Guild Wars 2

Why would you need a guide for this? It’s like creating a guide to show people how to breathe.

Conner.4702:

LordByron.8369:

OP you opened a post without even getting base concept of online games (learn what a cheater is) and yet you ask for bans?

Dev have stated they MEANT kohler to be skippable…
And skipping is full legit.

It seems you are complete newby in mmorpgs yet you ask for arbitrary bans on what you don t like…

….
That is the problem to have to play with Others, some just wants the game to be how only them wants and don t care for Others.

I think you should reread what the OP has wrote. He’s not talking about skipping stuff that can be skipped, but skipping stuff that shouldn’t be able to be skipped.

CoE first Alpha encounter is one of them as he mentioned in his post. Or to simplify it Going from A to D without passing B and C, because you found and exploit to bypass it.

Bottom line is unless ANet comes forth with a specific list by dungeon instance and encounter of what can and cannot be skipped to ban people as the OP suggests based on his opinion is a terrible idea.

How do you know when you’ve violated a rule when the rule isn’t clear in the first place? The very fact there is a contentious discussion over this means people have different perceptions of what constitutes “cheating” and what is legit.

Bottom line, it all comes down to options.

If you are a hardcore player then you are entitled to find a team and play in grouped dungeon instances as it is now.

If you are a casual player you should have the option to play a single player instance version at a much reduced reward scale.

There’s no rational argument against having additional options.

Dyroth.5063:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I think this is gonna get the kitten nerfed out of it. All this is going to lead to is diminishing returns lasting several hours instead of 30 minutes.

Either this or the path gets buffed so that full glass cannons receive greater punishment.

Punishing glass cannon is functionally the same as also punishing newer players without all exotic gear. They need to consider all the consequences before going in that direction.

Cirroq.2531:

DeathPanel.8362:

Go play wvw or FOTM 40+.

Raising the challenge just to satisfy a hand full of people like you while ailenating a lot more other casual players is not a smart thing for ANet to do.

A race towards the bottom, aiming for the lowest common denominator, or whatever term you would like to use is a great game design philosophy. Anet’s fear of alienating casual players has hobbled content design in GW2 and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Good thing you aren’t in charge of Anet, since you have no comprehension of what it takes to run a MMO.

An MMO is sustained by the PLAYERBASE. Not by its difficulty, not by its elites, and certainly not by people like you.

ANet wouldn’t alienate a large portion of their casual playerbase just to satisfy the 0.1% of the “HC” players. That just wouldn’t be logical.

Timze.7980:

DeathPanel.8362:

Timze.7980:

DeathPanel.8362:

runeblade.7514:

Citadel of the Flame

/thread

Wrong.

CoF is by far the least time taking and still well rewarding dungeon. But even this is only, when people know what to do.
BUT, for if you are looking for dungeon to run with only 2, then I would easily say AC.
It can be done and have already done by 2 players and isn’t even that hard. You just need to know how to get past trash mobs.

I would suggest trying AC

You are still wrong. Taking 1 of the paths and using that as the standard to judge the entire dungeon is wrong.

I’m not speaking about only 1 path. I’m speaking about whole dungeon series. CoF 1-2 are extremely fast. Path 3 got just nerfed much and has no hard points anymore with those already mentioned good groups.

Wrong again.

P2 is not fast unless you have a good group. With a good group any dungeon is fast.

What made P3 slow wasn’t the beginning part, it was just the most frustrating part. Aside from that the dungeon still takes a long time.

Cirroq.2531:

I guess this is more of a question of game design than anything. Why is it that if you DC in a dungeon you are kicked out to the entrance? What is the point of punishing someone for a bad internet connection?

I think this is the only MMO that does this. Is this really by design or is this on the list of things that is going to be fixed in future patches?

You can easily re-enter and rejoin your team.

Timze.7980:

DeathPanel.8362:

runeblade.7514:

Citadel of the Flame

/thread

Wrong.

CoF is by far the least time taking and still well rewarding dungeon. But even this is only, when people know what to do.
BUT, for if you are looking for dungeon to run with only 2, then I would easily say AC.
It can be done and have already done by 2 players and isn’t even that hard. You just need to know how to get past trash mobs.

I would suggest trying AC

You are still wrong. Taking 1 of the paths and using that as the standard to judge the entire dungeon is wrong.

Tristavel.9218:

To an extent, yes. Smooth run with nice people is the optimum, but I’d rather have a “bad” run with good natured team than a smooth one with rude and aggressive one. Believe it or not, there can be fun in trial and error, even if it takes a lot of time; for me, having to deal with aggressive jerks who need to take every opportunity to demonstrate their (real or imagined) superiority ruins the fun much more than simple incompetence.

