If you haven’t heard by now, the gold reward from dungeons in Guild Wars 2 has been cut to 1/3 of the pre-update amount. This may be the nail in the coffin for dungeons since they’ve essentially been on life-support for the last year or so. One of the main reasons players were giving dungeons any attention at all was because decent amounts of gold were awarded for their efforts.

Background

ArenaNet haven’t exactly kept it a secret that they have no intention to support dungeon content. Ever since they shifted the focus to Fractals, dungeons have slowly faded into the background. But with the decent rewards given out you could still find players to group up with most of the time. By cutting these rewards ArenaNet have showed us that in addition to not being supported, dungeons will be actively discouraged by nerfing one of the main incentives. All of this is done with the intention of moving more players into Fractals.

Problems

Here are some of the glaring problems introduced by the new dungeon reward policy.

Harder to find groups

If fewer players are motivated to participate in dungeons, the remaining dungeon players are going to have a much more difficult time finding dungeon parties in the Looking For Group tool. Sure there will always be a core group of dungeon players that are in it for the fun and variety instead of the gold, but life isn’t going to get any easier for them.

Fewer ways for casual players to earn gold

Dungeons were one of the top sources of gold for casual (and many other) players. It takes a good amount of gold to experience many of the things Guild Wars 2 offers, and without gold from dungeons casual players must now either make do with much less gold, or turn to alternative activities like gold farming.

Unobtainable achievements

The dungeon related achievements in Guild Wars 2 will become more difficult to obtain. It was already a struggle to find consistent dungeon groups even before the reward nerf. Combined with their lack of visibility, many new players may not have the chance to fully experience all that the dungeons have to offer, or even know that they exist. Will the ambiguous “Dungeon Unlocked” mail message be enough to keep players trying out dungeons?

Frustrated players

Many players have expressed their frustration over the neglected dungeon content. There are players that almost exclusively play Guild Wars 2 for the dungeons, and they will be hit the hardest as their income gets cut by 2/3rds. But even for most players the reward nerf is considered to be questionable at best.

Alternate Solutions

Here are a couple of alternatives to the gold nerf situation.

Increase token rewards

The amount of tokens rewarded for a dungeon reward should be increased. At the current level you would need to complete over 1000 dungeon runs in order to collect all of the dungeon skins. Token rewards should probably be increased to AT LEAST 160 tokens per path instead of 20 (plus 60 bonus).

Add item rewards

Trade-able items could be added to dungeon rewards in order to make up for the lack of gold. This would accomplish the developers’ goal of reducing the amount of gold in the economy while also providing an incentive for players to participate in dungeons, allowing dungeon content to stay alive.

Final Thoughts

Get your dungeon runs in while you can! The future of dungeons in Guild Wars 2 is not looking bright. I personally enjoy running dungeons and hope that they remain viable going forward. It seems absurd that dungeons are being swept under the rug when they offer some of the most fun and high-quality content in the game.