Guild Wars 2

Hey there folks,

So I was on another forum.. and there people where talking about drops and the grind they had to for it. You have people who want to get a dungeon set, like we have it now with tokens. Well very grindy.

I am someone who thinks it is alright right now. Some things are a grind. But I don’t mind it cause I have the ‘I-will-see-when-it-happens-disease" (kudo’s for the people who get the reference)

Anyways, this topic is about: How can you make Dungeons more attractive?

We know there is coming an overhaul. But how can we make it so that people will feel that dungeons are less a grind? Make a chance to let gear drop at bosses? Or special gear drop at bosses and ask the RNG to do it for us?

Or maybe quests inside dungeons to get certain things to craft pieces of armor or weapons who have an unique look?

What do you guys think?

My main gripe is the HP on bosses. Some of them are WAYY too high

Also another one to note is some silver mobs are just insane… Example Oozes in Arah, 4 conditions when they smack you with their regular attack, that’s just absurd.

I think it’d be nice if new paths were made in each dungeon that let you transform any associated dungeon exotics into ascended gear.

Since ascended gear is planned to be made more accessible outside of flavor of the month, you can make some kind of weird story about how the essence of the fractals or whatever are spilling out of the gate and taking affect all around Tyria (and hence the dungeon changes). This would let you bridge the gap that people are worried about when it comes to fotm rendering other dungeons useless and old hard earned armors pointless.

I think it’s been brought up somewhere, but an option to turn in 3-4 tokens of Dungeon A into 1 token for Dungeon B.

So if someone really wants Dungeon B’s armor but hates doing Dungeon B, he can do other dungeons and still earn his armor. But it should obviously take longer, because he’s not doing THE dungeon.

The only time I don’t enjoy the dungeons is when I’m with a group and they are in bad gear, don’t know how to play their class and or don’t listen.

The dungeons in this game are awesome but you will only see this when you want to be a better player and learn them.

The increased rewards are enough of a reason to run the dungeons.

RobinotX.1604:

Hey there folks,

So I was on another forum.. and there people where talking about drops and the grind they had to for it. You have people who want to get a dungeon set, like we have it now with tokens. Well very grindy.

I am someone who thinks it is alright right now. Some things are a grind. But I don’t mind it cause I have the ‘I-will-see-when-it-happens-disease" (kudo’s for the people who get the reference)

Anyways, this topic is about: How can you make Dungeons more attractive?

We know there is coming an overhaul. But how can we make it so that people will feel that dungeons are less a grind? Make a chance to let gear drop at bosses? Or special gear drop at bosses and ask the RNG to do it for us?

Or maybe quests inside dungeons to get certain things to craft pieces of armor or weapons who have an unique look?

What do you guys think?

This game has to have grind because grind translates to players EARNING something over time. If you want instant gratification in a game try plants vrs zombies or that bird game….

My friend wants to get the Arah set, but it’s just so much harder to find a group, people would always rather do do CoF in 15 mins then spend hours in Arah for the same reward.

I’d like to see either the time it takes to complete each path/dungeon more in line with each other, or have the amount of tokens you get for doing more difficult paths increased.

Path 3 in CoF should give more tokens than Path 1 for example.

I’d love to be able to get Lodestones with the tokens from that dungeon. Ex: CoE tokens can be used to get a Charged Lodestone.
I think with the right token price it could work well. It would encourage more people to do dungeons also. Right now I never get a group for a dungeon that is solely from people within my own home world server.

Also, it would drop some of the prices for them on the TP, especially the ridiculous Charged Lodestone and give people a way to obtain them rather then simply buying them or hoping for the RNG to favor them that day. It would make the progression of actually getting all the lodestones you need actually feel like your progressing towards your goal as you would KNOW that you will get another lodestone by getting enough tokens rather than hoping for it to drop randomly.

Rhukong.9547:

I’d love to be able to get Lodestones with the tokens from that dungeon. Ex: CoE tokens can be used to get a Charged Lodestone.
I think with the right token price it could work well. It would encourage more people to do dungeons also. Right now I never get a group for a dungeon that is solely from people within my own home world server.

Also, it would drop some of the prices for them on the TP, especially the ridiculous Charged Lodestone and give people a way to obtain them rather then simply buying them or hoping for the RNG to favor them that day. It would make the progression of actually getting all the lodestones you need actually feel like your progressing towards your goal as you would KNOW that you will get another lodestone by getting enough tokens rather than hoping for it to drop randomly.

I get these loadstones sometimes and give them to guild members because I don’t want a legendary. I like the system as it is.

Increased rewards we can PROFIT from. Increase loot as we progress in a dungeon, and make longer dungeons like CoE more profitable.

Reduce some BS in some dungeons which force us to “cheat” by abusing terrain. Such as Arah P3 where we jump on the urchins to kill the Ranger/Warrior duo. It’s annoying to fight the Ranger while dodging a Warrior who can OHKO the team. There’s also the hoops we have to go through standing on a cliff in SE path 1 to avoid mobs when trying to kill the Golem.

If you want to look for good dungeon design, see Fractals of the Mists. The foes have great loot and they’re all able to be completed in 15 minutes with a competent team. The mobs are not too powerful either, and can be soloed. They do not 2KO either like mobs in AC can do to a level 35.

However, as my overall feedback, reduce boss health. It should not take so long as it does to kill Butcher. When you AFK during a boss and auto your 1 skill, that is NOT good design!

It makes me scratch my head why ANET took the direction of longer boss fights in general? In GW1, Shiro was the perfect boss… Then we were introduced to Dhuum… Not only did Dhuum take forever to kill, but most teams had to jump through hoops with Resurrection Scrolls… AND he was at the end of 2-3 hour dungeon where wiping meant failing!

Stop the forever-boss fights, and stop making us jump through hoops!

