Guild Wars 2

So as you can only do dungeons with a group of 5, well its preferred otherwise you’ll die like that clicks fingers

I was thinking Anet should introduce some Solo dungeons, something we can do in our mean time while we’re not Wvwing/Cofing/hunting world bosses.
The only solo things in the game are map completion and skill points etc, and maybe Orr? but orrs boring.

So this thread is to hopefully open Anet’s development teams eyes as to whether they should impliment a solo dungeon or solo dungeons, rewarding something at the end.

does anyone agree?
Post your suggestions/ideas below

Why don’t you play skyrim or something if you want to solo. There is better graphics and all dungeons are soloable. And don’t say there wasn’t enuff solo content.. look at living story.

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

I personally completed the Flame & Frost dungeon solo on my mesmer. Others have solo’d the entire Arah dungeon by themselves and have documented proof. You can do any dungeon solo as long as it isn’t gated by having multiple players open a door, in which case players have still bypassed these instances by just grabbing a few friends to open the door and nothing more.

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

Solo dungeons in Rift, at least when I was there, had a major, major problem. That is they didn’t scale at all. And since everyone in Rift had different armor, and they had to be made for the person who just turned 50 basically, anyone who’d done a few max level dungeons could walk through them with their eyes closed.

Trion made the mistake of thinking people want easy solo dungeons…but that’s not necessarily the case. They thought people just wanted to see content but not do content and that’s not the case.

The Rift solo instances once you had any gear at all, made Guild Wars 2 look difficult.

ArenaNet should implement a soloable option that allows you to explore, or whatever you feel like doing that the open world doesn’t really offer. This option would only be available after completing both the story and explorable paths of the five person mode.

A personal exploration mode has the potential of being something great, kill things, hunt for buried treasure, do random quests that are well thought out for npcs, and many other things as well.

Something enjoyable that has a level of depth and reward to it.

I would like to see Story Mode revamped to be soloable.

Sarision.6347:

I would like to see Story Mode revamped to be soloable.

I think the personal story lines should be soloable, OH WAIT, I soloed 96% of this game(excluding dungeons).

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

Solo dungeons in Rift, at least when I was there, had a major, major problem. That is they didn’t scale at all. And since everyone in Rift had different armor, and they had to be made for the person who just turned 50 basically, anyone who’d done a few max level dungeons could walk through them with their eyes closed.

Trion made the mistake of thinking people want easy solo dungeons…but that’s not necessarily the case. They thought people just wanted to see content but not do content and that’s not the case.

The Rift solo instances once you had any gear at all, made Guild Wars 2 look difficult.

Yes, which is why, in part, they were not popular.

They did not do a good job designing it for a wide-range of the playerbase, nor scale it correctly. The concept, I might say was good (although I could argue about that); the implementation fell far short of what it could have delivered. The implementation was only useful to a very small fraction of the playerbase in a narrow time window of progression. Uh, they were interesting, sort of, to see?

goldenwing.8473:

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

Solo dungeons in Rift, at least when I was there, had a major, major problem. That is they didn’t scale at all. And since everyone in Rift had different armor, and they had to be made for the person who just turned 50 basically, anyone who’d done a few max level dungeons could walk through them with their eyes closed.

Trion made the mistake of thinking people want easy solo dungeons…but that’s not necessarily the case. They thought people just wanted to see content but not do content and that’s not the case.

The Rift solo instances once you had any gear at all, made Guild Wars 2 look difficult.

Yes, which is why, in part, they were not popular.

But in other games, solo dungeons were more popular (AoC, Aion) for example. Rift is a bad example because they executed the dungeons badly. Guild Wars 2, due to scaling, might be able to do it better.

Solo content is something I love, but I don’t begrudge an MMO company for not focusing on it.

Toying with the scaling is probably the easiest way to do this, but you need to be careful. If the solo version of a dungeon is easier and equally rewarding as doing it in a group, that would be pretty tragic for the game as a whole.

The least risky place to start is probably with content that is underplayed anyway (story dungeons). If a good balance is struck where doing it solo is possible, but still offers reasonable incentive to find a group, then start fiddling with explorables. Slowly. SLOWLY. I’ve already seen people solo AC in its previous iteration, but at least it took considerable concentration and a human touch. An easy soloable dungeon = people finding a pattern = people programming bots = another heap of trouble to weed all of them out.

The open world is at least partially policed by players themselves. This would be a very, very annoying can of worms for ArenaNet, unless that bot catchin’ algorithm they have is really robust.

