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Pre-clears and Speed Runs VS Full Clears
aenuu
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 48
To start, I am not for or against any of the following. As a guild leader of a medium-large guild, I just want to know Cryptic's stance on these issues - what is intended to be a regular part of game play and what is not or which of these, if any, are officially considered an exploit. Is this what a player should expect during any of these dungeons and encounters?
I need to know because my guild is in an uproar right now, with half the members refusing to do "speed runs" for their own personal reasons and the other half 'want' to do speed runs because "it saves time" or "you don't have waste time killing things that you can skip and you can run more dungeons during the DD event."
Personally, I'll run them happily either way, I just prefer full clears. I would like an official response so we can finally have some peace and quiet over the issue - we have one group of people insisting that these things are exploits and another group insisting that these things are not and everything is working as intended.
Further, I don't want to make "guild policy" concerning these issues because I don't know which of these topics are "acceptable behavior" and which are not. And we have a lot of people on the forum saying what should and should not be allowed, and what should and should not be an exploit. Yet there is not one official response?
Now, I know you're not supposed to post "exploits" here on the forums, but guess what? We have no idea if this is an exploit or not! The majority of people in game are already doing all of these things at this point. And people are advertising for "speed runs" publicly, in Protector's Enclave, Gauntlgrym and everywhere else you would look for a group or recruit more members for your group. This seems like one of the most hot topics in game right now. And it's no secret - everyone is talking about it and/or hearing about it.
Many groups don't want to do a full run anymore. I often have to lead an all guild group if we want a full clear because other groups don't want take you without "experience" of "speed running" said dungeon. And there's still quite a few of us that don't yet know how to "speed run" every single dungeon.
Pre-clears, speed runs and skipping content are concerns I have had for the past month. Not only because this ruins the dungeon crawling experience for some (which is one of the main reasons why I play MMORPG's) but also because those who want to fully (or almost fully) clear a dungeon in the tradition way often get ridiculed, belittled and even kicked from groups because they either don't want to or don't know how to perform these pre-clears and speed runs.
I used to think it was 'bad form' for a group to "push" mobs off ledges, cliffs, bridges, etc. My view has changed on that aspect of dungeon runs because if it wasn't intended for mobs to be pushed of the edges, the game mechanics would be different (mobs could not be moved off the edges) or powers would be tweaked to prevent this. What made me change my views on this is because it is bound to happen frequently, even when it's unintentional - I have done this myself with my cleric using Sunburst to push mobs away if I get swarmed by too many mobs. At the start, this was completely unintentional. But now it has just become a regular part of game play during my dungeon runs. In fact, it's often desirable to 'kill' mobs this way because it's so much quicker than 'traditional' methods.
I do not know whether this is, in fact, intended, but it is just way too easy to "exploit" and near impossible to avoid in certain instances, such as some encounters in the Lair of the Pirate King and Spellplague Caverns last boss, for example.
Then we have the what people are typically calling "speed runs." I am not sure what to think about these. On the one hand, as a game developer and dungeon creator, you simply wouldn't make ledges and platforms and other objects you can walk and jump over or through, and make them accessible, if you did not intend for them to be accessed. Take a stairs for instance, that has a ledge on either side and it looks like you could easy jump over the railing and onto one of the ledges. But when you try to jump over the railing, it doesn't actually let you - even though you know for sure that you are jumping high enough to clear the rail and you should easy be able to land on the ledge without risk of failing. In this situation, you are basically running into an 'invisible wall.'
This happens in many games, and I'm not sure exactly what to call it, but this disallows players from running and jumping over, onto or through objects. So, in my mind, it is easy to assume that if the developers did not want to allow you to jump over the railing and onto the ledge, they would put these "invisible walls" there or simply make it inaccessible.
But this is not always case - sometimes people find a way to do things that are NOT intended.
I can think of many examples, the following is just one of them:
In World of Warcraft I remember a time where you could climb and jump onto the rooftops in Gadgetzan and 'snipe' at people if you had ranged abilities. Your opponents below without ranged abilities could do nothing back to you unless they climbed up on top of the roof, but they could run out of your range or hide inside a building. But if they wanted to attack you they had to climb onto your roof to engage you. This was a very difficult climb that took several flawless jumps and positioning to pull off - it took some practice!
