Guild Wars 2

Conncept.7638:

SiNoS.2147:

They have also said all along that dungeons are not ment for everyone. They said that they were ment for well rounded groups of players. They said that everyone had to carry there own weight. They never once said anyone could just go into a dungeon and complete it. People who have/had this expectation the fault rests entirely with them.

Would you like to try again?

I’ve read every single piece of GW2 news pre and post release, and Arenanet has not stated, anywhere, that any dungeon would not be playable by the entire playerbase.

If they have stated that anywhere, prove it, link it, show evidence. You may find that difficult though, as no such statement has ever been made.

Heres the post by Colin him self. While he doesent come right out and say it as bluntly as i do its there.

http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-talks-about-dungeon-difficulty/

I have been doing HOTW with PUG’s, all three paths and they are all doable. But the second is by far the hardest. I use my standerd PvE build for all of it, only that I equip Glyph of Renewal to revive. I did it in a group of three guardians and a warrior. My healing was enough to let them stand toe to toe with the bosses. I did it with a guardian, an engineer and three elementalists. That was chaos at first cause the mobs ran all over, but we adapted. So far in all my runs, I had one wipe.

I usually get out with at least 50silver extra, not counting the rares that I sell on the trading post. And I like that I can work towards a dungeon set, that not everybody can get their hands on. You shouldn’t expect to do the explorable without a lot of skill.

Also, I have spent tweaking my build since the first beta event. I have used skill builders, read the wiki, watched almost every video on youtube on the elementalist, consult the forums, ask advice in the guild … And now even Orr is just easy, nothing more. The explorable gives me a challenge, it’s the only thing that does. Keep it that way please.

The cool thing is ANet doesn’t have to rely on forum posts to determine if dungeons are too hard or too easy.

They have ready access to actual performance data from 2 million accounts!

How long do runs take? How many never finish? On what fights do players get downed/dead/wiped? What’s proportion of repeat runs by players or average # of tokens…

This goes for professions. A smart developer doesn’t learn that mesmers (or whatever) are OP and FotM by reading a forum. They learn it by seeing that every winning team has one. Or the opposite by seeing that a particular profession is half as likely as another to earn a dungeon set, or whatever.

The best data are our behaviors as players, not our posts.

SiNoS.2147:

Michael Fejervary.8576:

SiNoS.2147:

Michael Fejervary.8576:

Jim Travakh.7495:

You clearly dident read what i posted. To simplify it for you since you dont seem to understand.

The point of my post came down to this. They said that the Dungeons would be on a whole different level than the rest of the game. They made it a point to say that this content unlike the rest of the game required a lot more understanding of the game and its workings, and skill to use them than the as you referred to it “carebear” content thats found in the rest of the game. In final people overlooking this and complaining is not the fault of the dev’s but the people and only with them.

Your clearly the one who’s being non-constructive as i only responded to you in the exact same way you have reacted to others. If you want to set down and have a constructive debate about it i’m more than willing to treat you as an adult. Till then ill treat you as a kid.

Oh, gee golly, really?

You would be willing to treat me like and adult if only I post in utter agreement to you and nothing against your point of view or opinion.

Wow! I am so sorry, that I ever left a constuctive post (that wasn’t even directed at you to begin with) that contained my view and opinion of how it was not a simple matter of the players being “dead weight” and it being in part the fault of the developers for making such a CAREBEAR game with no true progression to help prepare all players toward the harder content such as dungeons.

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

Now that part of this post was non-constuctive I agree, but then again it wasn’t meant to be either.

In reality the “treat you as a kid” comment is not only childish in and of itself, but it is also no different than any other intimidation technique that others on a forum use when they cannot handle someone having a view or opinion that differs from them.

Look you don’t like my view, but that does not make it non-constructive.

SiNoS.2147:

Conncept.7638:

SiNoS.2147:

They have also said all along that dungeons are not ment for everyone. They said that they were ment for well rounded groups of players. They said that everyone had to carry there own weight. They never once said anyone could just go into a dungeon and complete it. People who have/had this expectation the fault rests entirely with them.

Would you like to try again?

I’ve read every single piece of GW2 news pre and post release, and Arenanet has not stated, anywhere, that any dungeon would not be playable by the entire playerbase.

If they have stated that anywhere, prove it, link it, show evidence. You may find that difficult though, as no such statement has ever been made.

Heres the post by Colin him self. While he doesent come right out and say it as bluntly as i do its there.

http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/guild-wars-2-colin-johanson-talks-about-dungeon-difficulty/

The thing that’s faulty about what Colin said there is that in GW1 you were able to stack buffs in a way that you took 0 or 1 damage from every attack, while you gathered up mobs and blew them up with aoe. There were consumables that reduced cooldowns, increased movement speed, increased all attributes (damage), decreased cast time, reduced incoming damage/gave immunity to critical hits, and increased health, for half an hour straight. These consumables could be used all at once too.

GW2 you can’t take hits for 0-1 damage. Your only damage reduction boon cannot stack in intensity, you can only get -33% incoming damage, or walls that reflect/absorb projectiles, or dodging to avoid damage altogether. But unless you’re stacking your group with a specific arrangement of multiple guardians, a staff or focus elementalist with powerful auras (for the staff anyway), and a mesmer using feedback.. you probably can’t keep up those walls with 100% uptime. You probably can’t keep vigor up across the entire group with 100% uptime either, dodge is limited, you can’t dodge everything.

You also don’t have as powerful of consumables and can’t stack consumables either.

Comparing DoA in GW1 to dungeons in GW2 is a rather poor comparison.

Michael Fejervary.8576:

SiNoS.2147:

Michael Fejervary.8576:

SiNoS.2147:

Michael Fejervary.8576:

Jim Travakh.7495:

You clearly dident read what i posted. To simplify it for you since you dont seem to understand.

