t say it was anything above neolithic cunning but you can sum anything up bluntly and make it sound bad. this works well for me…and that’s better than being a conscienceless exploiter who wants everything without earning it. it’s not the intended flight path but it still requires effort which is the next best thing when the intended way is near impossible.

plasmacutter.2709:

I don’t think it’s the dungeons that are broken but the professions.

Some professions get good kit out the door to handle support, others tanking, others damage, but until they reach 80 there’s no way to fill out the remaining roles.

My mesmer simply does not have the traits at 35 for instance to tank an AC explore mode. The defensive weapon cooldowns are too long to be chained together, the caps on traits-per-line prevent the stacking of enough toughness to make up the heavy vs light armor gap seen on warriors/guardians, and condition removal skills are still many levels further up the trait lines.

People saying “anyone can build for any role” are not taking into account the max level for these explore modes are not 80, so anyone running these at “even level” are going to be missing chunks of their slot skills and have far fewer traits invested.

The trinity may not be there, but you still are profession-bound on certain roles.

In most dungeons you can PuG story mode doing anything. If you find you’re not able to ‘tank’ yet on your mesmer, just run DPS. realistically there shouldn’t be any roles, everyone should be just another individual who happens to be coordinating fight plans with other players with a common objective. also those “even level” signs on the lower dungeons aren’t entirely accurate. While it is low enough for you to enter, it could still be a bit too much until you’re around 5-10 levels passed it unless you’re with a good team. ofcourse we all get downleveled to suit it, but being a higher level down-graded still has advantages over those who ARE that level. some dungeons are quite difficult for anyone, but in those cases it’s more obvious the dungeon despite being open to lower levels, is another End-game activity. just look at the level of the token rewards from exp modes. atleast leveling is a relatively fast experience in this game. you wont be 35 for long. until then, don’t judge your fish class on its ability to climb trees.

@Strifer it’s really just a more elaborate take on the 2 in method. I organise the 5 of us into “team 1” consisting of 2 players, “team 2” consisting of 2 players, and if there’s a guardian available they are “team 3” solo. Otherwise – i’ll explain when i get to it. The 2 players in team one are assigned a replacement from team two. Say player ‘A’ and player ‘B’ are team 1, Player ‘C’ and player ‘D’ are team 2. Player ‘A’ is assigned ‘C’ as their substitute, and ‘B’ is assigned D. player A and B begin by talking to Magg, and kiteing as best as they can for as long as possible. When ‘A’ get’s downed, they call ‘down’ or just the letter ‘d’ to signal the substitution, and ‘C’ runs in to replace ‘A’. it doesn’t matter who goes down first on either team. If ‘B’ dies first, ‘D’ will be in before ‘C’. The reason i say to run in before they are properly dead is that while they are downed, they still hold some mob attention and that makes it easier for the substitute to get into a comfortable place. it also means that there wont be a few seconds where they turn on Magg. if player 5, who we’ll call ‘E’ is a guardian, they will observe and wait until either ‘C’ or ‘D’ is dead, and the other one just a couple seconds from going down. They run in, and any good guardian from what i’ve seen can take alot of damage and usually buy a good 10-20 seconds or longer. if player ‘E was infact a guardian, then player ’A’ and ‘B’ should easily be ready by the time ‘E’ is almost defeated, at which point the two of them run in and the cycle continues. if ‘E’ was a less bulky class due to no guardian being available, they simply observe both ‘C’ and ‘D’, and run in to replace who ever gets downed first. if this happens, ‘A’ and ‘B’ still have plenty of time to get back. and just say for example, C dies, and E is in with D – it is the duty of ‘A’ and ‘B’ to observe and wait till either one is dead and the other is on around 30% health or seconds from a few fatal hits. then they go back in and the cycle continues. that pattern usually holds for an average of 2 cycles, it can be broken sooner and it can be held longer… but when it does get broken, that doesn’t matter, just play it like the less constructed any 2 players in angle. by that time, you would have bought enough time that it doesn’t matter so much. around 80% you’ll probably just be running back constantly as they will be far greater in numbers and harder to kite. forget all order at that point and just keep going for it like lemmings, that’s usually sufficient enough to get the last 20%.

MrLee.6892:

Robert Hrouda have you killed those mobs spawns in that room successively in a well organized pug (without voice communication)?

Just curious if you guys play with other players in game instead of in house at ArenaNet.

Those packs are simply WAAAYYYY too overpowered.

And like a poster said in this thread " If these events/dungeons weren’t so buggy/hard we wouldn’t need exploits to do them".

Then I thought about running dungeons in other MMO’s like LotRO, SWTOR, Rift, and WoW. I never ONCE thought of doing an exploit or been in a group that kept doing exploits just to get past something.

