Guild Wars 2

TLDR: My guild is full of voice commed, organized, capable dungeon crawlers. As in “we have no problem with, say, The Secret World’s very hard 5-man dungeon progression.”

Yet even the most avid among us unanimously say “GW2’s dungeon experience is complete kitten”.

There is no serious incentive/reward, the costs are too high, and most of the encounters are senseless and random with no decent strategy or tactics to be found at all. Yes, there are a few encounters where you can apply real tactics and strategy, but they are relatively few. Most encounters are full of senseless 1-shots or 2-shots with no warning, no tells, no time to react. In general, most dungeon encounters boil down to either: A) random, senseless mechanics that inflict insta-death with no way to avoid, or B) faceroll easy tank-n-spank.

Every one of your dungeon designers should go buy a copy of The Secret World and ignore the regular game. Instead, once you get your accounts set up, go download the client for their TestLive Server, go to Agartha, talk to the Fate NPC, grab a full set of purple 10.1 crafted gear, unlock Nightmare mode, and then go play all 8 Elite dungeons and then all 8 Nightmare dungeons. Your design team will then learn how a proper and well-done dungeon progression should look and feel. I’m talking 48 nearly perfect boss encounters, all very different, in two progressively more difficult modes (Elite > Nightmare).

Then come back and re-do ALL of your dungeons.

I just want the rewards back and the kiting room to not be hell anymore.

I agree with the OP.

I ground the heck out of NM modes during the first two months after TSW’s launch. I halfway did it for the reward, but halfway because they were stellar boss fights (except the shield mechanics in Hell Fallen – those were a cop-out).

I couldn’t stand to try more than a couple of the dungeons in here. On top of the bug where you couldn’t get into dungeons with a full party (very frustrating, and turned me off of dungeons early), the experience was more annoying than rewarding for the very same reasons as the OP listed: mobs have gratuitous amounts of health, often no real strategy, and non-telegraphed one-shot mechanics.

I agree with OP entirely.
I haven’t played the Secret World but what is extrenely clear to me is that dungeon system in GW2 is outdated and extremely poor.

Artificial difficulty based on 100xHP 50xdmg is a thing from a decade ago.
It’s so unimaginative it actually offends the developers who implemented it. I have NO idea where this all came from when rest of the game is so good…. Simply no idea.

Another sad part here is that ANet has not learned anything about good endgame practices since they’ve done GW1. I mean, Colin is actually proud of DoA… DoA, which peaks with a boss that renders one class’ primary ability COMPLETLY useless. A class added in the expansion DoA came with, none the less. DoA, which only difficulty mechanism was insane HP, insane dmg and hige numbers of mobs (and he actually admits that!)… This is just… sad…

At the same time, they release a blog post about how fun dungeons are.
Pity they don’t end the article with a “Casual players? Haha! Not for you, sorry. Go do something else. What? Well… dunno… But Dunegons are for PROs only!”.

They never, ever even try to introduce their real dungeon philosophy to more casual players, either. You get thrown from a vanilla PvE into… this… without a warning and without a way to practice your game play and prepare for what’s to come.
Personal story could have been a perfect place to do this: introduce things you will face in explorable, just a bit less deadly and with more warning. But no.
And this is such a wasted potential, it brings up rage in me.

Another thing that sets me of is lack of mechanics to re-trait in a dungeon.
We get an anvil, which is a really ironical way of saying “hey, prepare to die!”, but while we’re actually expected to adjust and overcome, no re-traiting on the spot.

On top of all that, no rewards to speak of.
“Just do it for fun”. Well, there’s no fun in your Dungeons, ANet.
Challenge can be fun, but you completly failed in either implementing any real challenge, or fun in your dungeon system.
In NONE of your dungeons have I – or my guildies, all from raiding guilds or alliances from other games – had a feeling of “if only I could improve, if we could come up with something smart, we COULD do it next time, we need to try harder” on a wipe or a death. No, it was sheer annoyence.

