Who ok'd the dungeon currency/item decision?

[RoastedWalnuts.4618]

A few things that are in need of quickly being debunked:
1. Dungeons haven't been "dead" for a long time, with efficient groups they have actually been good money due to the repeatable achieves, not to mention there is literally several full guilds on NA alone that are built purely around dungeons. I guarantee you most if not all the people on here saying dungeons are dead are the same people that haven't actually touched dungeons ever/in years.

 

2. Anyone claiming this is good for new players is just straight wrong its the opposite. It is now going to be harder than ever for a new player to find a group to get their first clear on specific dungeons to unlock that content due to there now being no incentive for players who have played it to go back and do it again for over half the dungeon paths in the game. This is the change that will effectively make dungeons "dead  content" and will especially appear that way to new players.

 

3. The decision to make a change this drastic with 0 heads up and player input after they have constantly been preaching about being open about content and decisions just straight up should not be acceptable at this point.

4. The irony in Anet even stating themselves that dungeons are the first piece of content players experience and want it to be better whilst in the same patch notes making the single biggest move they have ever made to kill and bury dungeons. First impressions of this content are now going to be worse than ever, its clear at this point you don't want dungeons, you are too lazy to do anything meaningful to dungeons and you just want them gone.

5. There is a million other things you could have done to make them better for "New Players" like:
making Story Paths more solo able and implementing them into the 1-80 story (how they should have been since launch but instead u just get a lame mail saying "hey maybe go do this"). Hell make all paths scale with 1-5 players so players can do them with whoever they want and however many people they want.

Remove the massive list of gear in the vendor and just have one of each skin and have that item be stat selectable and even further on this point give dungeons their own area in LA again like it used to be instead of some random merchant practically nowhere with all the shops crammed into a single bad UI. This change would effectively make dungeons the go to place for brand new players gear.

Or the most simple change of them all, fix all the legacy bugs and scaling issues that have been in dungeons since the infamous China update or even some bugs still existing since launch.

The reality is there is many, many more (and probably even simpler changes in some cases) changes that could have been made to TRULY make dungeons a better experience for new players and an entry point to the game yet they actively chose a change that makes dungeons even worse for new players. I could almost be convinced at this point that Anet is being paid off by some bigger company to keep GW2's first impressions as low as possible.

I was so excited for the game when you first mentioned you would be taking a look at the new player experience again and possibly reverting some of the terrible China changes. But if anything this change just proves that you would rather do the opposite and effectively remove all the early content in the game so players can have even more of a reason to skip over it instead of making any meaningful changes to improve the content that is already there.

[voltaicbore.8012]

16 hours ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

Dungeons are possibly the worst currencies they could have "simplified" and no you practically cannot most people are never gonna touch 2/3 of the dungeons in the game and just repeat the fastest 8 paths because there is no reason to ever do otherwise now.

You seem to be unaware that this exact thing was already happening - the people who ran dungeons for currency generally did run the fastest 8 paths on repeat because of the Dungeon Frequenter reward. What confuses me is that you're clearly aware of Frequenter (as you mention it yourself later in this thread) but never seem to acknowledge that it already does the thing you accuse the currency unification of doing.

As far as I can tell, only 2 other posters in this thread noticed that Frequenter had this effect. It's pretty obvious to me most of the naysayers to this change don't actually run dungeons to a meaningful degree.

The only thing the currency unification does is make the Frequenter style of play more efficient.

Edited June 8, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[RoastedWalnuts.4618]

8 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I keep seeing this point "no reason to do X content again" in this discussion.

 

Sorry but if that's how you feel about specific content then all i'm getting from you is that you never cared about that content in the first place and you never enjoyed playing it.

You only cared about the rewards it offered which have not changed, so why complain?

 

If you really like/enjoy that content then you will continue to play that content for that reason alone.

If you only care about the rewards.. well Anet just made that easier for you so again.. why complain?

