Guild Wars 2

Autohits doing huge damage
Group of 8 mobs that spam grenades that cant be dodged unless you dodge-roll; and have high health
Mobs that, if they reach you, stack 11 stacks of bleed in one attack that doesn’t look any different from their auto-attack
Bosses whose actions are covered by damage numbers, while they do 1-shot hits
Traps that cannot be dodged that trigger at random, and cannot be seen unless you watch for a while
And, as with every other part of the game: BUGS. BUGS EVERYWHERE.

It’s like nobody even playtested most dungeons.
Some of them are fun, with interesting mechanics that are challenging in a non-tedious way, but overall, the experience with dungeons is not a fun one.
Tedium=/=Challenge.

I hope ANet moves away from the KMMO-style design for challenging content. Otherwise, GW2 will have no future interest in expansions from me.

That’s not a poor design, that’s the reason why you should have a proper build and play as a team instead of just as a random group of greedy guys.

- huge autohits (those with 8k+ damge) can be avoided easily cause the all prefigure themselfs
- at level 80 you should have at least 14-15k HP so you survive most attacks. But even if you don’t, I haven’t seen any AE attacks that can’t be either avoided without using dodge or are on a rather long CD so you have dodge ready when they hit you again
- I have never seen that a bosses actions would have been covered by damage numbers, don’t know what you are talking about
- those traps you are talking about are static, once you get how they work, you can walk through them easily
- you are right about bugs, some are really annoying

I preferred the approach they took with GW1 dungeons. Stupid amounts of trash mobs everywhere, occasional ‘boss’. Killing big groups of trash is IMO more enjoyable than killing 2-3 not-so-challenging silvers. I love that one biggish trash mob in arah, as an example. Kind of wish it was bigger.

OP is right to some degree, and Nacht, you’re assuming EVERYONE who ever ran a dungeon went through the whole game avoiding it until 80.
First dungeon is at 30.

Even on story-mode CM for example there’s some imbalance issues and generally sloppy design.
- Snipers one shot … I don’t want to have to re-spec my traits JUST not to get one shot for one dungeon. I thought the whole ethos was “play they way you want”
- Hounds use Fear, Cripple AND knockdown constantly – and it’s easy to get knocked into a chain where you have no control over your character.
- Fighters knockback too often, and you can also be chained into a knockback-lock when you get to the point inside the Manor where there’s a large group of them.

In relation to bleed stacks, AC rangers seem to have heavy stacks of bleed damage. Though applying bleed on them isn’t anywhere near as effective.

For bosses/mobs, all I can say is that some of them are clear in readability of what’s to be expected, aka telegraphing. (Take a look at the Troll or the Ranger Nente boss in AC story…very clear telegraphing, – then look at some other bosses/mobs and it’s a different story).

Without that, all dungeons become less about skill and more about guessing when a boss will attack. And with only 2 dodge rolls on cue, you could easily use up those dodges pre-judging a huge attack for one of the smaller ones you’d be able to take a hit.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I preferred the approach they took with GW1 dungeons. Stupid amounts of trash mobs everywhere, occasional ‘boss’. Killing big groups of trash is IMO more enjoyable than killing 2-3 not-so-challenging silvers. I love that one biggish trash mob in arah, as an example. Kind of wish it was bigger.

This man is a truth sayer.

Dungeons are so incredibly boring. I’m only doing them for the achievements and then I will never ever enter them, unless I really want an item. But I will not be doing it for fun!

nethykins.7986:

OP is right to some degree, and Nacht, you’re assuming EVERYONE who ever ran a dungeon went through the whole game avoiding it until 80.
First dungeon is at 30.

Actually I don’t. I made one statement about the amount of health a lvl 80 char should have, that’s all. Maybe I should have said “don’t go glass cannon” instead, but at the end those two are the same. If you try to do a dungeon with the regular dps solo pve build you are more a burden to your team than anything else.

Even on story-mode CM for example there’s some imbalance issues and generally sloppy design.
- Snipers one shot … I don’t want to have to re-spec my traits JUST not to get one shot for one dungeon. I thought the whole ethos was “play they way you want”

You can play any way you want, if you decide to be a one shot you just have to be very careful and dodge those shots. You can do it, even in CM.

- Hounds use Fear, Cripple AND knockdown constantly – and it’s easy to get knocked into a chain where you have no control over your character.

That’s correct, it’s a little stuipd that hounds are so hard split.

- Fighters knockback too often, and you can also be chained into a knockback-lock when you get to the point inside the Manor where there’s a large group of them.

You don’t need to fight them all at once. For instance it’s possible to kite most of them while the rest of the group kills them one by one.

In relation to bleed stacks, AC rangers seem to have heavy stacks of bleed damage. Though applying bleed on them isn’t anywhere near as effective.

That’s correct, but they also have no way to remove bleed stacks. Have a Necro drop down Well of Power or a Mesmer use his Nullfield e.g. and you don’t have to care about those bleeds anymore.

A big reason why people are finding difficulty with dungeons when leveling is that they’re taking their solo PvE hero leveling specs into dungeons and expecting it to work out. Yes, there are no tank/heals/dps and you can build however you want, but if you go in with a SOLO spec, you’re not being very helpful to your group.

Another thing is, if your gear isn’t updated and to your level, if there is down scaling, your stats will be scaled LOWER than the level of the dungeon and you will struggle a bit there too.

Damage is the simplest of things one can bring to a group and EVERYONE will be doing damage, what you can bring ontop of that really makes a difference in how smooth the dungeon goes. Yes this also means take a hit in personal performance for the good of the group. It’s the reason why Warriors I always group with bring Battle Standard > Signet of Rage while the greatsword 5 signet heroes will never see an invite from me.

My Guardian runs damage reduction and control abilities in dungeons with Hammer/Staff. I constantly give Protection, Retaliation, Stability, Aegis and can finish other fields with mighty blow while warding off harmful foes or creating sanctuaries for safe resses.

My buddy that I run a lot of dungeons with has heals coming out from his rune set and banners that grant regen, because he’s a warrior he also still does a lot of damage with Greatsword/Longbow. The two of us will never compare to other people of the same class in full berserkers in terms of DPS, but what we bring to the table is immense.

What we make up for our personal hit in DPS is our ability to pretty much stay topped off the entire time. The only time any of our members go down is because they miscalculated a dodge or something, with Regen and protection up all the time, a lot of damage is mitigated. Because he also brings fire fields, between that blast combo and my Staff’s empower, a steady upkeep of 20+ stacks of might is always up so the damage output as a whole group is actually really really high.

If anything because we spec like so, dungeons go even quicker as no bad wipes occur as often as a group of 5 glass cannons. Gearing and slotting for support also does not mean you butcher your damage output. That’s only if you gear +Healing which is the weakest form of support out there. It’s perfectly possible to gear a balanced char that has really good life span, decent damage output and group utility. My Guardian runs with 16.8k HP, 3k Armor, 40% crit, 62% crit dmg, and 2.9k Power and does more than its fair share of damage while bringing a lot more support than your average glass cannon.

TLDR: Stop tunneling DPS and tackle dungeon as a GROUP. It’s GROUP content..

I’m always running a 16k hp with 1850-2100 toughness builds for dungeons and doing fine even for my first time in the dungeon. Bu i do agree dungeons are boring as hell compared to how they were in gw1. I remember doing UWsc or The Deep/Urgoz all day without finding them boring one bit and eas bored of any dungeons in gw2 after a couple of days. Bad level design, 5 man parties and none existant rare drops come to mind.

I enjoy dungeons in their current state, especially AC and CoE. However, I would have preferred it for the nature of mobs to be inverted. Instead of lower numbers + high HP, I would have preferred to have been completely outnumbered by huge armies of weaker trash mobs that we have to wade through. Much more fun than whittling down a small group of Panzers in every room.

Lumines.3916:

A big reason why people are finding difficulty with dungeons when leveling is that they’re taking their solo PvE hero leveling specs into dungeons and expecting it to work out. Yes, there are no tank/heals/dps and you can build however you want, but if you go in with a SOLO spec, you’re not being very helpful to your group.

TLDR: Stop tunneling DPS and tackle dungeon as a GROUP. It’s GROUP content..

(I read the rest by the way :P)
This is all you need to say – but that relies on the devs telling the players how dungeon’s work before saying “Hey, you know all those traits you started putting into traits for all those DE’s, and most PVE’s, well, kitten that! TIME TO RESPEC!”

Because there’s no Traits/builds “hot-swapping”, this makes it more reluctant for players to change when they do more PvE than dungeons.

