Guild Wars 2

Q: Everyone in my group just ran past all the trash mobs! Aren’t we supposed to kill monsters in dungeons? Isn’t it cheating to just run through?

A: What you just saw is called “skipping.” Robert Hrouda, a former designer at ANet, gives a great summary of the topic here . He explains the reasons why people skip very well, and the post is worth reading.

Paraphrasing Robert, everything is related to time spent vs. reward earned. Trash mobs take quite some time to kill, and give rather poor rewards (lots of sticky gobs are not particularly exciting). Since you can skip, and most of the time this is faster, it doesn’t make sense for players to fight most of the trash mobs. There is just no incentive to do so. ANet recognizes this, and allows players to skip, as Robert’s post shows.

Keep in mind, also, that some mobs spawn infinitely (this is particularly common in Arah). You can never stop and kill everything— you have to run! Skipping has been built into the core dungeon mechanics by ANet with these infinite spawns— ANet intended for skipping to be part of the game, so it is certainly not cheating. People often just use this same tactic in other places as well.

Now, we can imagine a world without skipping— what would it look like? ANet could simply turn off leashing of mobs, and they would always follow. What would happen to dungeon runs? Well, first: people could drag them all across the dungeon into the best location to fight them. There would always be some corner which you could bring the mobs to, drop your AoE’s, and destroy everything at once. That is not much of an improvement— the mobs are still trivialized. Alternatively, people would just use stealth. Every team would require one or more thieves (imagine the LFG posts: LF thief ONLY) so that they could still skip past mobs, since at the end of the day, skipping with stealth would still be faster. This is hardly an improvement either: ideally all content in the game can be completed with any class composition, and powering up stealth play like this would make the game less egalitarian.

ANet could always turn up the incentives for killing mobs: having them drop better loot is a great way to do this. For example, the destroyer trash in Crucible of Eternity is often fought because they drop T5 and T6 claws— the drop rate is not super high, but high enough that people generally think it is worth the time. Another example is the practice of killing trash mobs to get stacks of bloodlust or perception before fighting a boss— in this case, killing trash helps your effectiveness in fighting the bosses, and people are often very happy to do it.

At the end of the day, as Robert summarized over a year ago now, it is a matter of incentives. There is usually no benefit to fighting trash, so people understandably decide not to do it.

Q: Doesn’t it take zero effort to skip? Isn’t it unfair for this reason?

A: Just because skipping takes less time, does not mean it is trivial. Mobs can use knockdown, cripple, chill, and immobilize effects to prevent you from running. A successful runner knows the tells from mobs and knows when to dodge, when to use stability, when to cleanse conditions, when to blink, when to use a bit of stealth, etc. Groups will coordinate swiftness and aegis and other shared resources. People often switch equipment (to something with centaur runes, for example, for extra swiftness) or weapons (movement with a warrior’s sword/warhorn is easier than the preferred DPS weapons of axe/mace). Running is another form of challenge in this game, and it can be quite fun to do it right.

Q: I still don’t like skipping! What should I do?

A: You are not alone! While most people seem fine with skipping, people post in the dungeon forum complaining about skipping more than once per week on average. The simplest thing to do is very clear in your LFG posts: say things like “READ PLEASE: NO SKIPPING. Path 1” and feel free to kick people who do not follow your description. But the best thing, as Robert mentioned in the point above, is to find others who agree with you, and who you can reliably run your dungeon with exactly how you want to. Keep a list of people who join your groups for no skipping runs, look for guilds which do not skip, look for other posters on the dungeon forum. Trying to convince people who like skipping won’t be very effective: the most productive thing you can do is to reduce conflict and play with people you know you can count on.