 

2 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

You seem to be unaware that this exact thing was already happening - the people who ran dungeons for currency generally did run the fastest 8 paths on repeat because the Dungeon Frequenter reward. That reward yields 5g and 150 dungeon currency of your choice. It was the way to go in terms of finishing the Arah collection.

It's obvious to me all the people proclaiming doom & gloom about dungeon paths clearly aren't actively doing dungeons. If such complainers are doing dungeons, they're too stupid to realize that Dungeon Frequenter already had  - for years - the exact same effect as the currency unification.

Whoever designed and approved this change clearly saw that it is purely a currency cleanup.

 I've made it abundantly clear at every step that this change is negative towards NEW players, the vast majority of players in any game ever will only ever play content that gets them to the rewards from that content the fastest that's just a undeniable given at this point in video games. Now due to dungeons all having the same currency and the existing players now having literally no reason to revisit long or "unfun" dungeon paths due to them now effectively being a waste of time. For example it is now going to be harder than ever for a NEW player to get their first ever Arah clear to unlock that dungeons content in the vendor due to players that have done it before no longer having any incentive to do it again. This change has undeniably not lowered the population of existing dungeon players as a whole but will drastically lower the amount of players doing certain paths.

The dungeon frequenter argument is purely a strawman argument its a minute amount of currency and an extremely inefficient way to unlock stuff from a dungeon you don't want to do so much so that most people that enjoy dungeons don't even use the chests for currency they just keep them in their inventory as a collectible. The complete unification of currencies is not comparable in any way to a tiny little bonus reward.

[voltaicbore.8012]

33 minutes ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

The dungeon frequenter argument is purely a strawman argument its a minute amount of currency and an extremely inefficient way to unlock stuff from a dungeon you don't want to do so much so that most people that enjoy dungeons don't even use the chests for currency they just keep them in their inventory as a collectible

No, it's not a strawman. It's pointing out the reason why the "harder" paths are already dead, for both new and veteran players.

It's less efficient on paper than farming the actual dungeon currency you want, but another thing you seem unable to account for is the severe diminishing returns for repeating the same path within the same daily reset. Combined with the difficulty/unreliability of cobbling together a group for the more difficult paths, the sheer speed and reliability of Frequenter makes that 150 choose-your-currency box a very attractive choice compared to, say, trying to pull together a not-awful set of Arah runs with randoms.

41 minutes ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

For example it is now going to be harder than ever for a NEW player to get their first ever Arah clear to unlock that dungeons content in the vendor due to players that have done it before no longer having any incentive to do it again.

Again, people were already not running Arah. Those that were doing Arah still have the daily gold reward from it (as far as I'm aware) or were doing it for guildies who needed those Arah clears. Farming Arah currency by actually running Arah through the LFG was already an essentially dead task. Stop pretending like there's a meaningful downgrade of the number of people doing hard paths. That population is already just about dead.

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

the vast majority of players in any game ever will only ever play content that gets them to the rewards from that content the fastest that's just a undeniable given at this point in video games.

On that at least we mostly agree.

Though I don't think it's as much of a majority in Dungeons.
 

1 hour ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

Now due to dungeons all having the same currency and the existing players now having literally no reason to revisit long or "unfun" dungeon paths due to them now effectively being a waste of time. For example it is now going to be harder than ever for a NEW player to get their first ever Arah clear to unlock that dungeons content in the vendor due to players that have done it before no longer having any incentive to do it again. This change has undeniably not lowered the population of existing dungeon players as a whole but will drastically lower the amount of players doing certain paths.

I'd argue most people who still play dungeons in Gw2 do so because they want to/feel like it more than anything.

That is certainly my reason for doing so and these changes will not affect that.

I will say that it is a valid concern regarding lower populations in some paths although I don't think it's going to be as apocalyptic as you seem to think.

It may lower the hardcore players interest as they do tend to be purely reward focused when it comes to content but it will unlikely affect the casual players interest all that much.

If casuals are still going to run Arah etc for fun then it won't be a problem for new players to find groups.

If anything it'll be easier since they won't have to deal with stricter hardcore players as much, thus avoiding potentially negative experiences that could turn them off the content.