Some ranged dudes have auto-locking attacks which to me is completely unwarranted in a player vs. AI (PvE) setting…. Looking at you Ascalonian Rangers.

Maybe it’s a latency thing, but sometimes with projectiles that arc and have a red circle of where they’re supposed to land, I get hit with the projectile…. Even while strafing it and out of it’s path. This is especially annoying when trying to handle the Fire Golem during the Kudo fight in SE story mode or the vines in TA (though they’re not as punishing if you take a hit or two).

While I do agree that you coordination to win, I see that need more in story mode encounters than in explore mode encounters…. and isn’t explore mode supposed to be harder? I’ve rarely encountered something hard in an explore compared to the number of times in a story mode.

First off, I love HotW. By far my favorite dungeon, the environment, the stories, enjoy it all. However, I agree that the bosses.. all of them, are pathetic. Not saying, easy, or hard, or poorly designed. I’m just saying that they really don’t require much thought. There is no random element’s, they don’t randomize their attacks, there are no “Awesome Moments” There is a lot of “Auto Attack → dodge red circle → auto attack” And every once in a while you may throw in a “destroy totem”

Maybe a week ago, I started doing all the other dungeons, and I’m getting the same vibe from pretty much all of them. There are the occasional bosses that I really enjoy, and at the same time are extremely frustrating, which have some unique mechanic that is different from everything else in the game. But even still, once you figure it out, you spend forever whittling down their massive amount of hp.

I’ll also add, that over the past week or so, I have slowly been rethinking my stats/build/weapons/skills towards a more support focused Ranger, and while I am still adjusting, I am enjoying the dungeons I do a lot more and have found them to be going much faster and much easier. Don’t remember last time I had a full party wipe and most bosses feel like they are going down a bit faster, although they still have way to much hp.

(Excellent post Lumines, I very much agree with you, based on my own experiences now)

And while I am enjoying the dungeons as they are, minus few small annoyances, I will agree that there is a whole heck of a lot that could be done on Anet’s part to make them more fun and just as difficult if not more so.

GW2, where mobs one-shot you and most bosses die with 10 minutes of auto-attack.

I agree with most of the above. I don’t find the GW2 dungeons particularly hard, but most mobs are overtuned (no cooldowns, too many one-shot kills, too much CC removing control of players’ characters) and most bosses are extremely simplistic and boring. Burning down a huge HP pool while standing in one place and dodging a timed attack every X seconds isn’t challenging or fun. It’s just time-consuming. And, since we can’t make more time, that means it’s often not worth it to play GW2 when you could be playing (or doing) something else.

The environments are actually interesting and full of potential, but whoever designed the encounters had a serious lack of imagination, and seems to think “big numbers and randomness” are an acceptable replacement for “fun”.

nethykins.7986:

Even on story-mode CM for example there’s some imbalance issues and generally sloppy design.
- Snipers one shot … I don’t want to have to re-spec my traits JUST not to get one shot for one dungeon.

You can avoid those shots if you dodge at the right time.

I thought the whole ethos was “play they way you want”

To a certain extent. Bad players shouldn’t be allowed to walk through explorable modes.

Hounds use Fear, Cripple AND knockdown constantly – and it’s easy to get knocked into a chain where you have no control over your character.

Fighters knockback too often, and you can also be chained into a knockback-lock when you get to the point inside the Manor where there’s a large group of them.

Stability, blocks, knockback, dodging, counter fears, stuns, etc. There’s a lot of ways to counter this, especially as a team.

In relation to bleed stacks, AC rangers seem to have heavy stacks of bleed damage. Though applying bleed on them isn’t anywhere near as effective.

Condition removal.

For bosses/mobs, all I can say is that some of them are clear in readability of what’s to be expected, aka telegraphing. (Take a look at the Troll or the Ranger Nente boss in AC story…very clear telegraphing, – then look at some other bosses/mobs and it’s a different story).

Learning a boss is part of the process. Knowing what they do and when they do it is just as important as building your spec properly.

Without that, all dungeons become less about skill and more about guessing when a boss will attack. And with only 2 dodge rolls on cue, you could easily use up those dodges pre-judging a huge attack for one of the smaller ones you’d be able to take a hit.

Dodge isn’t your only defence.

You are able to swap out weapons and utility skills in between every pull if you want to. You should take advantage of that from time to time.

You coming up against a large group that chain stuns? Use something that gives stability.

Going against a group that does a lot of condition damage? Use condition removal.

Going up against a kiting/survival event? Change out some of your major traits so you have more survivability.

AresOnasis.4703:

You can avoid those shots if you dodge at the right time.

For sake of going back and forth on this, lets agree to disagree – a lot of people use the “just dodge it” answer when you don’t take into account multiple mobs…like multiple snipers, all firing are different rates, or fighters with knockback which puts all your skills (including dodge) on a 1 second cooldown, or a knockdown that lasts for 2-3 seconds – and you can’t use any skills. That 1-3 second window is enough for any sniper to oneshot you.

To a certain extent. Bad players shouldn’t be allowed to walk through explorable modes.

Just to reiterate…I was talking about story mode – I stated this. Not explorable.

Stability, blocks, knockback, dodging, counter fears, stuns, etc. There’s a lot of ways to counter this, especially as a team.

When i played a guardian stability skills were my bread and butter. However, those stability skills will always underperform against this. Stability fields last only a handful of seconds before it’s on CD, “Stand Your Ground!” and all those other shouts that help with removing conditions also only last a limited amount of time and then they’re on CD. I’m currently alting on ranger, and stability is limited.

In relation to bleed stacks, AC rangers seem to have heavy stacks of bleed damage. Though applying bleed on them isn’t anywhere near as effective.

Condition removal.

On player:
Bleed Attack > Condition Removal > Bleed attack > bleed stacks out while you wait for cooldown.

On Mob:
Bleed Attack > Condition removal > Bleed attack > Condition removal > Bleed attack.

Learning a boss is part of the process. Knowing what they do and when they do it is just as important as building your spec properly.

I don’t dispute that at all. I was just highlighting that the telegraphy of attacks ARE part of the process of learning a boss. If a boss is set to “random attack sequence #112150521335”, without that telegraphy, it would be impossible to know what’s to come, where to place yourself etc.

Put it this way… Imagine AOE attacks without the red rings.

Without that, all dungeons become less about skill and more about guessing when a boss will attack. And with only 2 dodge rolls on cue, you could easily use up those dodges pre-judging a huge attack for one of the smaller ones you’d be able to take a hit.

Dodge isn’t your only defence.

You are able to swap out weapons and utility skills in between every pull if you want to. You should take advantage of that from time to time.

You coming up against a large group that chain stuns? Use something that gives stability.

Going against a group that does a lot of condition damage? Use condition removal.

Going up against a kiting/survival event? Change out some of your major traits so you have more survivability.

I agree, dodging isn’t my only defence, and I suppose I should be kitted out for every encounter – but is it any fun being armed up to the teeth with every weapon my class can use, and changing my traits – and possibly trait builds – every 3 mins just because it suits this single encounter? For story mode…Probably not. (there goes my casual story-mode dungeon running)

In regards to being stun-locked – I thought even the notion of stun-lock occuring was a bad thing when it comes to games? (must be telling since they made a recent change to do with how fear stacks and it’s duration)

Dungeons are on the Ok level. Not super amazing, but not super horrible (unless they are bugged like SE path 1 is now).

For example AC path 2-3 is just fine. Boss has a 1 hit downs, and it better be a one hit down. It isn’t that hard to dodge with two rolls + shield block if you are a class that can use. One hit downs are not a bad thing, in fact it is the only thing that makes Path 1/3 AC boss anywhere near scary.

The actual bad path in AC and bad designed boss is in fact path 2. His entire mechanic is 100% ignorable. You can easily just DPSDPSDPSDPS the boss and never ever go down. In fact it is BETTER to ignore the turrets and just DPS the boss as fast as possible as it makes the run faster.

I do agree that dungeons do a trait switch because certain builds can become 100% useless in certain situations. Hey condition damage need to do damage vs environmental objects? Fat chance. Hey you like your build? Go underwater where it becomes useless! That sort of thing.

Certain bosses need tuning and others people state don’t. DPS varies HUGE in this game as you can have a good glass cannon and a bad glass cannon. A good one is such a huge difference in DPS it is almost mind boggling, but they are quite rare as it takes a good amount of skill especially for melee’s.

