Guild Wars 2

I challenge anyone to have a go at the dungeons in Dungeons and Dragons Online, and then return and tell me which dungeons are more fun. It really is a shame, the dungeons in GW2 could be so much more interesting and so much more fun. All the mechanics are there, but not put to use. That really is the core issue.

There are other problems that have made dungeons like Twilight Arbor (both storymode and explorable) a nightmare to my party. I consider all of them pretty good players, with plenty of experience running dungeons in various other MMO’s (including GW1). I’ll try to explain below.

The problem doesn’t arise from difficulty, but rather the way the learning curve is presented. There are various bosses in Twilight Arbor that are either way too easy to the point where the fight is boring, or require trial and error. My party has wiped countless times at the same boss, only to be kicked back to a waypoint all the way at the start of the dungeon, having to spend all their silver on armor repairs, and then walk all the way back through the dungeon to a boss that will have reset by then. While backtracking through the dungeon, often they would be killed by death-flowers that would either spawn underneath them or be invisible, and again they would have expensive armor repairs to do. Sometimes they would enter the boss battle for one second, and be instantly killed by a poorly indicated attack, or roll into a death-flower by accident while dodging an attack from the boss.

I know you can use the death-flowers to revive. That is not the issue here. The issue is the discouraging un-fun way in which the challenge is presented. The tedium of having all your hard work undone, and having to trek through the whole dungeon again. It’s just not fun.

All this could be forgiven if the dungeon in general wasn’t just a long corridor with mobs. But I have yet to see a single room in any of the dungeons that provided interesting options. It’s so… boring. I don’t feel encouraged to finish it at all. Even if the end reward is good, shouldn’t the run itself be fun as well?

And I know what some of you are thinking. “A good player doesn’t die at all!” I have been on those runs too! I have had plenty of deathless runs in dungeons where everyone knew what they were doing, and no one messed up. And it still wasn’t any fun! Where is the fun?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

My party has wiped countless times at the same boss, only to be kicked back to a waypoint all the way at the start of the dungeon, having to spend all their silver on armor repairs, and then walk all the way back through the dungeon to a boss that will have reset by then.

What boss specifically? I really can’t think of many Trail/error bosses in explore path beside L-Whatever. He is located on the hardest path as well. Maybe you can count the shield in F/F being one shot and you not knowing, but that isn’t that bad. Not sure why you would run into a shield either.

Story mode is harder than most explore mode paths… but also, story mode has more interesting boss mechanics.

IMO, the Fire Golem phase of the Kudo fight in SE story is harder than any of the hard encounters in the explore mode dungeons. Heals off conditions (bye bye condition builds), really hard to dodge/strafe all his attacks which hit real hard with the harsh DoT at the end, and a buttload of HP. I think if I was scaled at level 80, it would still get my behind kicked thoroughly by this guy…. Although having almost x3 more HP would help alot.

The reason behind literally every single person whining (it’s not legitimate criticism really, it’s akin to complaining about the difficulty of Tetris’ later stages) in this thread comes down to not having the experience yet to master the dungeon in question, and consequently not exhibit the will to try again. You often die the first two or three runs? That’s part of the learning process. Take from it and try again. Think outside the box of your regular PVE modus operandi.

I hope ANet realizes they are dealing with one very vocal minority here. To name an anecdotal example of the silent majority, my guild of mostly casual players, who don’t even use voice chat or strategize before entering a dungeon, are having no problems whatsoever with any of the dungeon paths. I don’t recall the need to quit due to difficulty mid-way on a first run, even. In my opinion, dungeons need a boost in difficulty, at least those that will get added later on.

Jamais vu.5284:

The reason behind literally every single person whining (it’s not legitimate criticism really, it’s akin to complaining about the difficulty of Tetris’ later stages) in this thread comes down to not having the experience yet to master the dungeon in question, and consequently not exhibit the will to try again. You often die the first two or three runs? That’s part of the learning process. Take from it and try again. Think outside the box of your regular PVE modus operandi.

I hope ANet realizes they are dealing with one very vocal minority here. To name an anecdotal example of the silent majority, my guild of mostly casual players, who don’t even use voice chat or strategize before entering a dungeon, are having no problems whatsoever with any of the dungeon paths. I don’t recall the need to quit due to difficulty mid-way on a first run, even. In my opinion, dungeons need a boost in difficulty, at least those that will get added later on.