I think that is very odd that all of a sudden people have to do it in this game. It is not working ArenaNet!!

just an FYI, that room doesn’t have to be exploited. I haven’t had a single PuG for whom kiteing under my instructions hasn’t worked. sometimes we get it in one go, sometimes it takes 4-5 attempts… but never left that dungeon without having completed it fairly bar one exception where the group were full of themself, and in a hurry to be endgame Leetsters standing around geared up without having played much of the game to get there – with them they rez’d mag out the way without even trying the kite first. I’ve even done it with mostly light armored players and 2 of us medium geared. However, that’s still not the way it’s meant to be. it’s obvious from the shape of the room and allocated space, the fact you have to try buy magg some time.. that it’s intended to be like one of those wave after wave survival things where we’re supposed to hold them off using combat. it’s far too hard to be done THAT way, but it can still be done without cheating. They are well aware of the difficulty of that room though… I think they intend to fix this soon (hopefully).

Massacrul.2016:

As i said, i did it with 2 RANDOM people and 2 guild mates. Don’t believe me – Your problem.

I’m not elitist, i’m not hardcore player… I’m a casual player that spends most of his time on WvW !

I didn’t say i don’t beleive you, i just mean to say those particular randoms must have been better than you credit them for. That is luck on that part, and circumstance on the other 3 of you.

Recently they changed tokens received, making them account bound. So tokens earned now can be shared amongst all of your characters. The change however only applies to tokens rewarded after the last update, those which were in your inventory prior to this are all the old format. That is why they dont stack. but don’t worry, you can still use them together to purchase dungeon gear. I think they might do something about that on the next update

People saying he’s easy are tripping. If you killed him like it was nothing you’re clearly unaware of your abnormally propitious circumstances, or some subdermal irritance of an elitist trying to make those who’ve failed feel isignificant while you’re well aware of the present difficulties. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but it is rediculously tough for people who don’t have the PERFECT group in terms of team coordination and individual ability, ready to roll whenever we click our fingers. yeah, you know who you are. quit pretending you just winged it with randoms.

1. I agree. we do need partial completion rewards – and i think the way they’ve tried to prevent it by lumping them up at the end is less rewarding, it feels like you’re grinding to one place where as with small injections of reward the whole way through, you feel like you’re constantly earning something even if you leave with the same amount as you do from the 1 end chest. it’s a mental thing, but also offers something to some players if they disconnect, or if their team ragequits after wipeing on a boss 12 times. you don’t wanna find yourself 50 silver down on repairs and with nothing to show for it. The best counter for this issue i can think of is, is just make a lockout timer for people who leave the dungeon early. that way they cant just farm 1 boss then quit, they have to wait increasingly longer each time they try from 5 minutes the first time they do it, 10 the second, 20 the third time and the 4th time onwards, 30 minutes. that surely would deter such advantage taking of the first boss.

2. Agree again.. I say this loads of times, and anyone who has noticed is probably thinking “oh this again….” but, we dont all have access to dungeon expert guilds and friends who play. alot of us are on our own and have to use PuG’s, but that’s a chance to meet new players and some day form such guilds. if we meet on frustrating terms like wiping on the last boss a bunch of times, i see less chance of that happening.

3. Agree again. an intensely hard dungeon mode/path, but worth it like at the end have a merchant with an exclusive armour and weapons set that provides one peice of it much like the end-game tokens in GW1, except a different peice can be obtained every time you do it. that way, rather than running it 50 times and establishing “yes, you can”, you just gotta clear it 6-7 times to get all the stuff you want. that’s a fair challenge but not stupidly repetitive, and other players without dungeon guilds can acheive something similar as a reward for their preseverence and time put in..doing the easier path alot more times, a fair trade off IMO.

SiNoS.2147:

Problem is the feed back is by puggers in general. These dungeons were not made with puggers in mind.

Must be great having loads of friends who play Guild Wars 2, and a strong online network of people just waiting to play dungeons with you. After all it’s not about what YOU can do it’s about your team working as one. I’m happy for you to have that, i’m sure that despite the fact i’m probably just as skilled a player as you, you deserve that armour and I don’t. because you’re fortunate and your friends play.

i’m just curious, I allways discourage my teams from doing exploits.. I explain that it’s because of those stunts that BS like the DR is in place. but sometimes i can’t stop them from doing stuff like jumping through the gates. I don’t go with them when they do so, and on occasion through hassling them about it they’ve decided not to do it at all. But when they do something like that and clear the boss, then come back and kite the room with me to then open the gate and instantly be finished… does that count as exploiting on my part? i’ve just ran the brunt of the dungeon and don’t want to have to leave the team to be 100% sure i’m fine. but if i refuse to take part is it still in someway my fault? they seem very naive and carefree and try to justify it with talk like “They’d have to ban half the population if people got in trouble for this”…

@Voltar: “i don’t want to be able to beat every dungeon with a pug. that’s not what they are supposed to be about. what other game intends for their high-difficulty pve to be pug-able? why do people feel entitled to it here.”