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

Solo dungeons in Rift, at least when I was there, had a major, major problem. That is they didn’t scale at all. And since everyone in Rift had different armor, and they had to be made for the person who just turned 50 basically, anyone who’d done a few max level dungeons could walk through them with their eyes closed.

Trion made the mistake of thinking people want easy solo dungeons…but that’s not necessarily the case. They thought people just wanted to see content but not do content and that’s not the case.

The Rift solo instances once you had any gear at all, made Guild Wars 2 look difficult.

Yes, which is why, in part, they were not popular.

But in other games, solo dungeons were more popular (AoC, Aion) for example. Rift is a bad example because they executed the dungeons badly. Guild Wars 2, due to scaling, might be able to do it better.

I have no doubt that ANet could do solo dungeons fairly well. I am huge fan of scaling in MMOs, back from 2001. Not so sure about solo dungeons (outside of personal stories). And haven’t seen a compelling argument for why ANet would want to add them (specifically in this game), nor a discussion with details from the OP, only vague handwaving regarding a general concept.

Again, better posted in the suggestions forum, along with more information, that’s all.

Its a MMO, by definition you play with other players…

If you want, ‘solo’ dungeons or solo gameplay try the other hundreds of games that cater for that?

I would really really like it if the Story mode dungeons scaled from solo to 5 players.
I did the Flame and Frost instances solo but missed out on the Molten Facility.

Tixx’s toy shop was a good example of this- my husband and I two manned them- it was fun and we got to see the content.

I would be so happy if at the least they scaled Arah Story

So instead of solo dungeons how about scale-able dungeons?

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

O-O glad you feel that way, I certainly don’t
I do not have a warrior or a Guardian and have no intention of rolling one.

If you tell me it can be soloed or duo d by an Engi/Meser/Ranger + Ranger then I will be very glad, just tell me how?

Morrigan.2809:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

O-O glad you feel that way, I certainly don’t
I do not have a warrior or a Guardian and have no intention of rolling one.

If you tell me it can be soloed or duo d by an Engi/Meser/Ranger + Ranger then I will be very glad, just tell me how?

You learn an instance, you come up with a build and strategy and you practice, the only thing stopping you is either your own doubt in your ability or just lack of initiative to try. I’m not claiming that any dungeon is easy to solo, however a lot of paths have been completed solo, and have been done on classes such as ele and mesmer. I remember just a few months into the game, someone posted a video of him solo’ing AC/CM on his ele.

Other than some paths which require x amount of players to pass a section (CoF P1, CoE lasers), really the only thing that is stopping you from solo’ing a dungeon is yourself. (This isn’t in any way meant to be insulting or a personal attack, if it comes off that way, I apologize).

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Morrigan.2809:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

O-O glad you feel that way, I certainly don’t
I do not have a warrior or a Guardian and have no intention of rolling one.

If you tell me it can be soloed or duo d by an Engi/Meser/Ranger + Ranger then I will be very glad, just tell me how?

You learn an instance, you come up with a build and strategy and you practice, the only thing stopping you is either your own doubt in your ability or just lack of initiative to try. I’m not claiming that any dungeon is easy to solo, however a lot of paths have been completed solo, and have been done on classes such as ele and mesmer. I remember just a few months into the game, someone posted a video of him solo’ing AC/CM on his ele.

Other than some paths which require x amount of players to pass a section (CoF P1, CoE lasers), really the only thing that is stopping you from solo’ing a dungeon is yourself. (This isn’t in any way meant to be insulting or a personal attack, if it comes off that way, I apologize).

Thank you and I am not at all insulted.

I haven’t done what you said because lack of initiative I guess and not knowing where to start, thanks for the tips

Edit: I just want to add that my interest in Story Mode dungeons is to see the story because I feel like I’m losing a part of it by not doing them.

Then there is the Personal Story in Arah- needing a 5 man team to finish my personal story was a blow to me.

I have no desire to solo dungeons just for the sake of doing so, which is why I support scaling.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

Yes there is. How are you going to solo path 1 of CoF? You need 5 people to get past the gate event. And then the boss would easily out-heal your damage if you somehow figured out how to glitch past. CoF p2? How do you get past the bomb event? You won’t have enough time to gather them all. Not to mention the event before the boss and the boss himself. Good luck doing those solo(hint: it’s impossible).

Or CoE path 1? How do you beat the console event? Or CoE path 3? How do you beat the shielded guy when you can only use one laser? And even if you got past those, how would you fight alpha since he can imprison you and kill you since nobody is there to break you out?