However, I would like to highlight the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan as an amazing, memorable solo boss fight, and Dredge Powersuit for groups. Yes, the Dredge Powersuit! Because he requires team co-ordination to pour lava and interrupt his heal, but he isn’t too difficult once you learn him.

i am actually quite happy with the way dungeons are now in gw2. i enjoy running them – some more than others. the pre-events for those that requireuncontesting are sometimes buggy, but if those are fixed, i won’t have any big gripes.

the increased rewards were a great addition to the current dungeon running mechanism. perhaps tweaking this even further would allow for more interest to be back in dungeons. just a few more ideas and thinking out loud:

• more bonus bosses / events for each dungeon? for e.g. the cave troll in AC is always fun when he does show up. perhaps the same could be done for more dungeons.. and they will have a higher chance to drop something? though i don’t really see a problem with drop rates or the loot table in dungeons right now

• above mentioned extra bosses or even a new area to that dungeon, perhaps the length of a short fractal, added to the dungeon if you’re able to complete certain objectives within certain restrictions (time frame, dmg dealt, no downs, etc). and finishing said extr aboss or “mini-dungeon on top of a dungeon” nets you a chance at pretty decent loot maybe? or a reslendant chest. though i can see this causing more problems in finding groups.. since maybe peopel might really focus on skill, etc and kick people halfway through if not good enough etc

• someone mentioned exchanging tokens of one dungeon to another. something interesting to be looked at. perhaps not at a one to one ratio, but say for e.g. you’ll need 10 AC tokens for one arah token. JUST an example. cause even that seems too easy. but you get the idea.

i’ll be back if and when i think of more stuff

Kain Francois.4328:

Increased rewards we can PROFIT from. Increase loot as we progress in a dungeon, and make longer dungeons like CoE more profitable.

Reduce some BS in some dungeons which force us to “cheat” by abusing terrain. Such as Arah P3 where we jump on the urchins to kill the Ranger/Warrior duo. It’s annoying to fight the Ranger while dodging a Warrior who can OHKO the team. There’s also the hoops we have to go through standing on a cliff in SE path 1 to avoid mobs when trying to kill the Golem.

If you want to look for good dungeon design, see Fractals of the Mists. The foes have great loot and they’re all able to be completed in 15 minutes with a competent team. The mobs are not too powerful either, and can be soloed. They do not 2KO either like mobs in AC can do to a level 35.

Oh you must mean even more rewards than the 3 gold I made running cof and AC this morning. Yeah 3 gold for having fun seems a little low NOT.
3 gold and I got to kill Kholer = fun times :-)

Drew.1865:

Kain Francois.4328:

Increased rewards we can PROFIT from. Increase loot as we progress in a dungeon, and make longer dungeons like CoE more profitable.

Reduce some BS in some dungeons which force us to “cheat” by abusing terrain. Such as Arah P3 where we jump on the urchins to kill the Ranger/Warrior duo. It’s annoying to fight the Ranger while dodging a Warrior who can OHKO the team. There’s also the hoops we have to go through standing on a cliff in SE path 1 to avoid mobs when trying to kill the Golem.

If you want to look for good dungeon design, see Fractals of the Mists. The foes have great loot and they’re all able to be completed in 15 minutes with a competent team. The mobs are not too powerful either, and can be soloed. They do not 2KO either like mobs in AC can do to a level 35.

Oh you must mean even more rewards than the 3 gold I made running cof and AC this morning. Yeah 3 gold for having fun seems a little low NOT.
3 gold and I got to kill Kholer = fun times :-)

Actually I’m referring to the super-long dungeons we don’t profit from, like CoE and Arah. Especially Arah.

AC is fine. CoF P1+2 is fine. SE P3 is good. And HotW would be good if bosses did not take forever to kill.

Tokens NEED to drop in Story Mode. 60 of them, like in every other path.

Just spitballin’ ideas

•Add chance for cores/lodestones to every dungeon chest

•More armor/weapon skins that are unique drops from certain dungeons. Purely cosmetic of course to keep in line with horizontal progression

•Endless transformation tonics (like the endless Halloween tonic) that are unique, rare drops from dungeons that function in combat. For example, AC tonic would turn you into a random ghost, CoF tonic would turn you into a flame legion charr, Arah turns you into a random undead, CoE turns you into inquest asura, etc. etc.) They already use existing animations of existing races, just have them use your weapons like the when you turn into a ghost in path 3 of AC. Only issue here would be how to turn it off (timer, button to turn it off maybe)

•Unique rare drop mini pets out of dungeons. Mini pet Subject Alpha, Mini Pet Zhaitan, Mini pet Lupicus, Mini pet Baelfire, etc. etc. You already have the models, just make them smaller.

•New models for bosses/certain mobs. There’s an acceptable level of rehashing but at the very least, bosses should be unique looking. I cant count the bosses with unique models on one hand. Also, taking skelks and slapping graveling on their nameplate is really lazy and boring.

•Some encounters/bosses need to either be tweaked, or just redone entirely.

For the above 2, they should drop from all mobs, not just bosses.

Also this

DungeonDaughter.7391:

Tokens NEED to drop in Story Mode. 60 of them, like in every other path.

No more RNG. If anything is added into dungeons, let it be through a token system.

Lower boss health. I understand sometimes you want the encounter to be more difficult, but I hardly think my idly pressing 1-5 while occasionally strafing for 4 minutes count as more difficult.

I like the endless transformation tonics and rare mini pets. But again, no RNG.

I love the idea of more armor and weapon skins. Some of the dungeon armor seem very unfinished and it is a pain to run one dungeon for the stats and another dungeon to transmute. Either that or give us a way to combine those basic transmutation stones into fine transmutation stones.

Honestly though, when you’re talking about the replayability of a dungeon, unless it’s something truly spectacular, I’m not interested in a path taking longer than 20m with a good group to complete.

-First and foremost bring the trash mobs inline with fractal trash mobs in terms of HP/damage, get rid of the champions. Fractal trash is perfect in the amount of time it takes to kill them. Remove some extra packs (looking at you TA), these don’t add anything other than making the dungeon more time consuming.

-I would reduce burst damage from everything (traps/trash/bosses), but increase the attack speed (making not CCing or moving out of the way just as punishing and also making confusion viable). 3 knight + Leurent in TA is a good example of what I mean.

-Add more waypoints in dungeons, TA and Arah are gross violators.

-Letting conditions effect furniture (AC path 1 + 2)

-Add a timer for how fast you clear a dungeon multiplied by how many things are dead. If you kill everything (trash/bosses), tokens/coins get a multiplier. Let’s say a 3x for beating cof path 2 in 30 minutes. Maybe 5x for beating Arah in less than 2 hours. Think of the timed dungeons/raids in WoW. Maybe add bonus bosses that you can only access if you reach it before a certain amount of time. Let it drop lodestones or mini’s.

-Bring lodestone/core drop rates inline with fractals. Rare exotics should not cost more than legendaries.

-Add ascended dungeon armor sets, make them cost an arm and a leg. 1500 for boots/gloves, 2000 for helm/chest.

