Guild Wars 2

Not likely that the people I’d like to read this will, since they’ve been mostly chased off by all the biased hate thrown at something they’ve put so much effort into… but hey, I can try.

The biggest ongoing issue I’ve experienced has been rewards for time spent/difficulty. It’s broader than just dungeons, but what with recent talk of boosting dungeon difficulty, I’ll focus on that.

See, most dungeons aren’t done by many people nowadays. Besides the guaranteed monetary reward, there’s not much incentive to go. The chests are clogged with vendor trash and it’s odd that I get even a single rare in a dungeon with three treasure chests and piles of trash mobs/bosses.

World events give guaranteed rares (or better) and chests that reward me with additional rares far more often than dungeon chests. And the thing is, these world events never fail. Some are done in literally a couple of minutes, even after the update. You can do a half dozen world events in the time you’ll run one path of a shorter dungeon.

Current dungeon rewards aren’t enough for most people (with the odd exception, like CoF1 farming, which will no doubt be fixed up with the dungeon buff). With a difficulty buff they’ll be run for tokens and tokens alone by people wanting a skin or legendary gift, and finding a group won’t be easy.

Increase rewards for dungeons. Hell, have a daily rare-or-better chest with each of the three boss chests. Most paths take the better part of an hour or longer. If people have to try the whole time, give them incentive to hit these dungeons and not just spend the same amount of time racking up shinies from 5-minute world bosses. This goes double for dungeons that are already very difficult and rarely run (which are about half of them, sadly).

I really like your content and running dungeons with friends, Anet, and I’m not alone there. Just gotta work on that carrot.

Make ’em wanna risk it for the biscuit.

Yeah, I’ve been feeling pretty ridiculous runs of CoF path 1 compared to fractals or arah. The tokens and special drops are the only thing differing but the CoF runs are much shorter (7 min) and the fractal runs are long (30m – 2h 30m).

Some people think “screw other dungeons. If I do a few CoF runs I have the money I need”.

It’s pretty sad that other dungeons are hardly done.

The main problem is the refusal to go vertical scaling game-play.

As I stated in one of my earlier posts sometime after the game was released 6 months ago.

“Leveling from 1 to 80 makes sense with the loot reward system, Increasing our stats to challenge the higher level zones.
At 80 the rewards and the grinding is there, just the items have no use because we are not needing them for anything beyond max level.
-There is no future dungeon that requires items from grinding.
-No world boss that requires items from grinding.
-No Event that requires items from grinding.
Basically we are just grinding and collecting items for nothing progressive other than visual appeal.
Usually in order to have a sustained endgame in (PVE) you need to give players a goal and then add ways to reach it = Grinding for Gear, Quest items, Unlock items, anything that adds a requirement to unlock something adds to the grind and makes it beneficial ( such as going from quest gear, to dungeon gear, to raid gear)”

Basically, You’re not going to get anything better then whats currently out there, everything is just for looks and has no real demanding purpose in game.

I know a lot of people dislike the idea of a carrot on a stick, but that’s what drive us in real life. If You want something, you work for it, If it’s not worth the trouble we don’t worry about it.

GW1 had carrots in the form of prestige skins that were only available in certain places (e.g. a complete clear of the Fissure of Woe). Plenty of people played that content over and over and over to get those skins. The skins were rare and thus were very valuable (i.e., they could be sold). The time required was longer than many dungeon paths in 2, but the content was fun and challenging, and of course people figured out how to speed run. Unfortunately, there is no hard mode in GW2, except for explorable mode dungeons — which some say are easy.

GW1 players also did hard mode content to get achievements. These were desirable because they conferred benefits to your account in GW2. However, there is no GW3 on the horizon to provide that kind of incentive.

Would exploring either of these incentives be worth while going forward or is this a traditional-vertical-progression-or-nothing thread?

GW2 is an easy game in every aspect, and has been since release. I too would really dig some actual hard content. Horizontal progression is not the problem here: look at GW1. The most reasonable thing to look out for is 1 hard dungeon to be released sometime in the future, with unique rewards that are not account bound (this would really be copycatting off of GW1 but you won’t hear me complain about that).

If this game is to remain as a horizontal system, they need to start creating goals that have requirements and something worth going after.

My main goal in a game is thought out something like this.

-Whats the story? A land of norn, humans so on, under siege from a dark power blabla
-Whats my story? You’re a tree born to defend the land and so on
-Who the bad guy? an evil dragon summoning undead and attacking people
-Whats his story? he lost a poker game
-Where can I find him? at his lair
-How do I get there? head to area (A) and speak with guy (A)
-what’s in it for me? your name will be engraved into a monument at the main town.

And the goal is set and my quest begins! unfortunately the final boss of this game was a fireworks display or pure …err disappointment/boredom.

edit
Imagine this as an example, Server wide events that affect the outcome of a situation.