If teammates were rude and aggressive then that would be by definition “bad” wouldn’t it?

“Trial and Error” is fun the first few times, but when you’ve done the same dungeon over and over again hundreds of times like me it stops being fun.

When I do dungeons I don’t care about anything but finishing it. I’ve already been there and done that a hundred times and I frankly don’t feel like wasting time on something so mundane.

If someone is preventing that from happening due to their inexperience I try to help. If that input is not taken and\or if that person reacts aggressively I’ll either quit or vote kick that person.

Bottom line, I have my friends and family in REAL LIFE. This is just a game where I team up with strangers. While I afford a minimal level of respect to everyone regardless of my relationship with them I don’t feel the need to go beyond that for strangers online if their actions waste my time.

Having said that of course I carry more than my own weight in a team, and you’ll never see me rage. I either quit or vote kick if it gets bad enough. I don’t like to waste time on drama with what are most likely pre-teens in an online game.

Ald.9418:

I’d argue that we need more forced grouping.

Solo game-play has completely ruined MMO’s and deviated them from what they originally were.

Wrong. GW2’s success lies in it’s numerous options for advancement that appeals to a broad playerbase.

When you FORCE people do do certain things without giving them options then GW2 will lose it’s uniqueness from the other failed MMOs in history.

WonderfulCT.6278:

I did Arah story before the patch with myself and 2 others having never done it before. I actually really enjoyed the battle leading up to him and we died a bit getting to zhitan (which is a good thing as challenge is welcome). Then as we fought the dragon itself just severe dissapointment crept into my soul. The boss was the easiest part of the dungeon when presumeably it should be at least somewhere in the middle. I’m not for the end boss being the most difficult but it was disgraceful. Now that I hear it’s easier I have given up on the personal story entirely.

Yes it’s really easy to give up a free alpha siege golem and pact rare weapon that sells for over 1 gold.

/Sarcasm off

runeblade.7514:

Citadel of the Flame

/thread

Wrong.

Go play wvw or FOTM 40+.

Raising the challenge just to satisfy a hand full of people like you while ailenating a lot more other casual players is not a smart thing for ANet to do.

JJBigs.8456:

this is a social game not a anti social game

It would be anti social to force people to socialize against their will.

Nanfoodle.2439:

Im a old school MMOer. I enjoy play my char and crawling through dungeons and killing mobs. GW2 community seems to like to run and train from point A to B and not play. Trying to get everything done as quick as possible to get a few tokens. Where is the fun? *****I wish the devs would change mobs so that you cant out run aggro in a dungeon.****** This is becoming a make or break it deal for me. This is not fun, its just turning into a race and people are not playing together doing so. Team work to get a job done needs to be brought back to dungeons.

Dungeons are done for a purpose, for either tokens or sometimes coin.

“Fun” for most people doing dungeons is basically finishing them as soon as they can.

No one has fun running the same dungeon x1000 times for their tokens/coin. Eventually you want to just end it asap and save time.

The true “fun” is in WvW or sPvP.

Zara.9524:

Hi.I have been playing GW2 for a while now as a necromancer and i have maxed out my gear.Im missing out only the ascended amulet.Also i am level 28 in Fotm.
I no longer have any use of dungeons but i do some on daily bases for my guild mates that need the gear.
Instead i do wvw and some spvp.But in the end we get some servers in wvw that are not worth fighting…We conquer entire world…so it is not fun at all.
My question is are u going to add any hardcore dungeon or any other content that will satisfy all those people with high end gear?
Since dungeons as they are now are kinda 2 easy for us….
Most of my guild got dungeon master in the hard mode of the dungeons before the patch.
If u are planing to get something for us can u specify will it be dungeon related and when approximately it will be added?TYVM

Go WvW.

Toxyn.9608:

angan.6572:

In a game with no group forming system, i don’t see why there shouldn’t be a solo option.

LFG tools are a recent development. Players were successful in the old MMOs as well. Meet new people, socialize with your realm community, build a friend list of capable / nice people, and join a guild. The system isn’t automated, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Actually they aren’t a recent development.

Many MMOs have had lfg tools built in. I am surprised that there isn’t a lfg tool built in since the framework for it is there. It is definitely not a hard thing to implement since people have already done it unofficially for this game. (I will not cite urls here since that may infract)

It’s because the opener needs to have done the story mode of that dungeon while everyone else don’t.

So if the flagged person leaves then it kicks everyone else out.

It’s very bad form to leave like that when you are the dungeon owner. Although it’s sometimes due to forgetting and not out of malice.

Tristavel.9218:

DeathPanel.8362:

It’s not a matter of being serious or not, it’s a matter of you wasting everyone’s time.