At that time, sitting on the roof, I thought to myself "this shouldn't be considered an exploit because players aren't forced to stand there and die when I attack them. This is a PVP area and they can run away or hide if they want. They can also climb the roof and come kick my butt and other ranged players can still attack me!
But I was wrong, and so were a LOT of players that engaged in this activity. No one got banned for it that I know of (probably due to the amount of people using this exploit combined with the fact that it was such a minor infraction) Blizzard soon called it an exploit and 'fixed' the situation by putting up those "invisible walls" (which I mentioned above) to prevent people from getting up there. Now, even today in Gadgetzan, you simply can not get up on top of those rooftops anymore. At least not without hacking.
So even though I thought the roof top camping was a cheap tactic, I didn't think it was an exploit because... well, who "wouldn't" think of climbing onto a roof in order to get positional advantage over your opponents, since it was a PVP area?
Now, let us consider Neverwinter's Castle Never dungeon and all of the ledges and objects you can hop on to skip content. Is this intended? I have no idea but I have no reason to believe it is not intended due to the design of the instance.
Better examples of "speed runs" being performed in Neverwinter, however, are the dungeons where people simply run to the end of the dungeon and 'wipe' at the campfire just before the boss encounter and skip all, or part, of the content in between. While there are numerous examples of this, I believe the best example in the game right now is the "speed runs" that take place in the Fardelver dungeon, in Gauntlgrym. Typically a TR or a CW will run to the last campfire in the dungeon, and once they reach it they will notify the group that they can exit the dungeon and re-enter. When they re-enter, everyone appears at the last campfire of the dungeon, right next to the person that ran all the way there and then they all enter the boss room together and defeat it. It takes an experienced group much less than 10 minutes to do this and people are doing these Fardelver runs 3 to 4 times during the one half hour event for Gauntlgrym.
Pre-clears are also being done by people so they can invite their buddies as soon as the DD event starts, and some of these people just queue for an instance and kick the other members before the end, invite their buddies to the group and everyone takes turns logging out and then back in, when the DD event stats and presto! All they have to do is quickly kill one boss and they have the DD chest. Then I imagine many of them run off to do 3 more speed runs. Where is the fun in that? I mean, yeah, you get more loot. I understand why people do this, I understand why people do all these things but I have no idea if any of this is acceptable game play behavior. And if that's the way that things are supposed to be, then fine! We just really need some official feedback and clarification on these issues. Please!
And on a random though related note, I immediately queued up for the Dwarf King dungeon during my last Gauntlgrym marathon and I waiting until the event expired without the queue popping up for me once to enter the dungeon. Why? Because everyone was farming Grym tokens from Fardelver instead! They must feel that there is absolutely no incentive to running the Dwarf King dungeon, currently? I guess if I want to run Dwarf King I'll have bring my own guild group - lesson learned.
PS - I have contacted customer service with the contents of this post and am waiting on a response from them - just in case this thread gets locked, but I hope that it doesn't because everything I have said here is common, public knowledge and is already being discussed on the forums in many other threads that are not locked down (yet).
I need to know because my guild is in an uproar right now, with half the members refusing to do "speed runs" for their own personal reasons and the other half 'want' to do speed runs because "it saves time" or "you don't have waste time killing things that you can skip and you can run more dungeons during the DD event."
Personally, I'll run them happily either way, I just prefer full clears. I would like an official response so we can finally have some peace and quiet over the issue - we have one group of people insisting that these things are exploits and another group insisting that these things are not and everything is working as intended.
Further, I don't want to make "guild policy" concerning these issues because I don't know which of these topics are "acceptable behavior" and which are not. And we have a lot of people on the forum saying what should and should not be allowed, and what should and should not be an exploit. Yet there is not one official response?
Now, I know you're not supposed to post "exploits" here on the forums, but guess what? We have no idea if this is an exploit or not! The majority of people in game are already doing all of these things at this point. And people are advertising for "speed runs" publicly, in Protector's Enclave, Gauntlgrym and everywhere else you would look for a group or recruit more members for your group. This seems like one of the most hot topics in game right now. And it's no secret - everyone is talking about it and/or hearing about it.