Colin said that ANet “dungeon” team felt dungeons were too easy for release.
And this IS part of the problem: because of the completly artificial, flat difficulty, once you know the fight, there’s no challenge whatsoever. NONE.
However I am glad they haven’t “increased” it or we’d see 40minutes boss fights…

Dear Anet, the OP introduced you to check out one game, I’d like to introduce you to LotRO. Or at least to research their instances.
“Hard Mode” is called “Challenge” there, for a reason: there’s an optional element to each boss fight that aditionaly tests your skills, some of them very tactical, too. But more casual, less uber pro players can still explore if not all, then most instances and… you know… actually HAVE FUN in the game and enjoy every aspect of the game, while pros can gloat they’ve beaten all challenges.
LotRO is by no means a perfect game and their instances are not perfect, either, but their philosophy doesn’t date back to last decade…

And while I’m at it: you guys have really not implemented re-join on disconnect? Or leadership transfer on diconect instead of instance shut down?
What was (barely) acceptable in 2005 IS NOT in 2012. This is an absolute joke, a sad one.

Agree OP.

Just to add to the no rewards part. This is a RPG. A huge part of the fun is from seeing your character progress. Yes the content is fun, but it’s just as fun or more fun for some people as also getting rewards that make you feel more powerful after you have done them. Nothing beats that feeling of getting a nice chunk of xp, or getting your hand on a rare item when you finish the dungeon.

Let’s hope Anet does something.

Let’s not even hope; we might have to pray. They haven’t even fixed Heartseeker missing yet.

Just up the rewards and I think players will be happy.

this cannot be the same dungeon team from guild wars. no kitten way. no way in kitten hell.

Reynfall.1547:

Let’s hope Anet does something.

Let’s not even hope; we might have to pray. They haven’t even fixed Heartseeker missing yet.

Did you read Robert’s post? He said “lets hope we can all move past this”.

They’re not changing anything. His dungeon is the way it’s going to be and we deal with it or find another game to play.

Totally agree with OP and cherrie.8907

Sojou.2067:

Reynfall.1547:

Let’s hope Anet does something.

Let’s not even hope; we might have to pray. They haven’t even fixed Heartseeker missing yet.

Did you read Robert’s post? He said “lets hope we can all move past this”.

They’re not changing anything. His dungeon is the way it’s going to be and we deal with it or find another game to play.

Yeah, this d-bag is the most unprofessional kitten I’ve seen respond here.

Sack him, please. He’s dead weight and bad for business.

Dungeons are simply not fun because they are 15 minute experience spread over an hour by adding an artificially high health pool to all the monsters.

Dungeons designers while you’re at it, get wc3 and download the custom game mod Impossible Bosses. That is how you make fighting bosses fun AND hard.

15 minute experience spread over an hour, and let’s not forget the 2 silver you get at the end that could be gotten anywhere else in a minute or two without incurring a repair bill that it might not even put a very large dent in.

If you aren’t having fun in them, don’t do them. No one is forcing you to do anything, and if it’s really that awful for you, then go do something else. If you want to complain that there isn’t anything else to do (which you’d be wrong), then don’t play. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it horrible.

I can’t believe the same company that made the rest of this game made these dungeons. They feel like the complete opposite of the rest of the game, unpolished, untuned, terrible rewards, completely uninteresting and not fun at all.

it was fun before this patch were implemented but now it’s just ridiculous ! did u guys even try to play these dungeon yourselves before making us going through it?

I’d admit that dungeon were a bit too easy before but at least it was fun and let us release stress over the same heart quest n vista all over the world. Fix those dungeon back

reading your post made me feel better. I was shocked at my first attempt in AC story mode, i was walking in expecting plenty of normal mobs with some veterans thrown in for good measure maybe a champ or two. what i got was rooms and rooms of 2-3 elite mobs with seemingly spammable abilities/crowd control or autoattacks that hit me from anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 my health. going from 100% to downed or sometimes even death only took seconds if they focused on me or a party member. I just didnt get it, this is the first dungeon anyone will experience and i fully expect MOST people to have a similar experience, considering my group was a guild run with voicechat, id hate to see how pugs go. now before anyone goes on about using the “right” skills/weapon choice/utility abilities etc at level 30-35 (i wont even go into the CM explorer i did at 46) you dont exactly have as many options plus i doubt many of them are going to counter any mobs ability to kill you in 4-5 hits.