It would be nice if we could swap inside the dungeon to meet demands of certain fights. And no saying “don’t specc too deeply” isn’t a good response for bad design.

nethykins.7986…

You’re just a bad player then if you’re having trouble in story mode with this stuff. You’re not supposed to spam your support abilities. They are there to be used at the right time. You don’t just stand there and wait to be hit. You don’t just use condition removal the second you get a 2 stack of something.

Seriously, I’m not going to spell out exactly how to counter this. You need to think about it for yourself for it to sink in.

Oh that is a terrible argument: “You’re just a bad player then if you’re having trouble in story mode with this stuff.”

Have you played Twilight Arbor story mode? Those bosses are incredibly difficult, frustratingly so. When my party of fellow guildies finally managed to reach the final boss, all their enthusiasm had disappeared along with the smiles on their faces. They were not having fun. And many of them were considering quitting the dungeon due to all the armor repairs and the absurdly hard final encounter.

And that’s the biggest problem. Not that it’s hard (which it is), but that it isn’t fun. Most people I’ve grouped up with have said, and I quote: “I’m never doing this dungeon ever again, the armor isn’t that important”.

That is a bad sign. Lots of dungeons in GW1 were tons of fun (Sorrow’s Furnace, Frostmaw’s Burrows, Fissure of Woe, Underworld) even if they sometimes were badly designed and unfair (Fissure of Woe, Underworld, DOA).

@Mad Queen

Are you talking TA story or TA explore? TA story reward is really just a toss away hat so it doesn’t give armor, just “attunement” making you able to enter explorable mode without someone else. Even that is optional.

As far as difficulty – TA story IS more difficult than explore mostly since you are going to get newer less skilled players (obviously less now, but back when I did them almost everyone was leveling their main not an alt). That is where the problem lies for SM. The story dungeons aren’t inviting enough to new players. It just smacks them with layers of combat and says “die and figure it out”, such as the lovers fight or TA SM final boss (which order to kill the mobs in). They should have balanced SM around 3 players to allow it to be more akin to Dynamic Event difficulty.

Edit: And before anyone say’s SM isn’t “harder” – You have done Up path right? Compare that nightmare tree to the SM final hero bosses.

EM is fine as it unless your in a bugged dungeon/underwater combat/ or anywhere near the mind numbing bore fest that is HoTW.

I was talking Twilight Arbor story mode yes. Some of my guildies wanted to check it out, and it was fiendishly difficult, especially the final boss. I don’t think I can talk any of them into doing a dungeon ever again. They made no profit what so ever, due to armor repairs, and the final reward was rubbish as well.

And after experiencing Arah in explorable, I’m not sure if I could convince myself either. The Underworld in GW1 was hard but fun. Arah EM is hard and not fun.

If you are not in rare gear and have some toughness and vitality as stats of that gear and stand in red circles on the ground or don’t kill the flowers as well as remove conditions in TA you’re going to have a really hard time.

You should do a gear check before taking anyone into any dungeon.

All the guildies in my guild have rare gear crafted or purchased by me before I take them in a dungeon.

Drew.1865:

You should do a gear check before taking anyone into any dungeon.

This is the EXACT. TYPE. OF. kitten that was touted as something that shouldn’t be an issue in GW2… specifically for story mode – ie: You’re scaled down, so stats don’t mean a kitten thing. All the level increase means is that you’ve probably got a lot more utilities unlocked at your disposal.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Oh that is a terrible argument: “You’re just a bad player then if you’re having trouble in story mode with this stuff.”

Have you played Twilight Arbor story mode? Those bosses are incredibly difficult, frustratingly so. When my party of fellow guildies finally managed to reach the final boss, all their enthusiasm had disappeared along with the smiles on their faces. They were not having fun. And many of them were considering quitting the dungeon due to all the armor repairs and the absurdly hard final encounter.

And that’s the biggest problem. Not that it’s hard (which it is), but that it isn’t fun. Most people I’ve grouped up with have said, and I quote: “I’m never doing this dungeon ever again, the armor isn’t that important”.

That is a bad sign. Lots of dungeons in GW1 were tons of fun (Sorrow’s Furnace, Frostmaw’s Burrows, Fissure of Woe, Underworld) even if they sometimes were badly designed and unfair (Fissure of Woe, Underworld, DOA).

Yes I have done story mode, at least 3 times.

Maybe their idea of fun is just steam rolling through things? Do you feel that you should be rewarded for minimal effort? Do you not think overcoming a difficult encounter is its own reward?

Who cares about repair bills? What else are you going to spend your money on in this game? A legendary? Please, if repair bills are a problem for you, then a legendary is far out of reach.

Story mode is supposed to be easier than explorable, but not so easy that you can just blindly walk through it without any regard for how to play properly.

Yes… you can play how you want, and you don’t need super awesome gear to complete it. But what you do need, is knowledge about your class, proper builds and how to play them.

If you suck at dodging and can’t kite… Don’t be a glass cannon. or at the very least, swap out to more defensive utility skills.

“Playing the way you want” doesn’t mean you get to be terrible and still get every reward you want.

All of those who use the taglines:
“Just dodge it!”,
“You have a bad build”,
“You’re a bad player if you cant do this”
All of the above are really just cop-outs.
Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Individual mobs have cool mechanics – the Knights in TA have a leap-knockdown-flurry combo which is fun to watch for, neutralize, avoid, and position against.
Then they put 3 of them with a boss in TA E.
That. Is. TEDIOUS design. NOT fun, NOT challenging: Tedious.

Generally, you pull the group opf them – spamming dodges (because each knight can Leap-combo at different times; and gib you before anybody could possibly respond) – kill one – outrange the others – and repeat until it’s just the boss left.
Is that hard? No. Not at all.
Is it fun? No. Not at all.
It’s tedium – and people really need to stop mistaking Tedium for Challenge.

Another example is in Story mode CoE. Kudu charges a shot that can’t be avoided nce it fires. That means you have to Dodge at the very end of the charge to avoid it. The problem is that there’s no difference in animation from when he BEGINS charging and when he FINISHES.
Compounded with the fact that he can teleport mid-charge, and you have a stupid tedious mechanic that can’t be avoided unless you’ve done the boss before and know exactly what to expect.

If while Kudu charged, a shock-circle slowly got bigger; then a big blast signified his shot, it’d make it a lot less tedius and bring it to the realm of an actual challenge – rather than something you “Just have to see a few times” before you can actually dodge it.

In short: GW2 Dungeons are objectively very poorly designed; and I hope future dungeons are improved upon.

Individual mobs have cool mechanics – the Knights in TA have a leap-knockdown-flurry combo which is fun to watch for, neutralize, avoid, and position against.
Then they put 3 of them with a boss in TA E.
That. Is. TEDIOUS design. NOT fun, NOT challenging: Tedious.

You can pull them individually, or a couple at a time. You don’t HAVE to fight the entire group at once. This is why people like you are bad. Because you don’t try to separate the enemy group. Any class has the tools to do it.

In short: GW2 Dungeons are objectively very poorly designed; and I hope future dungeons are improved upon.

In short: You need strategy, and teamwork. Being downed is part of the game. It’s not a big deal. That’s why you have teammates to help you. The ONLY problem with Kudu is the 2nd bot if you don’t have condition removal. The rest is a joke.

Learning how to deal with groups is important and not something to be forgotten. This isn’t like other games.

AresOnasis.4703:

Individual mobs have cool mechanics – the Knights in TA have a leap-knockdown-flurry combo which is fun to watch for, neutralize, avoid, and position against.
Then they put 3 of them with a boss in TA E.
That. Is. TEDIOUS design. NOT fun, NOT challenging: Tedious.

You can pull them individually, or a couple at a time. You don’t HAVE to fight the entire group at once. This is why people like you are bad. Because you don’t try to separate the enemy group. Any class has the tools to do it.

People should selectively read even less than they should selectively quote. The guy says in the very next sentence of his post that he knows you can pull them individually and that its not hard. You insult him for not being able to do something he states in his post to be quite easy. Did you just not bother to read the rest of it? And by the by, I agree with him. That fight is either A) easy and tedious as you pull them one at a time or impossible if you are stupid enough to try and fight them all at the same time. A happens a lot more than B, in my experience, and its just as much of a problem in terms of gameplay. Slightly less powerful mobs, but ones smart enough not to run back to their original positions while one of their mates gets pounded into dust IN CLEAR VIEW of them would be a lot more fun.

Webba.3071:

AresOnasis.4703:

Individual mobs have cool mechanics – the Knights in TA have a leap-knockdown-flurry combo which is fun to watch for, neutralize, avoid, and position against.
Then they put 3 of them with a boss in TA E.
That. Is. TEDIOUS design. NOT fun, NOT challenging: Tedious.