Those are just examples off the top of my head. The dungeons are designed to be done by groups with blocks in the way that keep you from doing them alone.

As long as the dungeons were challenging and not super easy, I would come back to the game if they added solo dungeons. I love a good solo fight. It is very rewarding for me.

The O in MMO does not mean Only! by definition you “CAN” play with other players

Keep pushing off Solo players to play other games that are solo only is why maps get empty….. ANet lose money equals no updates no added content!

Rhysati.4932:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

There isn’t much standing in the way of solo’ing any of the existing dungeons

Yes there is. How are you going to solo path 1 of CoF? You need 5 people to get past the gate event. And then the boss would easily out-heal your damage if you somehow figured out how to glitch past. CoF p2? How do you get past the bomb event? You won’t have enough time to gather them all. Not to mention the event before the boss and the boss himself. Good luck doing those solo(hint: it’s impossible).

Or CoE path 1? How do you beat the console event? Or CoE path 3? How do you beat the shielded guy when you can only use one laser? And even if you got past those, how would you fight alpha since he can imprison you and kill you since nobody is there to break you out?

Those are just examples off the top of my head. The dungeons are designed to be done by groups with blocks in the way that keep you from doing them alone.

You should go back and read my second post. Relatively, there isn’t much. Some paths have events which will gate your progress, however it’s not all of them, I’d like to say not the majority but it would be an assumption. Perhaps I could have worded my original post a little bit better, since I feel like it’s being interpreted in a couple of different ways.

I remember Aion having a solo dungeon which I really liked at first but then it just became so boring because of how long and easy it was. I think that if ANet did something similar but in a different way it could be a huge success.

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

Because Rift is a game that is all about armor and stats, and the solo dungeons dropped the equivalent of this game’s blue armor.

By the time those things released… what was even the point of running them more than once?

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Vayne.8563:

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

Solo dungeons in Rift, at least when I was there, had a major, major problem. That is they didn’t scale at all. And since everyone in Rift had different armor, and they had to be made for the person who just turned 50 basically, anyone who’d done a few max level dungeons could walk through them with their eyes closed.

Trion made the mistake of thinking people want easy solo dungeons…but that’s not necessarily the case. They thought people just wanted to see content but not do content and that’s not the case.

The Rift solo instances once you had any gear at all, made Guild Wars 2 look difficult.

Yes, which is why, in part, they were not popular.

But in other games, solo dungeons were more popular (AoC, Aion) for example. Rift is a bad example because they executed the dungeons badly. Guild Wars 2, due to scaling, might be able to do it better.

Perhaps you mean something other than scaling. If the reason Rift solo dungeons failed was power creep, then the relative lack of power creep in GW2 might make a solo dungeon more challenging.

Scaling in GW2 is schizo. Sometimes it seems to work well, other times, not so well. Cryptic did it better in CO, and Cryptic is not exactly a watchword for well-developed games.
_______

As for the idea of solo dungeons in general — ANet would probably make them gimmicky, like the one in Southsun. My personal preference is for dungeons that play more like a fantasy movie and less like a click-this, then click that game.

Story mode could be solo

I do think they should make a solo VERSION of a dungeon. Scalable instances are awesome and dungeons could scale from solo to 10 people for example.

But if ANet isn’t able to make a solo scale to explorable dungeons, maybe at least make story mode solo.

I’d prefer if they gave us heroes/mercs like we had in guildwars 1 and use those if we wanted to ‘solo’ content.

Be more fun if I could level my own alts and then go and fight in an instance with them. Wouldn’t have heroes in the game world though.

Raylion.4362:

I’d prefer if they gave us heroes/mercs like we had in guildwars 1 and use those if we wanted to ‘solo’ content.

Be more fun if I could level my own alts and then go and fight in an instance with them. Wouldn’t have heroes in the game world though.

That’s another AWESOME idea. If i could play with my own chars as NPCs in a group, that would make this game every shade of awesome. It would be a lot harder than have a PC group but still make them doable “solo”. Just like in GW1. That could even sell char slots. Read the word, you greedy hodors: SELL :P

I started a thread in the suggestions sub forum a while ago asking for a solo-able story mode version of each dungeon.
-make the story mode dungeon scaled to whatever the size of the group 1-5
-make the rewards lower than the explorable mode however add in dungeon token drops at very low rates 1-5 based on RNG from chests or completion. Giving players incentive to move on to explorable mode. Limit the amount of runs per 24 hours to keep exploits from occurring.
-allows players to go through the dungeon at their own pace, eliminates the stress to skip portions of the dungeon or even the cut-scenes, gives the player the chance to learn the mechanics of the bosses.

