During Tuesday’s update, we saw some pretty significant changes to the dungeon reward system, and how reward tokens are affected by diminishing returns (DR) as well as offered at the very end of a complete run. The changes were done to discourage players from exploiting certain dungeon bosses and environments in order to skip certain fights, and run through areas as quickly as possible, multiple times, to farm tokens. This may seem like a good intention in theory, since the system will undoubtedly see subsequent changes once ArenaNet’s team actually fixes the exploits.
Except for the fact that, well, the DR system– and the changes that occurred– seem… not quite right. Instead of seeing diminishing returns for super-fast dungeon completion runs (less than 30 mins) that are ran back-to-back, as intended, some players are seeing diminishing returns on the amount of tokens they receive the first time through. And the second time through, even though their run took far longer than 30 minutes. There are also players who are finding themselves kicked out of groups right before the final boss so their groupmates can quickly grab a friend who can then earn the completion rewards, leaving the original player who battled through the entire dungeon empty-handed.
Yep, something’s definitely off. The changes, and the implications players are seeing as a result, are frustrating and confusing to many. Yesterday, ArenaNet’s team issued two responses on the official forums, both in this discussion thread regarding the changes. The team is asking for reports of any bugged rewards. Here is that announcement, posted by Jon Peters, Game Designer:
I just wanted to update everyone on where we stand with this. So far we have found a single bug with the system that is causing certain players to get stuck in a state of reduced rewards without actually exploiting. A fix for this has already been made and is being tested locally now. We are going to do more significant testing on this new version but we also believe it is more bulletproof to begin with. Please keep posting data as these cases are somewhat rare and are hard for us to find with internal testing but seem to be exposed quickly when thousands of people are playing the dungeons.
All rewards are susceptible to our code that is dealing with people who are speed clearing dungeons. This means that if you are speed clearing and then play some new chain for the first time it may not reward the full 60 tokens. If you find yourself getting less rewards consider whether or not your rate of dungeon completion is extremely high.
If you think you are running at a fairly reasonable pace post all of the chains you have run and the time of day they were completed and we will file it to try and figure out if it is a bug. Please post accurate times, otherwise we cannot determine if there are in fact bugs in the system. Please continue to use this thread as a place to post this data so that we have it all in one location.
Later in the thread, Robert Hrouda, Content Designer, gave players this update:
A bit of misinformation I am seeing in the threads is that if you complete a single dungeon in ten minutes, we’re going to punish you for it, as though we are punishing you for being “too good” at it. This is not true.
Our DR system combats repeated runs, and has a global presence as well effecting other dungeons. So if you run multiple 10 minute dungeons, back to back then you are going to get hit with the DR system no matter which paths you choose.
However the notion that your group will be punished for clearing any single dungeon in any amount of time is incorrect. Running through multiple speed clears back to back will result in the DR system influencing your rewards.
I have updated the Patch update page to reflect this information.
With any luck, ArenaNet will quickly straighten out the bug in the reward DR system, and hopefully, ideally– work on a real solution. As players continue to become better geared and more familiar with Guild Wars 2 character builds and their teammates, dungeon runs will continue to become faster and faster, even without exploits.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to share them in the comments section below!
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