(1)An undead king has risen once again and is unleashing angry spirits <—Becomes target

(2) two factions are made to who both want control over the situation, unable to settle between themselves they ask us to choose by proving our worth/strength and support that faction, ((A reputation race has been created.))

(3) quests / dailies / dungeon obectives are created for us to complete, depending on the side we choose, completing objectives related to that faction will increase the reputation bar for that faction.

—Rundown—
2 reputation bars are created in the UI somewhere.
Each faction has their own gear set look (Something to fight for)
As players complete quests and gain reputation for that faction, the bar will slowly advance to be completed, and a faction has been selected via popular dedication server wide.

Once the faction has been chosen, the gates of (time to whoop undead king) will be opened and we proceed into dungeon / raid events for guilds and hardcore PVE dedicated players, making our way to the kings throne or something like that.

There you have it. An easy, competitive / cooperative story that has a purpose, a game changing choice that we as a server chose, and raid / reward potential.

Gustoril.4195:

-How do I get there? head to area (A) and speak with guy (A)

Does the area and the guy have the same name?

Btw, I feel like dungeons are stupid. They are not challeging at all. Lots of bosses are just “keep hitting and dodge when necessary, if necessary”
That’s why some fights like the Dwayna girl in Arah p4 are known as impossible, because you have to think, you need strategy and coordination.
AC is, after the changes, the closest to perfect dungeon. It has some issues that may not ever be fixed (like graveling normal attacks applying 3 stacks of bleeding), but beating each path isnt boring anymore

I hope ANet changes every dungeon to make them more challenging, funnier and more rewarding ofc

I don’t think any sort of bonus gear is needed from dungeons. Many people don’t like running dungeons, and they would be excluded from obtaining “better” gear or be forced to do something that isn’t their cup of tea. Currently, all of the best stats in the game can be achieved in various play styles (pve). Open pve, dungeons, or wvw. No one is left out.

Skins are the carrot in gw2. In ways, I miss working on long difficult quest lines or even camping a rare mob for super rare loot but it also made me feel insignificant until I had those pieces. In gw2, I don’t feel under geared, even when I was 80 running full rares. With full exotic/ascended now, I don’t feel like a super god but I do still notice the boost and it is welcoming. Its a bonus yet nothing game changing from what I’ve seen. Rare or ascended it comes down to player skill above all, which to those who CAN complete harder dungeons, arn’t being rewarded appropriately. Aside from a new title, I got near nothing for getting Dungeon master. Arah was the hardest part of it all and I’ve seen better loot from SE which took half the time if not less.

Like op said, time spent/difficulty should reflect the loot quality. If cof is going to be super easy, then the loot should continue to be kitten. If CoE takes 1.5 hours, I should feel like my time invested led to something (coin, mats). For me, I don’t need super armor that boosts my stats but I would like to get mats for a weapon skin recipe and dungons arn’t helping me with that no matter how difficult path x is.

What I’m afraid of most is if this new “make dungeons harder” patch is just gana be adding more trash mobs that hit you for 4k. The living story dungeon was amazing, really hope they are using it as a guideline for the dungeons to appeal the hunger for a challenge but also the desire for a enjoyable experience. Not necessarily copy the dungenon mechanics but understand that encounter’s need to be more reasonable. If boss Y is going to stun lock you, it shouldn’t do a ton of damage. If boss Z has a heavy hitting skill, it should be noticable so it can be avoided, things like that. I won’t even look at AC exp p1 or p3 anymore because it’s either glitch the boss (which I absolutely hate) or wipe because this guy is insane with add-ons. Detha is the only enjoyable fight that took some skill to complete imo.

NinjaEd.3946:

I don’t think any sort of bonus gear is needed from dungeons. Many people don’t like running dungeons, and they would be excluded from obtaining “better” gear or be forced to do something that isn’t their cup of tea. Currently, all of the best stats in the game can be achieved in various play styles (pve). Open pve, dungeons, or wvw. No one is left out.

…eh?

Ascended rings come from Fractals. Fractals are the dungeons of dungeons to people who don’t like dungeons. You can’t get any kind of ascended gear from WvW (I don’t consider the months-long mostly-PvE daily grind known as laurels as qualifying means). Gear definitely isn’t balanced currently.

That being said, yeah, while ascended gear would be a fine reward, more tradeable skins/better loot all around is all dungeons really need to be a bigger part of the game.

Skip the whole dungeon idea and get back to the dynamic spontaneous world idea we were promised when we bought the game. Forget about trying to outdo WoW and go back to the dynamics. It’s what makes you better.

I totally agree with the OP that the time spent/reward for dungeons is ridiculous when compared to the time spent/rewards for any of the easy world boss events.

Maybe they could add a chance at laurels in the final chest. Or give us more things that we grind for towards our legendary weapons in the dungeon. Another thing they could do is add more achievement points rewarded for completing dungeons. This would be something that could add some competition to the PvE leaderboards.(which I wish there were access to leaderboards in game, but thats a different topic)