It doesnt look like the dungeons here even on story mode (CM got a buff recently, sigh) ease people into the game at all.. how the hell are complete newbies to the game going to feel when they deal with this horrid stuff. they dont even give you a chance right off the bat just throwing mobs with 10x your hp that can kill you in a few seconds, now i just know to stay away complete sadly.

@Rainzar

Yeah, newbies will pretty much get screwed by this game now.

I don’t like the dungeons either. Slashing away a million HP and dodging instagib projectiles just isn’t fun. Make bosses who use illusions, make you knockdown all the time, ressurrects allies, knocks you off a cliff, controls traps around the map etc. Those can be challenging without a Million HP and instagib. Creative challenges are way more fun than an increase in stat/mob numbers.

Nice post OP and nicely put cherrie.8907

As i mentioned milion times solution to make something challenging and therefore fun isn’t mobs with tons of hp and 1 hit kill buttons. Thats old, boring, and for sure not challenging.

Anet you made briliant game, dont ruin that by making ultimate, end game pvm content boring grind fest.

I just hope this thread wont be over run by “l2p, go play wow, noob” kids/internet tough guys, so devs can actualy get to important and constructive posts with fair criticisam.

afflaq.3947:

If you aren’t having fun in them, don’t do them. No one is forcing you to do anything, and if it’s really that awful for you, then go do something else. If you want to complain that there isn’t anything else to do (which you’d be wrong), then don’t play. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it horrible.

I hope you are aware of the fact that there’s very little in this game that most of the players would all like to do?
Not everyone likes alting, I know people who flat out refuse to engage in any PvP, people who don’t like wolrd completion, don’t care about achievements, don’t care about crafting, don’t care about geting fff rich. But I can’t think of any of my gaming friends who has ever said “I am not interested in dugneons / instances.” Not even about one counter-example..!

Players want to do them, because they usually are real team fun.
If you run a restaurant and a client want a salad and you tell him “sorry no salad, take bacon instead”, you will probably be out of business very soon.

pve is bad in this game… just look at Age of Conan the deungeons where outstanding…
I usually dont play much pve but this is really bad.

go out and play wvw

Right now there are some mobs on some paths that have issues.

Should rewards be upped, I would think so. But the original post fails in illustrating the dungeon problem and instead over inflates the actuality

There are specific things on specific paths that require action. Those items should be reported on. Everytime we come across something 5 people report them
Multiple things have been adjusted already
Granted some additonal things have been broken as well
It is all time to me
And analogies seriously need to stop
This isn’t a restaurant and they would still be in business if they didnt have their 8 dungeons, so keep your threats and doom and gloom out of the forums please
There are paths in every dungeon at this point that can be done

I am certainly not surprised that people are having tons of trouble in the dungeons though

So do them or don’t do them plain and simple.

I’ve just read that TSW had hard dungeons. Then someone else says that… LOTRO??? has hard dungeons… you got to be kidding me right? It’s not possible I’ve just read that? I misread? And then Age of Conan… best joke of the list.

There is ONE problem in dungeons in GW2, which also happens in group oriented dynamic events… the game needs an option to tone down or even disable friendly player spell effects. They make it often impossible to see the preparing moves of the boss mobs, when they are about to bash your skull badly. Everything else is “learn to play” issues, because the game is different and doesn’t work on the “tank/healer/dps” model. That, or use the combat text for warnings.

You’re telling ANet to go and play an MMO that’s about to go belly up? Great advice.

Ragnar Dragonfyre.1806:

You’re telling ANet to go and play an MMO that’s about to go belly up? Great advice.

May not change the fact the one aspect of the game was done better than ANET’s attempt.

Personally, I found the dungeons (flashpoints) in SWTOR to be the best dungeon experience I have had as of yet.

I’m so happy to see this topic, it states what I believe entirely.

I don’t mind hard dungeons. I really don’t. Some people might just be mad because their “free farm” dungeons got buffed, and some other people make fun of the people who have trouble saying they should stop being noobs and L2P.