You can pull them individually, or a couple at a time. You don’t HAVE to fight the entire group at once. This is why people like you are bad. Because you don’t try to separate the enemy group. Any class has the tools to do it.

People should selectively read even less than they should selectively quote. The guy says in the very next sentence of his post that he knows you can pull them individually and that its not hard. You insult him for not being able to do something he states in his post to be quite easy. Did you just not bother to read the rest of it? And by the by, I agree with him. That fight is either A) easy and tedious as you pull them one at a time or impossible if you are stupid enough to try and fight them all at the same time. A happens a lot more than B, in my experience, and its just as much of a problem in terms of gameplay. Slightly less powerful mobs, but ones smart enough not to run back to their original positions while one of their mates gets pounded into dust IN CLEAR VIEW of them would be a lot more fun.

Okay… First of all, separating the group is tedium? Picking off individual members of a group that would otherwise insta-gib you is tedium? Really?

You can’t complain about a group being too hard, and then say that picking them off is too easy. And then complain that you can’t just rush in and kill them as a group.

I agree the mechanics need a bit of tweaking, But the original argument was that story mode is too hard and saying that people are bad is a “cop-out”. They then go on to list the Knights as a reason why it is too hard. Then in the very next sentence admit that it is easy.

Do you not see the problem here?

@Ares

I can see both sides. I played a monk in everquest – one of the dedicated pulling classes. In my eye’s pulling itself is a tactic (be it from one side of an entire zone to another for example: King Tormax raids during Velious) and can’t be called as an exploit as devs have complete control of where and how the mobs retains agro. I would never ever say “lets pull a boss + adds” in any MMO ever. It is just easier to kill adds solo and then engage the boss.

But that’s just it. It is an instanced boss encounter. The encounter itself has little to be desired. L-whatever isn’t tough at all by himself. It ends up being a game of whack-a-mole till he drops dead so you can go kill the tree. This is not how the fight should be. A better way to do the fight would simply.

L-Whatever solo at 100%
L-Whatever summons 1 add at 75% (He would do a shout about knights to inform)
L-Whatever summons 1 add at 50% (Same)
L-Whatever summons 2 adds at 25% (Slightly different text to say more will come)

Same amount of adds but it breaks the fight into phases so your not in “tunnel vision” beating on a giant wall. This with better leashing would prevent players from ignoring the mechanic that the knights deliver (Heavy dmg to non prepared players), and players would coordinate to kite L while 4 others deal with the Knight/knights by using CC such as Fear/Stuns (Adds like these should be chain stunnable/feared with some DR attached)/roots/chills/minions/<Insert here>

That ia a much better fight than what we have now and looses the tedium of killing mobs in single file to get to the big baddie.

Edit: Just to point the combat is there, the skills are there, the classes are there to make a really neat synergized fight. To use each class to their best abilities, but it isn’t there quite yet.

That’s completely irrelevant to the point that they brought up.

Have you played Twilight Arbor story mode? Those bosses are incredibly difficult, frustratingly so.

and

All of those who use the taglines:
“Just dodge it!”,
“You have a bad build”,
“You’re a bad player if you cant do this”
All of the above are really just cop-outs.

They said this because I stated that the dungeons aren’t hard. They tried to prove that they are indeed too hard. They then go on to say that they are easy if done right. But doing it right is tedious.

How can you not see the problem in this thinking?

The core problem here is that the dungeons aren’t much fun. People can be challenged by a dungeon, fail miserably, and still feel it was fair and they had a good time.

This is not the case with GW2’s current dungeons. I find myself mostly micro-managing small mobs with too much health and too much damage, as I clear one tunnel after the next. Occasionally this is mixed up with a challenge that can only be solved in one way, and requires countless respawning, backtracking through the entire dungeon, and heavy repair costs.

Where are the fun challenges? Where are the puzzles and platforming bits? Why am I only clearing boring mobs, and fighting gimmicky bosses? Why do all of my guildies agree that even after successfully beating a dungeon, they never ever want to do any dungeon in GW2 ever again?

These are the same people I used to clear Underworld, DOA and Fissure of Woe with! These people are used to a challenge and to failure… as long as they are having FUN.

AresOnasis.4703:

Okay… First of all, separating the group is tedium? Picking off individual members of a group that would otherwise insta-gib you is tedium? Really?

Yes, it is. Its not a GW2 problem per say but if this is an intended mechanism rather than the unintentional and undesirable side effect of a necessarily simplistic AI then MMO design has gone backwards in the last 10 years. If I am stomping his face into the ground in full view and earshot of his mates and they don’t notice that’s a massive immersion breaker right there and I find this mechanical, vaguely cynical gameplay to be very tedious, even if it does only take a few minutes on account of it being so easy.

AresOnasis.4703:

You can’t complain about a group being too hard, and then say that picking them off is too easy. And then complain that you can’t just rush in and kill them as a group.

Yeah, actually you can. Something being too easy if you do it the right way and too hard if you do it the wrong way is a serious problem that will jade experienced players and alienate newbies. Given their MO to shake up MMO design and their obvious skill at game design I hope Anet stays away from the pull individual mobs from the group as the best approach technique. Its easy and dull and immersion breaking and they can do better.

AresOnasis.4703:

I agree the mechanics need a bit of tweaking, But the original argument was that story mode is too hard and saying that people are bad is a “cop-out”. They then go on to list the Knights as a reason why it is too hard. Then in the very next sentence admit that it is easy.

I have no comment on the original argument expect to point out the threat title makes no mention of difficulty. In terms of difficulty though I do completely agree with you, dungeons are easy. I have run the various story and xp dungeons with many sub-optimal groups including groups with people below the level requirement and have never failed to complete the run. I’m not a great player but I do keep my eyes open and try to figure out the best way to do things. When that way happens to feel artificial or slightly exploity I find it tedious.

AresOnasis.4703:

Do you not see the problem here?

Frankly no, you have failed to convince me. You seem to not only think of easy and difficult in black and white terms but you also seem to view them as a much greater factor in the fun/boring scale than most other people in this thread do. Whether or not something in a game this complicated is easy or difficult is a phenomenally difficult thing to determine and how much that affects enjoyment even more so. I would suggest a little more respect for the opinions of others and a little more awareness of the limits of your own knowledge.

PS To save you from being predictably tedious and replying by saying how little I know as well I will do it for you. I don’t know how to fix dungeons, I don’t know if they are too hard or easy and in general I don’t claim to know much or have any solutions or truths apart from my own personal experience and ideas about design. Based on nothing but my own opinion I disagree with you and am perfectly happy for you to disagree with me. Have a nice day!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Where are the fun challenges? Where are the puzzles and platforming bits? Why am I only clearing boring mobs, and fighting gimmicky bosses? Why do all of my guildies agree that even after successfully beating a dungeon, they never ever want to do any dungeon in GW2 ever again?

There are two easter egg jumping puzzles in AC (that I know of). Have you seen them? One is funny and the other is a reference to a movie. They offer no in game reward, is that part of the problem? Do you see everything in the dungeon as simply getting in the way of your reward?

CoF path 3 has the things you just listed. CoE exp has a little more variety than just spamming attacks on a boss. CM has the blow up door event (that everyone skips because they think it’s hard or takes too long). It also has the rocket trap, the room with spikes in the floor, etc.

The cool parts in the dungeon aren’t always part of a boss fight, and shouldn’t be. I do agree that not every part of every dungeon is completely optimal. Not every part of every dungeon is unique and interesting.

But you’re making very general statements and completely avoiding the areas where the things you ask for are given to you.

Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Actually, that argument is a cop-out. -Objectively-, the GW2 dungeons have very good design – the sole exception to this is the destroyer boss in CoE.

The only problem one can objectively attest would be a bug, and those are rare.

Why is this objectively true? Because GW2s boss design is in line with a long tradition of games with similar difficulty. The disconnect is that modern gamers, especially MMO gamers, fail at that kind of difficulty.

And they fail hardcore. They are used to being coddled by games such as WoW, which made dungeons boring sleep-lootfiestas.

Maybe it’s just not the game for you – that’s okay. GW2 isn’t supposed to be a wow-like cakewalk. It’s supposed to be challenging in the dungeons.

You’re like someone going to a Mario game and complains that it lacks twitch gameplay, such as FPS or Starcraft require.

Spoiler: Mario’s developers won’t give a kitten about such an opinion. Neither will Arenanet

Zefiris.8297:

Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Actually, that argument is a cop-out. -Objectively-, the GW2 dungeons have very good design – the sole exception to this is the destroyer boss in CoE.

