Guild Wars 2

First off I want to say that I love the dungeon. This had some of the most fun content that I’m played since beta weekend when I knew nothing about the game. The bosses were interesting and did not punish certain play styles over others. In fact we actually found that we needed things that did not seem to be in the current meta, like heavy condition damage, a few times in order to progress quickly. However, we realized there are three different gates on being able to progress in the dungeon and this is very worrying for casual players.

First is Agony, this one isn’t so bad since you can get resistance to it by the time it shows up I believe. A minor irritation, but people will want the armor anyway and I’m hoping that attacks that inflict it can still be evaded, blocked, etc. This is something that will become an instance of linking infused gear or being kicked because of how nasty the condition is. However, just one gate and it being something casuals should be able to get eventually even if it takes a while.

Yet there are more gates beyond this which would make the higher depths of the dungeon un-puggable. In order to fix this I have two suggestions.

1: Make progress tracked by account. Right now progress is tracked on a per character basis. Making it tied to an account would ensure that people can play no matter which of their characters they’re on. For those who put all of their attention into one character this wouldn’t change much. For people who have multiple they will need to run the lower difficulties over and over.

2: Let the party enter at levels higher than the minimum available. This is the one that really needs to be implemented lest the dungeon become absolutely impossible for casuals. I’ve seen grumbling already when people needed to drop back to depth 1 in order to help out a guildie or friend who hadn’t done the dungeon yet. This will only get worse at higher levels, such as when the majority of the group is on depth 17. They probably won’t be willing to accept anyone who is depth 16 or lower. If they did then they’d make no progress with their own depth and it will most likely take much longer for them to go from 17 to 18 than the pug to go from depth 7 to 8.

For the proposed system of difficulty, it is also undesirable for the highest depth member to be the only one who matters and that to be a farming shortcut. As such here is a method I think would allow lower depth members into higher depth instances, without improving farming.

-The highest depth the party can enter is the highest depth achieved by any party member.
-When up-scaled, you still receive drops for the depth your maximum is. A depth 5 person in a depth 12 dungeon would get tokens that are depth 5 in number
-If someone finishes a set of three when upscaled their depth goes up by one as if they’d completed the depth they are supposed to be at.

In short, please reduce the gating mechanics currently present on the dungeon. It is far too awesome for people to be denied because they don’t have a highly active guild that is willing to run them through the lower difficulties.

I like your idea very much but I think it goes against the spirit of the design.
This was designed for those who said we have nothing to do after 80. The point was the grind. So in order to continue your grind you have to do it your alts as well. That way people still have stuff to do even after 1 toon has the gear.
Just my thoughts anyway.

All of the items are already account bound so the grinding doesn’t make any sense. You can get the armor through account bound items. Letting you grind on any character would just reduce the monotony.

Something Creative.6134:

-When up-scaled, you still receive drops for the depth your maximum is. A depth 5 person in a depth 12 dungeon would get tokens that are depth 5 in number

I agree with most except this, it’s unfair.
If my skill is enough to finish the dungeon in a harder difficulty I should be rewarded according to such difficulty. Even if I haven’t done the previous steps to get there.
That would be ok for a grinding/time expended reward system, not the skill based one this game claims it has.

The issue there is the choice of which is more undesirable. People who haven’t advanced that far getting worse loot or people with high depth guildies being able to farm much more efficiently than other people.