Which is exactly what killed my interest in dungeons back in the early GW2 days and what ultimately killed raids as well.

 

[RoastedWalnuts.4618]

Again as I will reinstate as someone who actively does dungeons and participates in several guilds built around dungeons longer/unfun paths weren't "dead" due to my exact argument above it is incredibly inefficient and extremely time consuming to earn anything via the repeatable achieve. Saying otherwise is just plainly untrue.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

1 hour ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

No, it's not a strawman. It's pointing out the reason why the "harder" paths are already dead, for both new and veteran players.

It's less efficient on paper than farming the actual dungeon currency you want, but another thing you seem unable to account for is the severe diminishing returns for repeating the same path within the same daily reset. Combined with the difficulty/unreliability of cobbling together a group for the more difficult paths, the sheer speed and reliability of Frequenter makes that 150 choose-your-currency box a very attractive choice compared to, say, trying to pull together a not-awful set of Arah runs with randoms.

Again, people were already not running Arah. Those that were doing Arah still have the daily gold reward from it (as far as I'm aware) or were doing it for guildies who needed those Arah clears. Farming Arah currency by actually running Arah through the LFG was already an essentially dead task. Stop pretending like there's a meaningful downgrade of the number of people doing hard paths. That population is already just about dead.

So why didnt anet make running the less popular dungeons more rewarding? All they did was take the existing problem with dungeons and make it far worse. There are so many alternatives that would make dungeon running a popular activity, yet anet has done the 1 thing that would make the majority of dungeon paths even more dead.

[voltaicbore.8012]

23 minutes ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

Again as I will reinstate as someone who actively does dungeons and participates in several guilds built around dungeons longer/unfun paths weren't "dead" due to my exact argument above it is incredibly inefficient and extremely time consuming to earn anything via the repeatable achieve. Saying otherwise is just plainly untrue.

No, it's not untrue. It sounds like you simply don't know how to speedrun 8 paths, including a 4-5 min AC story solo, and AC merge and sub-5-min HotW story (skip to final boss). I can do a test run/some math, but between diminishing returns and the inability to fill groups quickly for the "harder" paths, Frequenter is probably not far behind farming the specific dungeons themselves. You do realize diminishing returns applies to dungeons, right?

Your "this is about new players" dodge is also meaningless. Unlike you, a lot of new players will not be in dungeon-focused guilds. They will depend on LFG to fill their groups. And guess what? LFG is already pretty sparse for the less popular paths. I'm guessing the currency unification effect, to the extent that it will exist at all, is more like beating a dead horse rather than killing a live one.

54 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I will say that it is a valid concern regarding lower populations in some paths although I don't think it's going to be as apocalyptic as you seem to think.

This is probably the most reasonable take.

Sure, the people who were on their way to reaching their Arah collection goals might now be able to buy out the collection now and just be done with it. But think about what that's saying about design - the only way to keep population in a game mode is to force them to be there by purposefully making the farming inefficient? We know games do this all the time, but why pretend like it's a good thing? If the content is so bad that nobody wants to run it if they don't need to, chaining people to it via inefficiency is not something GW2 should aspire to.

Let the people who want out, out. Those that remain will do so for other reasons, and I'm certain the regular dungeon running population will look much the same as it did before the change.

1 hour ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

There are so many alternatives that would make dungeon running a popular activity, yet anet has done the 1 thing that would make the majority of dungeon paths even more dead.

Even more dead, yes. But again, I don't think that's saying much, as they were already almost completely devoid of life. I mean, I do Arah runs if some nub on my friends list begs me to. I set up merges and skips for AC/SE/HotW, have duo'd CM p2 with a new player desperate to get it done despite LFG not filling that particular day. I do dungeons, a lot, even the unpopular ones. But I also know which LFGs fill and which don't. The unpopular ones are - GASP - unpopular! And it didn't take a currency unification to make them nearly impossible to fill an LFG for within a reasonable time.