The only problem one can objectively attest would be a bug, and those are rare.

Why is this objectively true? Because GW2s boss design is in line with a long tradition of games with similar difficulty. The disconnect is that modern gamers, especially MMO gamers, fail at that kind of difficulty.

And they fail hardcore. They are used to being coddled by games such as WoW, which made dungeons boring sleep-lootfiestas.

Maybe it’s just not the game for you – that’s okay. GW2 isn’t supposed to be a wow-like cakewalk. It’s supposed to be challenging in the dungeons.

You’re like someone going to a Mario game and complains that it lacks twitch gameplay, such as FPS or Starcraft require.

Spoiler: Mario’s developers won’t give a kitten about such an opinion. Neither will Arenanet

There’s a disconnect with that analogy. GW2 and WoW are within the same genre. Mario and FPS’s/ Starcraft are of different genres, completely different rule-sets. I understand what you’re getting at, but that wasn’t the best way to explain it. The only thing you’re going to compare dungeons in an MMO is with other dungeons in other MMO’s.
FPS’s and RTS genre has no place here.

I for one, never played wow. I have played other MMO’s, a lof them do dungeons differently. Some break up boss fights, some just make you faceroll to the end, but you’d know for sure what a challenging dungeon was compared to one that was badly designed “subjectively”. Funnily enough, before launch people were saying experiences in GW2 would define the difference between games like wow. Now after a few months, it’s more or less, the dungeons are different from wow….Not worse, not better, just different.

I agree that there’s not much objectively that’s wrong with the dungeons. Saying a dungeon’s design is plain, boring, not fun, mob pools are too high, they hit too hard, are all subjective comments. Objectively, does it have any exploits? does it have any major bugs? do you fall through the floor every 5 mins? If No is the answer, then objectively, it’s fine.

PS: Mario devs don’t care because it’s Nintendo. They produce the same thing year in, year out. Anet continually state they want to listen to community, if they don’t then they can prepare to see a lot of people switch off of GW2, and if they’re not In game, then they’re not using the Cash shop…if they don’t use the cash shop then the game won’t be sustained for as long as they plan.

I would really love to hear from the people who designed all this. What was the thinking behind it? I realize that I will have to change my builds sometimes, and that’s okay with me, but did they really mean for us to fight – die – run back – fight die – run back, etc, ad nauseam. If they could at least address this and tell us what they were thinking, or aiming for, it might shed some light on whole thing.

Having said that, I simply don’t enjoy the dungeons. In part, I miss the holy triad of Tank/DPS/Healer. Now, that may be just me coming from that ‘other’ mmorpg, and I can accept that I will have to change and adapt to this new game, which I love. Reading these types of forum posts is part of that process, and I’m willing to put the time in, in order to reap the reward, which is (I hope) ‘fun.’

In this game, I’m not ever sure what my role is. This is regardless of which toon I’m running. However, I do admit that it may be due to my past experiences with other games, where I knew my role. It’s just that, well, I can’t figure out what the hell is going on half the time. It all seems to be…messy.

Are there changes coming down the pipeline? Are the developers addressing the learning curve? I want to hear what they are saying about these issues. Does anyone have any good recommendations as to where I might look to find that sort of information? I don’t want to have to scour the forums and other websites just to be able to have fun in a dungeon.

At the moment, all I do is WvWvW, and I have a lot to say about that too, but that’s another thing altogether isn’t it. The one thing I will say is that I have FUN in WvWvW, which is why I do it. I do NOT have fun running dungeons in GW2, and I miss it. I used to love dungeon crawling, and I would love to just take my favorite character and throw him into some of the dungeons in that ‘other’ game. Why? Because you can say a lot about that ‘other’ game, but you cannot deny that the dungeons (for the most part) were pure genius, and tons of fun as well. My fervent hope, is that GW2 will rise up to be that good, at least in my eyes. For the moment, I’m not going anywhere, and I will continue to try and figure out how to have fun in these dungeons. I hope I don’t have to wait too long.

I won’t respond to Ares individually – I’ll just say they really need to re-read what I said more carefully. Also, they’re confusing what I’ve said with what someone else said, a few times in their posts. Until they can get at least this right, and find some sort of focal-point to direct their posts to, they’re not worth imparting counterpoints to.

Zefiris.8297:

Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Actually, that argument is a cop-out. -Objectively-, the GW2 dungeons have very good design – the sole exception to this is the destroyer boss in CoE.

The only problem one can objectively attest would be a bug, and those are rare.

Why is this objectively true? Because GW2s boss design is in line with a long tradition of games with similar difficulty. The disconnect is that modern gamers, especially MMO gamers, fail at that kind of difficulty.

And they fail hardcore. They are used to being coddled by games such as WoW, which made dungeons boring sleep-lootfiestas.

Maybe it’s just not the game for you – that’s okay. GW2 isn’t supposed to be a wow-like cakewalk. It’s supposed to be challenging in the dungeons.

You’re like someone going to a Mario game and complains that it lacks twitch gameplay, such as FPS or Starcraft require.

Spoiler: Mario’s developers won’t give a kitten about such an opinion. Neither will Arenanet

You know, the funny thing is that when you bring up WoW as an example of EZmoad, you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot, if you’re comparing to GW2. ^^;
Not only do GW2’s dungeon designs come off as exceedingly unpolished when compared to WoW’s dungeon/raid tiers; they are also amateurly designed, to boot – as well as offering very little progressive oppurtunity on individual pulls, aside from gimmicky metagamey “Pull one Knight at once, and let the rest reset” tactics – which I ~expected~ GW2 to depart from; if ANet’s hype for the dungeons were believable.

Granted that WoW has a heavier focus on boss mechanics than mob-pack intricacies(or lack thereof); but the sheer multitude of mechanics offered by the bosses in a single dungeon of WoW outpace GW2’s handful of mob-type-based mechanics for the majority of the released game.

I don’t mean to bring up the W-word – I know it’s a volatile subject around here – but I just thought I’d have to mention how your comparison was flawed; before moving on to explaining myself further:

The problem is that GW2’s dungeons are rarely an actual -challenge-. Either a boss takes 5mins longer to kill than it honestly should (Unthreatening punching-bag; tedium) or the tells for certain mechnics are either unintuitive or nonexistant.
Aside from these boss-related issues, trash-packs are designed sloppily.

Let’s use an easy example: Inquest Grenadiers. They do literally the same thing for 3 skills: Spam 3 different types of grenades; spawn 6 at once; with the grenades being unavoidable unless you dodgeroll.
Yes, they’re fightable. No, they’re not particularly hard.
They take a long time to kill, they spam a skill that hits for roughly 1/4th your health, depending on health-tier and build, and there’s 6 of them.

I want somebody to explain to me how this design is
1)Interesting and
2)Fun
The “strategy” for this pack is to essentially layer disruptive CC indefinetly – which truly does assume either profession or utility stacking – and even then, it’s HIGHLY unlikely to ever keep them CCed for long enough to avoid a single death to this uninteresting, unintuitive, unfun mob-pack.
The Grenadiers are just one example of many.

I hope now people will quit knee-jerking to call anyone who critisizes GW2’s dungeon design “baddies”/“noobs”.

ADDENDUM: Think about how the acquisition of Legendary weapons is designed.
It’s almost entirely monetarily gained, right? Whether through grinding for gold; to working the Mystic Forge for Clover returns; to grinding up/buying lodestones; to getting the marks of honor – it’s. All. A grind.
Not a sprawling, challenging, personalized quest for each Legendary weapon.
A grind.
Not a skill-based endeavor – a time-based endeavor.
An act of attrition.
Of ~tedium~.
Now, look back to dungeons.

The design permeates the entirety of GW2.
I hate to make the correlation – but, to me, NCSoft’s Korean roots are showing in a pretty nasty way, don’t you think?

Soki.3027:

I won’t respond to Ares individually – I’ll just say they really need to re-read what I said more carefully. Also, they’re confusing what I’ve said with what someone else said, a few times in their posts. Until they can get at least this right, and find some sort of focal-point to direct their posts to, they’re not worth imparting counterpoints to.

Zefiris.8297:

Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Actually, that argument is a cop-out. -Objectively-, the GW2 dungeons have very good design – the sole exception to this is the destroyer boss in CoE.

The only problem one can objectively attest would be a bug, and those are rare.

Why is this objectively true? Because GW2s boss design is in line with a long tradition of games with similar difficulty. The disconnect is that modern gamers, especially MMO gamers, fail at that kind of difficulty.

And they fail hardcore. They are used to being coddled by games such as WoW, which made dungeons boring sleep-lootfiestas.

