Guild Wars 2

I find myself straying to older MMO’s like World of Warcraft, when I would much rather be playing GW2. I sat down and got to the core of why this was happening. Of all the MMO “needs” GW2 does fulfill, a true sense of progression as far as character development is lacking, there, but lacking. As of right now, you have the Fractals, and Crafting as your method of attainment for “top” gear, and now with HoT there will be legendary gear available to Raiders. Gold is hard to come by, and the Dungeons are full of “Zerker Only” groups and the utilization of exploits. And Mat Farming can be an eye gouging, boring experience. Fractals are fun and challenging, but it can get boring doing the same limited scenarios – so: Make more fractals? or Improve a currently lacking part of pre-existing play mode?

I propose the following changes to Dungeons to make them worth playing, and not just speed run/farm them.

1. Cut the Leash. You can’t skip mobs if they’ll follow you to the end – you have to deal with them (or use an “anti aggro” mechanic like Stealth, via Bird Feathers or class mechanic). So either learn some LoS pulls, or find a run and stack point, cause – they aren’t going to turn around. This will increase Strategy within different group comps.

2. Increase the damage of all dungeon mobs by 5-10%. Make us work for it! Make us watch tells and CD’s, get out of the way, pull smaller groups, utilize builds and utilities in certain pulls – instead of just stack and kill while the mob lightly slaps us like Roger on American Dad. This will also cause 2 things to happen – People who like to “Pug” will be more inclined create well rounded builds with equal parts damage, control, support. 2. People in guilds who do planned “structured” runs can utilize the “Pure” builds and group make-ups – 1 Support, 1 Control and 3 DPS (or any group of well combined Hybrids of varying degrees) configurations and the such. You keep the integrity of NOT having a Trinity, while giving teams the option of virtually creating one. And, if I may, can some encounters have an “Anti stacking” mechanic, like maybe a boss fight with an effect that doesn’t harm the player, but does harm those within a certain range of the player, or a pulsing blind – something to make people move around instead of just stack.

3. You gotta give us a heads up! On the Enemy bar where you tell us what they do – Tell us their Aggro Preference, this way we can plan and say “Okay, well This aggros by Range, We’ll have the Ranger or Ele kite it around while we all rotate Chill and kill it.”

4. MONEY! The primary the reason “Speed Running” and “Zerkers” came about is because – Times are tough all over man, that Gold is hard to come by for the casual player. If the dungeons get harder, more exciting, less exploitable through the first 3 changes then they are going to take longer – so you’re gonna have to up the anty! I don’t want the daily grind of farming Silverwastes to be the most profitable way to make gold. Please don’t keep making me run Silverwastes… I want to tear my eyes out.

5. Show your Dungeon Mastery through Dungeon Ascendeds! They’d require the Exotic piece + more currency, so people can’t “skip”. We can always change the stats in the Forge if we want. AWESOME new Dungeon themed Skins!! A 3rd way to get “Raid Ready” and promote upgrading to the expansion AND help people feel like their hard work is paying off.

6. A few new Runes, and a new Sigil or two. For those of us who are in guilds and ARE going to have structured groups, we’re going to need some control in order to have order. I propose Taunt Runes. Here’s an Example:
Rune of the Lunatic
(1)Toughness
(2)10% Increased Protection Duration
(3)Toughness
(4)25% Chance when hit to gain Protection
(5)+Toughness
(6)Your Shouts taunt enemies within 600yd

Of course we would need a few to cater to the different Control focused utility categories.

Don’t want to have a full rune – but want to have a “kiting” weapon?
Sigil of Attraction: 66% chance on Hit to Taunt target.

Maybe a second Sigil that has a chance to convert Damage to Taunt for an AoE effect.

BAM!!, now those who want control they can regulate have what they need.

7. These two are for later down the road – Two New Modes. A “Champion Explorable” mode for level 80’s who want an ultimate 5 man challenge! Like Emril took the Explorable mode and “kicked it up a notch”. And “Run-Solo” Mode where the dungeon contains encounters meant to be soloed and really test the players skills and self reliability. This would double as a GREAT way to test out your build.