Many groups don't want to do a full run anymore. I often have to lead an all guild group if we want a full clear because other groups don't want take you without "experience" of "speed running" said dungeon. And there's still quite a few of us that don't yet know how to "speed run" every single dungeon.
Pre-clears, speed runs and skipping content are concerns I have had for the past month. Not only because this ruins the dungeon crawling experience for some (which is one of the main reasons why I play MMORPG's) but also because those who want to fully (or almost fully) clear a dungeon in the tradition way often get ridiculed, belittled and even kicked from groups because they either don't want to or don't know how to perform these pre-clears and speed runs.
I used to think it was 'bad form' for a group to "push" mobs off ledges, cliffs, bridges, etc. My view has changed on that aspect of dungeon runs because if it wasn't intended for mobs to be pushed of the edges, the game mechanics would be different (mobs could not be moved off the edges) or powers would be tweaked to prevent this. What made me change my views on this is because it is bound to happen frequently, even when it's unintentional - I have done this myself with my cleric using Sunburst to push mobs away if I get swarmed by too many mobs. At the start, this was completely unintentional. But now it has just become a regular part of game play during my dungeon runs. In fact, it's often desirable to 'kill' mobs this way because it's so much quicker than 'traditional' methods.
I do not know whether this is, in fact, intended, but it is just way too easy to "exploit" and near impossible to avoid in certain instances, such as some encounters in the Lair of the Pirate King and Spellplague Caverns last boss, for example.
Then we have the what people are typically calling "speed runs." I am not sure what to think about these. On the one hand, as a game developer and dungeon creator, you simply wouldn't make ledges and platforms and other objects you can walk and jump over or through, and make them accessible, if you did not intend for them to be accessed. Take a stairs for instance, that has a ledge on either side and it looks like you could easy jump over the railing and onto one of the ledges. But when you try to jump over the railing, it doesn't actually let you - even though you know for sure that you are jumping high enough to clear the rail and you should easy be able to land on the ledge without risk of failing. In this situation, you are basically running into an 'invisible wall.'
This happens in many games, and I'm not sure exactly what to call it, but this disallows players from running and jumping over, onto or through objects. So, in my mind, it is easy to assume that if the developers did not want to allow you to jump over the railing and onto the ledge, they would put these "invisible walls" there or simply make it inaccessible.
But this is not always case - sometimes people find a way to do things that are NOT intended.
I can think of many examples, the following is just one of them:
In World of Warcraft I remember a time where you could climb and jump onto the rooftops in Gadgetzan and 'snipe' at people if you had ranged abilities. Your opponents below without ranged abilities could do nothing back to you unless they climbed up on top of the roof, but they could run out of your range or hide inside a building. But if they wanted to attack you they had to climb onto your roof to engage you. This was a very difficult climb that took several flawless jumps and positioning to pull off - it took some practice!
At that time, sitting on the roof, I thought to myself "this shouldn't be considered an exploit because players aren't forced to stand there and die when I attack them. This is a PVP area and they can run away or hide if they want. They can also climb the roof and come kick my butt and other ranged players can still attack me!
But I was wrong, and so were a LOT of players that engaged in this activity. No one got banned for it that I know of (probably due to the amount of people using this exploit combined with the fact that it was such a minor infraction) Blizzard soon called it an exploit and 'fixed' the situation by putting up those "invisible walls" (which I mentioned above) to prevent people from getting up there. Now, even today in Gadgetzan, you simply can not get up on top of those rooftops anymore. At least not without hacking.
So even though I thought the roof top camping was a cheap tactic, I didn't think it was an exploit because... well, who "wouldn't" think of climbing onto a roof in order to get positional advantage over your opponents, since it was a PVP area?
Now, let us consider Neverwinter's Castle Never dungeon and all of the ledges and objects you can hop on to skip content. Is this intended? I have no idea but I have no reason to believe it is not intended due to the design of the instance.
