Dungeons, especially the explorables, are having some severe growing issues. Part of that is the general difficulty of the content but I think the bigger problem is that the players are having trouble getting a handle on the developer expectations for group compositions. Which is fine, breaking the trinity being a noble goal, but the costs involved in this learning experience are just too high. I think that if the system continues unchanged you will end up losing a lot of people.
How can this be resolved? How can you keep the dungeons challenging, while breaking the trinity, and without people abandoning that content in droves. One way is to ramp up the rewards but that is like putting a band aid on gangrene. People will then force themselves through the content for those rewards while hating what they are doing. They will waypoint zerg. They will continue to throw themselves at the content in the hopes that they will just manage to get through it. They will learn how to exploit their way through the content but they won’t learn how to manage it.
That is what I think needs to change and I think there are already systems in place inside the game to make that happen. The key seems to me to be to make it easier for players to experiment with the various builds in the dungeon environment. Give them the opportunity to try different things to overcome the various encounters and make them more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses and synergies of the various specs inside their chosen profession.
What I propose would be to incorporate part of the sPvP system into the dungeon design. Have the stats on all a player’s gear and weapons as well as all their trinkets disappear when they zone into a dungeon. Put a vender next to the anvil that offers dungeon amulets of all the same types as is available in the heart of the mists at no charge. Add an additional function to the anvil as well so that it can reset a players traits at the normal fee. This way it becomes easier for players to swap things around, to experiment with different things, to figure out what they need to work better with the other people in their group to beat the various encounters.
Fleshing out the system a bit more. Could put explorer and traveler’s stat type dungeon amulets on that vender for token costs as those aren’t going to be useful while learning the content but could then be brought into the picture when the content is known as an additional reward (as well as making the content a bit harder by using them). I would also leave weapon damage, base armor values, runes and sigils unaffected by zoning into the dungeon as earning the basic tools for the content should still play a role. Also keeps the system simpler for faster swaps between pulls as people have enough to consider with just changing their traits and stat distributions.
edit – Part of the system is already in place as we can swap around the major traits when out of combat but it doesn’t help when you are running a warrior in all knight’s gear with say a middle of the road spec (say a 10/30/20/0/10) and find yourself in a group without enough group healing to get through the content. Changing to a shout spec or a banner spec with the regen maybe with cleric stat gear could make the difference between a slog and having a good time but that would require not only a multi-waypoint trip to reset your traits but would also require you to also have a full set of equal gear with cleric stats ready to go as well.
Give people an opportunity to more easily play within your system and they will learn to play better within their groups, they will have more fun doing the content and they will keep playing through that content no matter the rewards.
(edited by Rouncer.7569)