Okay. most of us don’t have such networks which allow of us construct and conduct a precise team. it doesn’t mean we are any worse than you, but you have the added benefit of knowing whose running what, how much they can handle and how to relate relevant info to them to ensure they get it right. it’s easy for you to form a team, communicate with that team… and whatever else. those are essentially the points which carry a guild crew where a PuG fails, that doesn’t mean the PuG consists of less capable players… they deserve the rewards just as much. This game is different because there’s no roles, and the majority of guilds i’ve found couldn’t care less about dungeons as anything more than “hey for kitten and giggles, let’s try that on the weekend one time only and never do it again”. if there were far more dungeon oriented guilds, actively recruiting and organizing these things..it wouldn’t be a problem. but in the meantime, be considerate and understand you are just lucky to have the support you do.

Inci.7560:

Oh no, it’s weekend and a game patch will take place in two days.

You guys are really spoiled, and I have no idea where that came from. I wasn’t expecting such a big patch so soon, and I’m looking forward to it. So a minority of us(Myself included) don’t get much from dungeons. I still enjoy well played runs even though the rewards are lacking, and just do something else for the weekend because I don’t feel like grouping with pugs alot until the rewards are fixed. Big deal.

I love Anet because they’re so close with their community, it shows with every single post. Props to the whole team and in particular you, Hrouda. Love how clear your posts are and how you always give people the reasons for your actions. Makes problems much easier to understand, and this is not something I’ve ever seen in any other game. Much love from me, and I hope I’m not much trouble with all my posting, haha.

I don’t mind that it will take till monday.. I could wait till next friday – but his justfication was that they should be allowed to just forget about all together simply because it’s the weekend.

Inci.7560:

Kain.9167:

I can say with certainty that the people who want dungeons more difficult are the minority. They need to be able to be done by pug groups that don’t have exotic gear. I’m sure they are going to flame me like crazy for this but it is because they are an extremely vocal bunch. Not everyone has 4 hours to fight the same fight over and over with the same group and tons of communication. The most common dungeon group has to be a random one, and most people are taking the same path over and over again despite diminishing returns because the other paths are too hard!

What’s the goal with making them harder? To appease the people who already can do it and have it on autopilot.

What’s the goal with making them easier? To make them more accessible to everyone else who still has yet to do them and get the goodies!

Think about it.

So the quality has to take a hit because you want people to be able to clear it from the get-and-go? You dissapoint me.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be harder, I’m all for having more diverse tactics instead of just a few tough ones. I would probably nerdgasm if I had to dodge three different aoes in the space of two seconds with precise positioning before I could hit the boss for about two seconds until he has some other trick up his sleeve for me.

That’s why I love CoE so much. It’s boss tactics are by far the most diverse.

I don’t think they should make everything easy enough for just any player regardless of their attention to what’s happening, experience and team work… but there are some bosses that are just unfair, exclusive to precise guild teams of friends, with mic’s and thorough understanding of eachothers style. I bet i’m no worse a player than any individual in a group capable of demolishing any boss – but with the resources and guilds i’m part of, I am often alone trying my best to coordinate PuG’s. if i can show them how it’s done, make sure every player is switched on, listening, and involved in the strategising… and individually capable, then as a combined unit it should be possible for us. But on a boss like path 1 in CoF, it just isn’t. super coordinated guild teams aren’t being rewarded on individual ability, they are being rewarded on the fortunate edge that working as a well oiled unti due to outside factors provides them. If i can pull a PuG across the line, that should speak for my ability just the same and make us just as deserving. I like challenges, I like it when we wipe once or twice and have to re-think our angle, That’s not a set-back, that’s a rewarding challenge. but even if with a well thought out, individually capable PuG, it’s just not possible…I don’t see how bringing it down just within our reach is too far below you.

@Crovack – Very well said, I hope the dev’s do read this thread and atleast just try to consider this problem from yours and many of our perspectives. A sign that they have done so would be comforting, even if they don’t intend to cater to our suggestions.

@Lucas Ashrock – Yes, it is the weekend. All the more reason to have the game running well, for many people this is their chance to get a good GW2 session in. I don’t see “it’s the weekend, let them run amock” as a plausible reason for delayed attention to these matters. Especially not to ‘disco’. and women aren’t a haircut, you don’t just ‘get one’ like that.

I have been screwed over by this system too, as have many players. I have not once seen the intended 60, and after i get my semi-pleasing daily 45 the rest are bundles of 5-15 measly tokens, but just a heads up.. there’s allready a bunch of threads covering the topic and hundreads of players reporting the DR system innefective – Dev’s have even acknowledged it’s bugged. There is one thread where people were asked to report such bugs as comments… but creating new threads all together probably clutters the forums just a little and pushes other vital issues to the side/smothers them. I feel your frustration though, 100% with ya.