Better examples of "speed runs" being performed in Neverwinter, however, are the dungeons where people simply run to the end of the dungeon and 'wipe' at the campfire just before the boss encounter and skip all, or part, of the content in between. While there are numerous examples of this, I believe the best example in the game right now is the "speed runs" that take place in the Fardelver dungeon, in Gauntlgrym. Typically a TR or a CW will run to the last campfire in the dungeon, and once they reach it they will notify the group that they can exit the dungeon and re-enter. When they re-enter, everyone appears at the last campfire of the dungeon, right next to the person that ran all the way there and then they all enter the boss room together and defeat it. It takes an experienced group much less than 10 minutes to do this and people are doing these Fardelver runs 3 to 4 times during the one half hour event for Gauntlgrym.
Pre-clears are also being done by people so they can invite their buddies as soon as the DD event starts, and some of these people just queue for an instance and kick the other members before the end, invite their buddies to the group and everyone takes turns logging out and then back in, when the DD event stats and presto! All they have to do is quickly kill one boss and they have the DD chest. Then I imagine many of them run off to do 3 more speed runs. Where is the fun in that? I mean, yeah, you get more loot. I understand why people do this, I understand why people do all these things but I have no idea if any of this is acceptable game play behavior. And if that's the way that things are supposed to be, then fine! We just really need some official feedback and clarification on these issues. Please!
And on a random though related note, I immediately queued up for the Dwarf King dungeon during my last Gauntlgrym marathon and I waiting until the event expired without the queue popping up for me once to enter the dungeon. Why? Because everyone was farming Grym tokens from Fardelver instead! They must feel that there is absolutely no incentive to running the Dwarf King dungeon, currently? I guess if I want to run Dwarf King I'll have bring my own guild group - lesson learned.
PS - I have contacted customer service with the contents of this post and am waiting on a response from them - just in case this thread gets locked, but I hope that it doesn't because everything I have said here is common, public knowledge and is already being discussed on the forums in many other threads that are not locked down (yet).
Post edited by aenuu on
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As it is, I'm sure I'll get a few TL;DR responses.
We have never been there again since. Occasionally we joked about asking around about the exploits and shortcuts to farm the three bosses but we wondered what's the point of farming more and more AD if we hardly have enough people to come online to play together anyway.
With the approach of another heavy hitting MMORPG title looming, more and more of us are drifting away from Neverwinter.
The full clear took their all guild group over 3 hours as well, not including the Dracolich fight. It's outdated now, but I watched most of it just for fun. Seemed like cool folks: http://youtu.be/cZWW6YPDsaQ
As for tips and tricks to doing CN, you can find them on youtube, reddit and other places. Here's one: http://youtu.be/DN9cQ2ZSpI0
This video examples some of the stuff I'm talking about in my original post.
Look, I get it...you want to kill every dayum thing in a dungeon. Good for you. Get back to me when you have been doing the same dungeon at least once a week for the next two years. I won't even bother asking if you have played a game that long.
Most of the short cuts have been sealed. Once that was done folks like you are still not be happy? You are REQUIRING people to kill every dayum mob in the instance? Take your wall of text and go. I respect your ideals so in return respect mine. I don't want to be FORCED to play the game EXACTLY like you feel it should be played.
Reading comprehension much? Ha ha ha.
I have ran the same dungeon for 4 years, not just 2. And there is, in fact, one game I have played for 8 years. Why any of this matters to you, is beyond me.
And I never meant any disrespect, but you might want to re-read my post (all of it this time, maybe?) before you assume I'm not respecting your ideals. In my post, I'm not proposing or trying to "force" anyone to play any certain way - I just want an official response as to what is acceptable game play behavior and what is not, so in turn, I can tell my guildies what we, as a guild, promote our members to participate in and what we do not. That's all
Seems to me that an LFG tool should be something on the dev roadmap already, don't you think? Just add that to the business requirements - it would add - what? 20 hours coding time and another day for QA?
This is probably too valuable of an idea to just give out but it would do so much to improve dungeon experience.
Why not have a pool of monsters for that particular dungeon and when the party ques for that dungeon the server randomly puts together the groups of mobs and which node they will be at? This way you never see the same mobs at the same spots, in fact if you really wanted to make it more unique is you randomly pick node sites, have some nodes not hold any spawns while others get them. This way players don't know what they are facing until they are close.
These static spawns that are always the same type of monster get boring. DnD has always been about random encounters, and why developers fall flat on this concept proves that developers have not done any homework. What I am suggesting here is really not all that hard to do and it would go a long way to making dungeon experience that much more enjoyable.
