Guild Wars 2

Hello, sorry for the long post. Please read the whole thing.

I finally decided to post my thoughts in here. I want to talk about the dungeons in GW2. I want to avoid discussions about difficulty, because that’s a very subjective topic and I don’t want to waste this thread on talking about stuff that is already being fought over in numerous other places.

The dungeons are still fun for me, but the more I play them, the more flaws appear in the mechanics of the dungeons in general and of the boss fights in particular. An example for good and interesting mechanics can be found in CoF path 3 or in CoE (I didn’t go into Arah explorable yet, because the gear doesn’t bother me, I can only talk about the other dungeons). After 2 month I am pretty used to move around, but of course this is still something much better than other MMOs have to offer. But now that I am used to it, I want Anet to utilize it even more. Some examples.

Subject Alpha was considered a pretty hard enemy and the reason for that is the number of different things one has to care about. The Graveling boss in AC path 1 has an interesting combination of spawning ads and a huge AoE. So far so good. How does one fight them in the most efficient way? Hug them. Means, all players stand where the boss stands, heal each other, kill every add with multiple overlapping AoEs and simply dodge harmful AoEs periodically. Suddenly hard bosses become a hugfest and pretty simple. One could say that this is just a strategy that evolved because players started to learn and I am ok with that. But it raises questions on more creative ways to make things happen.

The dungeons that are not “huggable” are e. g. CM, TA and CoF, partially and that is good. That the “tree boss” fights in TA are too easy for a “final” boss compared to the stuff before is another topic. Now, a more creative approach for AC would be to let the adds spawn around the boss, not basically under it. Every hugging team would simply kill the adds in 1 second and damage the boss in addition. Making the adds spawn around the boss would make the encounter more challenging without adding totally new requirements to the dungeon group.

When talking about creative, the biggest “problem” for creating challenging dungeons is the downed state. People are not punished for mistakes by instant death, and can be revived by others, which is – again – very easy if the group is hugging (don’t get me wrong, some bosses in multiple dungeons have very effective anti-grouping capabilities ;P). A good example for nice and “theoretically challenging” mechanics is the brazier room in CoF path 1. Everyone has to fight and hold his ground for a specific time on his own. If someone dies, the step can’t be completed, and noone can actively help downed players without risking the whole thing. Coordination mechanics are the most challenging at the moment, especially in random groups.

What I would like to see more often are mechanics that require the single player to be good. I don’t want solo dungeons, I just want to make dungeons more difficult regarding micro management instead of communication with randoms. Let me give an example from Runes of Magic. A specific boss had different stages the changed periodically. During one of them 2 small tube like areas spawned at 2 of 5 possible locations in the room. Running into them applied a buff to the player. Some seconds after the areas spawned, the boss would use an infinite range AoE that dealt 110% of the maximum player’s health as damage and was unblockable. Which means, if you didnt get into the small area in time, you were dead. And you were really dead, not just downed. The other phases of the boss required the group to move, so it was always very challenging to react fast enough.

Another example. In the same dungeon, in addition to some other skills that had to be dealt with, a boss applied a debuff on the player that had the aggro (the tank cough). One of the other members had to run to a specific location, pick something up and run to the affected player. If that didnt happen fast enough, the tank would be dead in an instant.

This would require a small amount of coordination, but a huge amount of personal skill, depending on the players experience. With the current system of being able to die up to 7 times without any actual influence on the game some dungeons are kinda zergable, respawn and attack, die, respawn, repeat. Of course, the better the players, the less they die. That’s a normal development. I understand that Anet wants a bigger amount of players to enjoy dungeons than only a handful of hardcore gamers and that is ok. But why couldn’t there be some more challenging dungeons?

Another thing. The Halloween event had a very interesting jumping puzzle to offer, the clock tower. I would like to see a boss fight one day on moving platforms. Or with minor jumping requirements. Maybe even with a time limit. I mean, why not? In no other game trial and error was so forgiving like it is in GW2, so why don’t raise the skill bar?

Coming to the original point of this topic, I want more creative boss fight mechanics. Funnily enough, the more fun mechanics can be found in the story modes of the dungeons, for example CoE or CoF. This hurts the long term motivation, slightly. I want the fights to evolve beyond the current “nuke, dodge, nuke, dodge, nuke” in some cases or “nuke, kill adds, nuke, kills adds, nuke” in other cases. I want more focus on the skill of single players, not all at once, but at least one at a time.

I know that it is already a challenge for many people to time dodges right. Or to even realize when to dodge. But I am not talking about making everything much harder. maybe that will be a negative side effect, but I just want everything to be more creative, fun and offer new and exciting challenges that people simply can’t “hug” away.

A fix to hugging could be giving a powerful stomp or knockdown skill to the boss that he’ll use if a player stands for too long in the same spot as the boss. Note that he should only use it if the player is in the same spot, not next to it, so melee isn’t punished.

Edit: Actually I think it would require more than that, but it would work for a start. The boss needs some sort of unique and powerful ability that only occurs if the party is “hugging” it.

If everyone is within (very) small range? But that could punish all-melee groups.

I’m not a fan of boss-gimmicks, such as “stand here to not die”. But I do like boss fights that demand that you pay attention. Castlevania had some bosses that had a move that would cover almost the entire room in really high damage flames, forcing the player to start running away from the boss the moment he started preparing the skill (you were literally running away from a wall of flames).

I also wouldn’t mind a boss fight on a tower, but of course he shouldn’t have knockdown skills in that case. Maybe chasing a boss up a tower, or being chased by a giant boss eating the tower. Either way, a boss fight where you have to keep moving would be pretty fun. I also liked one of the bosses in one of the jumping challenges. There’s a recent jumping challenge that was added to Fireheart Rise, with a golem boss at the end in a room full of breaking glass floor panels, with angry sharks underneath. Now that was a lot of fun. Interesting mechanics, and great use of the environment!

Less boring bosses in empty rooms please. More bosses that make use of their environment!

i just would like dungeons to be more well designed and varied, with interesting mechanics, but it seems those are restricted to the (awesome) minidungeons, and the main ones get the “corridor of mobs with the occasional ‘press this button’ moment” treatment.

i’d also point out that i LOVE and would like to see a lot more puzzle-ish boss fights, like in CoF story and SE story, as well as more bosses with cool mechanics, like liutenant kohler in AC explorable or that skelk from the new dungeon added in dredgehaunt cliffs. for those who don’t know, in that dungeon, skelks can’t take damage in the darkness, and everything is pitch black except for your torch and some areas you can light up. so the boss fight is a nice struggle to balance damage, keeping the place lit, and keeping the boss from putting out the lit areas.