But that’s not true.

The dungeons are just plain poorly designed. They are a step back for the genre; and if it was ANet’s goal to make MMOs more dynamic and interesting, it certainly isn’t reflected at all in the way they designed dungeons.
I sincerely hope you don’t think the dungeons are in any way examples of good design.

For the 10th time: Dungeons are not, in any way, a challenge. That’s the problem. The bosses take a stupidly long time to slug through, the only time you can ever die is to cheesy BS (like a contact-trap that is undodgeable with no indication of its location on the floor one-shotting you); and all it’s about is repeating until you memorize everything.
THAT IS A PROBLEM.

You think it’s designed well because you get downed by those cheese-mechanics, and you don’t know any better to distinguish the difference between Difficulty and Artificial Difficulty.

couldn’t agree more with the OP. “oh just avoid the red circles…” really? rolls eyes I have ran them 6 times and never once enjoyed myself. high repair bill, lackluster exp for what we go through, and items i can seldom use.

The reason behind literally every single person whining (it’s not legitimate criticism really, it’s akin to complaining about the difficulty of Tetris’ later stages) in this thread comes down to not having the experience yet to master the dungeon in question, and consequently not exhibit the will to try again. You often die the first two or three runs? That’s part of the learning process. Take from it and try again. Think outside the box of your regular PVE modus operandi.

You didn’t read any of the complaints at all.

Most of the complaints are from players that have completed the dungeons several times, sometimes flawlessly. We might as well repeat this till the end of time, it is NOT about the difficulty.

• Lack of way points, running through entire dungeon after a death takes way too long
• Unfair insta kills, traps that give no indication of their presence or are invisible
• Lack of challenge, mostly monsters that take a long time to kill
• Bosses that are easy, but again take way too long to kill
• Lack of puzzles and platforming
• Lack of underwater sections
• Lack of levers and switches, or finding keys. You know, basic dungeon stuff.
• Poor rewards compaired to repair costs
• Completely linear design, just one long corridor filled with monsters
• Dungeons are too small, high health pools on monsters artificially drag the length of the dungeon out
• Trial and error game play
• What happened to the awesome freeroaming dungeons from GW1?

If you want proof that the dungeon design is bad, consider this:

We went to CM ex unprepared. We didn’t want repair-costs. We descided to strip and just do the entire dungeon naked. Yes, that meant we died a few more times than we would otherwise have. But those deaths were free of cost.

And we beat the dungeon. Naked. All of us.

Problem?
- No timers. Just respawn, run back to fight, no matter how long it takes. Boooring.
- Some mobs make death seemingly inevitable. Sure Shot Something for example. You can stun-break only so often while he keeps you knocked down. Endboss path 1 also seemed to delight in targetting one and the same player again and again until all dodges and CDs of that player were spent and he was dead, not just downed.

Over all, not many fights are fun. I like Kohler for example. I like the fight and I like the fact that he has random adds with him that change the fight (a bit). Many bossfights are snorefests though and many trashpulls are way, way harder than the bossfights. That just feels wrong.

Many fights seem to be easy if done the one and only exact right way. Booooring. It would be better if fights could be done in different ways depending on group-composition. Often, that’s not the case (or it doesn’t seem to be).

“Lack of underwater sections”

Nobody in their right mind is asking for more of that. Underwater is clunky and makes certain builds 100% useless due to no trait restrainer. In fact when I pug HoTW path 2/3 people will outright avoid them asking if I am only doing butcher. Don’t blame them either.

Dead.7385:

“Lack of underwater sections”

Nobody in their right mind is asking for more of that. Underwater is clunky and makes certain builds 100% useless due to no trait restrainer. In fact when I pug HoTW path 2/3 people will outright avoid them asking if I am only doing butcher. Don’t blame them either.

No, underwater COMBAT is clunky. There is nothing wrong with swimming itself. There is a severe lack of swimming in dungeons in general. They could easily create underwater obstacles, puzzles and traps.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No, underwater COMBAT is clunky. There is nothing wrong with swimming itself. There is a severe lack of swimming in dungeons in general. They could easily create underwater obstacles, puzzles and traps.

