Dear Devs, Dungeon Clarifications Needed

#1 - Sept. 25, 2012, 4:49 p.m.

First off, I’m loving that tokens are now account bound. It’s good to know that devs are listening to the players and responding. However, with all the new changes, most of it is confusing and not explained. We’re not sure what’s added, what’s kept, or removed.

Please let us know how all aspects of the current system is working

Diminishing returns now apply to exp, kinah, and tokens?
Conditions for experiencing diminishing return
* Path selection: are diminishing return still suppose to reset by alternating paths within the same dungeon? If not, what’s the Cooldown after running a certain path?
* Speed running: DR for completing ONE dungeon under x minutes? or DR for completing Two or more dungeons under x minutes?
Conditions for experiencing Bonus tokens
* Bonus tokens for each unique path?
* any other conditions we need to be aware of?
Are Cooldowns on a daily reset or 24 hour timer?
* Bonus tokens: daily reset for 24 hrs from last path completion?
* If alternating paths no longer resets path reward reduction OR someone just ran path 2 and waited, how long until they can run that path again w/o reduction?

Clear answers to these questions would really help. Also ability for us to check our own dungeon status would be invaluable. Here’s my suggestion for a /checkstatus based off of a instance info check I liked attached to this post.

Penalty: time until you can run the same path again if you did not do another path. Should reset to none once you complete a different path based on old dungeon rules.

Wait time: time until bonus can be collected again.

Time to no speed penalty for next dungeon completion: self explanatory.

Robert Hrouda.1327

#4 - Sept. 25, 2012, 5:43 p.m.

The system is not intended to punish players who manage to beat a chain very quickly through their skill. But if that group then decided to start speed clearing that path, it’s supposed to diminish their returns.
It’s use is as more of an insurance policy against future exploits or bugs.

It is currently not our plan to outline how the DR system works, because doing as such provides those intending on exploiting the system with bits of information they could use to circumvent it.

Robert Hrouda.1327

#15 - Sept. 25, 2012, 6:06 p.m.

Jim Travakh.7495:
While I can agree with that sentiment in some ways, is it intended for the first run of any given explorable path on a day to yield anything other than 60 tokens? Because that was a bug many of my groups encountered with inconsistent rewards on completion.

What we’re seeing in a lot of these cases, is that players actually have beaten the path the day before, so they aren’t getting the first run bonus of the day, since it hasn’t rolled over yet to the next day (the rollover happens at 5pm pacific time).
For instance:

-It’s 10pm at night, you beat CoF Magg chain. You go to bed.
-Patch happens at Midnight.
-Wake up at 8am. Log in, get new patch.
-Run Magg’s chain, see diminished returns.

In that case, the new ‘day’ hasn’t rolled over yet because it’s not 5pm. So you get hit by the diminished returns.

Not saying this is the answer to ALL cases, but it has proven to be the answer of many of the cases. After 5pm today, when everything is rolled over, we’re hoping to see things settle out with the DR system.

My Opinion: the day should roll over at the same time we push patches. I’m going to talk to someone about this…

Robert Hrouda.1327

#25 - Sept. 25, 2012, 6:47 p.m.

Pikafan.3792:
So, pray tell, how does a player get 45 tokens from a single dungeon clear?

Diminishing rewards on the first time of the day running that particular dungeon path?

You are being impacted by the DR system for your path as a result of having completed several other paths too quickly, before going to that specific path. Because you were being influenced by other the DR system, the 60 tokens you earned were diminished to 45.
Can I assume you did a few other paths and got 60 tokens for those?

In the event an exploit happens that allows players to clear different dungeon paths quicker than expected, the DR system also kicks in.

Robert Hrouda.1327

#26 - Sept. 25, 2012, 6:48 p.m.

ChairGraveyard.2967:
I agree with you guys, I think we either need to be able to easily check if we’re going to be screwed out of dungeon rewards, or the DR system just needs to be removed completely.

We are working on a way to better communicate that you are being influenced by the DR system, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when you get it.

Robert Hrouda.1327

#31 - Sept. 25, 2012, 7:03 p.m.

Pikafan.3792:
No, that was clearly the first dungeon I ran that day, after dailies(the chest daily quest is the benchmark I go by to tell if a new day has passed) were clearly reset.

The dungeon was done in 45 minutes, this is more or less accurate as I always set down a Peach Pie Tray for a 1 hour buff the moment the group enters the dungeon and there were 14 minutes left after picking up end credit.

Something is not right here.

I’d agree with that information, something isn’t right about you getting hit by the DR system if it was your very first run of the day from any dungeon path. We’ve seen reports of this happening to some players, and we’ll continue working on the system to find and resolve problems. Posting your issue about it helps us narrow the search fields down on what might actually be causing problems. I’ll PM you here in a bit asking for some more information that I can pass along to our programmers.