There were a lot of good points brought up in the thread both for and against the idea. I personally feel a lot of stress to ‘get it right’ the first time through a dungeon. I rarely do though and a few times I’ve been yelled at and kicked. Other times I have had kind souls simply lol me and ask if it was my first time through. (even though I have always announced this at the start of the run) Not everyone pays attention to chat, all the time.
As long as Anet closes all avenues to exploits, I can’t see a reason not to at least make the story mode solo-able.

I think it is a great idea to give the story mode dungeons a solo option. It is content that is already unplayed.

It can be pretty tough to find a group for a story mode dungeon. I want to complete the story mode for each dungeon so that I can initiate the explorer mode for each dungeon if I need to.

I have been in more then a few groups where a member of the group will have to log on to a different character to host the dungeon because none of the players have completed the story mode. Kind of sad really. I would certainly do them off if they were soloable though.

I for one am all for solo or even duo dungeons(still solable).

Duo would be cool too, work in a few mechanics where you have to coordinate with just one other person.

I strongly support at least story mode being solo-able or scale. That’s what I even expected it would be like with explorables for groups. Arah even more because its the end of your personal story with four random people suddenly acting like their as important as you are haha GW is known for great story and lore but its not friendly to experiencing it all. A major plus for GW1 was the ability to have an AI team you customized if you didn’t have real players and you could see every bit of content that way. With Merch Heroes we could even make our own alts as the team. Just scale rewards to almost nothing for solo play to reward teamwork but offer a way to see the content either way.

I’d love to see scalable dungeons. Not strictly solo, but any number of players from the max cap, right down to one. I don’t run dungeons as they’re currently set up, but I’d definitely duo them, if I had the option.

I don’t think current dungeons should be made to be able to be done solo.
But I would like to see some, at least one, solo ‘dungeon’ in the future.

I personally don’t want to always play as a group, I don’t want to find other people to play with, I just want to play. Obviously, I can do PvE alone, or even WvW, but I would love to be able to just go and do a dungeon alone.

It would obviously have to have a different reward system. You can’t be allowed to have the option to ONLY play alone in order to get the things you can get from playing as team. But it would be nice to have something worth getting.

The Southsun Cove ‘solo dungeon’ was not a dungeon. It’s actually laughable that they called it that. I want a real dungeon.

I want solo dungeons that I can get the tokens with. With my life as busy as it is I can’t get together with 4 other people to play a dungeon. I simply don’t have that kind of time.

Gonna bump this back up.

I agree with above. As someone who has played Guild Wars 1 since 2005 and who now only has an hour or two a day to play, I think just a solo option for dungeons should be added, wherein the difficulty would be lowered to support only a single character but of course still be difficult. Not necessarily pure solo dungeons like Warcraft or Rift.

Josip, that comment was unnecessary and uncalled for. Everything in Guild Wars 1 was soloable (With the advent of Nightfall and heroes), even elite dungeons, albeit with quite a bit of difficulty. Even pretty much everything in GW2, sans dungeons can be soloed. So it stands to reason that dungeons in GW2 would be soloable as well.

I get the whole living world and cooperation deal for GW2 but not everyone has time to sit around waiting for people for dungeons and it’s not like having a solo option would ruin that.

insted of solo dungeons they should add a random party search engin for dungeon instance that way you go about youre missions and wen the engin finds all party members it gives you a heads up for dungeon access.

Scaling Instances would be a cool idea. Lord of the Rings Online has something that was Extremely Awesome and it completely Destroys Fractals, atleast based on the idea alone.

It was called Skirmishes. You could edit the Level of the Skirmish, the Number of Players, and the Difficulty level. Rewards obviously was better the more Players, the Higher Level, and the higher the difficulty level.

If Anet had something like this, where you can edit the Dungeon/Instance along the same lines, and have loot scale the same way, then it would be a much, much better system than what they have now. Anet could even let us play dungeons at level 80 instead of being scaled like it is now, which is where many of the problems with farming dungeons comes from, because a Level 80 character with full exotic gear is always stronger than any other character of an equally scaled down level.

As An idea, If you do a Dungeon, as one player, and on the lowest difficulty, and at the lowest level, you only get like 5 Dungeon Tokens and 10 silver, it will literally take about 15 minutes to do though so the reward is justified.

But if you do a Dungeon with 5 Players, on the highest Difficulty, at Level 80, you get 250+ Tokens and several Gold. But, a Level 80 Dungeon is difficult, and takes much longer with a much higher difficulty level, and takes 3-5 hours to complete.