And Finally, how ArenaNet can benefit from these changes – Change the Dungeon Potions to Dungeon Boosters. Gem Store purchased/Black Lion Chest “+20% Damage in Dungeons”, “Increase Ally Healing Effectiveness by 20% in Dungeons” or “Take 20% Less Damage in Dungeons” Boosters. Maybe even a “10% increased Gold from Monsters in Dungeons” :-)

I know some people are going to react harshly to this post, and that’s just fine. I have merely gone through and examined why I am straying away from this product (when I LOVE this game), and what me and other GW2 players I know have been really starving for. This was how I could see is fixed with minimal change to the current model and mechanics, and the addition of a couple items.

They are done with dungeons no new investments in it will be made.

But yes it would be good if there was a more clear endgame goal-/progression. But at this point it would need to be tied to new content, which seems unlikely

That’s really sad, because I view Dungeons and Fractals as PvE’s main source of “practice” for Raid content, and learning your overall functionality in a group setting.

I’d also love to have more “Life After 80” – and good dungeon participation fills a huge void for people who aren’t quite “raid ready” – or something to do on the other 6 days of the week.

Dungeon involvement stokes the fire for raiding and therefore expansion sales. It’s a mistake to abandon it just because it’s a weak area. Heck, Dungeons are the “core” activity of most PvE MMO gamers – especially after we’ve participated in the Living Story events. And like I said, Fractals only satisfy so much of this “need”.

I hope they reconsider.

1- Take a thieve or an engi… done, all trash mob are skipped.

2- I don’t think you played enough dungeon right now. The reason why the zerk meta is this proeminent is because we all know the tells of each and every boss out there. The zerk meta isn’t here to take any hit but to avoid all of them if possible and the best way to do it is to burn down the boss before you run out of dodge.

3- ATM, there is no need to know wha have the agro. But most of the time the guy who will have the agro will be the first to hit the mob (be it at the begining of the fight or after a hard CC. Note that any hard CC reset the agro)

4- I don’t think the 3 previous change make the dungeon less exploitable. ATM the dungeon give to much money (let’s admit it), It’s a good decision to keep the dungeon as token provider and reduce the money you make from them. It’s also because it’s so simple to make money from dungeon that the TP price are this high. Simply, the price are what they because gold is overflowing from dungeon ATM.

5- Open PvE grant you mostly rare gear. Dungeon are here for easy exotic gear. Fractal for ascended trinket. raid will be here for ascended armor/weapon. Gear progression that follow the content difficulty. Seem more logical than what you propose.

6- Taunt is a hard CC in guild wars 2, not something you use for agro management. You understand that your runeset destroy any PvP (or WvW) balance, right?

7- A Hard mode for dungeon is something that a lot of us ask for but most likely it won’t happen. And the solo thing is something that is already possible for almost all dungeon path. I suggest that you try to search for dungeon solo video on youtube. You’ll see that there is plenty of video.

8- there is already consumbale that grant damage/defense/regen at the trading post. Dungeon consumable are mainly potion that provide a better efficiency against a kind of opponent and these potions are part of the artificer job. Do you simply suggest that the remove these recipe to sell the consumable on the TP? Will the 2 consumable stack in intensity?

You make some good points. Let me give you a bit more insight as to where I am coming from.

1. Absolutely! I’m not trying to “force” everyone to play as intended, I’d just like to increase the difficulty. If you want to skip – go ahead and comp the group to do so. But if they do it right there will be runs that can’t be stealthed through – otherwise what’s the point?

2. Been here since Beta, I run plenty of dungeons – pug and otherwise. You don’t all know the tells, that’s why I spend half the dungeon rezzing most “zerkers”. Again, not taking away your “right to Zerk”, just providing a means to an alternative. Increased damage by mobs would mean you would A – Round out your Spec or B – Bring Support/Control. I don’t think you quite understand the impact this “Meta-lomania” has on the the game, and how it’s ruining it. Shoot, let’s just have ANet remove all the other gear and builds if that’s what is standard! Cause right now, that’s what it comes across as – Elitism, “Zerker only”, “You should run _ or you’re a noob”. NO! People should play how they want, and choose stats to accentuate that without game-wide ridicule. I know it is inevitable – there will always be a “top Damage” setup, but what’s wrong is that, that is all that is viable – there should be more to it. It’s pretty cheesy actually. There is no “Trinity” but there are 3 play styles – a sort of “Soft Trinity”, and right now they aren’t being utilized – in 99% of content there’s no need for control, no need for support – 5 Damage can just go in and down it – or one can go in and solo it. Oh yeah, what a challenge.