-Add more titles for dungeon clearing and dungeon speed clearing. “The Gardener” for clearing all story and 3 paths of TA or “Ghostbuster” for all of AC. ETC.

-Add achievements for doing certain things during boss fights, not letting Magg take damage while opening the door, kill the ghosteater without using the mortars, things along that line.

-Remove the effect magic find from dungeons.

-Have dungeon runs last 1 hour at the most.

-Give bonus to gold/tokens for members that are 80 that have sub 80’s in the dungeon, have the amount dependent on the level gap. Total level sum of 400 would reward less than total level sum of 360.

I’d like to see a solo player version of the dungeons and here’s why. I’m an older player, my reaction times aren’t as good anymore, I also get nervous when I get to the boss. If I’m in a group I’m forced to move along at a faster pace than I feel comfortable with. In addition, I don’t want others to feel frustrated or see me as a liability on the team. If I could work through a dungeon solo, get confident with the content, then I’d feel better about joining a team.

In Runescape they have a skill called dungeoneering which you can do solo or on a team. With a team you obviously get much better xp and rewards. But that’s fine with me because it still allows me to play the dungeons the way I like best.

If it can’t be done in GW2, it’s okay. I enjoy the rest of the content.

I’d love to encounter a mob that has the HP of a normal mob but hits like a truck. Would certainly make for interesting strategies :P

(1) Dungeon finder
(2) Dungeon finder
(3) 5-man version of Ulduar.

-Have the legendary pre-cursor scavenger hunt require you go do things in story mode dungeons. A good example is in WoW’s Uldar raid, in order to get the legendary hammer, you had to throw it into the last boss’ mouth when he was at less than 5% hp. Or you had to stand in front and take a dragon’s breath attack and live.

Rosen Myst.7641:

I’d like to see a solo player version of the dungeons and here’s why. I’m an older player, my reaction times aren’t as good anymore, I also get nervous when I get to the boss. If I’m in a group I’m forced to move along at a faster pace than I feel comfortable with. In addition, I don’t want others to feel frustrated or see me as a liability on the team. If I could work through a dungeon solo, get confident with the content, then I’d feel better about joining a team.

In Runescape they have a skill called dungeoneering which you can do solo or on a team. With a team you obviously get much better xp and rewards. But that’s fine with me because it still allows me to play the dungeons the way I like best.

If it can’t be done in GW2, it’s okay. I enjoy the rest of the content.

Rosen you are welcome to run dungeons with me anytime you need someone nice to group with. The guild I’m in is all 18 and over and I think most of us are in our 30’s. Older players need to stick together since there aren’t a lot of us.

Don’t feel like you are different because of your age. Almost every pug I’ve been in has been composed of nice and helpful players and the mean players usually don’t get invited to run dungeons again.

The very MINUTE you quit doing ANYTHING in game or life just for the rewards, is the minute you will become truly successful. How about instead of looking for a material reward you start looking for a personal reward like knowing your getting better at whatever your doing be it in game or out. So many people are focused on what they are getting as a reward that they cant stop to appreciate the dungeon itself.

All of these dungeons have nuances that are totally missed by the playerbase and instead of enjoying the experience, the dungeon becomes an obstacle to overcome to get to what they want.

Its has been and always will be a failed game design that puts the emphasis on the reward rather than the experience. The WoW MMO crowd just doesn’t get this concept nor does most of the newer devs in this generation of game design. You end up with exactly what GW2 has devolved into. People crying for easier and easier content or bigger and bigger rewards day in day out and its a NEVER ending dilemma.

So the million dollar question becomes, How do you get players into a dungeon for little to no item rewards?

1)Take out random drops as rewards.
2)Dont design dungeons based solely around combat.
3)Put in spectacular views or down right neat places in the dungeon.(good example: the telescope at end of path 1 in Arah only make it “more”)
4)Put in Armor Trophies that people can see that you have done a truly challenging dungeon. These have absolutely 0 stats. They are there for others to see. They arent titles they are instantly recognized by all when you have done something not many other people can but has 0 power. The tokens for armor system of now would have worked better if they had had 0 and I mean 0 stats on them.

These are just some ideas.

If you’re gonna have super high hp bosses give them all phases. If I can down a boss 20% without trouble its unlikely I’ll struggle with the last 80%.

Most bosses in this game are a snore to do. It would behoove boss designers to take some notes from games like Monster Hunter or something. GL and to an extent Alpha are some good boss fights that keeps the player on their toes, as well as some of the more novel ones like the plant guy in CoE that requires environmental weapons as well as designated team roles.

Give us more items to exchange like lodestones. For instance, CoE would reward charged lodestones,. Make them cost 60 tokens.

And for the love of all god and might scale all the rewards for dungeons. No one want to do AC to win low tier dust or level 35 items. I understand that this does not apply to overworld to give people chance to farm for lower tier crafting materials, but this isn’t the case for dungeons for higher level people.

Add a hard mode for dungeons. Make changes to bosses. Example:

Kholer wouldn’t have the wind up animation, and he would drop several ghostly aoe chill when he does the spin. Add a wall portal thing like in fractals to lock people inside his arena to avoid leashing him. This way people would be forced to fight his minions.
The ghost eater would be immune to conditions and have the cone scream from the other path bosses, etc.

In compensation, raise the rewards.

Aw man, sometimes i wish i was a designer

Also Robert, thanks man, truly. You are one of the few people on this site to actively give people answers, talk, comfort and share the frustrations.

First off, I’d like to say hello to Robert and the rest of the community. I’ve noticed a lot of activity on the forums over the last few weeks about dungeons and I thought I should way in on the matter at hand, our current dungeons in Guild Wars 2 and their current state. I will be staying away from the topic of Fractals of the Mist as I have not made it to the higher levels (10+). Keep in mind when I talk about these, I talk in reference to PUG’s.

I’ve run all the paths in Ascalon Catacombs and believe it to be a well balanced dungeon and the paths to be challenging each in their own right.

I’ve also run Caudicus Manor several times. The paths are fine with the exception of a single section in path 2 that requires having a specific build with a Mesmer in it for controlling the mobs at the gate where you need to place 5 barrels while an endless stream of bandits continually try to steal the barrels from the red circles at the gate.

I’ve run all the paths of Twilight Arbor numerous times. This dungeon is very well balanced, challenging and enjoyable to play through.

I’ve completed all the paths in Sorrow’s Embrace. It’s a challenging dungeon and a lot of fun. My only gripe with it is with path 1. The first Golem fight in path 1 requires specific builds in order to take down before you get swarmed by the endless waves of mobs.