For some dungeons, they need to be made both harder and easier in different sections, rather than an overall ‘difficulty summary’. For example, Magg’s run at CoF is generally a breeze, i wouldn’t be opposed to upping the difficulty on the devourers to require a more tactical approach. Usually it can be done with the team all over the place killing whatever they feel like. That said, the kite-room is near impossible to kill the enemies and hold out in some zombie apocalypse style survival mode, and even just running around taking aggro can be tough until everyone one else in the party gets the hang of it and can buy those extra few crucial seconds. If it was more do-able, but still tough… that would balance the dungeon out alot. I’ve seen players try to jump through the gate and get frustrated with me because i insisted we kite the room, as exploiters are the reason for tripe like DR. Maybe a few more acoytles in the boss room too, he is very easy with any PuG.

Pathway 1 however, the run to the boss room itself is fine and I have lead various PuG’s through it with no major problems… but the boss is rediculous! We were built well, we had my Thief with focused deadly arts, sup grenth runed up and experienced in Degen – A ranger and a necro who both knew to focus high condition DPS – particularly poison… and 2 guardians who were experienced. we communicated well despite being a pug, everyone was very savvy, following plans precisely, offering feedback and solutions on our attempts. we ALL took the time to watch a few videos of teams clearing the boss on youtube to get the strategy down… and we applied that strategy as well as we could. there were no weak links or bad players, but that boss just has ZERO room for error. For a PuG, I honestly don’t think there was much more we could have done to give it a better shot… and I dont see how if we were a guild on ventrilo that could have gone any differently. we knew what to anticipate, but in the end it just didn’t pan out like the video. We wiped about 10 times, each time trying hard and working out the kinks… but in the end, we just couldn’t do it. I have been in that situation with several other PuG’s on that boss. Every single player i’ve faced him with has came to the conclusion… He needs to be softened up somehow. If he can heal himself, give him less health. the challenge is executing the strategy right, and because he takes so long to down…that’s alot of holding out perfectly… so if we do nail it, keeping the poison on him and avoiding the crystals that fall.. that should be rewarded. that’s a good enough challenge.

The people likely to disagree with me are very fortunate, They have guilds who they’ve known over the years from several other games. Tight gaming bunches who know eachother on a real name basis, understand eachothers strong points, and are comfortable coordinating with eachother over a headset… all those boxes ticked, but also just HAPPEN to be interested in running the same dungeons over and over again, available at the same time of the day…. Reality check: the majority of us don’t have such crews, but we are individually good players and deserve the same nice things other skilled players can acheive with their fortunate circumstances. I couldn’t interest any of my friends in GW2.. They either think they are ‘too cool’ for online games, or stubborn guys who got into WoW and can’t see anything being better. I also live in Australia… alot of us are very easy to get along with – great people. But many aussie gamers are high-school aged kids who abuse eachother over simple mistakes and have egos leaking out of their ears. That means even by luck if i could get a guild who just happened to have the exact same goals as me, it could be an unpleasant experience where as the players over seas in the US etc who i’d like to play with, are in time zones where it’s not often practical for us to play at the same time.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Well yes, obiouvsly we can add the timing, now set at 30 minutes. They truly think the exploit is a matter of timing, not how the fight is established, running between adds, pulling a boss till the WayPoint etc etc

Well, i’m not so much surprised, i was a GuildWars 1 player

(Who understood what i’m talking about, will laugh a bit)

You’re right, and that is the problem. we complain because their method of determining what is an exploit, is based on criteria which normal players can meet, and thus be penalised for, simply for being honest, persistent and well coordinated. They as you say should focus more on just HOW the player got to that end chest, not WHEN, and perhaps put in barriers along the way which require the completion of previous parts of the process to trigger the final chest, from the first event to the last.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Hayden.7920:

DivineBeing.2086:

Eolirin.1830:

They need DR so that if people find a game breaking dungeon exploit that allows them to significantly bypass Dungeon content, it doesn’t result in tanking the entire game economy or devaluing the dungeon armors. This isn’t meant to be a way to slow down players or punish being efficient, but a way to safe guard the broader game against techniques that use game bugs to trivialize content.

Dungeons generate more gold than most other activities in the game, and they want to be able to keep it that way, but that means they need defense against exploits before they happen, not just responses after they happen. This is an attempt to do that, it’s just bugged and needs additional tuning. Give them a little more time.

Shhh. Don’t point it out again. If these idiots can’t read and understand Anet’s responses than they deserve to be in the dark.