And that’s exactly the reason I believe the OP’s suggestion makes sense. It’s not really the matter of people being inherently rude/elitist/uncooperative, it’s the question of different attitudes to gaming.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m already “wasting time” playing the game. TBH, some of the “worst” (in terms of gaming effectiveness) experiences I had were actually the “best” (in terms of fun/memorable experience) ones at the same time. I don’t care that much about maximizing time/reward ratio, because that’s something I do at work and I really don’t need to bring this equation into simple fun. To me, skipping/glitching/speeding through content is a bit like listening to music at 2x speed just to save time.

I don’t think either of us is wrong as such, but at the same time – should we meet in a dungeon party – one of us would probably be somewhat annoyed by the other. And unless one is fortunate enough to have long time buddies play the game with him, such collisions are impossible to avoid – thus I believe OP’s suggestion is a sound one.

Won’t happen, but it would be a good thing IMO.

You took that quote of mine completely out of context. I stated you are a bad player if you end up causing the whole team to wipe and end up wasting everyone’s time.

Everyone has their own definitions, but it takes a warped person to enjoy a team wipe and waiting longer to finish something wouldn’t you agree?

I am all for a solo dungeon option with much reduced rewards, infact I probably would prefer that choice given the current state of teams.

Having options is never a bad thing.

Navzar.2938:

What I don’t get is, why did so many people insist on “rez-rushing” the bomb room in path 2? It takes just as long to just beat down the mobs and you didn’t have to die that way.

Because that was the most consistent method for success and had no requirement on build/gear/class for a pug team. The trade off was longer time and repair costs.

Pre patch if you chose to fight you had to have a very well geared team with good synergy or you’d fail every time.

Leo G.4501:

DeathPanel.8362:

You obviously don’t get what an analogy is or are just responding to be contrarian so I’ll just keep this straight forward.

The point is the person knows it’s a likely negative outcome based on currently known facts, yet he is told to go do it anyway knowing that given his situation he will likely encounter that negative outcome.

Just because you can achieve positive outcomes with a certain setup/situation doesn’t mean everyone has access to that type of setup/situation, and just telling others to do it just because it worked out great for you given your setup/situation is meaningless and less than helpful.

If I’m be contrarian then you’re being hyperbolic. You can compare anything like that to jumping off a bridge. Doesn’t make it sound less stupid.

OMG! Try onions on my pizza? Why don’t I just try jumping into a volcano and see if I’ll like it.

Yeah, woop. People say Arah path 4 sucks. Boo hoo, then don’t try it. However, don’t come whining on the forums about how you don’t want to try something just because you heard it’s icky, will force you to stomp a puppy and will steal your bum cherry so it should be changed…because if you actually did try it, you’d know most of what you hear is exaggeration.

I see you totally failed/refused to get the point. Not a big surprise.

hildegain.2106:

DeathPanel.8362:

A vast majority of people don’t think P4 Arah is easy

I thought that difficulty wasn’t a problem for you and most other people that claim to be skilled at this game. Skilled groups can beat it under an hour, a lot of non-skilled players can’t. You’re more or less admitting to having no skill if you’re not even prepared to try it then.

You have a very fundamental lack of understanding of what the point is.

If everyone were skilled or just clones of myself I’d have no problems. The problem is like in any online game where content requires teamwork it’s inevitable you have bad players in a team.

If you have the bar too high then all you are doing is punishing actual skilled players when they get stuck in a team of bad players.

Because the only choice I personally have in that case is quit the team or try to vote kick the bad players and in either one of those choices more time is wasted and more frustration created.

And the discussion is not about how well I do in that dungeon, but rather what the person I was referring to earlier in the thread so you either didn’t understand my point or just refused to understand.

I personally carry more than my own weight and have no troubles in any dungeon runs pre or post patch as long as I am in what you would label a “skilled team”.

The problem I am trying to point out is that ideal scenario is not the norm and if you set the bar too high then not only do the unskilled players get punished but also those that are skilled.

Leo G.4501:

DeathPanel.8362:

Ioflux.4369:

DeathPanel.8362:

He’s doesn’t need to personally try it since this is common knowledge.

It’s like asking for someone to go to the moon to experience it first hand if they claim that there’s no oxygen up there.

What a terrible analogy since he’s making a complaint and not stating an obvious fact. Running p4 arah and deciding how hard it is, is subjective to the runners. Some will find it easy, others will not. The moon will have no oxygen regardless of your opinion.

A vast majority of people don’t think P4 Arah is easy. Maybe if you are lucky and have 5 regular runners all with vent doing it. Just telling a random person to “go do it” is beyond useless since it will just be a waste of time for them given their situation since they will most likely just fail over and over again.

Here’s a more appropriate analogy then.