3. This would be important with changes 1 and 2 – my plan works together. If you get hit harder, you’ll have less chance to burn it down, you’ll need to know how to manage it.

4. In what world is 1-3 gold (and maybe a few sellable drops) “flowing”? And it’s flowing because you don’t DO the dungeon! You run through it, hit a guy or two and collect your chest. What a waste of pixels and someones hard work. NO wonder they gave up on dungeons and are focusing on Fractals… people only ever fight the bosses anyway.

5. Yes, because mindlessly following the train commander is such a great way to spend the day :-P When you increase the dungeon difficulty (i.e. the proposed Champion Explorable mode) that is when your gear would increase (I had originally thought to have an Ascended Vendor at the end of the mode , perhaps that would have been the better way to go)

6. Well… yeah, much like Perplexity Runes. Not a big deal.

7. This is my point exactly – you should not be able to solo a dungeon meant for 5 people, this alone sums up the tragic state of dungeons. If even a level 50 Fractal can be solo’d – something is WRONG.

8. The only incentive ANet would have to work on dungeons is if there is a way they can increase profits through them – and why not, they have provided us with an AMAZING world. So, Yes, remove those pots, and as for the stacking – that’s for Anet to toy around with.

Dungeons are the bread and butter of MMO’s and is where this game is TRULY lacking. And now they’ve even made fractals “pick and choose” so there isn’t even the loading screen anticipation of “what’s next”. If you want to destroy the competition (even more so) then you have to cover every gaming need.

We need dungeons where strats and tactics are the key to winning, not “zerk, skip and stack” – and they payoff should be worth the time and skill invested. Which is exactly why you only get 1-3G, cause there’s no time requirement or skill necessary. Luckily we have raids now to HOPEFULLY fulfill this challenge for 10 people, but still nothing for 5 people – especially since most of the 5 man content can be done by 1.

Like I said, I LOVE this game. But when I look at my screen and most of the time I see 5 people huddled in a cluster slamming their buttons…no strategy, no challenge – it makes me REALLY sad, because that’s pretty pathetic. This is the weakest link of a game that has the potential to be the best MMO EVER.

I once was like you too Heithinn and felt that posting my many ideas to make dungeons way better than they are would have a chance of contributing to something instead of falling on deaf ears. This was back in 2013, however, and not once since then has this company shown even the slightest bit of concern over the state of dungeon-related content and the players that love them in over 2 years since.

They literally want to try to get people to stop playing them out of choice, so that they can have an excuse to delete them. Why that is exactly, I don’t fully understand because the excuses given to us don’t really justify their apathy.

I’m sorry Heithinn but either you take what I said the wrong way or your insight of the actual meta is pretty bad.

There is already room for controle/support/DPS in the actual meta. In fact it’s all about controle and support and let’s ride on the remaining DPS we can do. What do you do in an encounter against a boss?

1- you freeze him : Controle
2- you build strenght with your allies via stacking might and fury : Support
3- you burn the boss with DPS.

I know it’s not satisfying from a traditionnal point of view but all roles are here and pushed to their limit due to the fact that we are all used to these dungeon that we’ve been runing for 3 years.

What you ask would change almost nothing of this, it may even make thing worse by forcing people into an even stricter group composition : “LFG <insert dungeon path> need thief or kick”.

At release we were mostly doing every trash pack and their grandma when doing a dungeon. Were they to hard or to easy? They were balanced from what I recall. But trash are like boss they have tell, it’s easy to understand them and to act in a way that you counter them. Do they need to do more damage? No, more damage would mean that a more “defensive” party won’t make it.

One other thing. 1-3 gold may seem low but most of dungeon runner do 5-6 path/hour. Which mean that they effectly gain at least 10 gold/hour. Outside of the boring chest farm of SW there is no better way to make gold.

And there is way more than following a commander in open PvE, there is plenty of content that aren’t done anymore but… that’s something that they seem to try to fix with HoT. The reward for the dungeon content (token and armor/weapon) are balanced and don’t need an upgrade.