Obviously you’ve got plenty of better things to do in GW2 than run certain dungeons. We are aware of ‘why’ Anet is doing this, but it’s the wrong solution and it only comes with problems. Don’t go calling those of us who are disgruntled by the system “idiots” just because this is no problem for you. Those of us who AREN’T exploiting, and want to spend our time on GW2 running a certain dungeon for an armour set CAN’T do so, because this system encourages one little fling with the dungeon per day. we are then expected to move on, but with my goal being the set in the reward i’d rather stay there and keep working at it. Players like me suffer. I do honest legit runs that take up to 1 hour, never ‘too fast’ to technically fall under this system. I still get only 5 tokens most of the time. if we could atleast get something in the field of 20-30 for each consecutive run, we’d still be busting our chops but it would be worthwhile, and our means to play would be satisfied.

The “idiots” he’s talking about are who (as much i posted it plently times on various thread, inviting to read ) still don’t want to read dev’s posts, where staff admitted DR system as broken giving unfair rewards, inviting the community to just wait a fix, having fun waiting if someone post the exploit to get 60 tokens per run, regardless of the DR.
Still no, i can keep posting it 100 times more, still you will see this thread (and his 2 replicas) growing of posts with random token rewards, and people whining. Not understanding they are wasting their time and anger on something just cannot be accomplished , because we lack of a fix

Haha

but it’s not just about the tokens, yes those are glitched, but the system even when ‘healthy’ would deter us from attempting the dungeon more than once a day, it would punish us for playing efficiently, it would cater to the wrong people. much anger comes from this facet of the negative effects the DR imposes. it is the wrong solution. it doesn’t stop exploiters, it just makes them wait a little longer. it’s a universal bandage over holes which require individual attention, and it comes with trouble.

Problem: Exploiters taking advantage of glitchy instances
A-net solution: Make it so they can’t be rewarded if they finish quickly or repeat…
Typical player: Huh? but that affects us… what did WE do? it’s between you two.
Exploiter solution: Duh, we’ll just wait out the timer at the end…(like the timers relevant)
A-net solution: Justify the system, blind eye to the disgruntled typical player.
Typical player: Well this sucks. I’m going elsewhere

-down the track if this keeps up-

A-net: please please please stay,we’ll give you free tokens, open more content, make hard things easy and easy things hard.. look! gem discount! get cheap gems! please stay!

Marshall Teach.9064:

Renegade.6325:

Provide examples of bosses that cant be beaten by well coordinated teams please.

and please elaborate on what you classify as a well-coordinated team, because pugs talking on vent not knowing what the other person’s specs are in armor/traits/weaponry isnt exactly coordination. nor is LF1M of ANYTHING going to make a proper team.

Well you make do with what you can get, and if the only people you can find is a PuG, then what is considered ‘well coordinated’ to such an individual would infact be a PuG but greater in contrast to the others in teamwork, individual player skill and experience. I bet you have some online community of friends who you’ve known for a while, have ran various guilds with, and have the same goals in a game – so running a dungeon is something easy for you to do together. Either that or you’re some suburban high school student with 10 school friends all with rich parents happy to splurge on awesome computers to log in together, mic up and do your thing. The rest of us don’t have such support, their fairytale idea of what constitutes a typical guild is not a reality for as many players as you think. if you know of a guild that is happy to do high-skilled coordinated dungeons all the time! then let me know where they are. please.

Zale.9645:

ArenaNet implemented the diminishing returns system to limit exploitation in dungeons without necessarily having to deal with the exploits on a case to case basis. Their thought process is that dungeon content should take around an hour or more to complete.

The flaw in their logic is that how long they think dungeons should take to complete and how long they actually take can be very different. The fact is that some dungeon content does not take an hour to complete or even close. Their DR system is fundamentally flawed because it does harm to legitimate players.

Let me present an example. If I were a cop, saw a man with a tattoo, and decided to arrest him just on the possibility he had committed a crime, even if I was right I would deserve to be fired because I could have been wrong.

The sad truth is that ArenaNet is essentially doing the same thing. They’re casting an indiscriminate net to catch their prey. But the DR system is a reflection of ArenaNet’s own flawed dungeon design. It will hamper exploiters, but in doing harm to legitimate players it makes the player pay the price for ArenaNet’s own mess ups.

This!! Summed up very well comrade.

While simultaneously catering for the casual players who couldn’t care less about the benefits of being casual – hence their casual presence, and attempting to put a handle on exploiters; the honest commited players suffer the most for it. The way i’d prefer to play, under their system cannot be satisfied. I would like to play longer, but the activities which would sustain my interest in the game are shrunk beyond worth to the point where there’s no point – and as a consequence, myself and other players with the same needs from a game are left hungry yet unable to eat because the rations are spoiled. They are very vague about this systems holes, it seems like they’ve put their foot down, they like the idea, and they are just going to keep trying to justify it without acknowledging how it’s destroying the gameplay experience. The dev attention on this matter seems low, and they only ever chime in with very inconclusive unsatisfying comments like “We realize there’s bugs. Have fun with that”. Kick me in the face a little harder next time. They say it will be good, but the only sense i can see that is in comparing it into how buggy and broken it is at the moment. it’s still a dodgy system. and you’ll find the people who have little to do with it are the ones on the defense.

