Guild Wars 2

I think that dungeons in gw2 has 2 types of problem.
- rewards
- not that fun.

Fractals are just better in terms of “high” end rewards (exotics, rares, lodestones), fast and easy dungeons like AC are made for coin. We need better progression, maybe some specialization in drop and rewards, some better way to get lodestones, maybe ecto.

Fun. Most dungeons, maybe with exception on CoE are more like enter→kill or skip trash→kill boss (mostly tank spank or antymelee one) →kill or skip trash →kill boss. We need more puzzles, maybe even jumping events etc because this trash clearing is very boring.

Today I’ve done some of the mini “dungeons” to get some achievments in explorer tab. Some of them (vexa lab for example) was fun like hell. I want to see similar events in normal dungeons.

Arah gear is horrid looking.
And I highly doubt that Simin at l4 isnt buggy. She will always disapppear at 50% no matter how long she’s out making that fight a loop.
I dont see a problem with a hard mechanics, but the way it is its just requires a certain glass cannon spec to actually have a chance.

Unless you do the four spark trick so you actually have a chance.

Making a dungeon unforgivably hard is easy. But making a dungeon fun, now that’s hard. I see this as the main problem with GW2’s dungeons (apart from Fractals). They are linear and punish experimentation, forcing players into a narrow mindset while eliminating that free-roaming feeling of adventure that GW1’s conjured up quite well. They are not much fun, they are just a lot of work. I realize some players enjoy this kind of labor. But I know a middle ground is possible, where a dungeon is both challenging, and accessible and fun.

The sort of challenge that doesn’t make you go “I’m never coming back here!” after the first try.

I hate the dungeons so far because they are too hard!

Because bosses often have immunities, high melee damage output and/or insane PBAoE, and extreme lack of heals, Guild Wars 2 has a reputation for being very tank-unfriendly. I often find myself saying, “World of Kitecraft” as I run around in circles while my team kills the mob.

EverythingXen.1835:

-Story Mode dungeons are just as hard if not harder than explorables. Either give them the same rewards as explorables or make them orders of magnitude easier to match their rewards.

-Dungeon/Group finder. Let me scan a list of people flagged as interested for particular dungeons and whisper/invite them. Do NOT autogroup me and/or port me to the dungeon when 5 people happen to be ready.

-Remove the events contesting the entrances to dungeons. Do not fix them. They serve no purpose other than needlessly keeping me from fun content.

-Nerf every Silver grade mobs damage and HP. Three Ascalonian Rangers are more dangerous than anything else in AC. More than a single Knight in TA are as well. I dont care what the rewards are. They’re cheap, overpowered, and are avoided/skipped/exploited past for good reason. The ones that aren’t dangerous just take forever to kill.

I second all of these.

It’s not fun to deal with the silver mobs, it’s just plain annoying. If the silver mobs absolutely have to be annoying (they aren’t impossible… there are ways to circumvent their obnoxious mechanics, it just isn’t fun or interesting to do) then put them in a challenge mode of the dungeon or something.

Right. I need to get a few things out of the way first before I give my thoughts on all the dungeons. These are my opinions. I might state a few things as facts but they’ll mostly be opinions on how things should be. I’ve been a gamer for quite a while, have done the most “hardcore” achievements in various PvE scenes of the MMO genre. Let’s just say I’ve been around for a while and I know what I like and don’t like. Continuing on.

Bosses:

The bosses in every dungeon seem to have a lot of hit points for the purpose of scaling up difficulty. More time is spent fighting the boss, more time spent fighting means there’s a higher chance of making a mistake. The issue here is that most bosses are pretty straightforward. They just have a lot of HP and they hit everyone. There’s no real strategy involved, you’re just swinging away.

-However-, in the event that there is a major attack coming up then it’s usually not even telegraphed all that well. The amount of times someone goes “what hit me” is astounding. There’s dumbing down and there’s giving the players a proper chance.

A boss doing a 1.5 second animation who is lit up by numerous attacks while his adds swerve around him won’t telegraph his attack properly. This is an issue.

Dungeon Trash:

I know dungeons need to be filled up a bit so it’s not just going from boss to boss but you need to be reasonable about it. Some mob placements just feel like they’re there just for the hell of it. “Let’s plant some guys here”. This makes for a pretty crowded dungeon and on top of that it feels unimaginitive. It becomes more of a chore to get through. Most of the mobs just stand around doing nothing all day.