The problem with underwater traps/puzzles/obstacles is they loose all source of fear Especially if they have no mobs when you realize you can’t drown. The trap then becomes a lackluster version of the laser trap or bees, just in full “3D” (best way I could put it) with a crappy camera following you. People already complain about the camera now, but place them in an area where you not only have to look straight down/angled, but up/down/left/right – /shiver. And since combat is so hated in dungeons with underwater sections most would avoid it if they decided to spice it up. If they decided to add it as you like to point out it just becomes another “Linear gimmick”

Example: Off the top of my head I remember a under trap in DDO. You had to open/close locked gates for one person passing through. The only thing that makes that difficult is the fact you can drown. Well that and armor made you slower iirc (been awhile)

Take away drowning and it becomes “Hey look its underwater! See see! Sure nobody wants to fight here, but if we place traps you will use it! Please?”.

DDO also had a section where one player had to swim past countless giant sharp fans, to reach a button at the end that turned them all off. That was really exciting to do. Usually I was the designated party member to turn them off, yaaay.

Underwater sections in DDO also had hidden treasure chests, or offered alternative paths. Its just a matter of implementing them well, thats all. Why make dungeons as boring as they currently are? And why not include more platforming?

I actually agree with the OP on some points, not necessarily for the same reasons however.

This is all my own opinion and things I would like to see changed.

First and foremost, there needs to be 3 tiers of each dungeon. Story, Hard, and Explore.

Story is current story, perhaps better tuned to the correct level.

Hard is current Explore mode, perhaps better tuned but at least with the kinks worked out.

Explore is just that, exploring. No NPCs holding my hand telling me where to go, and no Static bosses for that matter. Make something like 10-15 different mini bosses with 3-4 per run and then set em up so that each one can spawn in multiple locations and give them some form of nice loot incentive to make people want to kill them. Then put in something like 6 different Main bosses, and give each a distinctive flavor. Randomize the boss kill spots so each time you enter the dungeon the boss is somewhere else (never before the minibosses and never too close to the entrance.) Tune the whole shebang around level 80s in full exotics and restrict this new Explore mode to 80 and no restictions/bonuses causing 1st run to be better than any other run per day.

Secondly, the bosses autoattacks hitting like a truck while the special hits are meh is… odd. The specials should hit like a truck and be somewhat telegraphed (be it animation like the first boss in AC explore or simply in the rotation of skills he uses, example would be after he does a leap attack he will flurry so avoid it or something like that). The autoattack should hit a high toughness focused character for survivable damage (heal on cd WILL cover it plus a tiny bit extra). Less toughness would be more dangerous obviously. A toughness focused character should never be required to dodge the autoattacks of a boss, messing up on a special should put them in peril, but the autoattacks alone should be survivable.

Testing would be easy too, take a high toughness toon, disable the bosses specials and have the character spam their heal on cooldown while the boss autoattacks them. The boss should never down the toon.

On another note, having a pull with tons of silvers isn’t really fun. It’s extremely annoying and causes people to look for ways to bypass said pulls. Example is CM E and the room filled to the brim by 2 groups of separitists right before the riflemen room.

Both paths that head through this area have an easy way to bypass the groups, and lately it seems as though the groups are linked to some degree. It’s like a huge sign screaming ‘skip us, skip us, or you’ll all die.. alot’. There are a few specific party builds capable of clearing these pulls without deaths. 99% of the time the party will not have that makeup and thus will need to skip them or at the very least 2-3 people will die, not down, die during the encounter.

Traps.. this game has some, and in general I have no issue with the way they are designed. Except for one thing. Why is the switch always on the other side of the trap? Why not stick the switch behind some packs of mobs off in an alternate tunnel sometimes? Props if the tunnel has a small viewpoint and a mob controlling the lever.
To Mad Queen, I remember that dungeon it was one of the lizardmen ones no?

@Hand, now that might be an interesting twist. Personally though I would make the “explore” mode you describe 100% non-instanced similar to the dungeons of older MMO’s. Granted I have NO clue how bosses would hold up with more than 5 players unless it scaled like DE’s, which if they get it right could be kind of neat and if done right fill some missing Guild style PvE. Not exactly “exclusive” raids, but can scale to somewhere near there.