As it currently is, you do a dungeon run once or twice and you memorize what is where and how many to expect. It becomes boring very quick to see the same group of monsters in the exact same spot every run. My suggestion is what is needed but I doubt they would ever implement such a thing because it requires a bit more coding and from my perspective Cryptic likes to do the bare minimum programming just to make the feature work. They don't care about detail or balance or fun. This is obvious just by looking at the alchemy profession.
Random mob generation, random content generation, dynamic content generation: none of these are new concepts, I'm afraid. Shadowbane was the first major MMORPG to offer dynamic world content, published on March 23, 2003.
This sounds really cool but I am not sure how easy it would be for the dev's to pull off at this point, especially when you consider that they have the foundry that they 'could' use random mob generation in as well? Definitely an interesting idea, I'll give you that - I know it would make things much more interesting for me!
It's not that hard folks, really:
Are speed runs acceptable (examples are given in the original post)? Yes - No
Are Pre-Clears acceptable (examples are given in the original post)? Yes - No
Feel free to list any exceptions and/or details.
Thanks!
The problem arises from the conflux of (1) dungeon design that is fairly tedious with the amount of unrewarding trash mobs involved and (2) the DD and other event system, which was designed with the good intention of encouraging people to do these things, but creates instead a huge incentive to speed run. I do not personally doubt that the speed runs were not intended by the developers, but until they address it in some way with walls and so on, we will never know. As it is now, the combination of dungeon layouts which allow this, dungeon designs which people find tedious, and the incentive to cram in as many into 60 minutes as possible leads to this result almost inevitably.
If they didn't want things having an option to be skipped, they would move the static area of the spawn(s) so they couldn't be passed. If they didn't want things being pushed off of a ledge, they would put up an invisible barrier or an actual wall to prevent this. I think it breaks down to how you want to approach the game. They have implemented some time saving things into dungeons so those who want to save time can do so.
I know there is a dungeon or two where you can hop the gate that closes for certain bosses and eventually, the boss will follow to the safe spot so adds don't have to be dealt with. Sure, that could be considered an exploit because it goes above and beyond what the devs envisioned.
I am all for bypassing things by hugging a wall, knocking it over a ledge etc. Coming from a game like EQ where trash could take forever, one learns how to hug walls etc to save some time. Again, if it weren't intended, they would fix it. Like they have attempted to do with many exploits.
Good luck getting a dev/staff to answer. Considering no one that I know of has been banned for some serious exploits, that speaks volumes. Also, out of the several types of this thread that have been posted, I don't recall ever seeing an answer from them either. Until they come out and say it is wrong, I'll save time where I can
Maybe slower sometimes (hell sometimes trying to skip or push ends up taking longer lol), but i like it. I dig looking for every chest fighting the optional boss, etc.
I made my mistake with other MMO's in the crazy speed rush of getting gear, getting loot, must have BiS, must have larger epeen BS.
I enjoy the content, enjoy the gameplay, heck this is the first MMO where I will run a dungeon that doesnt have a drop for me lol.
My advice either find or form a guild that want to play the way you do, then you never have to worry about it.
Preclears are fine. It's a widely known game mechanics. May not be intended (otherwise, it would work like other bonuses) but the devs keep it to preserve the statu quo with the playerbase.
Here's what I think:
- Skipping packs is okay.
- Knocking off ledges is okay (it's a cool mechanic and it's fun, although I'd like to see the options somewhat reduced).
- Preclears are okay-ish. My beef with the DD bonus being too significant and T2 dungeons being horrendously long keeps me from saying this is not okay.
- Running till the next/last campfire and dying there to skip is not okay.
- Walljumping and jumping out of the main path is not okay.
But for each of the "not okay" points I'd like to add a very big "zerging players with endless seas of adds is not okay".
I'd like to see adds reduced, and DD event normalized (so that it is still worth to run dungeons outside of the DD event) before they fix cliff bump, campfire skipping, walljumping and preclear.
My guild isn't really big, I think we had 2 DD groups simultaneously at our peak, but now it's less than 3 ppl online, so I can only PuG CN, and no PuG grp does a full clear. Ever. I'd like to clear that instance at least once without any exploits.
my 2cents: their only rule is "as long as it is intented". There's just no way of knowing what they intend until it got 'fixed'.