DivineBeing.2086:

Eolirin.1830:

They need DR so that if people find a game breaking dungeon exploit that allows them to significantly bypass Dungeon content, it doesn’t result in tanking the entire game economy or devaluing the dungeon armors. This isn’t meant to be a way to slow down players or punish being efficient, but a way to safe guard the broader game against techniques that use game bugs to trivialize content.

Dungeons generate more gold than most other activities in the game, and they want to be able to keep it that way, but that means they need defense against exploits before they happen, not just responses after they happen. This is an attempt to do that, it’s just bugged and needs additional tuning. Give them a little more time.

Shhh. Don’t point it out again. If these idiots can’t read and understand Anet’s responses than they deserve to be in the dark.

Obviously you’ve got plenty of better things to do in GW2 than run certain dungeons. We are aware of ‘why’ Anet is doing this, but it’s the wrong solution and it only comes with problems. Don’t go calling those of us who are disgruntled by the system “idiots” just because this is no problem for you. Those of us who AREN’T exploiting, and want to spend our time on GW2 running a certain dungeon for an armour set CAN’T do so, because this system encourages one little fling with the dungeon per day. we are then expected to move on, but with my goal being the set in the reward i’d rather stay there and keep working at it. Players like me suffer. I do honest legit runs that take up to 1 hour, never ‘too fast’ to technically fall under this system. I still get only 5 tokens most of the time. if we could atleast get something in the field of 20-30 for each consecutive run, we’d still be busting our chops but it would be worthwhile, and our means to play would be satisfied.

Making it take longer to reach certain goals is just compensating for lack of content. DR is a form of this notion. I like to continuously run instances which I have got good at, to earn high end gear through simple persistence, patience and experience over a long period of time. I’m no crafter or rare item hunter, and I don’t have friends who play or a dungeon oriented guild who i am well established in. it’s not easy to find those things. So when i get good enough to carry a PuG through one path, i’d like to be able to run it over and over without being screwed over by some lazy mask for exploits rather than fixing them. I don’t exploit, I just want a worthwile amount of tokens at the end so that i can spend 3-4 hours running it over and over again comfortably to get one peice of armour. THAT would not be handing it to me, i’m still putting in time and effort, but that time should be rewarded. Instead, the game tries to cater to people who only do something once then bugger off because they clearly don’t care about it that much, and alot of the defense for DR comes from such people. This is killing it for me. And the dev responses are just vague, oblivious to the problems this system presents. blinded by their faith in its effectivity. it adds insult to injury.

i have cleared it with PuG’s loads of times over the past couple days, you just need to strategise right. with the kite room, i usually organise it so that there’s 2 teams of 2 players, and if there’s a guardian or war available, they stand alone as a time-buyer when needed. the players from team 1, are assigned a buddy from team 2 who replaces them as soon as they are downed. when both players of team 2 are out, the guardian runs in and tanks. by this point team 1 should be just about ready to go for the second round. towards the end, as it gets closer, forget the order so much and just try to make sure there’s allways a few people in there. sometimes we get it in one shot, sometimes it takes 5-10 attempts… but in the end it never fails. i’ve even done it recently with 2 medium armoured guys and 3 light armoured ones in the party. PuG and all. as long as everyone knows the plan thoroughly. as for the bombs, go for the upper level and distant ones first and it’s pretty straight forward. get them all back.. if you’re unsure, scope out the area first before talking to magg and beginning the event. the bomb section is one of the easiest parts. Maggs run really isn’t too hard… pathway 1 & 3 on the otherhand are PuG unfriendly, they made those runs to exclude everyone except for the fortunate folks who have constant dungeon running guilds and friends who play.

Archer.6485:

Other than the fact that diminishing returns are bugged for some people, I don’t see what the problem is.

If you’re experiencing these bugs you should wait untill they’re fixed. If you feel like you’re not being rewarded enough on repeated runs than you don’t need a lockout, you just choose not to play them more than once a day.

Personally I think the first run of the day rewards give you plenty. I don’t waste anywhere near 26 silver of repairs per run, and I get all the trash loot from chests as well.