This and having it be for 80/exotic geared only will limit the mass flux for awhile too. Add in the ability to get some tokens/good loot (still waiting on loot fix for explore atm) for rare spawns (chance to pop where general trash spawn equal to the “gold” mobs in AC) or bosses on 3 +2/-1 hr hour timers (keep it RANDOM), and it would make for some interesting open world dungeon crawls, which have been sorely missed from games.

I agree the big-bag-of-hp approach to bosses and mobs is far more tedium than challenge, and I wouldn’t mind seeing GW2 take some cues from DDO on dungeon design. I was a bit excited when I did AC the first time and found that hidden torch that triggered an optional encounter. I thought I was really on to something there and the whole dungeon would have stuff like that. Then I was disappointed to learn there was no point to triggering the encounter and that the designers didn’t build off the idea elsewhere.

With the development of in-dungeon jumping puzzles, this may start to change and the explorable mode might actually reward exploration.

I did want to make one comment about a minor bullet point up top. Regarding the one-shot snipers, I can only assume these are the riflemen as nothing else comes close to that damage output. They have a trait that, in my experience, few people ever pay attention to: they deal a heck of a lot more damage to moving targets. Once I discovered that, I stopped running around like mad in my encounters with them, and my deaths to their attacks have dropped to virtually nill with my glass-cannon MF-equipped engineer, even without dodging.

It’s an interesting mechanic that changes how you have to play. I like that.

I don’t think there is any saying-trash mob. If you want trash mobs, go to the open world. In dungeons, each mob has a role, but all in all: killing you. It make you cry, it make you frustrate, it make you wish to stop. That’s how a dungeon is. Only determined people merit to receive the rewards: the achievement, not the items.

As for the traps, what do you think they are supposed to be / do? They are not decorations, they are traps, for God’s sake. They are meant to be hideous and ready to kill you at your surprise. They are not clowns to show around in colorful cloths.

If you don’t like it, find another activity: auto farming maybe.

Since when have you started to ignore a guy with a rifle, especially sniping rifle? What would a sane person do on the sight of a sniper? That person should hide or at least distract that sniper to keep him/her from firing the killing gun.

Throw bricks to that sniper’s face, for God’s sake. And surely, stop whining about getting killed by a sniper because you just show your head to him then stand still.

It might have been the dungeon with lizardmen. But if I remember correctly, that DDO dungeon had various enemies.

Caudecus Manor’s butler path has a section with snipers at the end of a tunnel, and the entire tunnel filled with traps. And no switch to turn them off, and the snipers are immune to pulling skills. Oh, and its also too far to teleport.

Why not place a switch to turn off the traps somewhere in another tunnel, guarded by enemies?

Why not allow us to pull the snipers closer? Why are the enemies immune to traps?

Why did they make it so that it just boils down to mindlessly running through the traps and taking the beating? I just don’t understand these terrible design choices.

There’s a reason I’ve only ever done AC, CM and TA and not touched the other dungeons.
It’s because they were absolutely terrible.

And judging from the threads I see on this forum daily, the other’s aren’t much to look at either.

I do normal PvE, WvW and check out sPvP sometimes.
If I wanted dungeons I’d go play WoW because they are infinitely better designed.

The argument I keep seeing that, while I agree with, is fundamentally flawed given that yes the first dungeon is level 30. Saying, “Oh don’t wear glass cannon/pve soloist equips to a dungeon” does NOT work if you’re actual the level the dungeon is developed for. Yes everyone can get into how you must be level 80 to do even AC (I don’t agree but that is straying from the issue). But if Anet developed it so you can go in at 30 should you choose to, you shouldn’t be expected to at level 30 have two utterly unique sets of equipment: dungeon and pve.

And while some people may find the dungeons not worthwhile, or enjoyable, that is besides the point. It’s a to each his own situation. I’d probably dislike what others found fun. Anet cannot possibly make a dungeon that will be fun for everyone. If they did that would be a miracle in design truly.