It’s like if you are standing on the roof of a 8 story building. Sure some people can survive that fall but alot of people won’t. It’s like you are telling those that don’t think they can survive to jump to test it out.

Relatively, you won’t cease to be if you try Arah. If you jump off a building an not survive, you won’t live to learn anything.

Your analogy has nothing in common with the situation. You can walk into Arah and decide after 30 min if you like it or not…then not do it. You can’t really ‘half-way’ try to breath on the moon or stop half-way down an 8 story building jump.

You obviously don’t get what an analogy is or are just responding to be contrarian so I’ll just keep this straight forward.

The point is the person knows it’s a likely negative outcome based on currently known facts, yet he is told to go do it anyway knowing that given his situation he will likely encounter that negative outcome.

Just because you can achieve positive outcomes with a certain setup/situation doesn’t mean everyone has access to that type of setup/situation, and just telling others to do it just because it worked out great for you given your setup/situation is meaningless and less than helpful.

NovaBlast Shockwave.5164:

I was reading the responses and someone made the exactly the point that i was making..

Ferrus.7609:

….Snip…..grouping up with someone rude or unqualified

I agree with the rude sentiment but I call your attention to the word “unqualified” if you look at this board it is full of people complaining about “bad players” and how they don’t want to play with them.

I just like running around killing stuff. if that makes me a “bad player” so be it. If you want to act like your a a elite S. E.A.L team on a life or death mission. and have complete seriousness and precision good for you that doesn’t make others “bad players” just because they don’t take it as seriously as you.

No one ever said you are a bad player for running around “killing stuff”. (strawman)

No one cares if you take things seriously or not. But if your carefree attitude is causing you to not contribute to the team or doing things that cause the whole team to wipe, then that makes you a bad player. It’s not a matter of being serious or not, it’s a matter of you wasting everyone’s time.

Ioflux.4369:

DeathPanel.8362:

He’s doesn’t need to personally try it since this is common knowledge.

It’s like asking for someone to go to the moon to experience it first hand if they claim that there’s no oxygen up there.

What a terrible analogy since he’s making a complaint and not stating an obvious fact. Running p4 arah and deciding how hard it is, is subjective to the runners. Some will find it easy, others will not. The moon will have no oxygen regardless of your opinion.

A vast majority of people don’t think P4 Arah is easy. Maybe if you are lucky and have 5 regular runners all with vent doing it. Just telling a random person to “go do it” is beyond useless since it will just be a waste of time for them given their situation since they will most likely just fail over and over again.

Here’s a more appropriate analogy then.

It’s like if you are standing on the roof of a 8 story building. Sure some people can survive that fall but alot of people won’t. It’s like you are telling those that don’t think they can survive to jump to test it out.

Direngrey.8376:

Oh, let me join this team because they have 4 people, nevermind im leaving because there is 1 lvl 40 , a lvl 79, 78 and lvl 60. Oh, let me leave because there is an elementalists, warrior and necro. Typical people nowadays. They seem to want the 4 warriors and 1 mesmer combo.

Just out of curiosity, I posted on lfg and said " This is our first time running this dungeon" midway we had one random getting upset at us calling us noobs and asking " it’s obvious you never ran this, you’re useless bye " people really need to calm down…And have some fun.

There’s something you misunderstand here.

Someone leaving because there’s a bunch of low levels in a dungeon exp team is not being elitest, it’s being realistic.

That team setup you listed I would not join in any dungeon exp team even prior to the patch. (Maybe not even story mode) That doesn’t make me elitest, that makes me experienced because I’ve seen those teams fail hard first hand many many times and would rather save myself the time.

Regarding the class setup I agree with you. There shouldn’t be any requirements for class in a team.

However, there’s a reason why people want 4 wars and 1 mes or 3 wars and 2 mes for p1 runs, because those are dedicated farming runs and not for tokens. That’s also not being elitest but rather realistic.

I personally have no problem teaming with people that never ran an instance. I have problems with people that never ran an instance and don’t listen to input.

Bombul.2506:

Take too long is a relative term. This game has the shortest dungeon runs of any game I have ever played.

Many viable builds exist for classes. Granted some are more favorable than others such as the “Auto-Attack” build for each class. Press 1 once then go for a bio, #1 build for most dungeon bosses.

Kill content eh. Considering the gear is not a step above what you can buy or make after a couple hours of play what is the purpose of running dungeons? Certainly not the challenge. Certainly not a time sink. Certainly not a learning experience. What exactly should a person do after putting 100 or so hours into the game?

Compensate…. Really!!! Many would consider the easy cheesy runs that have existed for months to be more then enough compensation for years of play. In fact, what about removing all the gear and money gained by exploiting, that seems fair.