Ultimately I think ANet was looking to make the experience less bad (as opposed to actually good). I'll come back and admit I'm wrong if there's clear evidence that there's been a broad cratering of the dungeon running population. I'm just guessing that it's simply going to look much like it did before the change, is all.

[Super Hayes.6890]

12 hours ago, Super Hayes.6890 said:

Yeah, this is a good change. I will actually do dungeons again.

To clarify, since there are so many confused faces on my post, I like this change and will be playing dungeons more because of it. Why? Well since you asked, I can now just play them for fun and use the currency for the stuff I like and ignore the stuff I don't without grinding one dungeon. My kids can play with me too without me having to manage 8 currencies for each of them. We can all play together and pick the rewards each of us prefers. I don't give a damm about speed clears lol. So glad you asked 😉

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

22 minutes ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Even more dead, yes. But again, I don't think that's saying much, as they were already almost completely devoid of life.

The point is there are a lot of different things they could have done to change that, but instead they made it worse. Why not add items to the vendors that are desirable to new and veteran players? Things like runes, sigils, crafting mats etc. are resources everyone always need more of. If they wanted to improve the dungeon scene for new players they did a pretty terrible job of it.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

20 hours ago, Archer.4362 said:

 

Wasn't there a specific dungeon currency needed for a legendary or am I wrong?

For the gifts, but I guess now you'll be able to buy the gifts with the new currency.

[voltaicbore.8012]

28 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Why not add items to the vendors that are desirable to new and veteran players?

Probably because they want to make good on their position of officially abandoning active support for dungeons. Putting actually desirable rewards in there will draw.... actual players to the mode, and I'd guess that generally that results in greater attention/demand for the studio's attention in various ways.

28 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Things like runes, sigils, crafting mats etc. are resources everyone always need more of.

I agree some non-useless sigils would be nice. As for mats, the bags generally contain a good amount of low and mid-tier mats. I've never really been short on iron/plat/that tier of materials even though I rarely go out and farm them from the open world, thanks to dungeon bags on an appropriately leveled bag opener.

28 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

If they wanted to improve the dungeon scene for new players they did a pretty terrible job of it.

Again, I don't think they actually cared to actually improve the experience.

My best guess is that the approach ANet took was more along the lines of "how do we preserve the status quo (keep dungeons officially abandoned) but make the situation look less bad than it was?" Reducing currency bloat without significantly affecting how repeat dungeoneers currently seem to behave doesn't seem like the worst call they could have made.

Look, I'd personally love it if dungeons were actually rewarding on par with other stuff. I find them much more engaging than fractals, as I believe the encounters represent a different era of PvE design (individual mobs are quite weak, but make devastating mixed teams). These days it seems that either (1) mobs are simply powercrept to keep up with player power creep, or (2) some other mechanic is just artificially inserted to waste time or kill players.

I just don't think ANet really has the desire and commitment to really get dungeons right at the current time, and it's not like they don't have other priorities. I'd much rather have them do as little as possible with dungeons.

Edited June 8, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[Gorem.8104]

10 hours ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

A few things that are in need of quickly being debunked:
1. Dungeons haven't been "dead" for a long time, with efficient groups they have actually been good money due to the repeatable achieves, not to mention there is literally several full guilds on NA alone that are built purely around dungeons. I guarantee you most if not all the people on here saying dungeons are dead are the same people that haven't actually touched dungeons ever/in years.

 

2. Anyone claiming this is good for new players is just straight wrong its the opposite. It is now going to be harder than ever for a new player to find a group to get their first clear on specific dungeons to unlock that content due to there now being no incentive for players who have played it to go back and do it again for over half the dungeon paths in the game. This is the change that will effectively make dungeons "dead  content" and will especially appear that way to new players.

 

3. The decision to make a change this drastic with 0 heads up and player input after they have constantly been preaching about being open about content and decisions just straight up should not be acceptable at this point.

4. The irony in Anet even stating themselves that dungeons are the first piece of content players experience and want it to be better whilst in the same patch notes making the single biggest move they have ever made to kill and bury dungeons. First impressions of this content are now going to be worse than ever, its clear at this point you don't want dungeons, you are too lazy to do anything meaningful to dungeons and you just want them gone.