But seriously, it’s not the difficulty of the dungeons that bothers me (ok, indirectly it is) but how unfun they are. There’s nothing interesting about them. They’re just needlessly hard with no real strategy or teamworking involved, every single battle in every single dungeon can be summed up in one of these categories:

1) Giant HP monster that takes forever to kill just for the sake of taking forever to kill. No real tricks or gimmicks, just a big fat wall in your way.
2) Boss monster X with insta kill abilities.
3) A timed “protect the NPC” event with more monsters spawning than are even remotely necessary. Most dungeons have one of these, they’re unoriginal and annoying.
4) Condition stacking so hard you’re forced to have some kind of “cleanse” ability at all times.

I haven’t run all the modes of all the dungeons yet, but the ones I have the most complaints about (and why) are as follows:

Twilight Arbor. The dungeon itself isn’t horrible, but those poison flowers are on a ridiculous respawn rate and can down a character in 2 seconds. These, on top of the already strong mobs, are pretty overbearing. Other than to be some kind of “difficulty filler” I don’t see why they respawn so fast. And they stack poison faster than should be possible.

Citadel of Flame. Ok so route 2 was too easy, and people were farming it like crazy, so I can see the need to tweak it. But the way it was tweaked was both unoriginal and unfun. The only part that didn’t need a buff got a huge one, and it wasn’t even a good one. The time it takes to set the bomb was greatly increased, and the guys seem to spawn more frequently. Really? Couldn’t think of anything better than just making it take longer? Worst fix ever.

Citadel of Flame path 1, is that even possible? I’m lead to believe that it wasn’t even play tested because the tiny window in which you have to light all the torches (seriously, it takes longer to channel the lighting than the timer gives you to light it) doesn’t mesh well with the fact that the mobs all spawn at different times, because killing every group of mobs at the SAME time is nearly impossible, because you can’t just sit there and tank a mob while you wait for your party members’ mobs to respawn so you can kill them all at once. Since that’s the only way to light all the torches at the same time. The mobs should spawn simultaneously, or have a lower respawn rate so the window in which your team can actually light the stupid things isn’t non existent. This was actually a decent idea otherwise, since I don’t remember seeing anything else like it.

The things you fight and have to do are pretty unimaginative, especially since it’s usually just the same things rehashed for every dungeon.

I mentioned somewhere all the way in bwe2 how dungeons in GW2 are not challenging just chaotic. I got slaped on the face. I tried about 10-15 times to do Arah explo and noticed how after 1 hour people just give up. In about 50% of the runs someone leaves and if I go out to Orr to inv a replacement I get locked out of the instance and have to restart a trash clear again.

In any case finaly a group of people that are not funboys and understand that this is a bad dungeon experience.

What makes me a sad panda even more is that PvP is also zerg fest I really dont know what to do at the end game.

@ Korrigan.4837 you ever played Age of Conan ? the Hard mode Dungeons?
Otherwise silence please.

Thank you very very much.

I disagree with the OP fully. What’s wrong with you people, you crying about no rewards when you get a chest after each boss? What is it you people want? You want it easier you want it harder? Im starting to think none of you really know. This whole post sounds like a advertisement for some game I never herd of.

I got an idea just put in a application for dungeon designer, Anet is looking for new employees.

I read this whole topic because i have only done one dungeon sofar (and it wasn’t at all to hard, nor to easy) … thus reading the whole topic would be the only way to understand the problem… I sort of got the problem, and to some extent a possible fix (in other games). But these are entirely overclassed by a feeling of uninspiring negativity, finger pointing and QQ-level critisism. If i would get this thread passed to me, as a dungeon designer, i would not feel inspired to actually do something, nor change something for the better. I would feel offended and likely misunderstood, i would reason that on a limited design budget, this was the best i could do, and yes with unlimited resources it may have been a lot better. But hey, thats not reality…

I have idle hope that somebody actually does some suggestions for all or various dungeons, in how they could be made more enjoyable more challenging etc. Because all i am reading now is just negative QQ’ing … it may have some valid points, but they are at all not comming across as inviting to do something about it …