The point of my post came down to this. They said that the Dungeons would be on a whole different level than the rest of the game. They made it a point to say that this content unlike the rest of the game required a lot more understanding of the game and its workings, and skill to use them than the as you referred to it “carebear” content thats found in the rest of the game. In final people overlooking this and complaining is not the fault of the dev’s but the people and only with them.

Your clearly the one who’s being non-constructive as i only responded to you in the exact same way you have reacted to others. If you want to set down and have a constructive debate about it i’m more than willing to treat you as an adult. Till then ill treat you as a kid.

Oh, gee golly, really?

You would be willing to treat me like and adult if only I post in utter agreement to you and nothing against your point of view or opinion.

Wow! I am so sorry, that I ever left a constuctive post (that wasn’t even directed at you to begin with) that contained my view and opinion of how it was not a simple matter of the players being “dead weight” and it being in part the fault of the developers for making such a CAREBEAR game with no true progression to help prepare all players toward the harder content such as dungeons.

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

Now that part of this post was non-constuctive I agree, but then again it wasn’t meant to be either.

In reality the “treat you as a kid” comment is not only childish in and of itself, but it is also no different than any other intimidation technique that others on a forum use when they cannot handle someone having a view or opinion that differs from them.

Look you don’t like my view, but that does not make it non-constructive.

No your attitude is what makes it non-constructive. I never said you had to agree with me. I told you if you could quite acting like a child we could have a honest discussion on the matter. But instead all you have done is attack anyone and everyone who has posted something you dont agree with. Your condescending tone you come across as make you very hateful. To be frank it makes it impossible to take you serious. Treat the other players with the respect the deserve and maybe you would actually be treated like an adult. Its not that i cant handle snot nose brats. Its more like i would rather try to give them the chance to show there more than that. You so far are not.

Raging Bull.5048:

This is how things are:

the dungeons are too easy at the moment. I log in day by day, KNOWING I’ll just farm my 180 TA tokens so I can gear myself with the armor I want. There is no fun, no challenge involved. When I think about it, it does feel like a chore.

My intelligence is not challenged, my gaming skills are not challenged and believe me, after only a few days it became very stale. As I tend to say, we need much more COMPLEX mechanics/encounters in both DEs and dungeons.

The cool part, in WoW for instance (while the dungeons and raids were still good back in the day), was that you needed MONTHS to “crack” an encounter. Yes it was hard, yes not everyone could do it. But that’s the point. When you are having a hard time obtaining something or achieving something, and you FINALLY do it, the fun factor kicks in. You are happy you did something not everyone could, or at least not everyone could right away.

The way you set things now, ANet, is that you are degrading your own work! You made those instances, but you trivialized them beyond belief. The fact remains that you definitely need deeper, more complex mechanics for both bosses and mobs alike.

I join a PUG and we complete everything without any problems. I have the time to do all 3 paths in explorable mode in only one evening. I hardly pay attention to what happens anymore, it became a routine. And for how long has GW2 been out now? Is that what you really wanted to achieve?

People complaining how it’s hard shouldn’t be taken into account. Because it’s supposed to be hard, and IT ISN’T. If it isn’t hard everyone will stomp over available content, and then what? What happens when it becomes a boring routine for everyone, like it has for me? What do I do in GW2 now? For the moment, I need a chest piece and a hammer. Once I get those, what do I do? I move on to another routine, and farm CoF for an example? Is that fun, challenging?

One more thing: you took away the surprise/thrill factor when you removed the chance-to-drop items. It’s too predictable, knowing what and when you’ll get with the token system. A proposition: leave the token system as it is, but add chance-to-drop items (LOW chance) which are better than those you can obtain with tokens. That will be the incentive to run the dungeons over and over again, and people will always be on their toes, hoping they’ll get the drop they need.

You made a huge, huge mistake by trivializing everything, making everything available to everyone. Easy is bad. We need it difficult, or at least SOME instances really difficult. But please change your philosophy of what difficult means. It’s not huge HP pools and hard hitting mobs, OR swarms/zergs that overrun your party and poison-stun everything. Use your imagination, I’m sure you can do a lot better.

Indeed most dungeons are way too easy. Even some meta events are too easy. I managed to solo a few already when noone was around lol.

@SiNoS

Seeing as how little I have ever even posted (forum wide about 20 posts total) you keep making some pretty strong accusations.

Its fine. I am going to be the better person here and just agree that you are right about all of it and that I have been very horrible to any and everyone here on the forum.

Raging Bull.5048:

—
One more thing: you took away the surprise/thrill factor when you removed the chance-to-drop items. It’s too predictable, knowing what and when you’ll get with the token system. A proposition: leave the token system as it is, but add chance-to-drop items (LOW chance) which are better than those you can obtain with tokens. That will be the incentive to run the dungeons over and over again, and people will always be on their toes, hoping they’ll get the drop they need.
—

I think they didn’t want to create another lottery-system. Sure, it gives incentive to repeat the content but in the end it doesn’t change anything.

Wethospu.6437:

Raging Bull.5048:

—
One more thing: you took away the surprise/thrill factor when you removed the chance-to-drop items. It’s too predictable, knowing what and when you’ll get with the token system. A proposition: leave the token system as it is, but add chance-to-drop items (LOW chance) which are better than those you can obtain with tokens. That will be the incentive to run the dungeons over and over again, and people will always be on their toes, hoping they’ll get the drop they need.
—

I think they didn’t want to create another lottery-system. Sure, it gives incentive to repeat the content but in the end it doesn’t change anything.

Not to mention in order to do this they would have to drop dungeon gear from exotic to rare or something between the two as exotic is the best gear in the game.