I’ve completed all the paths in Citadel of Flame, also a good number of times for some paths. The only challenging part being path 3 if you are detected and must light all 5 torches simultaneously. Assuming you do have to light all 5 torches simultaneously this is going to require some means of voice chat between the 5 players.

Honor of the Waves, good dungeon, well balanced, real good time with the fights and boss mechanics. Potentially can be hard without voice communication for some paths, depending on the groups skill.

Crucible of Eternity is an extremely challenging dungeon and at times frustrating. Subject Alpha is possibly the hardest fight in the entire dungeon and he is in all three explorable paths, each path getting more challenging then the prior. The one thing I will say about subject alpha is the large rock circles with the ice patch at the center, one of those patches has a spike of ice that juts up from it that should have a different indication color in the frost making it easier for the player to read than is currently possible.

The Ruined City of Arah is well balanced with the exception of Simin in path 4, the Seer path; which I have already commented on in another post. I won’t rehash what was said there, but will include a link to the post. There is too much luck, specific build, and coordination required to deal with all the mechanics in the Simin fight. I have made suggestions and comments on the Seer path as a whole in this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-critical-critique-of-Arah-Seer-path/first#post932197

Now having weighed in on the subject of dungeons, loot for these dungeons is fairly reasonable. Personally I do wish it was slightly better without magic find. In a dungeon magic find gear puts a party at a severe disadvantage over one that has no members of the party in magic find gear. Sacrificing stats for better drops is in my honest opinion a horrible thing. I can understand magic find gear being used roaming the world with a party of 2-5 players enjoying leveling and maybe running event chains for fun, but magic find gear has no place in a dungeon, it just hurts the party as a whole, especially PUG’s.

As for token rewards I think they are fine the way they are. All dungeon paths should be feasibly completed within no longer than a 2 hour period. If any path potentially could take longer than that, the mechanics of that path should probably be re-accessed. No boss should have more than 2 mechanics at any one time, in my opinion. A good example of this in working form is Giganticus Lupicus, which has no more than 2 mechanics working at a time. Also if certain paths are to require specific builds those paths should likely be re-accessed also.

It has always been my impression that a party of 5 PUG’s with fully exotic gear, weapons, accessories and a good build should be able to complete any dungeon without much trouble. Am I wrong to be thinking this, because I’m not having fun with some of these dungeon paths and the creed of this game is FUN. I should be able to jump into a pug and get through a dungeon have it be challenging and take no more than 2 hours, that is my personal and honest opinion on the matter.

Random issues in no particular order:

• Many bosses take entirely too long to kill for their simplicity. Honor of the Waves is an easy example of this. Every boss has only one or two mechanics that repeat for extreme lengths of time, making them rather tedious and dull. Longer fights are fine, but build phases into them.

• Trash is pretty silly in some cases as well. If you’re going to go through all the dungeons, and those going forward, balance them like the trash in fractals. Those are pretty well done.

• Dungeon paths need to be similar in length and difficulty. Citadel of Flame is a pretty good example. Path 1 is short and easy. Path 2 is short and easy if Mag actually does what you want him to (see bullet below). Path 3 is pretty challenging (maybe too challenging. I’m not sure how you do the torch bit and the firetrap sprint gauntlet in a random group with no voice comms) and 2-3 times the length of the other two.

• The NPCs your group is shackled with are worthless and seem to be the main cause of most of the bugs found in the dungeons. They provide no benefit in combat and actively interfere with some encounters (looking at you, Mag). I really hope the dungeons going forward can remove the NPC interactions. Seriously guys, I killed an Elder Dragon. I got this. You can hang out at the entrance.

• Long, challenging dungeons are fine (preferable, in my opinion) but need to be more rewarding. Arah’s an easy example. Each path takes anywhere from 1.5 to 4 hours, and yet only rewards the same 60 tokens and has the same terrible chest drops as 20 minute paths like those in Ascalon Catacombs.

• RNG feels bad, man. I cleared 130 Fractals without seeing any essence drops. Meanwhile, one of the guys I run with regularly, who had a similar clear number, has over a dozen. After the December 3 patch I received two Vials in the first clear I did. Either you fixed something that was broken, or your random loot finally decided to not hate me. Regardless, things like Vials and the Rings, that are essentially required for progression, need to be reasonably guaranteed. Random is fine, but there needs to be some sort of fail safe in place to prevent RNG from actively preventing progression.

I’m sure there is more I’m forgetting. I’ll edit it in if I remember.

Edit:

• Dungeon entrance event chains. So, these were an neat concept, but don’t actually add anything positive to the experience. When I want to clear Citadel, Crucible, or Arah the last thing I want is to have a 20 minute to an hour plus of event chains just to enter the zone, especially if my party is on a time constraint. If I want to clear Citadel, I don’t want to clear the entrance event in between every path. Good luck running Arah late at night or early in the morning. The zone’s completely deserted. And that’s assuming the events don’t bug out and you can even open the zone. This type of gating mechanic is better left to a one time event similar to what you’ve done for Halloween and Southsun. Having to constantly open the zones up is a serious hindrance to the experience.

-Not so much an improvement, but a suggestion for an “easy” to implement dungeon. A horde mode dungeon, where more enemies and harder enemies spawn the longer your team stays alive. Have leaderboards and unique arenas (LOS, elevation, traps).

Set it to a Char themed gladiator tournament. I’m on fire with the suggestions tonight, give me a job Anet.

I have three things to say about the dungeons. 1: Reward from old dungeons is far from being even half acceptable but i’m pretty sure everyone knows that and last dungeon update did absolutely nothing to make me do same dungeons i’ve spammed since game launch. 2: I would like a dungeon with crystal enemies (like the shatterer and its minions). 3: I would like a dungeon like The Deep/Maws fractal, frozen ocean! looks nice and a full dungeon like The deep would be hawt

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

I think it’d be nice if new paths were made in each dungeon that let you transform any associated dungeon exotics into ascended gear.

Since ascended gear is planned to be made more accessible outside of flavor of the month, you can make some kind of weird story about how the essence of the fractals or whatever are spilling out of the gate and taking affect all around Tyria (and hence the dungeon changes). This would let you bridge the gap that people are worried about when it comes to fotm rendering other dungeons useless and old hard earned armors pointless.

I agree with this. I would also love to see new gear versions for each dungeon.
As an example:

Twilight arbor:
Exotic set – awesome skin, costs like 1k+tokens
Ascended Set- Super amazing wtf!?! skin, costs like 5k tokens.

