Guild Wars 2

Introduction

Let me start by saying, if you’re here to post how you don’t find them hard at all. Don’t. We’re not interested at all in how good you are at a particular dungeon. This is all about people that are bad at dungeons (a lot of people are), and how to make dungeons fun for them. I want to discuss making dungeons easier, while still catering to the hardcore crowd. See, even if some people manage to do these dungeons just fine, making them really hard, is bad for the enjoyment of dungeons overall, since there is no alternative. At least with Fractals you can do them at lower difficulty levels. This is what dungeons need. Imagine only being able to do Fractals at level 30… that’s what a lot of these dungeons feel like now. There’s no steady learning curve.

Difficulty curve, Fractal difficulty levels

Currently there’s not any progressive difficulty curve in the dungeons. Dungeons don’t progressively get harder, they start incredibly hard, then get easier, and then get harder again. As first time players go through their personal story, they receive invitations for dungeons. And that enthusiasm quickly fades after their first dungeon experience, causing many players to never want to touch dungeons again. This is not a result any designer should wish to aim for.

Dungeons should start easy, gradually teach players the mechanics, and then take it one step further with each dungeon. The first dungeon in the game should be the easiest one, and it should be fun to do.

Hard mode and tokens for agony gear

Fractals already introduced the idea of doing dungeons with a gradually increasing difficulty. In Fractals this curve is made some what artificial through the use of the Agony mechanic. In dungeons, I would suggest not only using the agony mechanic, but also scaling up monsters depending on what level you are doing the dungeon on. Ascalon Catacombs should be a walk in the park at level 1, even with rubbish armor and low level players. But take it a few levels higher, and the monsters should gradually get stronger, with better loot as a reward. This allows players to gradually get used used to dodging attacks and dealing with defiant opponents. And hardcore players can still find their challenge at the higher difficulty levels. But also, add the agony mechanic. Here’s why:

It takes not that many Fractals to reach the point where you need agony resistance, but it takes far more Fractal-runs to get the ingredients to craft that equipment. Which means you spend a lot of time doing Fractals over and over again, just to be able to craft your new agony-resist gear. So what if dungeon tokens could also be used to make agony gear? We’d be free to do what ever dungeon we want, how often we want, and still have gear progression. And on top of that, agony gear would now have a use outside Fractals as well! Because high level dungeons would require it too.

Make every dungeon about learning a new mechanic

There are several things a player must master in order to tackle dungeons. Stacks of defiant and proper dodging are but some examples. But there’s also various bosses that take some getting used to, due to unique mechanics. The Molten facility showed that the team understands the importance of teaching players a mechanic early on in the dungeon, before having the boss use it against them (the shockwaves from the Molten Berserker). So why not make every dungeon focus on teaching the player one important dungeon mechanic? Then the next dungeon can assume the player has mastered the previous mechanic, and teach something new yet again.

This is all about eliminating trial and error game play. A player should understand a mechanic first before having to deal with it. A player should not be required to repeatedly die just to figure out what the rules are. That is why low level dungeons would teach players the mechanics in a forgiving way, and early on. Gradually ramp up the difficulty, and players will already be familiar with the mechanics due to them already having completed lower difficulty levels.

I can see the point of this, but at the same time the dungeons are supposed to be Guild Wars 2 version of hardcore content, which is quite clearly not the case since most of them are very easy to PUG.

The dungeons are not supposed to be face-rolled, they are supposed to require organized groups that know what they are doing (which is not really the case for most dungeons at the moment)

I agree. So I suppose at higher difficulty tiers, the dungeons should demand more coordination. In which case we’re talking more than just boosting numbers for enemies. Of course with added agony, dodging becomes way more unforgiving (which is good for hardcore players). But the organized part is still missing. Perhaps some of the boss fights could be redesigned so they require more coordination. At the lowest difficulty levels, it should be face roll easy, allowing anyone to learn what they need to do. But then at higher difficulty levels, its the same mechanic, but far less forgiving.