Maybe it’s just not the game for you – that’s okay. GW2 isn’t supposed to be a wow-like cakewalk. It’s supposed to be challenging in the dungeons.

You’re like someone going to a Mario game and complains that it lacks twitch gameplay, such as FPS or Starcraft require.

Spoiler: Mario’s developers won’t give a kitten about such an opinion. Neither will Arenanet

You know, the funny thing is that when you bring up WoW as an example of EZmoad, you’re really just shooting yourself in the foot, if you’re comparing to GW2. ^^;
Not only do GW2’s dungeon designs come off as exceedingly unpolished when compared to WoW’s dungeon/raid tiers; they are also amateurly designed, to boot – as well as offering very little progressive oppurtunity on individual pulls, aside from gimmicky metagamey “Pull one Knight at once, and let the rest reset” tactics – which I ~expected~ GW2 to depart from; if ANet’s hype for the dungeons were believable.

Granted that WoW has a heavier focus on boss mechanics than mob-pack intricacies(or lack thereof); but the sheer multitude of mechanics offered by the bosses in a single dungeon of WoW outpace GW2’s handful of mob-type-based mechanics for the majority of the released game.

I don’t mean to bring up the W-word – I know it’s a volatile subject around here – but I just thought I’d have to mention how wrong you were about your comparisoN before moving on to explaining myself further:

The problem is that GW2’s dungeons are rarely an actual -challenge-. Either a boss takes 5mins longer to kill than it honestly should (Unthreatening punching-bag; tedium) or the tells for certain mechnics are either unintuitive or nonexistant.
Aside from these boss-related issues, trash-packs are designed sloppily.

Let’s use an easy example: Inquest Grenadiers. They do literally the same thing for 3 skills: Spam 3 different types of grenades; spawn 6 at once; with the grenades being unavoidable unless you dodgeroll.
Yes, they’re fightable. No, they’re not particularly hard.
They take a long time to kill, they spam a skill that hits for roughly 1/4th your health, depending on health-tier and build, and there’s 6 of them.

I want somebody to explain to me how this design is
1)Interesting and
2)Fun
The “strategy” for this pack is to essentially layer disruptive CC indefinetly – which truly does assume either profession or utility stacking – and even then, it’s HIGHLY unlikely to ever keep them CCed for long enough to avoid a single death to this uninteresting, unintuitive, unfun mob-pack.
The Grenadiers are just one example of many.

I hope now people will quit knee-jerking to call anyone who critisizes GW2’s dungeon design “baddies”/“noobs”.

So in order to counter his argument you bring up a trash pull the devs themselves think is bad and are actively trying to fix? You need to restructure your argument or just give up I think.

Vasham.2408:

So in order to counter his argument you bring up a trash pull the devs themselves think is bad and are actively trying to fix? You need to restructure your argument or just give up I think.

Oki-Doki – Do recall the working-term “One example” before I mentioned that particularly obvious example, though.

Pulls that include more than one Support Golem – the type that evokes a non-removable Fire Shield on all of its nearby allies – an example of a well-designed mechanic.
One Golem is an interesting challenge – to overcome the mobs body-blocking the Support Golem to end the source of Fire Shield is an interesting mechanic.
But that’s where things go wrong.
ANet seems to be in love with the idea of “More is better”. They have a mob that has an interesting ability that must be handled in a certain way. Then they add more of them. And more. And more.

3 Support Golems in a wave-style event with Bomb-bots rushing at the nearest player and beginning to detonate, while they have a Fire Shield on, is no longer an example of interesting mechanics. You must kill 3 Support Golems (Keep in mind, 1 makes it difficult to attack for any length of time) – which require a minute of straight damaging before you down one – for 3 of them.
While dealing with Fire stacks.

This sort of encounter is fightable, yes. Without corpse-running? Yes/ Is there any sort of strategy involved, other than “Stack condition removal at the expense of everything else, and just haphazardly tunnel-vision on the Support Golems”?
No.

This one-dimensional type of execution that demands a specific sort of traiting; with no option to adjust spent trait-points in-dungeon, is tedious and poorly-made.

I also go back to my Knights example, in TA E Forward-Forward path.
The boss is not hard by any means. The fact that he pulls with 3 Knights, no matter what, who each can do their leap-combo at different times, is badly designed. It pushes you into a metagamey “strategy” of letting the other mobs get bored, run away, and let you finish off their buddy.

If GW2 was supposed to make the game-world feel alive and teeming with personality, and make the combat feel strategic and satisfying – it SORELY missed its mark, in dungeons.

I do hope you can respond to the overarching topic now; rather than kneejerk to what is, effectively, semantics. If you can’t, you can always relinquish whatever point you wanted to make to me.
I brought up more interesting things to discuss than a simple example of the bad design that’s the norm in GW2 dungeons – you may want to respond to those, now. You know – the ones that go along the veins of
“GW2 dungeons rarely being an actual challenge; rather than an exercise in tedium”.

Gator

The only thing I can really say to you is: You need to define what your role in a group. You are in charge of how you want to be a team player. You need to figure out how you want to play, or what way you play best and design your build around that.

For example. On my Necro, I switch between playing a Condition Damage AoE DPS spec, and a Tanky build built around stripping boons/conditions and direct Damage.

One is obviously a DPS spec, the other is a group support spec. If you are stuck in the Trinity mindset, think of GW2 as having a different Trinity consisting of, DPS, Support, Control. Although, I would personally say Control = Support.

DPS = Obvious
Support = Providing some group heals, Boons, Condition Removal
Control = Stuns, Fears, Knock Down/Back, Kiting, Damage Absorbing

Soki.3027:

Vasham.2408:

So in order to counter his argument you bring up a trash pull the devs themselves think is bad and are actively trying to fix? You need to restructure your argument or just give up I think.

Oki-Doki – Do recall the working-term “One example” before I mentioned that particularly obvious example, though.

Pulls that include more than one Support Golem – the type that evokes a non-removable Fire Shield on all of its nearby allies – an example of a well-designed mechanic.
One Golem is an interesting challenge – to overcome the mobs body-blocking the Support Golem to end the source of Fire Shield is an interesting mechanic.
But that’s where things go wrong.
ANet seems to be in love with the idea of “More is better”. They have a mob that has an interesting ability that must be handled in a certain way. Then they add more of them. And more. And more.

3 Support Golems in a wave-style event with Bomb-bots rushing at the nearest player and beginning to detonate, while they have a Fire Shield on, is no longer an example of interesting mechanics. You must kill 3 Support Golems (Keep in mind, 1 makes it difficult to attack for any length of time) – which require a minute of straight damaging before you down one – for 3 of them.
While dealing with Fire stacks.

This sort of encounter is fightable, yes. Without corpse-running? Yes/ Is there any sort of strategy involved, other than “Stack condition removal at the expense of everything else, and just haphazardly tunnel-vision on the Support Golems”?
No.

This one-dimensional type of execution that demands a specific sort of traiting; with no option to adjust spent trait-points in-dungeon, is tedious and poorly-made.

If that’s the strategy then that’s the strategy. No matter what build you are everyone can switch to at least one condition removal skill, many of which can work on other people as well. Needing to vary your skills mid dungeon on a pull by pull basis is not bad design. If anything it’s better than the “pull everything, AOE it down in 30 seconds” crap most MMO gamers are brainwashed with. Having to actually think about a trash pull isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s something minor as “switch one of your skills to X.”

I also go back to my Knights example, in TA E Forward-Forward path.
The boss is not hard by any means. The fact that he pulls with 3 Knights, no matter what, who each can do their leap-combo at different times, is badly designed. It pushes you into a metagamey “strategy” of letting the other mobs get bored, run away, and let you finish off their buddy.

It took you two tries, but you finally found one of the dumber pulls that doesn’t appear to be on the devs radar. I’ll agree this pull is stupid, but it’s so far one of two that I’ve come across. The Inquest Grenadiers being the other, but the devs again admitted to such and are working on changing it, making it a non-issue.

If GW2 was supposed to make the game-world feel alive and teeming with personality, and make the combat feel strategic and satisfying – it SORELY missed its mark, in dungeons.

Your subjective opinion, I’m afraid. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it a fact. That’s how simple it is really.

I do hope you can respond to the overarching topic now; rather than kneejerk to what is, effectively, semantics. If you can’t, you can always relinquish whatever point you wanted to make to me.

No I’m quite happy to keep proving you wrong, no matter how condescending you act.