OR

Add Hard Mode options to each dungeon:

Hard mode rewards a set of unique tokens used to trade for ascended grade gear with their omgwtfamazing skins.

Some dungeons I feel have some pretty boring skins, for example Ascalon Catacombs.. and this dungeon is widely considered the easiest.
Why not add a hard mode option and have some amazing skins offered for completing it?
You can do so much with this dungeon, and the higher tier skins.. Imagine making them glowy at night like the weapons?! :O

As it stands, alot of people who would usually do dungeons, now don’t because they already have their exotic sets, and all the skins they want.. They need a new tier to strive for, and with their exotic set already out of the way, they are all set up and ready to go for hard mode.

Compared to WvW tokens the accumulation of dungeon tokens is a breeze. But it’s also true that I want to throw a bomb at each dungeon I’m done collecting tokens in. This is mostly because after several runs the annoying things of a dungeon become more and more annoying, like many of the trash mobs in Twilight Arbor for example. So once dungeons are finetuned better that’s gonna help a lot with replayability.

Another thing I find problematic is the focus on boss fights regarding loot. You already changed something about that and that’s good. Groups must not think like “We gotta clear this trash and/or skip as much as possible so we can finally get to the interesting and rewarding stuff”.

What I personally would find interesting to counter that is if there were ways to increase rewards from trash mobs based on how the fight goes. Each pull could have different parameters depending on difficulty and behavior of the mobs. For example: If you kill the Knight pulls in explorable TA without them downing or killing someone you will get 5 Silver or 5 tokens extra per Knight kill. Or if you manage to kill an aoe pull really fast you will get a dungeon only food that gives you 2 minutes of random stat boosts which can make the boss fight easier and faster. Or if you interrupt or reflect a mob’s dangerous attack you get 3 Orichalcum Ores, and if you survive a condition heavy pull without anyone in the group having a status effect then your group will get a 2 minute swiftness buff, etc etc..
There could also be general bonus requirements for groups that count for the whole dungeon for any pull, like “not taking damage” or “killing the next pull at most 20 seconds after the first, with ever shrinking time windows and increasing rewards” or “group ending the fight with 100% life” and so on. You could even change these requirements after some time, weekly or monthly, to easily give dungeons a new twist.

On top of that, I would also love to see more interaction with the surroundings in the dungeons, for example alternative ways to kill mobs, like with a rockslide or with timing a trap or how about getting professional at what people do in dungeons anyway: skipping mobs. You could implement mobs chasing the players for a while down narrow paths with obstacles and if the group escapes they will get a reward.

I feel like I’ve rambled on quite a bit and I hope my post makes any sense. The point I was trying to make is to add more ways for skillful play to matter, to make groups WANT to fight trash mobs (by adding bonus requirements) or at least make them not lose time doing so by giving them something that will actually quicken the run if they fight well.

I say just add lodestones drops (more than just what you guys deem “rare” chance) for the top 3 hardest dungeons based by time like arah, coe, (not sure) and increase token rewards for each of them to compensate for time/tokens. The ones that don’t need this would be ac, cof <- these have hit the sweet spot for tokens/time/drops/gold just need to balance the rest.
edit: Can we get a storage panel for dungeon tokens and ectos already??

My big issue with dungeons is the trash. Not the bosses.

That’s not to say that the trash is “hard”, rather it’s highly over-tuned. Silver mobs are often more damaging than the bosses of a dungeon. They have too much health, they do far too much damage, some of them do crazy amounts of damage with spam aoe and constant stuns.

On top of that, the loot obtained from trash is nowhere near worth the effort of actually killing it. The same could be said of bosses to be honest, as loot from pretty much anything in a dungeon leaves much to be desired and the only thing people are after is to get the tokens so they can get decent gear.

I do think the trash needs to have a meeting in a dark alley with the nerf bat. A few times.

I suggested in an older thread and it was ignored by even the community, and the thread died, that we add more uses of character movement and letter F key. Like grabbing crates and moving in place to climb up to unreachable switches while mobs stream in and until the door is open, the trash mobs won’t stop pouring in, or more buttons that require 2 or more people to press at the same time.

More Zelda style puzzles should be able to be designed in GW 2 for dungeons! Instead of item use, use our skills to make environmental impacts, like melting ice lakes, or freezing water for a bridge.

EDIT: found the thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Ways-to-make-dungeon-even-more-appealing/first#post492110

Servers down: time for discussion.

There are currently two problems I can identify about current dungeons:

1. Too easy. Months ago when the forums were filled with complaints of dungeons being too difficult, a developer said that he believed ultimately people would converge to the new opinion that dungeons were too easy. This time came many weeks ago.

2. People converge to the short and easy paths of dungeons, and are avoiding the harder ones, because you can complete 3 CoF path 1’s in the time you can complete CoF path 3, and as such get 3x the reward. A difficult problem to solve.

I would like to propose an additional difficulty on each dungeon path, with Agony and Resistance, mobs that are more dangerous, and better rewards.

I would really like to reiterate my point that if you look at the individual Fractal designs, they are how to design a dungeon the right way. Please take this comment to heart, as myself and many others in the community are extraordinarily pleased with the individual designs of the fractals! Give yourselves a pat on the back, and please look at them for reference when designing future dungeons!

I also hope ANET does not forget about the “Mini-Dungeons”, as they have Silver mobs very difficult to solo, and the endchest rewards from them are very disappointing. It’s also very disappointing how ignored they went by the community after WoodenPotatoes hyped them in his “jumping puzzle” videos (despite many of them NOT involving very many jumping!)

Looks like a majority this seems to have devolved into “give more loot!” but personally I would just like to see more “interesting” boss fights. I already have all the gear I need, masterworks and rares are good enough for me.

Examples of a good direction to go is the dredge mining suit and the jellyfish in the fractals. They have hefty HP pool but there are also mechanics to deal with it. Example of a bad way to go is the butcher in HotW, large HP pool with bad camera angle. The plunderer also felt like a fight against the environment and the inability to properly judge distances in underwater combat. Perhaps fighting the environment was part of the design of HotW?

One hit kills(especially from an Asura covered in particle effects -_-) and “we’re just going to cover the entire battlefield with AoE”(pretty much all of TA, previously mentioned dredge suit) just seems like lazy design. The homing/piercing/turns around to hit you again orbs in CoE story mode(haven’t done explorable yet) also feel a bit cheap. They aren’t too hard but dealing with them feels like a chore. About as fun as a kid being told to stop playing GW2 and go do their homework.
(Technically there are no one hit kills, just one hit downs but with enough downs that is no longer a useful distinction.)