I’m for an easy mode for dungeons but they must give out less loot. A dungeon that is relatively 50% easier gives out 50% of the loot for example.

I’ll also add that making an easier dungeon so people can learn the mechanics will need work. People will just faceroll through the entire thing. Notice how people are having issues with the new spider queen in AC? It’s because before you could faceroll through her and not need to dodge or move out of circles. Making dungeons easy will not help the issue.

Scaling them will not help either unless you’re referring to just story mode. Explorable mode is completely different. Story modes are all relatively simple to do along with your personal story as you level.

I think I’d do hard mode for the challenge, not for the loot if it’s anything like the current loot table of mainly greens and blues.

A reintroduction of hard mode, similar to the one in GW1 would increase my currently fading interest in GW2. Though HM wasn’t introduced until 2 years after prophecies released… fingers crossed people!

Hell, just because I came here to say that all dungeons are already too easy

But you convinced me to read your suggestion and think about it. I totally agree that we need some changes, not every person can dedicate enough time to play well, or are still learning how to play effectively.

3 difficulties are ok imo:

• “Easy” for new players, or lower level parties (lvl 35 equips are ridiculous near the lvl 80 ones, so you have a clear disadvantage at lvl 35)
• “Medium” will be the dungeons we have now
• “Hard” for lvl 80 with exotics and everything else

Players can choose the difficulty they want. Higher difficulties = better rewards (maybe a MF boon in high difficulty, more gold and exp as reward too, a guaranteed rare per day like world events)

IMO, all you really need in Easy Mode is to have an NPC fairy that pipes up with an annoying voice with a hint interspersed with “Hey! Listen!” Like in CoE with Alpha, all you need is someone to make an offhand comment about his powerful ranged AoE and how we need to get in close. The stuff that Trahearne says during battle with Blightghast would be perfect. That’s all it would need. Then, throw in Hard Mode with more of the same rewards as now.

Mind you, don’t hide content like skins behind Hard Mode. Some of us don’t have a group of four friends to run dungeons with. I’m of the belief that all content needs to be fundamentally puggable.

All this Hard/Easy mode stuff is really going to confuse people and just extra work for the devs. Why not just implement the same leveling system we already have for Fractals to every other dungeon?

Level 10 can be where the dungeons are currently at, so 0-9 can be super n00b mode. This way, we all have a reason to keep running dungeons ad nauseum, and trying to get as high as possible – if only just for bragging rights. Ideally, loot would be fixed so that higher levels will proportionately yield better loot, just like how Fractals is SUPPOSED to.

Well if you had the current dungeons as easy mode, then for hard mode just buff them up a bit like GW1 did with HM, it’s no more work than the fractals thing.. probably less

SnoodBeAR.5286:

Well if you had the current dungeons as easy mode, then for hard mode just buff them up a bit like GW1 did with HM, it’s no more work than the fractals thing.. probably less

That’s just it. People – like the OP – are already finding the current dungeons too challenging, so making them EASY Mode and then adding a HARD Mode will defeat the whole purpose of this segregation. Just scaling them up infinitely like Fractals – as per my previous suggestion – will save Devs a lot of work in the long run, I think. This way, people can keep leveling up as high as they wish, or stop leveling when they reach their optimal difficulty level.

Darthaemos.6370:

SnoodBeAR.5286:

Well if you had the current dungeons as easy mode, then for hard mode just buff them up a bit like GW1 did with HM, it’s no more work than the fractals thing.. probably less

That’s just it. People – like the OP – are already finding the current dungeons too challenging, so making them EASY Mode and then adding a HARD Mode will defeat the whole purpose of this segregation. Just scaling them up infinitely like Fractals – as per my previous suggestion – will save Devs a lot of work in the long run, I think. This way, people can keep leveling up as high as they wish, or stop leveling when they reach their optimal difficulty level.