I thought Colin’s post on this related discussion was pretty telling on their point of view regarding difficulty. In case people missed it, I’ll add below:

(about halfway down the post)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Do-NOT-nerf-please/first

If you’re too lazy to go to the link, this was it:

Quote from Colin Johanson:
“I’ll point out ironically, when we first turned on DoA back in Gw1 the posts you’re seeing in this forum from a few folks about difficulty were the exact same comments everyone had about DoA. It was “impossible, mobs were just tuned to do insane damage and have huge HP, there was no tactics to defeat DoA”, etc. I went back and read through the original DoA launch feedback and it was literally identical to the comments folks on the forums are leaving now.
We made the choice back then to stick with the difficulty, and give people time to learn how to play the dungeon better and overcome it. A few months later, people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game and totally reasonable without us changing anything.
We’ll be doing the same with the Gw2 explorable dungeons, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.
We’re actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We’ll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don’t have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We’ll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we’ll be looking at adding more dungeons as well!
All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We’ve seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in Gw1, it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.
If DoA was any indication, a couple months from now, many of you will likely be posting saying most of the dungeons are too easy and you need better challenges.”

@Hawken Best thing I read all day. Love it.

- Xhaine

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Red Falcon.8257:

If you lack communications players complain, but if you talk too much players will use your words against you.
There is no winning beside maybe letting out informations that are confirmed to be happening soon.

Indeed. I can say this though, we recognize failures not just in random occasions, but in total systems and dungeons in general. The great thing about an MMO/Live game, is that we can change it for the better. We have plans to change things based on feedback, and we are finalizing those plans right now. As soon as we are done and have a solid actionable plan, we’ll let you all know what that is, and what you can expect for the future of dungeons.

This is reassuring to hear.

What many people aren’t understanding is that its not the difficulty of a specific dungeon that should be discussed, but rather, what is difficulty in regards to the GW2 game mechanics.

The current dungeon difficulty is based around …seemingly random thoughts…not the unique traits of the guild wars 2 combat system, which are:

1) Red Circles on the ground, and moving/dodging out them.
2) Fully voiced Dynamic Events system
— Verbal queues to go with the physical ones, since its sometimes difficult to see
— Dungeons incorporating DEs in a more complex way (which is kinda there)
3) Dodging mechanics
— I shouldn’t have to doge normal attacks. And there shouldn’t be 3 enemies on the screen all casting the same spell on rotation…We have 2 dodges…build around that
Less confusion and chaos, the more strategic it feels.
4) Picking up weapons
— With this mechanic, you can create some wild boss fights, and specify exactly what kind of skill is needed. Go back and look at some WoW fights, like professor putricide. No offense, but your dungeon system right now is essentially a kitten(pun intended) compared to Blizzard’s Mufasa.
5) Jumping puzzles
6) Condition removal and boons
— Yes, youre trying to eliminate the need for specific groups…but you need stuff like this. Just make it so its significantly easier with this.

In addition, you need to make strategies more visible. For instance, make a boss invincible unless it has 5 stacks of vulnerability. This way, players KNOW they need to keep 5 stacks up. They don’t just get murdered and feel like the dungeon is too difficult.

Kain.9167:

I can say with certainty that the people who want dungeons more difficult are the minority. They need to be able to be done by pug groups that don’t have exotic gear. I’m sure they are going to flame me like crazy for this but it is because they are an extremely vocal bunch. Not everyone has 4 hours to fight the same fight over and over with the same group and tons of communication. The most common dungeon group has to be a random one, and most people are taking the same path over and over again despite diminishing returns because the other paths are too hard!

What’s the goal with making them harder? To appease the people who already can do it and have it on autopilot.

What’s the goal with making them easier? To make them more accessible to everyone else who still has yet to do them and get the goodies!

Think about it.

Exotic gear for dungeons is detrimental to your income (repair bills are to high)
from my casual player stand point I can say, rare gear with good runes are enough for dungeons even explorable mode.

Sorry but explorable mode dungeons were originally and in principle not designed for pug groups at all.
even so, certain pug groups are well enough coordinated to take on certain paths but not all of them can be achieved so easily by pug groups, CoF path 3 comes to mind.

I’m a casual player and don’t have any issues with the difficulty of explore mode dungeons what so ever I hate to say it but this is a case of learn to play in the truest sense of the word.

I myself had many issues at 1st when I didn’t know the dungeon / roles / class mechanics or how to properly spec and play my class, a lack of knowledge will most certainly get you killed, no matter what gear type you have

Latinkuro.9420:

Kain.9167:

I can say with certainty that the people who want dungeons more difficult are the minority. They need to be able to be done by pug groups that don’t have exotic gear. I’m sure they are going to flame me like crazy for this but it is because they are an extremely vocal bunch. Not everyone has 4 hours to fight the same fight over and over with the same group and tons of communication. The most common dungeon group has to be a random one, and most people are taking the same path over and over again despite diminishing returns because the other paths are too hard!

What’s the goal with making them harder? To appease the people who already can do it and have it on autopilot.

What’s the goal with making them easier? To make them more accessible to everyone else who still has yet to do them and get the goodies!

Think about it.

Exotic gear for dungeons is detrimental to your income (repair bills are to high)
from my casual player stand point I can say, rare gear with good runes are enough for dungeons even explorable mode.

Sorry but explorable mode dungeons were originally and in principle not designed for pug groups at all.
even so, certain pug groups are well enough coordinated to take on certain paths but not all of them can be achieved so easily by pug groups, CoF path 3 comes to mind.

I’m a casual player and don’t have any issues with the difficulty of explore mode dungeons what so ever I hate to say it but this is a case of learn to play in the truest sense of the word.

I myself had many issues at 1st when I didn’t know the dungeon / roles / class mechanics or how to properly spec and play my class, a lack of knowledge will most certainly get you killed, no matter what gear type you have

Looking at CoF path 1 prepatch – it was a nightmare. If the boss didn’t bug out, which was a big if mind you, the last 25% were impossible, yes I said it, bloody impossible for some groups. That is not fun, that is not fair, and that is reliance on roles which I thought this game was trying not to do. I couldn’t disagree more that people should have to join a guild led by some guy, be forced to deal with their politics and fighting, and have to sign up for dungeon times to be able to run with people on a teamspeak server or something.