Blossoms and the lack of waypoints in TA, I would like to punch the person(s) responsible. I guess it could be argued that the problem with these can be avoided by not dying but I would like punch whoever is making that argument as well. One is bad, both just makes things tedious. Do I stay dead and leave my team one person short or do I use a waypoint and leave my team one person short? Between the distance and the blossoms it’s not that much different. “Your team should revive you!”, see previous complaint about AoE.

Pretty much all the dungeons seem a bit too claustrophobic as well. I realize they are called dungeons but from what I recall of the missions/dungeons in GW1 they were not as constricting.

Less linear dungeons would also be nice. AC has 3 paths but in reality it’s only a single path that you play through with minor variation. That aside, it would also be more interesting if multiple ways to complete a path. People are already sort of doing this through exploits in some cases. Provide multiple ways to complete the mission, some ways could be longer/more difficult than others. Obviously the longer/more difficult ways should be more rewarding. Rewards doesn’t necessarily have to be loot but if you can’t come up with anything else then loot is an okay substitute.

I am still slowly working through the dungeons so the above only covers what I’ve done so far.

I will make it simple. Dont increase the number of mobs or HP of mobs/bosses when you want to make it harder or challengy. This is not fun.

And Harpies. It is neither fun nor hard nor challenging. Just boring…(Yea fractals)

Some ideas to make old dungeons more attractive:

-Every dungeon needs to drop Ascended items if it wants to compete with Fractals. People are doing Fractals because it drops the highest stats items. Fractals needs similar rewards to old dungeons, which would be to offer the same tier of items, but each dungeon having its unique stats combos.

-Give us less money, but more useful items instead. Money is nice, but it just pumps more money into the economy. Give us useful items instead, like tier 6 crafting materials. More generous core / lodestone drops. A better chance for exotics / precursors to drop from chests.

-Loot tables should be balanced differently for each dungeon and its paths. You want people to play through your content? You better make it kitten well worth it, because people will only be running the shortest and easiest paths if it all gives the same rewards. People don’t do the longer / difficult paths because there’s no additional reward for doing so. Solution: Add higher rewards to paths that take longer to complete, or have more difficult encounters.

Lower the HP on some of the mobs. It’s a huge pain to grind through massive HP bars of some of these bosses. Because they’re just not challenging, only a timesink. So either lower the HP bars, or make the fights more interesting. Classic example of boring bosses with HUGE HP bars would be Honor of the Waves path 2.

Last but not least. Fix the bugs in these dungeons. Make it your priority. Dungeons are endgame material. It’s the stuff people will be doing for many hours. Having bugs preventing players from progressing, or making it a pain to progress isn’t fun.

I agree that bosses need phases, even if it’s just 75% normal and 25% low-hp frenzy. The last thing I want to do in a dungeon is sit there doing the same thing over and over again to wear down a boss, I would rather it be a challenge and progress faster than have it be easy and take forever.

Maybe add unique items as a chance to drop per major boss? Make them account bound on acquire so people have to run the dungeons to get that particular item.

I like the idea of rewards varying by path. Since it seems painfully obvious that some paths are much harder than others, either accidentally or intentionally, it would make sense that doing said paths reward players more. Maybe 30, 60, 90 tokens with the corresponding difficulty levels?

I’m probably in the minority, but I want to see things being harder. My idea of “endgame” is not grinding for gear but doing it because it’s great fun. And honestly, my idea of fun is being challenged. Think of your standard non-MMO game. I hate to use it as an example, but Black Ops. Why do people play Zombies? They don’t play it for more gear, they play it for zombies in itself, to challenge themselves. We need something to do at the end of the levelling/grinding journey.

If I was in charge, here’s the changes I’d make: Make bosses less of a damage sponge. Autoattacking something that poses no threat to you for 5 minutes is not a challenge, it’s not fun, it’s just a blatant chore. HotW is the worst offender. Half health, double damage on a lot of bosses in this game. Take out all the Sorge the Zealots, the Svanirgardirs, the Searing Effigies and the Ghost Eaters and replace them with Kholer and Lupicius. Alpha is pretty good but he has a kitten amount of health and you have to kill him three times for seemingly no reason.
Second thing I’d do is reduce the amount of exploits/tricks you can do to skip/make encounters easier instead of actually fighting it. Right now, running some dungeons such as AC is just using a set run of tricks/pulls over and over again to get through. There is no skill in following a pattern. Even parts which should be fairly dynamic – such as protecting Hodgins in the first path – have a set strategy that pubs use when they run it (One person tanks the burrow while everyone else hunts the others). Something as simple as making burrow locations random could force people to adapt. It should still be the same time to run something, just harder instead of a set pattern of pulls/skips/exploits.

And as for new content? I’d prioritize something with a smaller team. There is more room for tactics with maybe 3 people. Something more like a skirmish, something more similar to the aforementioned black ops zombies – a challenge of your groups skill to see how long you can stand rather than following a set pattern. Something you can log on every day and think “oh man I can’t wait to do some x after running some wvw and spvp because it’s fun” rather than “gotta do AC for my tokens soon”. And I’d also like to see some kind of self-contained “conflict” instead of the standard dungeon philosophy of “here are a pile of guys, kill them until there are no more”. Make things that respawn for a good reason. Make things that make your team require tactics, rather than “spam FGJ and auto”. Make points that you need to choose between that say, give buffs or spawn allies, tangible objectives that require teamwork and communication and that can’t just be rolled over by a pug. Something like the graveling burrows in AC, or the second last seal on Cliffside, but on a larger scale.

That somehow became a long post. I hope my broken keyboard didn’t ate my sentences and it is still readable. O_o

1. At the moment the difficulty is all over the place. The final boss should feel like the final boss, but the random champion enemy crab two rooms before the final encounter is so frightening that you better just skip the fight and run for your life. Every encounter after this one must feel underwhelming because you can actually beat it.

2. For someone who doesn’t want the dungeon sets, there should be some alternate genaeral useful reward. The best tip I got so far is “Buy rares and salvage for Ectos” which feels incredably lame for an dungeon reward.
A suggestion that comes to mind is that you could associate each one of the 8 fine or even rare craftion materials with a dungeon: For examples you could buy Onyx materials and Venom Sacs with Deadly Bloom.