What about those of us who don’t farm dungeons as a test or our teamwork or to complete a daily roster of various activities simply cause it’s there, but who enjoy the farming aspect of games and wish to complete various runs of the same instance to slowly but surely get some nice exotic armor as a reward for our persistence? This diminished reward system is a penalty which prevents any kind of comfortable persistence based acheivements within the game. If my main priority is a set of fancy armour, then nothing else feels worthwhile until i’ve got that goal out the way. I’d go back to mapping, sure, but then i think how much better it would be with that nice exotic set and decide against it. whether we do 5 runs in 2 hours or over 2 days, it’s the same work. if i wish to put in more time, then should that not be rewarded? because the way this system goes, it deters us from being enthusiastic about the game enough to want to play continuously. my 5-10 tokens per run say, kill DR. it sucks and it’s simply a cheap way to avoid dealing with the exploits. would a reward of 20-25 tokens per completion no matter what be too much to ask for? it would still take like 10-15 runs to get some of the individual armor peices, if not more. that wouldn’t be handing it to us, but it would be just rewarding enough to be worthwhile.

wookie slayer.4259:

Hayden.7920:

so you had no trouble with the pathway 1 boss in CoF explorable huh? with a PuG? do it again. you’ll never find a team with that much luck. there’s your challenge.

But thats part of the problem I’m not going to do the super hard path for the same rewards as the other two, nor will anyone else. These dungeons are boring and to me easy I havent been to Cof in awhile nut ive recently dont all AC and TA and they are EASY maybe its just those two but if so they are super easy all the paths

apparently there’s incentive to do the “super hard” path with the daily first time thing and whatnot. if you want the challenge, it’s in those difficult pathways. The “easy” ones are for those of us who don’t have a guild of 20 besties who all mic up, and have to make do with pugs. there’s something for everyone… but the actual token reward system, and this DR BS can go. it’s the real villain in all of this.

so you had no trouble with the pathway 1 boss in CoF explorable huh? with a PuG? do it again. you’ll never find a team with that much luck. there’s your challenge.

Galador Dux.6359:

The level of your gear means a lot less versus the quality of your play/builds and the stat spread on your gear.

Level 80 rares of any stat spread are pretty much dirt cheap on the TP last I checked. The difference between that and exotics isn’t a monumental difference, and certainly wouldn’t be enough to be the difference between success and failure unless he lived by the skin of his teeth. In other words, check your game before blaming your gear.

obligatory comment about explorable mode being hard

you’ve adressed what you had an answer for, but that leaves a big hole in the area of – something to show for our efforts. leaving a challenging dungeon with half of the full reward is much less of a sting than getting nothing at all just because the final boss was rediculously tough, and is an exclusive feat to players fortunate enough to have a stack of gamer friends and a good tight guild, mic’d up and ever active in the same scene. if you know of a guild on the every server who constantly organises successful dungeon runs like those which obviously justify your faith in the system, then tell me where they are. otherwise, we have to make do with PuG’s, and when coordinated right that should pay off. these incredibosses were built around a SUPER specific idea, which goes against the idea that removing the trinity created “play how you like”, I play well but apparently i need a headset and new friends. my 5 tokens per run in any case says, the system blows.

^ Nemui, forking out up to 1g in repairs and wiping several times… we don’t just put up with that for the ‘lovely time we’re having’. there is incentive, the incentive makes it fun and worthwhile when at the end, we have something to show for our wipeouts and lost silver. The work towards a goal is what makes it bareable and even fun. The challenge is in collecting enough through persistent effort. I haven’t put up with the cliche’ dug out look of CoF and all the freakish unexplained 1 hit deaths just so at the end i can say “well that was fun, even without making any form of progress towards an objective”.

JonPeters.5630:

Plain and simple this system is a safety net for stopping crazy farming when people find exploits that make each run super fast. We are also addressing those loopholes, but that takes time and new ones might always be discovered. If you and your group do the dungeons without skipping large sections and run different chains this system shoul(bugs aside) never impact you.

Addendum for clarity, super fast means < 30 minutes, and even then you must hit that speed multiple times in a row before you start seeing any impact.

Many of us like to play this way; Multiple runs of the same instance in order to farm tokens. This DR system discourages persistence and encourages casual flings with dungeons here and there, leaving us with little of interest to do between’cool downs’ on this system. I’m no master craftsman or rare item hunter, I don’t care for those methods of obtaining items. I like to farm tokens and whatnot until i can obtain good gear. There are also players who dont have the friends or support to form a group worthy of the most hardcore dungeon paths, nor do they have the time to clear it once, then come back in an hour to try again.. so if they would like to take the less agressive path several times over, that might be the only way they can get a worthwhile 2 hours of GW2 in before/after work. I’d like to know just how we have some ‘unfair’ advantage by doing multiple runs? whether i farm 80 tokens back to back, or 80 tokens over a period of 5 days, it’s the same accumulated time and work and should be rewarded the same. you’re just slowing the inevitble and punishing me by giving me a measly 5 tokens each run, despite the fact alot of my runs take longer than 30 minutes.

It is no “safety net”, it’s a cop-out to avoid simply ensuring there are no ways to exploit, because there shouldn’t be.

Cromx.3941:

LOL I am owed like 1.2 gold and god knows how many tokens,

you were ripped off on purpose by Anet, because they feel in the past you played too much. Therefore retroactively they have sidelined swaths of people into the “do not reward” category.