If leveling was easy and fun, getting into PvP is easy and fun, crafting comes naturally and is rewarding – why should this one aspect of the game be a huge chore and extremely difficult? It’s a grindfest at best with the number of tokens needed to get a set of full exotics, so why should each run take ages and come with huge repair bills? For flaming armor that has no stats bonuses over any other exotic? No sir. That is stupid and is like the WoW gear treadmill minus the better stats! I am amazed anyone buys into that formula at all because it is INSANELY moronic! You have zero idea what fun is if you think it is running a static, difficult dungeon 100 times over for some digital plate is fun, and you should not be allowed to be on these forums at all. Dungeons need to be doable, rewarding, and not take forever. Like it or not Guild Wars 2 ends at one point or another and cutting people off right when they are starting to have fun because you want 30% more damage on mobs to fulfill you is idiotic.

Kain.9167:

Latinkuro.9420:

Kain.9167:

I can say with certainty that the people who want dungeons more difficult are the minority. They need to be able to be done by pug groups that don’t have exotic gear. I’m ,sure they are going to flame me like crazy for this but it is because they are an extremely vocal bunch. Not everyone has 4 hours to fight the same fight over and over with the same group and tons of communication. The most common dungeon group has to be a random one, and most people are taking the same path over and over again despite diminishing returns because the other paths are too hard!

What’s the goal with making them harder? To appease the people who already can do it and have it on autopilot.

What’s the goal with making them easier? To make them more accessible to everyone else who still has yet to do them and get the goodies!

Think about it.

Exotic gear for dungeons is detrimental to your income (repair bills are to high)
from my casual player stand point I can say, rare gear with good runes are enough for dungeons even explorable mode.

Sorry but explorable mode dungeons were originally and in principle not designed for pug groups at all.
even so, certain pug groups are well enough coordinated to take on certain paths but not all of them can be achieved so easily by pug groups, CoF path 3 comes to mind.

I’m a casual player and don’t have any issues with the difficulty of explore mode dungeons what so ever I hate to say it but this is a case of learn to play in the truest sense of the word.

I myself had many issues at 1st when I didn’t know the dungeon / roles / class mechanics or how to properly spec and play my class, a lack of knowledge will most certainly get you killed, no matter what gear type you have

Looking at CoF path 1 prepatch – it was a nightmare. If the boss didn’t bug out, which was a big if mind you, the last 25% were impossible, yes I said it, bloody impossible for some groups. That is not fun, that is not fair, and that is reliance on roles which I thought this game was trying not to do. I couldn’t disagree more that people should have to join a guild led by some guy, be forced to deal with their politics and fighting, and have to sign up for dungeon times to be able to run with people on a teamspeak server or something.

If leveling was easy and fun, getting into PvP is easy and fun, crafting comes naturally and is rewarding – why should this one aspect of the game be a huge chore and extremely difficult? It’s a grindfest at best with the number of tokens needed to get a set of full exotics, so why should each run take ages and come with huge repair bills? For flaming armor that has no stats bonuses over any other exotic? No sir. That is stupid and is like the WoW gear treadmill minus the better stats! I am amazed anyone buys into that formula at all because it is INSANELY moronic! You have zero idea what fun is if you think it is running a static, difficult dungeon 100 times over for some digital plate is fun, and you should not be allowed to be on these forums at all. Dungeons need to be doable, rewarding, and not take forever. Like it or not Guild Wars 2 ends at one point or another and cutting people off right when they are starting to have fun because you want 30% more damage on mobs to fulfill you is idiotic.

And if you think dungeons in guild wars 2 hard and long, then you sir, must be nothing, but noob. I m running TA expo all 3 routes in less than 2 hours every day and expo arah 1 hour +- each route. I found running dungeons fun, buy also too easy and it becomes routine, where i dont need to thimk. Just kill..

Your kind is the one who shouldnt be allowed to come to these forums, you are the reasons why mmorpgs dies, you want everything to be ’’fun’’ and easy, which means you dont need to put any effort into it ..
You are casual player and you have no rights to want having same gear as hardcore players for nothing. They do put 10x more into it! This is mmorpg!
I love doing dungeons, farming them for awesome gear. But it has to be atleast bit hard!

Kain.9167:

Looking at CoF path 1 prepatch – it was a nightmare. If the boss didn’t bug out, which was a big if mind you, the last 25% were impossible, yes I said it, bloody impossible for some groups. That is not fun, that is not fair, and that is reliance on roles which I thought this game was trying not to do. I couldn’t disagree more that people should have to join a guild led by some guy, be forced to deal with their politics and fighting, and have to sign up for dungeon times to be able to run with people on a teamspeak server or something.

If leveling was easy and fun, getting into PvP is easy and fun, crafting comes naturally and is rewarding – why should this one aspect of the game be a huge chore and extremely difficult? It’s a grindfest at best with the number of tokens needed to get a set of full exotics, so why should each run take ages and come with huge repair bills? For flaming armor that has no stats bonuses over any other exotic? No sir. That is stupid and is like the WoW gear treadmill minus the better stats! I am amazed anyone buys into that formula at all because it is INSANELY moronic! You have zero idea what fun is if you think it is running a static, difficult dungeon 100 times over for some digital plate is fun, and you should not be allowed to be on these forums at all. Dungeons need to be doable, rewarding, and not take forever. Like it or not Guild Wars 2 ends at one point or another and cutting people off right when they are starting to have fun because you want 30% more damage on mobs to fulfill you is idiotic.