But, as the original poster said, and others added to… the mobs and such are ridiculous. And although some have given strategies to deal with the hounds, the snipers, etc. it’s always, “Have a Mesmer with such and such” or “Have a Necro with such and such.” So instead of the trinity, which Anet worked hard to eliminate we end up with worse: we cannot run a dungeon without 1 specific class out of 8 possible choices… That’s absurd. Trying to make it seem like a no brainer to always have one specific class in your party is frustrating. Since most people do run with PuGs, you don’t get to hand-select what classes you get in your group and we shouldn’t have to. If I want to run a dungeon with friends I shouldn’t not be able to because oh no we have no necromancers or guardians… or whatever.

I do want the dungeons to be challenging, but a lot of the mobs are much worse than just “challenging.” The fact that most groups go through a lot of effort just to RUN PAST the mobs tells me that Anet needs to do some work on that aspect of the game.

The dungeons rely too heavily on roadblock mobs for their difficulty. What the dungeons need are more areas that purposely split teams up and require coordination over time and space. Mobs wouldn’t have to be so strong then, since they could still interfere with progress without killing players.

Putting more emphasis on teamwork, and less on gear/DPS/etc., can only be a good thing.

i think these dungeons are not “casual” friendly and that’s a horrible business motto. i’m sure some of you reading this are like, “screw casual!”. but understand that people posting on these forums are a small percentage of the people playing the game… and the people who are actually enjoying the dungeons constitute an even smaller percent of the people playing GW2. so if the greater population of GW2 isn’t a)running dungeons or b) enjoying them, then business wise, this company loses out on a lot of business.

from a personal experience, i bought this game along with 4 other friends with the idea that we were gonna have a great time running dungeons and having good times in DEs. 2 months later i am the only one who logs in … and even then, i’ve lost interest. why? we all have jobs… i don’t have a family but some of my friends do and there is NO way they have the time required to invest into dungeons like some of the people who are posting here. yes, some of you make it through them in good times with no deaths… but to get to that level i am sure you invested time that surpasses the average player. also, to someone who has limited time to play per day has NO interest in going into a dungeon to get massacred, respawn, run back to fight and rinse/repeat about 4-5 times before downing insane health pool boss or mob… and in the end, you have spent 2 hours and about 20 silver in repairs. so yes, that is a horrible design. Add on top of that all the poor mechanics and elements already mentioned in previous posts and you got people who love the “idea” of running dungeons leaving this game. That’s fine to some of you, maybe you’re saying “then go back to (other mmo) you noob!”… and that’s exactly my point. My friends did run back to the other mmo that isn’t even free to play! but it’s time efficient and, most importantly, fun.

yes, i know there are other things to do aside from dungeons.. but some people play fantasy mmos to crawl through dungeons. when dungeons turn the majority of people away from the game, then there’s a problem.

anyway, i believe my friends and i represent the “average joe” since we are indeed, “average joes”…. and if i’m the only one, out of 5, who is still playing, then to me that seems like there’s a problem.

Anet realizes people are going to run out of content, so dungeons are designed to be massive time sinks. Thats all it boils down to.

The carrot isn’t good enough for people to bear through the sticks.
That’s all I can say in this matter.

I hated WoW dungeons..never found them remotely challenging..the most challenging part was getting the idea of how to do it across to new people. And when you figured it out..guess what..it still took days to kill the kitten thing on top of following some inane pattern of idiocy like keeping them apart, facing it a certain way etc etc…

I’ve run through it all and picked up Dungeon Master for the heck of it. There’s a lot of criticism in this thread so I guess I’ll add my two cents.

•One of the unique core mechanics of this game, dodging, is buggy. Far too often do I see my roll cancel halfway through the animation (yet still drains my endurance) and I get hit by whatever I was trying to dodge. Dodging is the most effective damage mitigation in every situation and to have it bug out on me (which is literally the difference between life and death in some cases) is unacceptable.

•The vast majority of bosses are terribly boring and one-sided. There are a number of bosses which I think are terrible and should never have seen the light of day (The Destroyer in Crucible of Eternity…really?) and then there are bosses that I think are somewhat acceptable but needed more to the fight to make it at least somewhat interesting. An example of this would be the final boss of Citadel of Flame path 3. His mechanics are quickly defined in the fight even to those who are new to it, they make sense and require reaction and movement. However, he has 62 billion hp, and only ever follows those same mechanics, I think he would be better served if he had maybe one or two additional phases or something to change up the pace. (I’m just spitballing ideas here, point in case is the mechanics are okay, but really I think he either needs less hp, or additional phases) Those are just two examples, there are more but you get the point.