You obviously haven’t played many dungeons outside of COF p1 and you obviously haven’t played many mmos if you think dungeon runs are the shortest of any mmos.

Dungeons exp are run for the tokens in exchange for gear for players that don’t craft. It’s an alternate way to get their gear. Making it too hard for those players or removing the rewards would effectively “kill” the content as I originally explained.

And what can a person do after playing for 100 hours? How about wvw or spvp? How about exploring 100% of the map?

I clocked nearly 900 hours in this game since it launched and I still run dungeons.

If I were just teamed up with clones of my self I’d have 0 problems with any dungeons in this game. The main problem is a dungeon takes a team of 5 different people, and a majority of the times you get inexperienced or bad players.

Previously this was a nuisance, now it means team wipe and disband and more wasting time looking for others.

This unintended consequence is something people like you never considered when you post your rants about how “easy” things are.

Irakaz.8964:

CHIPS.6018:

I already finished Arah paths 1 to 3. I farmed enough in Arah for the Arah armor. But I refuse to touch path 4 because everyone in my guild said it was brutal time wise. I do not have 4+ hours to burn on this, with the risk of failing and not getting anything.

Just the thought of a 4+ hour long dungeon (success not guaranteed) turns me away. I am not even going to attempt it until it gets changed. It got nothing to do with my player skills, which is very decent btw.

In the mean time, I will wvw with those precious 2 hours that I got.

Why dont you actually try the path first? Maybe your guild mates are wrong. Going by your logic casual players should also give up on WvW. Sometimes you have to queue so they might as well not bother. Otherwise they might be wasting time. They should also get rid of Fractals full stop.

He’s doesn’t need to personally try it since this is common knowledge.

It’s like asking for someone to go to the moon to experience it first hand if they claim that there’s no oxygen up there.

Um, you CAN get relevant armor for the dungeons level from the vendor…

Lasur Arkinshade.4107:

I would say I think that this dungeon patch made the Zhaitan fight way too short. He doesn’t even have time to use the attacks that you guys added to him during one of the earlier patches. He just keels over and dies after about 30 seconds.

Good, the whole story mode dungeon was way too long anyway and the Zhaitan fight was unneccessarily long.

We are talking about a story mode dungeon that is also the last personal story quest, it shouldn’t be anywhere near hard.

Silidus.7985:

The thing most people seem to forget is that there are already hard/easy mode dungeons. They are called Explore Mode. Explore Modes are for skilled players who enjoy challenges and want to obtain useless, but visually striking armor. If you are not interested in a challenge, then there is a story mode which can be done for lesser reward, and involves more story and lore elements.

Wrong.

I don’t know what universe you occupy but lvl 80 exotic armor/weapons (some with non craftable prefixes) are NOT useless.

In fact it’s the end game gear for most players that don’t have max crafting or are looking for stat prefix that crafting doesn’t give.

bllurr.2618:

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since launch (and even before that) and if there is one thing I have realized about dungeons is that people have found ways to cheese their way through them. what I mean by this is that people are finding places where they can stand during a boss fight at just auto attack him from range and the boss will just sit there and do nothing. It makes it very boring for players who actually want to experience all the content the way it was supposed to be played while the rest of the group just looks for a faster way to finish the dungeon and get their tokens at the end. Hope this is something you guys can resolve.
Thank You, Bllurr

People cheese through dungeons because they are really tedious, take too long to get through, or have some sort of near impossible encounter that can’t be beaten without cheesing. (Or would take specific builds/classes to do it and is generally a pain)

If you remove those options without compensating then the unintended consequence would simply be that no one will run those dungeons anymore.

If killing content is what you want then that’s the way to do it.

Mirta.5029:

Only unskilled players are punished. Learn to play by doing easier dungeons first until you’re the master of your class instead of whining that Arah is too hard.

Wrong.

“Unskilled” players AND their teammates are punished. A team is usually only as strong as its weakest link.

I could be the best player in the world but my team can still fail if I am with some bad players if the dungeon’s threshold is high enough. It has nothing to do with my personal skills or ability. That’s where your logic fails.

If you set the bar too high not only does it punish “unskilled” players it also indirectly punishes their teammates who are otherwise “skilled” since afterall this is a MMO and we are talking about dungeons that require teams.

Vasham.2408:

haviz.1340:

It’s a part of personal story and those missions are really easy.

I’ll restate the obvious: the fact it’s story mode does not excuse poor game design.

That’s your opinion.

So far you haven’t shown any real evidence that this is poor game design. All you’ve demonstrated is that you personally think it’s too easy.

Easy is not the same as bad design. There are certain things that should be easy, like personal story missions.

By all rights the final story mission should be soloable rather than requiring a group if they were going for consistency in design, since the personal story is the single player aspect of the game.