Wouldn’t learning the fights and improving personal skill levels be better than begging for nerfs to fights?

Kami.7369:

Darthaemos.6370:

SnoodBeAR.5286:

Well if you had the current dungeons as easy mode, then for hard mode just buff them up a bit like GW1 did with HM, it’s no more work than the fractals thing.. probably less

That’s just it. People – like the OP – are already finding the current dungeons too challenging, so making them EASY Mode and then adding a HARD Mode will defeat the whole purpose of this segregation. Just scaling them up infinitely like Fractals – as per my previous suggestion – will save Devs a lot of work in the long run, I think. This way, people can keep leveling up as high as they wish, or stop leveling when they reach their optimal difficulty level.

Wouldn’t learning the fights and improving personal skill levels be better than begging for nerfs to fights?

Agreed, it would prepare them better for HM. If they run EM and scrape it with a poor build they are going to complain about HM and ask to nerf that too.

Kami.7369:

Darthaemos.6370:

SnoodBeAR.5286:

Well if you had the current dungeons as easy mode, then for hard mode just buff them up a bit like GW1 did with HM, it’s no more work than the fractals thing.. probably less

That’s just it. People – like the OP – are already finding the current dungeons too challenging, so making them EASY Mode and then adding a HARD Mode will defeat the whole purpose of this segregation. Just scaling them up infinitely like Fractals – as per my previous suggestion – will save Devs a lot of work in the long run, I think. This way, people can keep leveling up as high as they wish, or stop leveling when they reach their optimal difficulty level.

Wouldn’t learning the fights and improving personal skill levels be better than begging for nerfs to fights?

Absolutely. There’s a plethora of both written and video guides available for every dungeon, yet some people just refuse to reevaluate or improve their playstyles.

That being said, IF Anet should ever decide to cater to this vocal minority, I think my suggestion of implementing a Fractals-esque leveling system will be a good compromise for everybody.

Darthaemos.6370:

That being said, IF Anet should ever decide to cater to this vocal minority, I think my suggestion of implementing a Fractals-esque leveling system will be a good compromise for everybody.

Oh I agree definitely. As long as the low level version of each dungeon (levels 1-9) is easier than what the dungeons are like now. This allows players of all levels of experience, to ease into it gradually. And with the higher difficulty levels, the challenge is there for more hardcore players (and for better loot and bragging rights). Its this missing difficulty curve that I wanted to address in a way that doesn’t ruin dungeons for people that like the difficulty. With the Fractals system, it should be perfectly possible.

lordkrall.7241:

I can see the point of this, but at the same time the dungeons are supposed to be Guild Wars 2 version of hardcore content

Well if that’s true, it kinda sucks since EVERYTHING ends in a Dungeon. (Halloween, the Karka Invasion, Wintersday, The Super Adventure Box, Flame and Frost, and even my Personal Story.) So is everyone expected to be hardcore?

Just scale the difficulty to the number of players like everything else.

I agree with this. Why is explorable mode easier than story mode? Story mode of CoF is pretty tough and discouraging, while explorable mode can be done in minutes. Story mode should still be decently difficult, explorable mode should be really tough, and hard mode should be impossible for quick PUGs.

Storymode in Honor of the Waves is absurd, and not necessary for the bar to be set so high. Agreed, the dungeons need an overhaul and difficulty reduced. Many bosses should have half of the health they have, and many Silver’s are hitting way beyond someone’s capacity to withstand the hit.

And just to make sure there’s no confusion on this. I would suggest all dungeons to be doable on multiple difficulty levels, so the hardcore crowd gets what they want as well. Start ridiculously easy, and then ramp up the difficulty gradually as the rewards get better too. Just like with Fractals, the more you do a dungeon, the harder you can set the difficulty. Because I think that groups that put the effort in to beat a dungeon at a really high difficulty level, should be rewarded for their skill. A higher difficulty dungeon also takes much longer to complete, so the rewards should compensate for the time spent.