If you think the cosmetic gear upgrades aren’t worth it, then don’t grind for them! Do each dungeon once just to see the content, and call it a day! This might sound like a rehashed answer, but I really don’t understand why you complain that there is a grind, and then complain that the grind isn’t worth it in the same breath.
I farmed the full CM explorable light armor set because I thought it looked great. The first few runs were very annoying and time-consuming; I thought that any route besides the Seraph route was a complete time-waste because of the rooms with 4958943 mobs and Sure-Shot Seamus. While doing it, I mastered the dungeon literally; worked out best ways to overcome mechanics, pulled better and better, recognized troublesome mobs amongst a pack; I managed to streamline every route to approximately 30 minutes, and guess what? Despite the ‘farm’, every other run was an experience; whether it was watching someone who hadn’t done it before die to spikes in the pillow room as I typed the warning out, ending a run with two people in their underwear, people commenting at the end that that particular run was the best they have ever done, or getting friend requests at the end, dungeon runs don’t always have to be mindless token drones. Take them for what they are: 5 guys doing a tough dungeon together.

Also, yes, Guild Wars 2 does ‘end’ at some point, but ‘when they are starting to have fun’ is debatable. Does that mean you were only just starting to have fun at 80? And no one is being cut off from dungeons because they do 30% less damage to mobs; I don’t really understand your source of frustration at the end of your post.

I’ve read through a lot of these posts, and I certainly have a few new perspectives on this matter, to the point where I even believe the current difficulty may be justified… in the explorable mode but having such a high difficulty in the story mode is simply inexcusable. I use the word “difficulty” loosely by the way. The dungeons I’ve played aren’t hard because they require anything resembling skill, they are so because they have a multitude of mobs that can 1 hit ko with regular.. REGULAR attacks, that are extremely difficult to even see let alone dodge. (and if you do successfully dodge you usually end up dodging right into another 1 hit ko) The mobs themselves have FAR too much HP, and good luck if you want to run a dungeon as a melee attacker and you arent a heavy armor using class… No if you want any chance of successfully playing the dungeon, even in STORY mode, you have to spec your character EXACTLY the way ANET wants you to for that specific fight/dungeon (And they don’t even have the decency to tell you what that specific spec is either). I shouldn’t need to point out how limiting and imo, boring this is, but eh.. I just did.

I am not ashamed to say I don’t have a huge elite guild in this game, nor do I have a ton of hardcore, fully-geared friends, so the majority of my dungeon runs have been and will continue to be PuG’s. I see no good reason why these dungeons should cater only to huge powerful guilds, or people who can afford to eat dozens and dozens of silver in repair bills for not much actual reward. There NEEDS to be an option for casual players to just get together with a group and have fun.. For there not to be sounds like a betrayal of the game as it has been (and continues to be) advertised. The fact that in my server it’s almost impossible to even FIND a PuG should show that there’s something majorly wrong with the system as it is now. And before I put up my flame shield, I will remind everyone reading this that it was ANET themselves who touted this game as the kind of game you could go out and play with new and random people..

In conclusion, Please ANET, there is no need to nerf the exploration mode, there should be areas in this game for those “elite” enough to want them. But please, give those of us who aren’t an option as well, even if that has to come with a reduced reward.

My guild and I did AC Exp, all first time and we finished it in about 1 hour and a half. All the people complaining about it being difficult are whiners.

We got wiped out many times but we came up with strategies, and each time we got wiped we used our brains to come up with plans that gave us a higher probability of survival.

Story mode is a joke, exp is challenging and extremely fun. They should make an harder mode for exp.

Keep in mind that the game has not had a significant balance pass yet. Class skill balance is still all over the place, with some weapons being essentially useless not to mention traits and utilities. Dungeons are similar, with some dungeons and paths being relatively quick and easy affairs, while others are long challenging slogs.

This will even out somewhat over time.

Also keep in mind that a lot of players are just stacking full Berserker’s on absolutely everyone, speccing full offense, and expecting that to work.

Dogblaster.6713:

…it has to be atleast bit hard!

Exactly, it can have some challenge but not mountains of it. Each path should obviously push back with some resistance but not so much that a group of pugs cannot accomplish it. Paths should not be impossible for any group be it randoms and/or any team composition – period.

I think that Arenanet should possibly open up a new path in each dungeon and call it the “Guild Challenge” path. Let the people who want their omega difficult paths get it with some kind of special reward like Guild Tokens to be used at a later date with expanded guild functionality.

As for the paths as they are, they are for individual rewards. Yes, you gain influence for your guild by running dungeons, but that is not why the majority of people run it.^[Citation needed, but seriously, there is no doubt] Keep the paths currently in place crafted for individuals running the dungeons as groups of random individuals for individual rewards as is.

Kain.9167:

Dogblaster.6713:

…it has to be atleast bit hard!

Exactly, it can have some challenge but not mountains of it. Each path should obviously push back with some resistance but not so much that a group of pugs cannot accomplish it. Paths should not be impossible for any group be it randoms and/or any team composition – period.

I think that Arenanet should possibly open up a new path in each dungeon and call it the “Guild Challenge” path. Let the people who want their omega difficult paths get it with some kind of special reward like Guild Tokens to be used at a later date with expanded guild functionality.

As for the paths as they are, they are for individual rewards. Yes, you gain influence for your guild by running dungeons, but that is not why the majority of people run it.^[Citation needed, but seriously, there is no doubt] Keep the paths currently in place crafted for individuals running the dungeons as groups of random individuals for individual rewards as is.

How is it any different from random individual group to an inexperienced guild group? The same communication can apply whether its a guild group, or a random group. I still do not see your point.

What we need I believe is a direct and advertised response from Anet on what they want Explorable dungeons to be. There are multiple factors that need to be addressed.
1) Are they for PUGs?
2) What level gear should I have?
3) Should this be prestige? or simply “the next level” of armor/gear.
4) Should we need voice comm?

I believe the answers to these questions are needed from Anet directly on a largely advertised post on the main site and in game mail, not here in the forums section buried under the rest of the pile of topics spewed forth from the community.

1) I do not think all explorables should be for PUGs. Have one or two be Pug oriented, with corresponding lesser appealing gear.