5. There is a million other things you could have done to make them better for "New Players" like:
making Story Paths more solo able and implementing them into the 1-80 story (how they should have been since launch but instead u just get a lame mail saying "hey maybe go do this"). Hell make all paths scale with 1-5 players so players can do them with whoever they want and however many people they want.

Remove the massive list of gear in the vendor and just have one of each skin and have that item be stat selectable and even further on this point give dungeons their own area in LA again like it used to be instead of some random merchant practically nowhere with all the shops crammed into a single bad UI. This change would effectively make dungeons the go to place for brand new players gear.

Or the most simple change of them all, fix all the legacy bugs and scaling issues that have been in dungeons since the infamous China update or even some bugs still existing since launch.

The reality is there is many, many more (and probably even simpler changes in some cases) changes that could have been made to TRULY make dungeons a better experience for new players and an entry point to the game yet they actively chose a change that makes dungeons even worse for new players. I could almost be convinced at this point that Anet is being paid off by some bigger company to keep GW2's first impressions as low as possible.

I was so excited for the game when you first mentioned you would be taking a look at the new player experience again and possibly reverting some of the terrible China changes. But if anything this change just proves that you would rather do the opposite and effectively remove all the early content in the game so players can have even more of a reason to skip over it instead of making any meaningful changes to improve the content that is already there.

I'm thinking its like a lot of things in this game, got to get it done when its new or you miss out. People will be doing them now till they re-unlock a merchant we have had unlocked for the past 10 years. Once that is over, good luck to new players ever finding a group ever. Honestly, I agree that dungeons should have played more of a role in the story, cause it really is super awkward at the end of the main story. How you suddenly are in one and playing with characters you have no idea about if you didn't do them. Like the true ending to the story is the cleansing. 

There is a lot they could do with Dungeons to make them better, many good changes they could do to support new players. Instead they did a no warning drop update that hurts them for new players and hurts players who get the currencies through other methods. 

Edited June 8, 2022 by Gorem.8104

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

Omg merging all the Fractals currencies into one currency!? Now players have NO incentive to play higher-tier fractals! Wait..

[Exxcalibur.6203]

On 6/8/2022 at 3:23 AM, yoni.7015 said:

You can make your own group, go with your guild or friends. 
It still is good that they changed it. For example someone doesn’t like Arah but wants the armor set or a weapon, he now can run the dungeon he likes to get it. 

Hey little miss sunshine, Im locked out of 6000 plus tokens and the lFG is dead.  Its not good, its a kittening pain in the kitten.  Go away.

[Teratus.2859]

21 hours ago, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

Again as I will reinstate as someone who actively does dungeons and participates in several guilds built around dungeons longer/unfun paths weren't "dead" due to my exact argument above it is incredibly inefficient and extremely time consuming to earn anything via the repeatable achieve. Saying otherwise is just plainly untrue.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

I'm not denying those paths are longer and more inefficient to farm rewards though, I agree they are.

All i'm really saying is that because of this change the population of players that will continue to run those paths will mostly be made up of people who want to run them because they enjoy them, rather than people forced to run them for specific rewards.

Which in my view also comes with the possibility of more casual players running those paths because they enjoy them than reward driven hardcore players who don't and just want to blast through them as quick as possible.

Which could make those paths far more enjoyable for new players as well.

 

Ultimately what I would love to see though is Anet actually improving all the dungeons, maybe adding hard/challenge modes to them, time trail rushes with leaderboards and new rewards/achievements for them like maybe ascended elite variants of the dungeon armours and weapons etc.

