Hi:
I’ve run through quite a few dungeons now, and I’d like to take the time to provide some feedback on how you can make the content better.
Firstly, in my opinion, dungeons SHOULD be challenging. Unlike dynamic events, you have a limited amount of resources and a limited amount of players to accomplish a series of encounters, and each encounters SHOULD provide unique difficulties which may be overcome only by close teamwork. But there’s a line between challenging and tedious, and I feel that line has been crossed.
Putting more hp on mobs and bumping up their damage does not a challenge make. It makes the encounter into a time sink. It encourages attrition, and it only serves to makes encounters artificially longer. Throwing the same melee enemy at the player over and over again, each with 500000 hp, does not challenge the player any more than throwing a balanced mix of archers, mages, and fighters, each with 10000 hp. Likewise, putting a particular “sniper” who can two-shot a player among a group of melee enemies isn’t a challenge either; it turns the encounter into a “focus this guy and pray we get lucky” crapshoot.
There are a few instances of “proper” challenges which I felt were done right. The dual mesmer battle, for example, in AC, required tight coordination and strong synchronization between players in order to succeed, though I think their hp should be reduced and the variety of their attacks should be increased. But unfortunately, the majority of these encounters would have had the same difficulty, if the hp was divided by 10, such as the door guard battle in CM. If you can beat this guy when he has 10000 hp, you can beat him when he has 120000.
The key, I think, to designing a challenging but non-tedious encounter lies in the following elements:
1. Make it short, but difficult. Overwhelm the player party with a variety of different enemies, and force the players to identify a strong tactic. If the player party fails at this, they should be punished by getting killed. If the tactic works, don’t punish them by forcing a battle of attrition, but reward them by ending the encounter so they can move on to the next. Test the player party’s ability to identify a tactic under pressure and their reflexes to mechanically execute it in a short and hectic time frame. Don’t test how much free time they have to grind through a health bar or how robust their keyboard’s number keys are.
2. Give each player role a part to play in each encounter. Too often do I see warriors pulling out a bow in order to do something useful (aside from spending time dead) because they did not feel rewarded by closing to melee. Reward melee classes by making melee range disruption actually useful. Do put lynch pins in your encounters which can only be dislodged by being smashed by a giant hammer (for example, a strong caster who gets interrupted every time they’re hit by melee), or stabbed in the back by a dagger. Make certain enemies be weak to certain elements, while other enemies are weak to a hammer to the face. Mix these enemies together and put them in the same encounter. Reward parties who brought utility, but allow brute force parties a chance at success as well.
3. Reward the players when they succeed, and scale your rewards to the degree of the success. For example, don’t discourage repetition by severely nerfing the completion reward, but tailor the reward to how well the group did. You have implemented medals in dynamic instances; why can’t you do the same for dungeons? Didn’t die once? Gold! Died less than 5 times? Silver! Went out of your way to kill some extra mobs? Extra 5 s awarded as a bonus! Don’t punish the people who grind your dungeons; reward the people who beat them.
4. Punish the players for their mistakes. Send clear messages to the player party if what they’re doing is NOT working. If a party can die 10 times at the same encounter but still manage to beat it by attrition, you’ve screwed up in designing the encounter. If the player party wipes, force them to re-do the encounter from scratch. Dead enemies come to life, and the encounter is reset. Encourage them to try something different, or execute their plan better, but make them do it again. You should not be able to grind an encounter down despite making mistake after mistake.
There, those are my thoughts and suggestions on how you should improve your dungeons.
I really hope you can evolve your design into making them true challenges instead of long, tedious, grindfests.