Overall, I understand why you are upset against the way dungeon are today but, they are like this because they’ve been run and run and run over and over again. Players discovered the most efficient way to do them and it’s also players that reject less efficient way to do them. Their content is designed to be done with whatever you want to play and is balanced around that. The only issue is that players tend to reject what is not optimal. Is this possible to do arah with a healer/tank/DPS team? Yeah, I’ve done it countless time in the first year of the game. At this time, there was no “exploit” known where you force lupicus into the wall (well there were bug also… Oh god… facepalm…).

Nothing really change in the mechanisms, just Players discovered all the trick that we are using right know, establishing optimal strategy that we’ve ran for so long that we simply forget that these are strategy.

Just REALLY hating it right now and seriously considering buying WoW: WoD over the new GW2 expansion – and paying $15/mo to Blizz instead of the Gem Store.

I do see how they are trying to fix it with Fractals – or how they are saying they are trying to fix it anyway. Like they’re “fixing their dungeon fails with fractal wins” And I hope that the raids are all they are puffed up to be. I just miss a challenge. There has to be a way they can make it (in 5 mans) that it’s truly a challenge. What it really comes down to -I guess- ARE the mechanics, and the lack of interactive mechanics – “get out of the red circle” isn’t exactly as interactive as “Stay out of that spell effect, kill that add, push that button over there on the wall, OH GOD Phase two – everyone get to the middle of the room, sheep that, trap that, silence that, okay, we’re rotating interrupts on this – OH GOD I’M STUNNED” on fights like you get with a WoW Dungeon Boss, those “keep you on your toes”, unavoidable mechanics. The mechanics that make your heart pump and your palms sweat! Everything on GW2 can pretty much be burned right through while I’m eating a sandwich with the other hand – aside from the ever-present red circle threat (most of them anyway) and the occasional – “move from here to here”. There are a COUPLE bosses with the heart-pumping, sweaty palm moments, but not nearly enough.

I can’t explain how bad it bothers me that stuff that is supposed to be meant for 5 people can be solo’d – especially when you are down-leveled. And when the “hardest” content in the game (Lvl 50 fractals) can be solo’d. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does.

I guess I’ll just hold off on purchasing either one until I see if the xpac is worth it. But if I see vids of new content being solo’d – or people just stacking and standing there, it’s off and I’m getting WoD…

Until then I’ve been working on readying a guild on GW2 dedicated to finding kindred souls who want to run stuff “old school” for the laid-back fun and enjoyment of the game.

Until then I’ve been working on readying a guild on GW2 dedicated to finding kindred souls who want to run stuff “old school” for the laid-back fun and enjoyment of the game.

1.5 year ago you could have count me on for that. But now, just the though to do a dungeon path or fractal bore me to no end. I welcome GW2:HoT mainly because there will be new thing to see, discover and (most of all) explore. I can’t wait for all the exploration of new maps that will await me. While the work on fractal may fit the taste of a part of the community, still, this will be the same old fractal to do over and over and over again and this is absolutely not exciting.

Heithinn.6508:

Please don’t keep making me run Silverwastes… I want to tear my eyes out.

All your other points aside, why the hate for sw? It has a lot of variety: defend mules, defend forts, take back forts, look for chests, collect mats, defeating champs that pop up, the breach champs, defending the siege carriers, the battle with the big bosses, the run to the hidden depths with champs along the way, getting to the centre chest in the hidden depths, exploring the hidden depths for lesser chests. Then there’s the jp and also the hidden area in the north where you can herd beatles.

Plenty of options, and unlike a dungeon where you pick a path and stick with it, you can change your strategy in sw anytime. Dungeons and sw each have their pro’s and con’s. There’s no need to be down on sw.

And the best thing about sw…. no gravelings.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

All your other points aside, why the hate for sw?

Because what make SW one of the best way to gain gold is the mindless chest farm in which you just run around with a zerg, opening chest en masse.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

All your other points aside, why the hate for sw?

Well whoever feels the need to farm boring SW can do that 24/7 and get their souls obliterated (aimed towards CF). Plenty of people I know prefer to do fotm/dungeons, rotating their professions daily, trying out ’’new’’ things and pushing their professions to the limits. The gold comes on it’s own, the only downside of it is the fact that you have to be a bit more prepared for it. 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 4 5 1 1 heal 1 1 1 while watching Flash wont do it (GOKU be gone if you are reading this!).