Real 'explorable' dungeons.
You’re exploring 3 (or 4) different paths of a dungeon. You haven’t vanquished the dungeon, you’ve just defeated a major player in that dungeon.
Alright, well then they could changed it to what they do now. Unless you have someone in your party who has done all 3(4) paths, you have to do all three before you can fully ‘explore’ the dungeon. Just like how it is now with Story mode vs Explorable mode.
You could just run around and clear all the enemies if you want to explore it? Most of them don’t respawn.
However, I would support a suggestion to make a truly explorable mode that’s something more like UW and FoW in GW1 – you can choose which quests you want to do and in what order. At the moment what we have is actually just a selection of 3 pre-determined stories – not much exploration involved…
I see what you’re asking for, and it is a good idea. There is a small part in the Snowblind fractal where you run from the Ice Elemental to the Shaman cave, and that little walk with 5 adventurers carrying torches through a dark forest looking for a cave while being tracked by hunters and wolves is the most engulfing dungeon experience in the game to me. It has so much personality and I feel like I’m exploring. I don’t know what it is about that single minute in GW2 that has so much depth but it is a work of art as far as engulfing the player in the instance goes.
Well the main issue whit explore mode that at least i have is that you dont have much reason to actualy explore it, explore mode, as it was already meantioned, is actualy a story mode, you have some story to follow and outside of that ther is nothing else to do in that dungeone.
Also that go from point A to point B to finish the dungeons is also working against the explore feeling, explore mean to wander around and do things based on what you found during your exploration but in gw2 dungeons you are rather forced to go throu checkpoints in corect order, the game dosnt even give you actual reson to deviate from the route that was set for you.
From what i see, that Explore mode was called as such because you have a choice of a predetermined path out of many others, and not becuase you can explore the dungeon.
If Anet wanted for dungeon to be explorable they should have made an series of quests from which players can chose a few to do in the dungeon before entering it, like you have 10+ quests related to the dungeon, some smaller one and some biger whit actual story, but you can only take like 2 or 3 at time, so you just enter the dungeon and than explore it while doing the quests you took, and you can do them in the order you chose yourself, or just spred the NPC that need help whit their quests inside of the dungeon, makeing the need to look for quest NPC also a part of exploration and which would make you feel that you just by accident, during your wandering, found a person in need of help.
This would also allow to expand the dungeons whitout the need to actualy rework them or add new dungeons, they would just have to add new quest to the list or new NPC.
After all currently the path in dungeons are closely tied to the story in that path, so in current form of the dungeons when they want to add new story to it they need to add some new parts to the dungeon it self as well, otherwise the newly added story would have to reuse the old parts of the map and that would make it feel repetitive at some point.
Well just adding new quests to the list would also make them reuse the old part of the map but atleast in that form you still would have a choice of order in which you would go throu the quests in that dungeon aswell you would have more objectives, primary and secondary, that would encourage the idea of exploring, straying of the premade course.
In short it would give you an actual meaning an reason to go and check that, at first sight, empty corner of the map which otherwise you would just ignore.
(edited by Cold Hearted Person.6154)
Explorable means you can run into a dungeon, no mobs, no traps and explore the dungeon. I want to see all the little nooks and crannies, and all the beautiful statues, without having to be joined by 4 people and attacked by all sorts of veteran and champion creatures. For the RP guilds and servers out there, Dungeons could be a place to actually RP safely. Such as members of the priory inside the Ascalonian catacombs studying the murals and ‘reading’ the ancient tombs that are locked inside. I just think being able to wander around Arah without having to deal with risen and whatnot would be really fun.
My first reply to your post was my own sugestion, so now i will give a reply to your idea.
Your idea of exploration sound interesting only at first sight to be honest, i mean look if a map would have only some NPC to talk to whit no quests or events and no monsters at all, after checking all the places on the map, would you stay on it any longer? would you actualy had any reason to be on this map?
After some time you would get borred and moved on, whit no need to look back.
Just like any map in any mmorpg that dosnt have much content is usualy deserted, you can look at Southsun Cove as an example, before the Last Stand events that map was almost completly deserted.
(edited by Cold Hearted Person.6154)
I think have a few respawning veterans throughout it, but make it an open-world zone. Yesterday after I finished CM explore and everyone left my part I wandered around inside, would’ve been nicer to have some people there, with a few easy enemies. The dungeons are really cool places that they put a lot of detail into, but no-one really looks at it.