This has got to be the biggest most unprincipled company in the history of gaming.

i’d be in that catagory. getting 5 tokens most of the time.. i’d like to know just what constitutes the logic in such an unnecessary penalty when what we’re apparently being penalised for was in no way boosting us towards anything in the first place. god help you if your team finishes a dungeon faster than they are ‘allowed’ to.

^ The griffon farming in GW1 was fun, i liked to solo and that was a perfect place for me to farm – then they destroyed it and put scarabs everywhere, as if we were getting too much of a good thing when really we weren’t, we were just getting by. This diminishing rewards buisness bares that same grin of content spoiling.

the error isn’t with the system. the error is the system.

DR is backwards.. if we wish to play longer, it gives us less reason to by making that experience grindy and unyeilding. The only people who benefit from this are the ones who don’t care they are receiving benefits, on account of they don’t play much. The uneven distribution of tokens amongst players despite similar circumstances, penalising those who’ve allready farmed a bunch, forcing players to take unbalanced routes in order to gain anything… whether we work at it 3-4 hours in one session, or 3-4 hours over 3 days, the results should be no different. it’s a task, we complete it, we get the goods. If we want to spend more time on the game, should you at A-net not be flattered that we appreciate your work so much? because this feels more like a slap to the face.

Today, I spent a good few hours in CoF. I got 15 tokens on my best run, and for the others just 5. What harm would it do if i was receiving say, 25 tokens each run.. That’s a good quarter-esq number. some of the gear peices require 300-400+… i’d still have to complete dozens of runs and put plenty of time in, it would be challenging.. but it would atleast feel worth it to not get totally screwed over in the end and give me something worth-while to do/work towards. That, I can’t see being a problem to the integrity of the game in any way. This system implementation on the other hand is causing great unpleasantry and frankly i’m sick of reading “This sucks, I’m going back to WoW” as a result.

I hope someone there gets to read this.

My incentive to play constantly is now screwed up in a way which prevents me from playing it constantly. People who are willing to – and want to run the same thing over and over are being punished, it’s rediculous. whether i put in 1 hour or 5 hours , that 5 hours should be 5 times as rewarding as a 1 hour session. Simple as that. it’s the same work just not spread out..

We’re essentially being penalised because we enjoy the game and want to play it longer, which ironically we don’t enjoy at all. The game is being conditioned for people who hardly care about it, at the expense of those of us who DO want to get stuck into it. if you want players to explore more paths, then balance it out. don’t have 1 that any PuG can do, and then 2 that make even coordinated guild teams rage quit.

Abolishing the trinity was meant to liberate our choices as players, but you defeat the point of that when you design something around a precise idea which only players fortunate enough to have 20 best buddies on all the time mic’d up running best buddy guild teams coordinated up the ying yang can pull off. i’m a good player, but i dont have that kinda support.

hell yeah i loved zodiac weapons.

Edit: Maybe they’ll come in when Cantha is released like in GW1?

vicwolf.7862:

Kiting is doing it wrong, Pirate. This isn’t a thread for discussing workarounds for dealing with a badly balanced encounter, it’s for getting the encounter balanced in the first kitten place.

yeah it shouldn’t require some abstract strategy when it’s clearly intended to be a survival activity, only, the survival element is rediculously unbalanced. The tedious wait for the solutions to be patched in :/

For your trouble with the kiting area – one way i get my teams to do it is organize ourselves into teams of 2, and if there’s a guard or warrior, they are a team on their own. The two players in team one are assigned personal substitutes from team 2, so when they go down they call it and their team 2 substitue runs in. when team 2 has whiped, the guard/war goes in. by that point the players from team 1 should almost be ready to go back in, and they will as soon as the guardian/war is down. it can fail, things go wrong, but a couple tries at it and it allways works in the end, that’s running with PuG’s.
But the dungeon system as it is is very unrewarding to me… i get less than half the tokens i’m meant to be getting so there’s no incentive to put up with some of the bs bosses like pathway 1’s shard guy.

Yesterday I ran CoF for the second time of the day – first time after the patch, and only got 5 tokens in the end.. I then ran it again and once more, only got 5 tokens. On my third run i got 15 before quitting, then hoping for 60 i tried the next day and only got 45 before another string of 5’s. Continuous runs for tokens to earn decent armour sounded like fun to me, it shows i’ve done the work to get it and it looks nice. but when i only get 5, as ‘punishment’ for being enthusiastic about the new armour… come on. make it steady – not 60 then 20 & downards for everyone else (and 5 for me), why not just a stream of ..say.. 30 per reward. it’s enough to make it worthwhile but it still takes many runs (10+ at that rate for the chest peice). 5 per run is just grinding, which you pat yourselves on the back so much for apparently “avoiding”.

In accomodating people who are only going to play for 1 hour, you leave those of us who wish to play longer with less incentive to play at all. How does that make sense?