I brought up more interesting things to discuss than a simple example of the bad design that’s the norm in GW2 dungeons – you may want to respond to those, now. You know – the ones that go along the veins of
“GW2 dungeons rarely being an actual challenge; rather than an exercise in tedium”

Kid you don’t really know tedium in MMOs if you think GW2’s dungeons are tedious in any way. Tedium is a three month grind to even get access to a basic dungeon you won’t run once everyone’s done an attunement quest within. Tedium is farming a dungeon over and over just for the right to flick a switch and have it be an actual challenge, to the point people don’t want to run the hard mode since they’re sick of the place. Tedium is watching the same piece of loot drop after over a hundred clears, but you can’t go to the next dungeon until that piece of loot you need drops or the first boss will stomp your face in due to a minor stat difference. If trash pulls are what you define as tedium I think you haven’t experienced much of anything in this genre of gaming. Come back when you have.

I have played Dungeons and Dragons Online, which isn’t a brilliant MMO by any stretch of the imagination… BUT, it does have well designed dungeons. It has interesting traps, puzzles, platforming challenges and multiple branching paths. It makes good use of height differences, has climbing sections, underwater sections, all sorts of things to keep you invested.

GW2 has all of these mechanics, but seems to put them to terrible use. Most of the dungeons involve clearing a room or a tunnel of mobs with very high health… and thats it. Especially Caudecus Manor, Ascalon Catacombs and Twilight Arbor are extremely tedious and linear, with gimmicky obstacles. When ever I do those dungeons, I feel like I’m doing work. Long tedious work. I don’t feel challenged, and I don’t have fun. I don’t have the feeling that me and my party are trekking through an exciting maze and figuring out our own strategies. It’s more along the lines of one long winding corridor filled with enemies, and sometimes a trap.

Vasham.2408:

If that’s the strategy then that’s the strategy. No matter what build you are everyone can switch to at least one condition removal skill, many of which can work on other people as well. Needing to vary your skills mid dungeon on a pull by pull basis is not bad design. If anything it’s better than the “pull everything, AOE it down in 30 seconds” crap most MMO gamers are brainwashed with. Having to actually think about a trash pull isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s something minor as “switch one of your skills to X.”

It took you two tries, but you finally found one of the dumber pulls that doesn’t appear to be on the devs radar. I’ll agree this pull is stupid, but it’s so far one of two that I’ve come across. The Inquest Grenadiers being the other, but the devs again admitted to such and are working on changing it, making it a non-issue.

Your subjective opinion, I’m afraid. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it a fact. That’s how simple it is really.

I do hope you can respond to the overarching topic now; rather than kneejerk to what is, effectively, semantics. If you can’t, you can always relinquish whatever point you wanted to make to me.

No I’m quite happy to keep proving you wrong, no matter how condescending you act.

I brought up more interesting things to discuss than a simple example of the bad design that’s the norm in GW2 dungeons – you may want to respond to those, now. You know – the ones that go along the veins of
“GW2 dungeons rarely being an actual challenge; rather than an exercise in tedium”

Kid you don’t really know tedium in MMOs if you think GW2’s dungeons are tedious in any way. Tedium is a three month grind to even get access to a basic dungeon you won’t run once everyone’s done an attunement quest within. Tedium is farming a dungeon over and over just for the right to flick a switch and have it be an actual challenge, to the point people don’t want to run the hard mode since they’re sick of the place. Tedium is watching the same piece of loot drop after over a hundred clears, but you can’t go to the next dungeon until that piece of loot you need drops or the first boss will stomp your face in due to a minor stat difference. If trash pulls are what you define as tedium I think you haven’t experienced much of anything in this genre of gaming. Come back when you have.

Yeah, no.. See.. That’s not how examples work.
“You brought up one, I’ll give you that. But you’re still wrong!”
I brought up one out of 7 I have off the top of my head, of bosses and mob-pulls, that are poorly designed. I’m not going to list examples and explain them in simple terms so you can understand that GW2’s dungeons are a step back for the industry. You’re droning really hard already, and I can see you won’t alter your opinion based on examples.

You’re entering this discussion on one decrepit leg; and when you think you’re “proving me wrong”, you’re cherrypicking which parts of my posts you want to respond to – ignoring the overall point in each one.

I’ve played EQ, FFXI, WoW, GW, and now GW2. I know about the skinner-box method like the back of my hand.
I also know that the same design flaws that existed in GW show themselves in GW2.
I’ve also played games in other genres to a high degree of competency. I’ve competed in invitationals for two modern 2D fighting games; and won 2nd in one. For 5 seasons of WoW arena, I placed within the top 0.5% of the ladder. I had my full-fledged Relic equipment for THF and NIN in FFXI.
I know a good deal about what makes a legitimately good multiplayer game; and I can pick out design flaws that can make a game deviate from being good.

^Was not to tell you how amazing I am. It’s to iterate how unfounded your “You don’t know TRUE tedium!” personal attack was. I know real tedium – and GW2 exhibits it with its Legendary grind – and it exhibits a different form of it with ANet’s “more is better” philosophy of mob-pack design and in terms of boss-health.

If you’re going to try to attack my credibility about “knowing true tedium”, you should also think about the game we’re talking about, here.

GW2 markets itself as a jump-in-and-play MMO. With the way the dungeons are put together, it seems like we’re going back in time 10 years to what would be acceptable design for an MMO dungeon during a time when Absolute Virtue was considered “Super hardcore epic-challenge” – when all it really did was spam every class’ 2-hour abilities and have a stupid amount of Health.

I’ll end with a suggestion: Think about your response this time before kneejerking and trying to resort to some sort of feeble fallacy such as attacking my credibility.

I’d be willing to bet I’m better than you at this and many other games, so keep that in mind as well.

Soki.3027:

Yeah, no.. See.. That’s not how examples work.
“You brought up one, I’ll give you that. But you’re still wrong!”
I brought up one out of 7 I have off the top of my head, of bosses and mob-pulls, that are poorly designed. I’m not going to list examples and explain them in simple terms so you can understand that GW2’s dungeons are a step back for the industry. You’re droning really hard already, and I can see you won’t alter your opinion based on examples.

You’re entering this discussion on one decrepit leg; and when you think you’re “proving me wrong”, you’re cherrypicking which parts of my posts you want to respond to – ignoring the overall point in each one.

I’ve played EQ, FFXI, WoW, GW, and now GW2. I know about the skinner-box method like the back of my hand.
I also know that the same design flaws that existed in GW show themselves in GW2.
I’ve also played games in other genres to a high degree of competency. I’ve competed in invitationals for two modern 2D fighting games; and won 2nd in one. For 5 seasons of WoW arena, I placed within the top 0.5% of the ladder. I had my full-fledged Relic equipment for THF and NIN in FFXI.
I know a good deal about what makes a legitimately good multiplayer game; and I can pick out design flaws that can make a game deviate from being good.

^Was not to tell you how amazing I am. It’s to iterate how unfounded your “You don’t know TRUE tedium!” personal attack was. I know real tedium – and GW2 exhibits it with its Legendary grind – and it exhibits a different form of it with ANet’s “more is better” philosophy of mob-pack design and in terms of boss-health.

If you’re going to try to attack my credibility about “knowing true tedium”, you should also think about the game we’re talking about, here.

GW2 markets itself as a jump-in-and-play MMO. With the way the dungeons are put together, it seems like we’re going back in time 10 years to what would be acceptable design for an MMO dungeon during a time when Absolute Virtue was considered “Super hardcore epic-challenge” – when all it really did was spam every class’ 2-hour abilities and have a stupid amount of Health.

I’ll end with a suggestion: Think about your response this time before kneejerking and trying to resort to some sort of feeble fallacy such as attacking my credibility.

I’d be willing to bet I’m better than you at this and many other games, so keep that in mind as well.

Yes, I’m droning because what you describe as poor design is something I’ve never had trouble with, barring a few moments I too have agreed are terribly designed. Yet you claim to somehow be “better” at this game? Claiming superiority is the first sign of someone with something to prove on a personal level rather than anyone trying to give constructive criticism. Did my remark about your potential lack of experience touch you on a personal level? I would certainly hope not.

Anyway you can claim all that experience all night long and it doesn’t mean anything. Rather than whine and complain about every aspect of every pull of every dungeon like a hyperbole spewing child you could have noted the parts that need fixing in a well worded manner. As for the rest it was only a matter of following my example: use strategy and talk with your group. Communication and working with the party helps, almost to the point of trivializing the trash in this game. One person saying, “Hey, I’ll run support for this dungeon” can make a world of difference with the difficulty and so called “tedium” you see around every corner. Or maybe being smart about gearing instead of wearing berzerker armor then being mad when the boss downs you instantly. That gear’s only good for one fight anyway (Arah Seer path, btw), and it’s hardly required.