There are plenty of difficult if not over the top dungeon paths you can run if difficulty is your thing, but just realize that not everyone shares your opinions.

Vasham.2408:

[NOTE: I’m cross posting this in both the Dungeons and Personal Story boards since it effects both aspects of the game.]

So I just ran some people through Arah storymode to help them finish their personal stories. I had read in the patch notes about Zhaitan’s poison bombs being nerfed and the airship battle being nerfed, so I expected that. Here’s what I didn’t see coming:
During phase 1 Zhaitan’s adds are now non-veteran and spawn in ridiculously reduced numbers (2 per spawn instead of 4). They also have next to no HP, so the NPCs killed them before we could even get there. We literally sat on our rears and let the game play itself.

Then it got even better. The three Eyes of Zhaitan during phase 2 had their HP cut in half and their damaged nerfed so hard we took none at all. They died so quick we had over a minute to wait as the ship pulled up next to the tower and we could start the cannon phase. When that started it too less than thirty seconds to kill Zhaitan. Thirty seconds. He didn’t even have time to spawn his tentacle adds you guys put in there to make the phase more “engaging.”

How is this acceptable, Arenanet? How can you justify this second rate game design? This is a FINAL BOSS, something that’s supposed to be difficult to kill. Sure the fight was crap before but at least you had to involve yourself. After the patch this isn’t even a boss fight. It’s comparable to the quicktime event bullcrap that permeates FPS games nowadays. I wouldn’t even call this casual. To call it such would insult the intelligence and skill of casual gamers.

Arenanet you better have some amazing fixes planned for boss fights, especially this one, when you reveal your “phase 2” of the dungeon changes. If this is a sign of things to come then dungeon content in this game is doomed.

This is a story mode dungeon that’s part of the personal story. It takes well over a hour to do and with the removal of wp rez it would simply be more tedious and frustrating to finish.

Alot of players including myself believe this is a decent change to compensate for the removal of wp rez in dungeons.

mugsmoney.5239:

Ioflux.4369:

NickChabby.8907:

snip

Driving license tests auto fail you for making critical mistakes. Yes you can make mistakes and still pass (equivalence of taking a hit and not dying) but you can also fail for not bringing your A-game. Bell-curved grading for grad school entrance exams. You arent graded for how well you do, you’re graded how well you compare to other examinees. You may fail for making 2-4 mistakes or for just not being as creative for essays.

This move by A-net is basically telling players that in order to do dungeons, you must complete it under these circumstances. By doing this, they are pushing the players to become more knowledgable and competent to make use of the mechanics given to them to clear encounters. You are given an infinite amount of tries to learn from your mistakes for a small price of a repair bill + your time. Other places make you pay thousands of dollars to attempt at proving you learned your lesson.

Couldnt have said it better!

That’s a flawed analogy.

Driving tests are failed due to PERSONAL failure.

A failed team can result from the failures of others.

You are collectively punished for the failures of a few.

You can be the best player ever and have the best possible gear and your team will fail if you have bad players in it.

Previously this was an annoyance, since you can still use wp and tough it out with repair costs.

Now it’s a brick wall, forcing you to waste time to kick people and find others and in general this promotes rage and mistrust.

I already see ads on gw2lfg for dungeon groups requiring linking of all gear and specific trait/class builds for group because of this patch.

haviz.1340:

RollingBob.8502:

This is an A++ post and says it all. The developers just formalized the split between the elitists who would really appreciate the challenge and deserve a special reward for choosing it and the majority who are now finding it even more difficult to get in a group and get to finish the first boss because kicking a downed player is now easier than giving a quick lesson.

You have 8 dungeons to choose from. If you have troubles with completing the almost hardest of them, maybe you should practice running easier dungeons. Once you improve your skills, then you should start running CoE/Arah. Zerg rushing bosses was never a valid tactic, it’s similiar situation when anet fixes exploits and suddenly you can’t beat the boss.

That’s a total non sense answer.

Dungeons are beaten because players know the events and strategies unique to that dungeon. Running other easier dungeons would do NOTHING to teach new players on how to beat the dungeon they want to go to.

And frankly, it’s not a simple matter of improving skills, people just simply refuse to realize that fact.

Some people will be bad no matter what happens, and if they solely bare the burden of that I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The problem is when you have BAD players the whole team suffers, while previously a bad player is an annoyance now you basically have to waste time to kick them and find someone else or fail the instance.

OnoGhost.6019:

DeathPanel.8362:

OnoGhost.6019:

I was running the “Sorrow’s Embrace” …

I want to play devil’s advocate here. It seems that you are casting yourself in a very favorable light while the kickers in a negative light. (Of course we don’t know what really happened since your version of the story is the only one being presented.)