3. Ascended gear is a problem. Either you tune the gear down to match exotic stats or you give each dungeon it’s own ascended gear. Since the whole agony part is only useful in the fractals dungeon and I wouldn’t like to see this introduced in the the old-school dungeons. The tune down is the prefered option imo.
The problem is not that it is only slightly better and it hardly matters. People will look at the numbers and the numbers are better so they go for ascended gear leaving the other content behind and making it hard to find a group for dungeons.

4. Story mode is not easier than exploration mode. Just hand out tokens like you would in exploration mode. Or make an extra story token which allows access to a Pact armor or something like that.

5. Harder paths should give better rewards. You surely have metrics for each dungeon path that people run. If you make the naive assumption that people runs the harder paths less often, you can do a little math and adjust the rewards accordingly.

6. Some bosses have nice ideas and horrible execution. The advanced Destroyer in CoE comes to mind, which has a nice idea with the frost guns etc. But it is just plain boring to play and no quick fix you will apply with change that. I would encourage you to get back to the drawing board and think who you can make this thing an engaging battle.
My main problem wit this one in particular is that I have more fear of the lava and the general enviroment than the boss itself. So make it a boss which can be skipped by a deadly jumping puzzle or make the boss a bit more challenging and the envioment not so extreamly punishing.

And one last point and this one is probably most important:

I was one of the people who thought dungeons are too hard. Well, I was wrong they aren’t hard but they feel padded.
New dungeon runner feel that there is an extrem difficulty spike in the game because their old stratagies doesn’t work anymore, and veteran dungeon runners will just get bored to death because once you figured out who to deal with the silvers there aren’t really much of a challenge they just have huge health bars.
I am not sure how to address this problem but it is sure the there is nothing in the game that prepares you for the challenge and once you figured it out it isn’t really that interesting… just long.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoyed my dungeon runs, the pugs I runned with were all very nice people, but the first few runs were just brutal and the later games were good because of the people.

As a semi-casual player who barely touched dungeons yet, I loved fractals and midly enjoyed AC/ CM/ Furnace story mode, because the former felt more creative and diverse, while the later experiences were crippled with looooong HP and graveyard zergs (but I loved the story-driven content and story ambience). Honestly, long, monotonous fights and content designed (or was it?) around rezzing and fixing armor did not allow me to enjoy the experience as much as it could have been.

As an extra concern for a semi-casual player – and I’m sure that does not applies to the specific part of the community that loves dungeons, is that I’m not sure if I’ll ever enjoy farming tokens, and so I have a dilemma: should I try to do explorable mode just for the sake of finishing each path once? Will they be worth it, or are they worth it only if I farm them?

One thing I liked about GW1’s EotN dungeons, is that their first reward for completion was a nice title boost (for hall of monuments and gameplay bonus in that area) and the existence of books that recorded all dungeons I’ve completed and gave me a big reward for completing them all once.

I would like to see this kind of books in GW2. It would make more people attempt at finishing every dungeon and dungeon path possible, but only once, for those who would like to enjoy the experience but do not have any motivation to farm them over and over.

Just going to reiterate some good ideas I’ve seen browsing the forums and some of my own ideas based on the experiences I’ve had in the current dungeon system.

Before I start, I’ve more or less played all of the paths of every dungeon to death (besides the story modes) and have acquired the dungeon master title, if that adds any weight to my suggestions. =)

Dungeon Difficulty

When I first started doing explorable dungeon paths at the appropriate character levels, it was a very nightmarish experience (looking at you, Cadaceus Manor) and wondered how some of this content was balanced for those players newer to the game. It was very offputting because the rest of the game up until that point was such an amazing and refreshing experience.

Cut to maybe a month or so later once I reach max level, have obtained full exotic gear, and go back to those explorable dungeons: They feel appropriately challenging and I don’t have much difficulty with them (with a few exceptions). I attributed this to learning my class a bit more and having better equipment. I still wondered how lower leveled beginner players were supposed to tackle these dungeons decked out in blue and green quality gear.

I think a good solution to this is to make the different paths (including story mode) go off of a difficulty scale that gives the players an appropriate award based on the path they’ve completed. Story mode would be the easiest, and would give the players a lot of breathing room to learn. It could reward the party with 10-20 dungeon tokens at the end. While that reward may not seem grand to most seasoned players, the feeling of being awarded yellow quality currency that can eventually be turned into level 80 exotics when you’re a newer player is amazing. Explorable paths 1, 2, and 3 could increase in difficulty (and perhaps length) and reward the players appropriately. This would also give players the option of doing the “quick and easy” path if they’re strapped for time or only dedicate a small amount of time to the game per day.

Story Mode: 20 Tokens [Easy path] – For beginners in lower quality equipment
Exp Path 1: 30 Tokens [Normal path] – For average players with mixed levels and equipment
Exp Path 2: 60 Tokens [Hard path] – A challenge for seasoned players
Exp Path 3: 90 Tokens [Nightmare path] An epic adventure for advanced players

For a grand total of 200 tokens if you decided to run all of the paths in one sitting.

Oh also, please remove the diminishing returns for clearing consecutive dungeon paths too quickly. If a player wants to dedicate a session to clearing multiple dungeons in one sitting, please do not punish them for it.

Dungeon Rewards

With the addition of ascended quality gear and it only being available in Fractals, I’ve noticed many players voicing concerns that the dungeons will become obsolete, since you will eventually be able to acquire better equipment in the fractal dungeons.

Perhaps you can introduce ascended quality gear that requires a large amount of dungeon tokens and a special item that can only be acquired in the most difficult path of a dungeon. Maybe include a cost in ectoplasms or other fine materials that need to be combined in the Mystic Forge, similar to the ascended backpack recipe.

Also, I noticed that in a recent patch there were some new jeweler recipes added to the loot tables of certain dungeon bosses. I’ve never seen these drop once for myself or anyone in my groups. It would be nice if players could turn in a number of tokens to gain these recipes from the dungeon vendors. Also, I’m sure most players would agree that including other unique crafting profession recipes would be awesome instead of letting jewelers have all the fun. Even better: include the ability to craft more intricate versions of existing dungeon sets that require the base equipment pieces to create for people to really show off their dedication to a particular dungeon.

Dungeon Events

A lot of the events in the dungeons are quite interesting and enjoyable. Events such as bringing the bombs to Magg, taking the glowing sphere to open the doors in Arah, or the spike traps event with Detha in AC are quite fun. However, some of the events, such as having to protect Magg while he places explosives, or the event where you need to place the five explosive barrels next to the door in Cadaceus Manor, makes me stop and wonder if the developers really sat down and play tested these and looked and each other and said, “That was a satisfying and fun experience!”