I think a lot of players would love something like that.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[cargan.5689]

Quote

On 6/8/2022 at 6:25 PM, Alypsis.3425 said:

So yesterday before this latest patch I had 3972 Dungeon Tokens spread over several different Dungeons that I had gathered primarily through WvW reward Tracks so I could buy the associated Gifts needed to make Legendary Weapons. Today after this patch I have 3972 Dungeon Delving tokens that I cannot use unless I unlock the vendor by Anet forcing me to run 4/5 runs of each Dungeon I need for each Gift. This is an insane decision if this is what was intended. There is no enticement or carrot here that will make me want to play more Dungeons in  GW2 just so I can use the tokens I have already spent time collecting, I will just find something else to do with my time. If I had known this was coming I would have bought the gifts yesterday even if I did not end up using them all.  Anet you offer a range of ways to play this game PVE, PvP, WvW, Raids, Dungeons, Strike Missions, Living Story etc so that it caters to all of the different styles and ways people choose to play the game so please support that design decision and not try and railroad those choices, please review and enable players to do what they could do yesterday as well as ( not instead of) whatever else you were trying to achieve.

 

Sums it up perfectly, this change makes me feel im playing a Seinfeld episode 

 

 

[Druss.9034]

I think people are taking this the wrong way. I understand why this change upsets a lot of people, afterall the true lifeblood of an MMORPG is Game World Persistence (the idea that the game world itself is reliably consistent), and that's probably the main reason vertical progression games suffer these days. Players want to feel like their efforts mattered in the end and that their time is being and has been valued.

 

However, Anet might be onto something. They should try combining Skirmish Tickets, Fractal relics, PvP league tickets and Raid currencies as well. Perhaps the dungeon currency is just a test run for further changes.

 

Afterall, as others have said here and implied, forcing players to play specific content in order to get rewards from that content is just artificial inefficiency.

 

🙃

[NaramSin.2693]

Btw, now they fixed this "bug" and it seems that now it is again possible to access items that we could buy in the past, nice, btw i wonder why they do not test changes of this magnitude in advance ... this was clearly the main problem of major releases as we saw with EOD recently, the dungeon system was there since the beginning, why don't they ask some beta tester to give them an advice before the official release? In this way they would give a greater impression of reliability and solidity of the system, imagine such a thing with the amount of players potentially present in steam ...

[voltaicbore.8012]

3 hours ago, NaramSin.2693 said:

imagine such a thing with the amount of players potentially present in steam ...

Just one of the many reasons to be worried about a Steam release. Currently, GW2 flies under the radar a bit. Sure, it does well, and those of us who play it love it... and we all know how ANet never really successfully tests releases.

I agree that something like this would be terribly received by the wider Steam audience. I really hope whatever burst of money Steam would bring ANet is worth all the risk.

[Kuma.1503]

Just add daily + recommended dungeon paths ez fix 🧐

[Sirius.4510]

On 6/7/2022 at 2:00 PM, mythical.6315 said:

You base that claim on what?  

Personal experience with the LFG tool, and what guild groups have been interested in doing. It's generally pretty empty regardless, but I've seen entries in AC/TA more often, and I know guildies have been doing them expressly to get Monk/Nightmare runes.

Yeah, it's not as authoritative as hard data on how many times a week each dungeon path is run, but only ArenaNet has access to that.

[mythical.6315]

30 minutes ago, Sirius.4510 said:

Personal experience with the LFG tool, and what guild groups have been interested in doing. It's generally pretty empty regardless, but I've seen entries in AC/TA more often, and I know guildies have been doing them expressly to get Monk/Nightmare runes.

Yeah, it's not as authoritative as hard data on how many times a week each dungeon path is run, but only ArenaNet has access to that.

Unless someone is monitoring the LFG without looking away, they will not be seeing the groups that fill very quickly.  There’s a very large percentage of players that for whatever reason just sit there and stare at the LFG waiting for a posting to magically appear for what they want instead of creating one themselves. 

Edited June 12, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Sirius.4510]

Probably not, but given how many of them don't fill at all over a 10+ minute explorable path, I'm not sure I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of those.

[The Boz.2038]

On 6/7/2022 at 7:15 PM, RoastedWalnuts.4618 said:

invalidated anyone's time who got the Dungeoneer title

If anything, the change made the title more prestigious. 

There are no downsides to this change. "Forcing people" to engage with content just to keep the content alive is not a winning strategy.