•Many trash mobs are more difficult than 99% of the bosses in the game.

•Way too much rehashing going on. Aren’t dungeons supposed to be a unique experience? Why does path 1, 2, and 3 of Crucible of Eternity have the same recurring boss? Why is Giganticus in almost every Arah path? Why are so many bosses just bigger versions of the mobs you can find anywhere else in open world PvE?

•Differentiating what’s challenging and fun, and what’s simply tedious. While I personally don’t think Effigy in Path 1 Citadel of Flame should’ve been nerfed, I can understand why people hated that fight. The same can be said of Dwayna in Arah path 4. The mechanics are very simple, but the boss that just constantly regens back to full hp to make you re-do the same simple mechanics over and over again for an extended period of time.

•Poor incentive for some paths of Explorable mode. Some paths take much, much longer and are much more challenging than others, yet the rewards are the exact same as in every other path (and dungeon for that matter). Sorrow’s Embrace path 3 and Arah path 4 are perfect examples of this. Honestly you could run path 1 of Sorrow’s embrace 3 times for 20 tokens each and it would probably be faster than running path 3 once.

•And while I’m throwing out criticisms, don’t do underwater combat if you can’t implement it well. I hate attacking mobs underwater in HotW paths 2 or 3 and having them leash (go invulnerable and regenerate all their health while keeping me in combat so I don’t regenerate at all) or having the boss above or below me, he uses an ability, I press v to dodge, and it makes me dodge towards them instead of way. But maybe here I’m just biased, I hate underwater combat with an uholy passion, I think it makes almost every class much less effective and makes every single fight take much, much longer than it would if it were on land.

I’m sure there are some other things I would’ve said if I remembered to say them, so I think that’s it for now. I think this is just a pretty vague oversimplification of my criticisms of dungeons. I might have to get around to either finding threads for each dungeon to criticize specific aspects of it at length.

Marble Daemon.7350:

Since when have you started to ignore a guy with a rifle, especially sniping rifle? What would a sane person do on the sight of a sniper? That person should hide or at least distract that sniper to keep him/her from firing the killing gun.

Throw bricks to that sniper’s face, for God’s sake. And surely, stop whining about getting killed by a sniper because you just show your head to him then stand still.

The funny thing is that the mechanic for CM’s riflemen is to do more damage to MOVING targets.
What in the hell kind of mechanic is that?

It’d make more sense to do a ridiculous amount of damage to you when you’re standing still – not moving to avoid the Scouts; and needing to use every single dodge-roll whenever a rifleman fires at you.
When there’s 4 riflemen.
Oh, but you also have to dodgeroll when the Scout leaps at you!

See what I mean?

Ditton.3149:

I hated WoW dungeons..never found them remotely challenging..the most challenging part was getting the idea of how to do it across to new people. And when you figured it out..guess what..it still took days to kill the kitten thing on top of following some inane pattern of idiocy like keeping them apart, facing it a certain way etc etc…

So what you’re saying is that you think any sort of boss mechanic is “idiocy”, and you’d rather slug ito a boss for 10minutes until it drops dead?
Okay.
I guess you’re ANet’s demographic, kudos

Support skills are on high CDs versus low CD debuffs that stack atrociously against you and are often not telegraphed. Abilities that hit you before the red circle even appears. Needlessly high unavoidable damage in a game without healing.

Response- pick the right specs. Too bad you can’t switch specs on the fly, or even know what the right specs are. Bye bye to play it your way. To top it off- everything has absurd amounts of health. Chipping away at health was fun at what period of time in gaming history?

It’s not a challenge, it’s a slog- I love a challenge, some of my favourite dungeons I’ve died dozens of times on, and honestly GW2 dungeons are probably killing me less than normal- the problem is most of my time is spent cycling attacks on enemies that don’t die. It’s not hard- it’s boring and one dimensional gameplay.

Hate to say it- but it feels like they threw in downed and dodge- said ‘this is as good as creating a tanking/healing mechanic’, then put in a streamlined dps system where there’s pretty much nothing unique.

Damage, dodge, heal- debuff if the mobs aren’t immune- every class plays almost the exact same way.

This is what a game looks like without the trinity it seems.

yep~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~