Could bosses be more interesting? Sure they could. It’s also Arenanet’s first round of dungeons in this game and with new MMOs the devs often start simple. Inflamatory threads about how dungeons are terrible are pointless when advice on how they could improve is both more constructive and helpful to them. Rather than yelling “TEDIUM!! ONE HIT KILLS!!! CRAPPY DESIGN!!!” in such vague terms would could say “Why don’t you try X, or Y? That would make bosses better and dungeons more fun.”

But alas, you’ve chosen your path. Shame it’s the one that nobody listens to except those with the same poor attitude. Well, them and people who like to remind you that no, you’re not helping. Screaming and flailing will only make things worse. But if this thread’s proven anything it’s that you don’t care regardless.

Oh dear, has it evolved into this again? People calling each other bad players and claiming superiority? Dear oh dear.

Why do people get so defensive and hostile the moment someone disagrees with them? Why not simply use well reasoned arguments instead? Isn’t that the point of a forum? … Well, then again, looking at most forums… perhaps not.

My biggest issue with the dungeons currently is NOT, read NOT in bolt letters, the difficulty. I have completed plenty of them. After having fallen off the Clocktower countless times, I can also safely say that I do not mind learning a challenge, even if it takes countless times.

However, after making it through the challenge, it has to feel rewarding. With dungeons me and my party felt that with each challenge we survived, we were really just setting ourselves up for tedious work. I think everyone was hoping that a dungeon would mean a labyrinth with devious traps and puzzles. And not a long corridor, with occasionally a room, and just mobs of enemies with really high health pools.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Oh dear, has it evolved into this again? People calling each other bad players and claiming superiority? Dear oh dear.

Why do people get so defensive and hostile the moment someone disagrees with them? Why not simply use well reasoned arguments instead? Isn’t that the point of a forum? … Well, then again, looking at most forums… perhaps not.

My biggest issue with the dungeons currently is NOT, read NOT in bolt letters, the difficulty. I have completed plenty of them. After having fallen off the Clocktower countless times, I can also safely say that I do not mind learning a challenge, even if it takes countless times.

However, after making it through the challenge, it has to feel rewarding. With dungeons me and my party felt that with each challenge we survived, we were really just setting ourselves up for tedious work. I think everyone was hoping that a dungeon would mean a labyrinth with devious traps and puzzles. And not a long corridor, with occasionally a room, and just mobs of enemies with really high health pools.

While I’ve noted your condescending attitude to people who disagree with you in other posts going so far as to put on the act of a mother talking to a confused three year old when they perform the heinous crime of, gasp, having differing opinions on subjective matters, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and humor you here.

I’ve bolded the part I wish to speak of. I enjoy running the dungeons for the challenge and the story. Rewards for me personally are fine, those being silver and karma. I also understand that isn’t for everyone and agree the main problem with dungeons, barring a few BS pulls, are the rewards. Anet has already stated a fix for this is in the pipeline and I trust them to follow through, though what that reward system is I don’t know.

I will however state that a proper reward system should have been in place from the start. I’m just glad they’re working on fixing it.

While I’ve noted your condescending attitude to people who disagree with you in other posts going so far as to put on the act of a mother talking to a confused three year old when they perform the heinous crime of, gasp, having differing opinions on subjective matters, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and humor you here.
I’ve bolded the part I wish to speak of. I enjoy running the dungeons for the challenge and the story. Rewards for me personally are fine, those being silver and karma. I also understand that isn’t for everyone and agree the main problem with dungeons, barring a few BS pulls, are the rewards. Anet has already stated a fix for this is in the pipeline and I trust them to follow through, though what that reward system is I don’t know.
I will however state that a proper reward system should have been in place from the start. I’m just glad they’re working on fixing it.

Actually, they may have been referring to me as well – and our opinions seem pretty much aligned (Dungeons are not at all hard, just tedious).

I truly do hope ANet refines the dungeon experiences in the future. If they just keep making things like stupidly-easy but long bossfights; bosses that have no feasible tells; bosses that spawn with adds that, alone, have cool mechanics, but together, turn into a CF of bad design and misguided “More is better” ideals; or traps you’d literally ave to have foresight to see coming; dungeons will be forever-mediocre, and people who accept and thrive on mediocrity (das yew) will be the only demographic who enjoys the game aside from pvpers – something I don’t think any company should strive for with their design goals.

Soki.3027:

While I’ve noted your condescending attitude to people who disagree with you in other posts going so far as to put on the act of a mother talking to a confused three year old when they perform the heinous crime of, gasp, having differing opinions on subjective matters, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and humor you here.
I’ve bolded the part I wish to speak of. I enjoy running the dungeons for the challenge and the story. Rewards for me personally are fine, those being silver and karma. I also understand that isn’t for everyone and agree the main problem with dungeons, barring a few BS pulls, are the rewards. Anet has already stated a fix for this is in the pipeline and I trust them to follow through, though what that reward system is I don’t know.
I will however state that a proper reward system should have been in place from the start. I’m just glad they’re working on fixing it.

Actually, they may have been referring to me as well – and our opinions seem pretty much aligned (Dungeons are not at all hard, just tedious).

I truly do hope ANet refines the dungeon experiences in the future. If they just keep making things like stupidly-easy but long bossfights; bosses that have no feasible tells; bosses that spawn with adds that, alone, have cool mechanics, but together, turn into a CF of bad design and misguided “More is better” ideals; or traps you’d literally ave to have foresight to see coming; dungeons will be forever-mediocre, and people who accept and thrive on mediocrity (das yew) will be the only demographic who enjoys the game aside from pvpers – something I don’t think any company should strive for with their design goals.

I think it’s cute that your only response is to belittle people who are able to succeed were you obviously fail, all the while regurgitating the same buzzwords and stale arguments. Please continue, it makes me laugh.

Anyway I’m ignoring you now. I have better things to do than waste my time arguing with a petulant child.

well, same old song, same old song…

There are people whining about being one shotted, there are people whining about getting stacks of dots on them, there are people whining about being killed…

few things to say, every prof. in this game has way to counter any problems of above ( way more easy in 5 man group )

Every single one of you can time your dodges or other cooldowns
Every single one of you can start to kite or line of sight if needed
Every single one of you can change your skills / weapons for specific bossess / trashpacks
Every single one of you can avoid dying on any pack, if you are smart and good enuff.

The fact, that some of you fail at avoiding the deaths, is not fail / poor design of the game, it is your fail.

And whining about it somewhere, will not make you better, it will most likely make the game worse..

Are you sure that you want to turn GW2 to WoW like game, where you run through 100 of mobs and smash randomly 4 keys ?

Are you sure you want to turn it to no brainer Diablo 3, where you continuously spam left mouse click and you still win the game ?

What is wrong with learning the mobs, learning how to deal with them and learning how to combine your skill bar and when to use things right ?

I am new to this game, I got warrior and elementalist.

I ran 4 different dungeons, all together about 30 times.

And I never had issues which you guys have.

Does that make me some kind of superhuman ? Hell it does not, it just makes me someone, who does not suffer from tunnel vision and can think and focus !

Most of the people I grouped with, kept dying randomly on random things, I never seen em getting out of the way when needed, I never seen em kiting a mob or stuning it at right time, or removing conditions from them selfs and so forth..

And those are the people that then flames the design, not their own failure.

Honestly, the noobs and effortless players are getting trully boring and annoying. I dont want all MMO games to be complete hack and slash no brainer, kitten it…

Who is with me ?

dungeons are fine – i dont have a problem with them – when i die it’s usually my fault

but sometimes those stun/fear/daze locks are annoying but it was probably my fault for getting caught in them or not having any condition removal O=

pa – TA story was super easy – i think i did it at 55? recommended level?

I find the dungeons to be completely devoid of challenge; with the only times I’ve ever been downed being to cheese-mechanics no amount of skill could see coming. (Random traps that cannot be dodged being an example)

GW2 dungeons are designed very poorly. From people I’ve spoken with on the subject, if they think they’re designed well and are a decent challenge, I’ve found out that they’d never done anything of note that is an actual challenge that isn’t a grind in any other MMO.
If you’re not familiar with what makes something in an MMO a challenge, you really shouldn’t try asserting that GW2 dungeons are challenging.

I suppose Mediocrity is this community’s mainstay. If you want GW2 dungeons to be a mediocre slog through cheesily-designed tunnels, I really don’t know how to argue against that sort of nonsense. =\