2) I don’t think gear should matter. Skill is a big part. Now I will sound like an elitist who thinks himself better than everyone else, but I went through a progression in CoE. first I ran in my full gear, paid insane repair bills after alpha fights, and was bitter. next came the naked phase, where I sacrificed my stats bonuses and took off my armor for the dungeon in order to save the repair bill. Now I wear my full gear for the entire run and usually have 2 piece damaged, with none being totally broken. I can make it through each alpha fight without being defeated usually. TL;DR Skill is the determining factor, not gear.

3) I think the dungeon gear should be prestige. I think they should not be “the easiest and most efficient way” of getting exotic gear.

4) voice comm. I have run CoE with varying amounts of voice com, from 4 of us to two of us in mumble and even one attempt at a full PUG group. in my experience, It has been tremendously difficult to run with PUGs, simply because they haven’t learned the mechanics of the game or dungeon yet. mechanics like dodging, following targets, and even quickly respawning and returning to the action. I enjoy voice comm, and honestly it is necessary for the first few runs and EXTREMELY helpful for CoE. SHOULD it be a requirement? that should be determined by Anet’s goals for Explorable dungeons.

So please Anet, tell us what you intended.

Hawken there is one thing he didn’t mention. That’s the overpowered PvE skills that came out later that made PvE a complete joke. When people figured out DoA before that, it was still hard and extremely hard to find groups because it’s just not fun and the gems you get from one run is nothing. Hell, Foundry took 5 hours to finish.

You’ll know that a dungeon is overtuned when you have to be level 80 to do it. And so far, this statement applies almost to every dungeon in the game.

Can you do “insert dungeon name” story and exp with a group of “insert dungeon level requirement”?

I turned 35 yesterday and did my first dungeon on explore mode. I went with some guildies, two of which had gone before so could explain things.

I got rocked over and over in the beginning and loved every minute of it. Instead of getting frustrated I knuckled down, realized I had some more things to learn about my class and needed to pay attention more to learn what I needed to know. Going in I thought I was pretty good at dodging. Nope, room for improvement there. Yep it was expensive but the feeling of finally getting it on one boss and keeping alive was awesome. Next time will definitely be easier.

I wouldn’t want them to be any easier. I can only speak for myself but I expect that there are more like me. It’s not just about rewards. By the end I could care less about what I got. Not dying as much, because of improving how I play was a better reward in the light of being entertained which is the main reason I play these games. Rewards are the icing on the whole cake.

dungeons should not and do not have 100% success rates people. i’m not saying that a certain portion of players don’t deserve to succeed or anything like 10% NEED to fail. rather a completed dungeon should feel like it was earned not handed to them.

i remember my first CM butler path that i ran with a group of pugs that had no idea what to do (like myself).

rocket turrets? “why isn’t my rifle doing damage to them but i see other people shooting rockets? how the hell are you supposed to get across without dying here? (while entire group is running into 5-6 turrets’ aggro range)”

spike trap hall? "wtf this is IMPOSSIBLE (while group is bee lining to the mobs only 1-2 trying at a time so even if they got close the 3 bandits would kill them). "

later on i learn the rifles are supposed to deflect rockets, not shoot them, and the traps require you to run to safe areas as a group before making your way to the end. we never made it to the end btw <_< and i feel that’s how it should be. people shouldn’t make it across the rocket room while randomly button mashing hoping to eventually deflect an incoming rocket and praying you don’t die. people shouldn’t be bee lining for the bandits in the hall hoping they are lucky and make it across the traps. that’s just asking to be fed your way through the dungeon.

i will say i was pretty angry and in disbelief at how we were supposed to survive those two sections of the dungeon, but, honestly, a group of inexperienced players shouldn’t be able to breeze through dungeon events (this goes for bosses too).

you don’t always succeed after learning either, but that’s part of the reason why there’s more satisfaction to be had in doing it right. i could have, after failing that CM run, call bullkitten, run to the forums and post that dungeons are way too hard, but that would mean that i accept, even though other people have cleared it plenty before, that i am not able to do it too.

miya.5160:

The nice thing about GW1 was that it slowly prepared you for the difficulties ahead. It trained you. You weren’t surprised when you hit a wall. You knew, at the very least subconsciously, that it was coming. That’s the way I want Guild Wars 2 dungeons to be.

As it stands, a lot of people are disgruntled. Dungeons are too hard for players who are less skilled, dungeons are too easy for people who are, and there’s not a lot of middle ground.

That’s a problem.

There’s a lot of flaming in this thread, so I would just like to say that I wholeheartedly agree with Miya. Dungeons do not scale well to either newcomers or to 1337 groups.

AC is a level 35 dungeon. Thirty five. Can anyone AT lvl 35—in lvl 35 gear—actually do that dungeon? If not, then why is it a lvl 35 dungeon in the first place? On a similar note, I remember seeing someone asking about TA in the Lion’s Arch map chat yesterday. She asked what it was, and someone told her it was a lvl 55 dungeon, but no one would probably take her unless she was lvl 80. If no one can find good groups for these dungeons at the level requirement for them, then the dungeons should be rescaled.

My recommendation would be to have unlockable modes for players that get progressively higher with each new difficulty level. All players in a group must have a difficulty level unlocked in order to attmpt to run it (like Hard Mode in GW).That way, dungeons can provide a new challenge for 1337 groups, and have an entry level that is appropriate for beginners. Instead of having armor for each level, maybe accompany the completion of a certain difficulty with a title to acknowledge the accomplishment.

I also second the suggestion to have certain dungeon elements randomized with each new entry, so you can run the same dungeon level multiple times but still have different experiences each time. Maybe randomize mob spawns/types, boss spawns/types (like we had in the explorable areas of GW), mob and boss patrol routes, trap types and spawn points, and maybe random side quests that give extra bonuses like buffs.