People advertise openly and loudly they want and do speedruns, using whatever glitch and exploit is available. I assume Cryptic has GM's in the game, who just like everyone else, see the same thing in zone-chat.
It is condoned, hence it is approved.
I'd say the only cheating in this game you could actually get banned for, is when whatever you do is going to cost them Zen. Unless you're botting of course, they seem to condone that just fine as well, or just deny it's even happening.
It hit me a few nights back why they have not addressed the enchant issue. They are seeing it as a money making issue. The enchant bots actually force players into wanting more AD and when a player is forced into wanting more AD they lean towards opening the wallet to accomplish that need. These enchant exploits make them money and they realized it long before I did. This is why they are not being addressed as they should have been long ago.
becouse of this simple fact players will always find a way to skip some mobs, find alternative route etc.
what should happen to make people run full clears more often? make them profitable!
How? the mmo i was playing before neverwinter had a bonus boss system in their endgame dungeons, obviously the bonus wasnt just standing there - you had to kill enough mobs to make boss appear, or use/talk to some different npc's located in some various places in the dungeon (thus making you go there and clear the rooms you would be able to skip)
bonus bosses were as hard -some even harder- as final bosses, and dropped items of the same quality = fun and profit
in my humble opinion this idea is FAR FAR FAAAAR better than the irritating and easy-exploitable Dungeon Delves mechanic...
At this point in time, I am so frustrated with the lack of official response that I just don't care anymore.
The free spirited, hard core gamer in me wants to say, "if the dev's allow you to do it then it must be OK to do, unless we're told otherwise." Or basically, working as intended - if it's not intended, they'll patch/fix it.
On the other hand, the guild and group leader in me wants to say, "we need to stick to tradition and do things the way they were obviously intended."
The problem, speaking for myself, is that the more I think about it, the more confused I become concerning what is actually intended and what is not. Ultimately, I have no idea just what is 'intended' concerning these issues. So I'm left with only being able to give some arbitrary answer that sounds good.
So I can go with the answer that I think will be the "most popular" answer in our guild, or I can go with a more throttled and conservative answer and try to keep everyone from potentially engaging in what might be considered 'unacceptable game play behavior.'
Then again, I suppose a third option would be to say, "I just don't care any more" and leave it up to each group to decide. Which is probably the answer I'm going to go with at this point. I can't be 'the responsible, rule abiding gamer' if I don't know what the rules are because of the clash between the design of content, the implementation of the gaming dynamics (such as dungeon delve events), the lack of clarification from the dev's, and any tradition sense a veteran gamer might have toward moral dungeon etiquette and protocol (coming from a long line of other MMORPG's).
Therefore, until the dev's let me know when, and if, I should start caring about this issue again, I am just going to do what the majority of the group wants to do. Because until there is more clarification, I believe this would be the path of least resistance with my group mates, and therefore less drama and strife for all.
The patch notes and sometimes ninja patches of holes and shortcuts are self-explanatory. You don't need a dev to tell you you shouldn't do it, they are trying to fix the whole thing. It just takes time. It's really super slow and most of the patches don't really fix the issue but i guess they're doing their best.
I understand your point. I'm sure things will all work out the way the dev's want it to in the end. But that is exactly why I started this thread - what are we really supposed to be doing in the meantime? Regarding these issues we aren't at 'the end,' we're at 'the beginning.' Your point of view is certainly valid but my questions still go unanswered despite the inevitable fixes and patches in the near or not-so-near future.
You quoted me and responded with basically the same message - "working as intended - if it's not intended, they'll patch/fix it."
Speed through a dungeon is also obviously acceptable.
"speerun - infering using exploits to speed up the dungeon is obviously not acceptable and against the tos"
Most are obvious imo:
- Skipping packs of mobs by jumping through the geometry and not using the the clearly intended glowy trail is not intended.
- Intentionally killing yourself for any reason other then to work around a bug is not intended.
- Other players skipping ahead to a camp fire because one player reached it - not intended. (Though imo its good tech as it allows you to workaround annoying bugs - like the fact you start at teh start of the dungeon after a DC - very much non intended imo, so the campfire teleport is a good workaround for that.)