Mini dungeons and jumping puzzles.

I couldn’t agree more with O.P. Anet is passing up on a huge opportunity by not providing more solo content. Most of the leveling is done solo which means the majority of people who like the game enough to go for max level at least enjoy playing by themselves. When you get to the end game though there aren’t a lot of options for people who don’t want to coordinate.

It’s incredibly frustrating to be so reliant on a group of strangers who never want to admit they’re confused probably because other people get tired of explaining ridiculous dungeon puzzles over and over. Even if you get a legendary weapon, all ascended accessories, and play perfect it really doesn’t make much of a difference if your group doesn’t happen to all know what’s going on. The nice thing about leveling was if people showed up where you were it was great, but if they didn’t you could play through. This is not the case in end game.

P.S. Who thought it was a good idea to take max level characters and have them chase ooze around for hours getting no where?
I always found the best parts of these games was to build a powerful character that could run around and smash things to bits. If you get to the end of the game collect all the best weapons even though they offer very little over normal weapons you’ll still get your face smashed in by freaking ooze, and what is the reward if you do kill him? A couple blue items no one would use ever.

I’ve spent less time in dungeons than doing anything else in the game, simply because that 5-man requirement is just ugh… restricting? I would absolutely love to have solo dungeons, dungeons specifically scaled for just one person. I mean come on, they did that with Scarlet’s Funhouse. I solo’d that no problem and I’m not willing to believe that it was the same difficulty for 5 as it was for 1. Same concept.

I would love to see some solo options for dungeons. I have been playing the game now (off and on) for close to two years. I have completed Arah story and AC story modes, 4 fractals and killed most of the world bosses repeatedly. Of the aforementioned, the world bosses are the only things in game that are easily done for a casual player, I have started many of the dungeons multiple times where I was not able to kill the first boss (multi-wipe) before the PuG breaks apart, I have a repair bill and about 2 or 3 hours of disappointing game time. Solo would allow me to have time to fully explore a dungeon without holding anyone back that just wants to see the last boss and leave, time to come up with my own strategies and plans and time to learn the dungeon so that when I am in group I would be a much more valuable asset to the team as a whole.
Also I would be more inclined to make purchases from the store if I actually played the game more, with map completion over 90%, and that being the main basis for game play, What do I do when I hit 100%? Most likely the same thing many others have already done, quit logging in!!!

I know someone along the way here will recommend joining a guild and that is good advice, as I have been in several guilds. Only thing is that I am a casual player and will log in for two or three nights in a row and then not again for two weeks. Not many guilds like to keep players like that in their roster. And that makes sense, why have me around taking a spot when you can have someone that is more active, so I do not blame them for that. I did the same thing some years ago when I played another MMO.

I like this idea. people keep hating on posts like this because they refuse to think that the game they like has issues. well people I got news for you, GW2 is not perfect it has flaws and some parts just plain suck. that said I love the game, and adding solo dungeons would hurt no 1 so I hope they are added.

The personal story should certainly be soloable, and there should be solo dungeons in the game. I also think this is a great idea.

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

I think you’ll find this IS in the suggestions forum, now stop trying to be uptight because the OP hasn’t really expanded on his idea, you made no attempt what so ever to add an idea or refine what he said apart from synically ask him to move the post to the place where it already was!!

Now that’s being cleared I don’t think personally solo dungeons are the way to go, as somebody already mentioned, if u want solo dungeons, go play a singleplayer game like skyrim or the PERSONAL story, or is it specifcally the type of gameplay you’d like to solo? I guess you could solo story mode dungeons with a really good character, still not the same tho is it :/

+1.

For who say “Go to skyrim noob” remember that solo dungeons is always optional, so you can always choose.

Pd: I miss my heroes and solo dungeons with them like in Gw1 Take my time and play at my own. In GW2 is always zerker warrior: Hi all, -> Find corner -> gogogo -> Bye

MAUS HOUS.8047:

goldenwing.8473:

Solo dungeons did not end up being particularly popular in RIFT.

If you have more detailed information regarding ideas for a dungeon to solo (outside of stories), please post in the suggestion forum.

That is not an endorsement of the idea, just a pointer to the correct forum for the thread.

I think you’ll find this IS in the suggestions forum, now stop trying to be uptight because the OP hasn’t really expanded on his idea, you made no attempt what so ever to add an idea or refine what he said apart from synically ask him to move the post to the place where it already was!!

You’re replying to a post from june, the thread was likely moved.

For everybody else, the game has plenty of solo dungeons.