I would just say something..
I don t like dungeon a lot being quite a frustration rather than a team play…
I’d just say a thing…i hear lot of people saying dungeon are not that hard….just to discover they only rely on IA exploits (that are not serious, like many you find in any mmorpg and nobody cares).

Yet really few cares to play most econcounters as they are intended…..and yet say how dungeon are easy…

So if you:
-pull one enemy at atime
-run ion circles to kite mobs reducing their effectiveness

And things like that, please don t say dungeon are easy…….enter the rooms and face battles as they should without taking in account limited IA instead.

And consider that dungeons should not be the exclusive property of few competitive clan/team.

Now its really hard to finish a dungeon properly with random GOOD players…..expecially since they won t probably use teamspeak.

Consider that if only the few able to do dungeon would pay for the game or play it alone (because they are one of the few endgame content) this game would die in weeks.

Most dungeons are fine the way they are, some dungeons need a bit a tweak here and there but nothing major. All dungeons pretty much doable without full exotic lv 80 gears. Higher lv gears in this game doesn’t give you that much advantage like other MMOs. The problem I can see why many people are complaining is because they have to use pug to do those dungeons.

Many of the current dungeons aren’t hard, it’s more of a communication problem than the game difficulty. Many part of the dungeons required people to talk to each other and coordinate certain actions at the same time or simultaneously. This is a major problem with pug. Typing is out of date, what Anet needs to do is implemented a in game voice chat system like planetside or something for party/team/squad. Pretty much free TS/Vent in game. That would solve a lot of kittening right there.

Many of Anet alpha or dungeon test teams claimed that dungeons might be too easy at launch. The thing is, you can’t compared testers to live version. Many of these testers maybe sitting next to each other and talk to each other while playing the game. They don’t need to type. Communication isn’t much of a problem for them as it is for pugs. They actually use foods/potions to go through dungeons, foods/potions are actually very useful in dungeons but many people still don’t touch this stuff enough. Some people are just plain cheap.

The only problems with dungeons right now mainly is their reward system. It is pretty unbalance how you can do one dungeon one path in 10-15 mins (no exploit/cheating) and then another dungeon would take like 1-2 hours to complete but you still received the same amount of rewards.

Posted by game director Colin Johanson

“What I would call ‘hard’ was trying to run Domain of Anguish and Mallyx with a balanced setup in the first weeks it was released. Many people called it impossible, but it was a heck lot of fun to do! Why? Because it offered veriety and fluid gameplay, quick and deadly like it should be. Not kiting a mob for 2 minutes and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat.”

I’ll point out ironically, when we first turned on DoA back in Gw1 the posts you’re seeing in this forum from a few folks about difficulty were the exact same comments everyone had about DoA. It was “impossible, mobs were just tuned to do insane damage and have huge HP, there was no tactics to defeat DoA”, etc. I went back and read through the original DoA launch feedback and it was literally identical to the comments folks on the forums are leaving now.

We made the choice back then to stick with the difficulty, and give people time to learn how to play the dungeon better and overcome it. A few months later, people viewed it as the most fun thing in the game and totally reasonable without us changing anything.

We’ll be doing the same with the Gw2 explorable dungeons, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.

We’re actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We’ll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don’t have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We’ll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we’ll be looking at adding more dungeons as well!

All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We’ve seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in Gw1, it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.

If DoA was any indication, a couple months from now, many of you will likely be posting saying most of the dungeons are too easy and you need better challenges“

SOURCE: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Do-NOT-nerf-please/first

I am really happy Areanet dont nerf things cause of QQ od bad or not patient players.

I hated dungeons from first, but now I love them and I run Arah, TA daily and they became too easy … there is no hard dungeon in this game. If you say there is, you really dont know what hard boss fight means

Anyway. Thank you Areanet for all your effort

Just find a good players. I pugged, then i found some good players, added them and we run many dungeons (I am almoste done with full TA-set now). It’s not that hard to find good players, really. Guild Wars had always pretty hard endgame content. Also, this is supposed to be played as level 80. Sure it’s no problem to have one or two lower in your party, but it’s easier with good equipped and traited 80ies of course. I noteiced that most groups can now beat AC (yesterday i pugged path 3 – the hardest one – and no one died in the whole run).

This leads to the following: if you want good gear, you have to be good and socialize with good players. I admit that the story mode should be easier or maybe an introductio of a hard or easy mode (like in GW1) would be nice and welcome.

The current dungeon difficulty is no more difficult than vanilla WoW. Unfortunately that’s the problem, too much catering to the casuals. Makes for an extremely boring PvE experience.

When players cry that difficult content is too hard and the content difficulty gets reduced, you find that the players themselves will become better or more skilled, because they don’t have to.

I’m just hoping that the future content will ask that players maybe wipe for few nights in order to figure out a boss or encounter.

There are several fundamental flaws with dungeons in this game. lets list a few.

• No obvious synergies between classes. I.E. you need to sit down and theory craft for an hour or 2 on what builds for 5 classes. Not realistic for most people.

*Barriers to start such as needing to respec and only being able to have 1 build at a time.

*Needing specialized gear that may be vastly different than used for soloing or WvW.

*and list your favorite design flaws with the interior of the dungeons that have been covered at length elsewhere.

The dungeons in this game aren’t as difficult as they are poorly designed to deal with human nature and pugs. most every major issue with them can be made trivial with a dedicated team of 5-10 people that play together regularly. However the reality is that even most guilds don’t have groups of 5-10 players who do dungeons regularly together.

I want to praise the fact ArenaNet adjusts their dungeons difficulty constantly based from both player input and what stats they monitor from our runs. This is so much better than (the other) MMO in which the dungeons become easy-mode within two weeks and you farm them until you randomly hit the loot drops you want.

My only two complaints is:
1) the loot drops are so disappointing (so many blues), rarely get a yellow (only from dungeon mob drop).
2) Dungeon tokens should be included per successful boss fight completion and not held back till end of dungeon run. Maybe if you had a graduated increase of token drop the farther you get into the dungeon to prevent quick 1 or 2 boss dungeon farming for tokens.