I agree that sometimes people are overly intolerant and jerks and kick for no good reason whatsoever, but a majority of the times there’s a good reason why they vote kick.

There are alot of players that haven’t done certain dungeon runs and react negatively or not at all to feedback and that creates frustration. I have personally no problem with seconding a vote to kick those type of people.

As far as I am concerned if you are a noob to a dungeon you better listen well to the others and don’t give any attitude. If you don’t then you deserve to be kicked.

I let these players know know before I joined their group that I was new and didn’t have experience with this dungeon. If they were pressed for time they shouldn’t let me join or mention that they are going for a speed run. I tried to follow in tight behind the group and did anything that I was instructed to do. Not a lot of instruction was given. I wasn’t like I didn’t contribute anything to team. I attacked what was targeted, switched to range when I noticed that was what the other players were doing, and helped downed players. Why kick somebody before the reward?

Well, if what you say is true and they kicked you before the reward, then they might’ve wanted to invite a friend in your place to get the reward you were going to get.

Often times though, I notice noobs to dungeons get kicked for having an attitude when people try to tell them what to do.

Churchill.8714:

wait wait wait wait wait…people are complaining they can’t do these dungeons and they are trying to run them in blues and greens?

Jesus christ, even showing up to a dungeon group in that gear is offensive and you should feel bad.

I’ve done AC and CoF on 2 characters (4 runs each) since the patch and haven’t had an issue yet. If you aren’t running exotics and superior runes you should feel bad for wasting your parties time.

You are wrong, and totally clueless.

The whole POINT of doing these dungeon runs is to GET geared in exotics IN THE FIRST PLACE.

EVERY player in their career was in blues/greens/yellows at some point.

How do you expect them to show up in exotics and superior runes in these exp runs when these exp runs are where you get those things in the first place?

Malediktus.9250:

DeathPanel.8362:

Malediktus.9250:

Oh you have to run back for 3minutes? Big deal. Its a low punishment for wiping. I think wiping should cause the dungeon to fail so you have to restart completly.

Good thing you aren’t the one in charge of decisions about the game then.

If you did that GW2 would lose a pretty big portion of the player base in the first week.

Explorer dungeons are the elite areas of GW2. When you failed elite areas in GW1 you had to start over. Much better back then.
And its funny when people threaten to quit because they failed something. They should man up and get better. Its not like theres anything challanging in this game currently.

Wrong. This is a game, and it’s played for fun.

There’s a fine line between challenging and frustrating and this line exists at different levels for different people.

When you raise this line you risk alienating players, and unlike your unrealistic thinking they will simply quit and move on instead of “man up” since this is just a game.

The net result is gw2 will lose a portion of the player base unneccessarily, and revenue will suffer.

Which is why I stated previously, if your flawed, unrealistic thinking was followed by the devs, GW2 will lose most of its players and die out.

Vik Flagge.8324:

Mention in party chat that my (your) friend was perma banned for kicking at the maw before the group starts. Then take a screen shot of party chat. Wether or not its true you should have no problems. Unless you are bad and get kicked at first fractal.

Some people might want to kick you just for kicks and giggles after you say that. Frankly empty threats just encourage people to test them.

OnoGhost.6019:

I was running the “Sorrow’s Embrace” dungeon and informed the person recruiting that I was a new player and had not run the explorer mode, but I did watch a walk-through video. They said that that was fine and that they would let me and the other new person know what to do. They did not communicate what to do till after we had already died. They were complaining about getting the dungeon done before the reset and said it was our fault for it taking an hour instead of twenty minutes. I was kicked after helping them defeat the three final golems and got no reward. I was very honest and upfront about my experience with this dungeon and I am rather disgusted with the behavior of these players. I paid the same amount of money to purchase this game as the players who bought it at launch and do not think that I should be penalized or abused for not buying it sooner.

I want to play devil’s advocate here. It seems that you are casting yourself in a very favorable light while the kickers in a negative light. (Of course we don’t know what really happened since your version of the story is the only one being presented.)

I agree that sometimes people are overly intolerant and jerks and kick for no good reason whatsoever, but a majority of the times there’s a good reason why they vote kick.

There are alot of players that haven’t done certain dungeon runs and react negatively or not at all to feedback and that creates frustration. I have personally no problem with seconding a vote to kick those type of people.

As far as I am concerned if you are a noob to a dungeon you better listen well to the others and don’t give any attitude. If you don’t then you deserve to be kicked.

TRON.1085:

Pugging is now pretty much impossible…either you get players joining that should not be because of lack of agony or not even at that level…

Or you get kicked on last boss so players can get rewards for doing nothing…

You extended the time needed now for fractals by like an extra hour…

Nobody needs to even work for rewards because they just wait for a free slot at the end of a fractal or dungeon and just kick someone and jump in…

The chances of coming across a bad team with this new patch has gone up about 100%% of the time..