Actaully very shocked so many players don't get that these exploits are exploits. I mean it seems like 99% of groups ALWAYS exploit in Karrundax and Spellplague, and many have the nerve to tell me they aren't. I mean yea - that one little spot you jump through in spellplague may seem harmless - but its VERY CLEARLY not intended.
Or purposely dying in karrundax. Or (prepatch) pulling back bosses to break the add spawn tech.
Obvious exploits.
I avoid all of these as much as I can, but some are simply unavoidable if you want to pug with the way this games being played. Luckily they patch often to fix them.
-Epic Dread Vault Crushed.
Characters (Dragon): Axer (60 Guardian, Leader of Crush It!), Controller (60 Wizard), Warlocker (60 Warlock)
Speed runs are fine.
1. There is a chest over there with some adds. You want to get that chest? Kill the adds. The rewards are not good enough to warrant me killing adds, just for a chest.
2. There is a pack of adds over there..... they don't see me.... maybe I can sneak pass them......
3. There is a small gap between the rocks (not a solid wall). Maybe if i jump over those rocks I don't have to fight those terrible adds...
4. There is a bridge ahead.... it is quite far..... but if we all run together..... and then "punt" all the adds off....
All the above are legitimate and good play.
Obviously you are not going to know all the quirks of of the dungeon on your first run.
For some (like me) the idea is to manage your time so you get the most reward out of the time you spent.
If I'm helping newbies, it will be a slow run. If it is with a group of veterans then I would run it as fast and efficiently as I can.
So untill things get fixed hopefully and since this game is played by humans you can try to find fellowminded parties and enjoy it. The only real problem for me is bots and the hatefull crazy people behind them. Its the virus that spreads and needs to be dealt with, either with law enforcement or with clever programming maybe. Imagine that millions of gamers enjoy finally a DnD themed MMO with Foundry's potential to be uniquely promising and there you have thousands of, potentially, lowlife scum ruining the game. Dont care if it was always like that etc etc, its simple.. you spoil my fun to get money? You are scum either you are 16 or 46 and you will have to stop this by force or not. Thats the real problem behind all this and i hope there will be a way to solve it or else we will end up doing dungeon runs with bots every day, now its still rare though it happens.
As for the other exploits, jumping and skipping content is all about devs not giving invisible walls. The casual players don't care too much about skipping content. For more hardcore gamers, if a content skip is found, they see the potential to make more in game currency. Thus do more exploits. I personally think it is just bad design, I'd prefer a dungeon that has mini tasks for each class and individual to do in order to proceed in the dungeon.
I.E. Rogue room requires a trickster rogue to bypass an entire room of traps and obtain an artifact to be placed in the main room, this can also be done by another class, but needs to becareful because the traps do a ton of damage.
CW room where the platforms can collapse which will rely on cw to use up all 3 of his/her teleports inorder to get to a non falling platform.
DC room where allied ghosts spawn and the devote cleric have to keep them alive to pass through to obtain the artifact etc.
or have a kill adds to get certain objects to proceed in the dungeon questline.
or have a jump quest/maze/puzzle to slowdown gamers.
But currently the dev's idea of slowing down a dungeon is: Throw in more adds and there isn't anything special about the boss mechanics either, just waves and waves of adds. A couple of bosses in this game have a great design. like Pyrophalia from Karrundax(rogues can't sit on her 24-7), Spellplague last boss(platform falling off), Lolth(the fact that shes the only boss that heals makes the fight unique other than annoying adds of blademasters), but there are also many badly designed bosses. there isnt enough unique bosses that it is currently 1 strat fits all, maybe need a rogue to constantly move around in stealth to break pillars while team is fighting and holding boss aggro, or a boss that forces you to take damage base on the distance you have moved. There is simply not any special mechanics to any of these fights that make full clears any special or fun to do. All there is to full clears are more adds that are ridiculously tanky and 100% waste of time to kill
Lanaya@meeggtoast 13.4 BiS GWF
Shendelzare@meeggtoast 11.2k CN mule CW
Server: Dragon
Stream: meeggtoast
Guide: Meeggtoast's Destroyer Dps Guide
There is a lot of creative potential in the dungeons that could incentivise players to actually play the game instead of cheating loot.