Imagen they have to add some sort of new game mod. story, then a middle mode for gear, and then explore for the challange and maybe crafting gear?? Other items needed for lets just say legendary? since its the hardest to get at the moment

Its strange how some people want them to be harder when in fact only the minority are fast clearing them by using questionable methods and the majority of guild wars players dont do them because of how unfair they are.

I think the ones who are claiming that they are too easy want them to be harder so they can add more gear, they are just addicted to the “GET GEAR” stuff.

I havent seen a single to fix to dungeons yet.

A lot of people are bored with dungeons because most of them are too easy. I hear people complain about how easy and fast they are to clear every day. PVE is just redicilous easy in this game.

Honestly imo it’s usually the trash mobs that give my groups the most trouble (rifle bandits in CM camping the waypoint anyone? lol) I die more from 1 hit trash mobs than I ever do any boss, most boss mechanics are fairly easy to figure out after a failed attempt or two (assuming you don’t spoil the fun and read ahead on the forums on how to do it :p ) Like TA story for example, my guild figured out the final boss first run, we wiped a few times before we spotted the trigger, then we began making a tactic for taking out the group in an order. I love that kind of stuff, but when I walk through CM expl and I’m 1-2 shot by trash mobs hiding behind the opposite wall as I walk through a doorway or getting sniped by rifle bandits when I rez at the waypoint…yeah those kinds of things take the fun out of the dungeon. I understand they had to roughen up CM to slow speed clear teams (which I hate btw, it ruins the whole experience) btu I think for trash mobs at least they went a little too far on some of the dungeons. Ones like CoF (even done the proper way before they closed the exploit) was pretty well balanced and was a blast. Nerfing dungeons to satisfy the few QQers= bad bad news, but tweaking at least the trash mobs to make a more fluid dungeon experience but still require proper mechanics and teamwork on bosses= Good Game.

Making all dungeons easier (or harder) is a shot in the foot. What a game needs to be successful in the long term is to have a wide range of experiences. Not everyone has the same skill and not everyone has the same amount of free time.

Some dungeons should be hard and long (cough), some should be hard but short, some should be long but easy, and some should be short and easy.

Even the “difficulty” should be of different types in different dungeons. Some should require more mobility, some should require more accurate timing, some should require more teamwork, etc..

I do think that “challenge” by itself is almost worthless (people should play the dungeons because the dungeons are fun – and that should be the #1 priority of the developers – not just to “beat” them), but making all dungeons instantly accessible to everyone would eliminate the feeling of personal achievement that players get from the learning process associated with mastering a specific dungeon or a specific encounter.

Variety (of difficulty and length) is the key to satisfying a wide audience.

Dungeons in this game aren’t hard to complete.
They require no real coordination or cooperation to finish them.
There are no boss mechanics in the game, you just simply survive and ditch out dps and get rewarded for it.

Being 2-shoted in a boss fight doesn’t depend on the difficulty but on the mechanic.
I don’t want dungeons to be more difficult, i want them to have a dungeon mechanic in boss fights, ways needed to defeat bosses.

Right now i can complete dungeons in explorable mode while having BLUE gear.

Anet also replaced grinding for better gear to grinding for something that looks shiny…..

Ex

Exeon.4358:

Right now i can complete dungeons in explorable mode while having BLUE gear.

And you think that’s a bad thing? That your skill matters more than your gear?

If you do (if you want gear stats to be the deciding factors), there are plenty of games out there you’d enjoy more than Guild Wars.

Account.9832:

Exeon.4358:

Right now i can complete dungeons in explorable mode while having BLUE gear.

And you think that’s a bad thing? That your skill matters more than your gear?

If you do (if you want gear stats to be the deciding factors), there are plenty of games out there you’d enjoy more than Guild Wars.

I’m not saying it should be a deciding factor, i’ve played games in the past where it was all about the gear, however the difference is, that in GW2 i don’t tell the difference in difficulty with blue gear to exotic gear.

Ex

You’re meant to be able to do these dungeons at the required level. So a full group of 35, 55, or w/e should be able to do the corresponding exploreable mode. Full exotic & trait should not be required.

Its not required. Its just easier if you are 80 with exotics obviously. They are balanced for their suggested level.

Yarin.7982:

Dungeons are easy and hard at same time. For some players harder, for some easier. For instance: Arah path 3 is ‘’peace of cake’’ if you know what to do you can clear it in less than hour. On other hand Arah path 1 is incredibly long and extremely dificult and it can take up to 3 hours with very good group. Dungeons needs some balance or they should be more rawarding. Getting 60 shards for path 3 is ok number compared to effort, but 60 shards from hardcore route one is just silly.

So basically we need these hardest parts to be more revarding than the easier ones. Even with DR system it is faster to run path 3 three times and get 60+45+30 than go path 1. You have to think about this basic equation effort + time spent = reward

Those are my two cents, but overall I’m very satisfied with these dungeons.

This is probably one of the few actual intelligent and properly contributing ideas I have seen about this problem thus far. I don’t have a problem with most of the dungeons either (except parts of CM) and I think that doing the hard paths are balanced just fine but the rewards are not. Hope someone sees your idea and considers it before it gets swallowed up in this regurgitated disaster of a thread.

Honestly my number one complaint about dungeons in general is that mobs have way too much hp. Instead of a bajillion trash mobs with plenty of loot (Urgoz, Deeps, DoA, Slavers etc), now we have few mobs but each with a bajillion hp. I really don’t enjoy spending 10-20 minutes whittling down a boss with a bloated hp pool, and even trash mobs take too long to kill.

Spamming skills for ages waiting for a mob to die. It’s just. not. fun.

Someone mentioned DoA earlier. DoA mobs hit hard, but they never had such big hp pools, not even the bosses.