Please don’t design events that require even the most seasoned players to have to die repeatedly in order to achieve success. That’s not fun. =(

Trash Mobs

I notice that in a lot of pick up groups, most people will skip a lot of monsters and go straight for the bosses or events necessary to progress through the dungeon. I feel that if there were more incentive to killing the trash mobs, most pugs would stop to clear the mobs. You could add a 5% chance for 1 token to drop off of silver elites and a 25% chance off of champions, or whatever chance you feel would be appropriate. The bags of wondrous goods that drop off of bosses was a step in the right direction, I feel.

Bosses

There are quite a few fun and challenging bosses to fight, such as Kholer, Lupicus, and Subject Alpha that I wish we could see more of in dungeons. Bosses that require you to be moving a lot and timing your dodge are very much welcome for me. However, allow most bosses to be reasonable for players who prefer to melee. If they have a lot of close range AoE’s and nukes, let the boss creatures give off a sign or a tell, that way it allows melee players to know when to evade, dodge, or step away for a moment.

Please do away with bosses that only require you to stand around and whittle away at a giant HP bar. I’ve almost fallen asleep at my computer on many different occasions due to fights like that.

Also, give us more environmental tools that allow us to make the boss fights more interesting. Similar to the lava buckets in Dredge fractal or the electric cages in the Aquatic fractal.

Also while we’re on the subject of bosses, I’m sure most players would agree that the final battle with Zhaitan in the story mode of Arah was very unsatisfying. If it’s within your time frame and budget, I would love to see an encounter in one of the explorable Arah paths that takes the players back to the site where Zhaitan fell, only to discover that he wasn’t quite defeated, allowing the players the satisfying battle with the downed Zhaitan to finish him once and for all.

TL;DR:

*Scale each path to be more challenging and rewarding than the last, so players of all skill ranges and equipment level can eventually afford the dungeon rewards they wish to achieve.

*Give players the ability to create ascended equipment with items found in the more challenging content of dungeons, similar to ascended backpack recipes.

*Allow us to buy the rare crafting recipes that drop off of bosses with tokens.

*Get rid of the events that require players to die repeatedly to succeed.

*Give players more incentive to clear trash mobs in dungeons instead of skipping everything.

*Remove damage sponge bosses and give us more boss encounters that require us to think and move and utilize the environment to succeed.

If any of my input is even slightly reflected in future content patches, I will be happy and buy all the gems! =D Please keep up the good work Anet, this game has been one of the most enjoyable MMO experiences I’ve had in a long while.

IMO the only 2 dungeons that are a grind are CoF and Arah, it kinda sucks that you get pretty much the same loot/ rewards as you do from 15 minute paths on other dungeons.

What is more of a grind however is trying to find a group for an old dungeon since FotM came out. Even with GW2LFG it can still take a while to get a group.

• Don’t agree with dungeon finder requests. It is anti-social tool that strips games of it’s content: namely open world pve. It can change an open world mmo to GW1 instance based multiplayer (5 ppl) game. That said, finding party should be made easier/more fluent by introducing other mechanisms. I like the idea that players must complete DE in order to unlock dungeon. This immediately results in having a group of players near the instance entrance. And because of the fact that grouping in GW2 is easy due to no healer/tank/dps roles, it is enough. There should be more of this. Dungeons should be either opened for short periods of time, or should be hidden/change locations. This way, if I want to go to AC, I need to spend some time doing dynamic events in Plains of Ashford and since some players will also want to do AC I’ll meet them and form a group as we go. Of course there needs to be more and more interesting DE so that they don’t feel unnecesarry grind before unlocking an instance. So my idea would be give dungeons as a reward for playing with group of ppl in the open world.

• DE inside dungeons!!! You had that idea, and I don’t understand why it is not in there. DE’s would make each dungeon run unique.

• Hidden optional stuff in dungeons unlocking bonus encounters with bonus reward.

• Less linear. UW from GW1 is a good example.

• Never-ending due to cyclical nature of some dynamic events and harder the more time you are in there. reward scaling too. Final reward after final boss if you manage to nail it down, but after that, why not staying there a little longer, make some side-DE and find some secrets/crafting recipies/npcs?

• Measure team progress and accomplishments in Dungeons and make DE outside the dungeon based on the team results. For example: after 75% of teams fails certain de in the dungeon, the boss with his army emerges from the dungeon entrance and starts a meta-event.

• Dungeon rewards could use a new system → exchanging tokens with NPC is boring. Using dungeon specific materials and hidden npc’s / locations in the dungeon as well as hidden recipies to create fun items are more interesting.

• Hard mode boss encounters launched by players doing some additional stuff (Stealing Glinth’s Egg in GW1 example).

• No bugs and exploits?

• No waypoint runs. If we wipe on some Dynamic Event or boss encounter, the event should fail and we now do something different in the dungeon. If we play really badly and fail many easy DE’s there should be kick from the dungeon. Many kicks can result in meta event outside and dungeon becoming innaccessible, then after re-capturing dung it gets easier and less rewarding. Many parties doing very well result in the Metaevent that will make dungeon completed and innaccessible for a time. And dung gets harder next time it appears.

Just couple of ideas that are not necessarily well-thought, but that is your job as game designers

In GW1, you’d get rewards for completing most of the content. In my opinion, any reward given for doing everything but not for repeating something is a good idea. It promotes diversity of situations which lessen the feeling of grind.

So, you could do something like that for dungeon paths : reduce the tokens you get per run by 20 for example, and reward players with 120 tokens each time they complete every path on a dungeon? Just like the story books in GW1.

Same one for doing every single dungeon in the game. Currently there’s some title. Make it a story book that rewards us with lots of gold/karma/fine mats/ectos/lodestones etc… when we complete it (ie, when we do every single dungeon path once) and deliver it.

As for general dungeon design. Some people complain that bosses have too much HP. Others that trash mobs hurt far too much at time. I believe those two issues are linked. Mobs hurt too much so people gear up heavily in defensive stats, so they take too long to kill the bosses.

I can’t help but think something isn’t right with most dungeon paths tuning on damage and attack animations. But maybe it’s just me playing a 10k base HP class with little group utility that would justify a heavy defensive gear set while the dungeons must be tuned for 20k HP powerhouse warriors.