Doing dailys in dungeons and fractal’s has now become more painfull than stabbing yourself in the head with a blunt instrument….you end up sometimes wasting 2 hours for nothing in return..

Well done, you have managed to break the only decent group content you had and make it not even worth the time….dungeons and fractals..

This is even worse than lost shores, I have try’d really hard not to give up on Anet and GW2…but i think it’s time to admit defeat.

With this and diminshing returns aswell…they really don’t want us to play this game or have fun playing this game..

Yeah, by trying to fix things ANet has made things worse. Because fotm takes so long dbags are now rewarded to exploit the kicking rules to boot people out to powerlevel their friends towards the end.

Vik Flagge.8324:

I take a screenshot of party chat before every fractal run now especially if there are multiple members from one guild in party. I also mention in party chat that a friend of mine was perma banned for kicking at the maw to let his guild mates in before we start.

They will probably kick you just like that to see what would happen.

Yaki.9563:

Wait, a non-warrior/guardian team is actually better at a path for once!? Say it isn’t so!

The point is it didn’t matter previously since any class/combination can beat the paths, the only difference is time.

Now only certain combinations can actually even get past that event, meaning you are FORCED to have that combination to advance.

Tera GX.8149:

Do keep in mind that this change isn’t the whole of all changes. The need for a Janurary patch combined with all the things that had to be done I suppose is why this incomplete state is the result. A quote I just fetched for a different topic but still relevant here:

I read the whole of that post. And I am not encouraged since it implied that the difficulty level might even be raised further.

The fact is, the success of a MMO lies in accessibility not in how “challenging and fun” it is.

What one person finds challenging may make it unbearable for someone else.

I have 8 level 80s, half of which are fully end game geared, and all crafting maxed, and commander buff.

If I were playing with a full team of clones of myself, I’d have no problems with this patch at all.

The problem is, YOU NEED OTHER PEOPLE when running dungeons, and statistically EVERY pug team has 1-2 players who either don’t know what to do or are just bad players in general.

This change not only punishes those types of people but indirectly punishes their teammates.

Pug teams ragequite/disband over team wipes, and all this patch does is make it more likely, which ends up wasting time for people like me, who have to find a new team and risk the same cycle happening again.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Path 1 was the same for me.

Path 2 was a big challenge. We tried multiple different approaches and it took a while, but it was definitely worth it. It’s more about team coordination than specific professions and armor.

You need:

1) Snares
2) Support
3) Damage/AoE
4) Target Calling

If you can handle that, you can beat it. We had some of the “Worst” classes in the game and we were able to do it when we figured it out. Engineer, 2 Necros, Ranger and an Ele.

If we can do it, anyone can. It’s not your profession. It’s not your armor. It’s your skill.

I’m really glad that’s how it is.

Wrong, IT IS about your profession.

You said it yourself in your post you need snares/support/aoes.

Not every profession have those things. Just because you happened to have the right classes/builds in your team doesn’t mean anything.

It doesn’t matter how “skilled” you are, if you don’t have those types of professions with those abilities you outlined yourself you will fail.

Isslair.4908:

Wha?

The defending of Magg is such a faceroll now.

Done it with a pug party with 2 rangers, rifle warrior and some ele. Had no difficulties whatsoever and completed it in one try. I imagine with good team it’s just facerolling while mobs die.

It could even use some more upscaling.

Well thats at least 3 aoe type chars 2 of which cripple on their aoes.

Try it with a melee heavy team, and you will fail every time.

kKagari.6804:

I’m not going to assume if you had guardians in your team or something, but I find that in general, guardians don’t use stand your ground enough, or harrowed ground. Often, most of them are ok to use the skill if I request them to.

I outlined my group, we did have a guard.

Having stand your ground doesn’t really help since there are tons of mobs all with kd and more spawn as time goes on, so it comes down to being able to aoe them all down which having a melee heavy team is not capable of.

Because of the scaling down nerf, all dungeons below lvl 80 have been scaled up slightly indirectly. (ignoring other changes)

The only dungeon I ran so far after I patched was COF 1 and 2.

P1 was about the same.

P2 caused my pug team to disband.

Note, I have full exotic everything with sigils and runes sets.

So did my team, except for 1 person, and all were 80 of course.

Mesmer, War, War, Guard, Ele.

We failed 8+ times on defend magg. We caught on right away about the assassin but that wasn’t the main issue.

The main issue was the tons of mobs with knockdown attacks eventually overwhelming us.

It seems that the path now requires heavy or all aoe specced team to succeed, which is bad design.