Some of the mobs even do absurd amounts of damage together which you won’t be able to handle properly with certain setups, if any. Hit points on some occasions could use a little tweaking too. This goes back to the telegraphing of attacks from the bosses. Same applies to the mobs if they have some sort of powerful attack. In the aoe mess in GW2 you’re just not able to spot these things.

Suggestions? Think about the trash mob placements, lessen them, lessen their hp, make them less of a pain to deal with. In some dungeons the trash mobs are harder to deal with than their respective dungeons. Not okay.

Give the dungeon a little more flair by having these mobs do something other than standing about. In most dungeons they’re just standing around. As soon as you come near they magically spring to life as if they were in suspended animation the whole time, waiting for their saviour to come near them. The fractals seem to be doing better in that regard though.

The Grind:

Let’s face it. There’s a major grind involved. Nobody does a dungeon to get “great loot”. They do a dungeon to get tokens. With tokens they can get a piece of armour. Then they need to do the dungeon again to get… more tokens for an additional piece of armour. You can do it for the stats but most people want the sets for the looks as well. Other than that, there is no incentive to do these dungeons. Nobody runs these dungeons over and over because they’re fun but because they’ll offer tokens. On top of that, you’re forced to do the same dungeon over and over and over for the set you want.Then they’ll abandon it to do fractals.

Suggestions: Would it be so bad to make universal tokens or even just use karma for the sets? The dungeons give karma now anyway. But I get that you’re dead set on wanting people to do the dungeon which rewards its respective set. So why not have a unique item drop from the boss? Then use that item, paired with karma, to buy your armour piece. Example: Ascalonian Helm cost = karma price of 45000 + Head of Ascalonian Catacombs Boss.

This would make the grind a lot easier and at the same time a lot more varied which makes it tolerable. Hell, if you can’t use the head then maybe you can turn it in for some T6 materials?

Fractals:

Fractals. What can I say about fractals? They’re an improvement over the old dungeons. But I’m not really a fan of shutting out people who are at level 2 while I’m at 10+. I’d rather be able to bring these people up to my level than having to go through all the different levels to get them where I am. It splits up people, makes it less fun and it becomes a chore once again.

I’m personally not too big of a fan of doing them over and over to get an additional level and face harder challenges. Which amounts to do doing the same things except longer. The exceptions start at level 10 where new attacks come into play, I guess. But did I really need to do all those previous levels just to get there? Again, grindy.

Needed to split my post up. Last bit.

Bugs:

I know, I know. You’re working on fixing bugs. The issue is that people do suffer while they’re still in the game. I just had a friend disconnect at the Jade Maw which means all her progress was lost. Gamers like to progress. Not being able to progress due to a bug is demotivating and makes you not want to do any of the buggy content. I’m not sure what else you’re doing so I’m not going to claim your priorities are wrong. But this is a major issue that should have the highest priority. Any bug that stops your ability to progress should be at the top. People will stop playing a game where your progress means nothing if it can all be washed away by a bug. Especially in an MMO.

If you managed to read through all of it then you’re amazing. I hope it helped. I realise I go off on tangents but I hope everything’s clear enough.

Svarty.8019:

2) Offering ugly gear sets for hard dungeons and pretty sets for the easy dungeons. Why are the weapon rewards for AC so cool? Why does CoF armour look so good? Arah weapons look plain.

Actually arah weapons are the best, with constant smoking effect

Arah gear is horrid looking.
.

My armor is the most beautiful armor in game. Expecially as necro.
Link on signature

I mainly play dungeons these days (any expl. mode with one char + fractals with another char).

I agree with other posters that fractals is a special case (you really need to fix that people can’t rejoin if they DCed or otherwise left the instance!!). The 9 fractals are refreshingly different from each other and often promote group play, e.g. by assigning small tasks to individual players. FotM can count as progress on dungeon quality. :-)

Here are my suggestions for improvement for the “normal” (non-fractal) dungeons.
- Every boss or champ feels the same. Debuff him, dodge, cure conditions, always the same skill rotation, more or less silent fight with no drama. In one dungeon it’s frost, the other it’s fire or poison, but it makes no difference.

- No drama: GW2 is so great about telling stories by letting them play out by events, actually experienced by players, instead of boring text to read or cinematics, which are skipped anyway, GW2, in the open world, tells the stories by events. Not so in the dungeons. Why?

- Bad culture: People leaving groups; calling other people names/noobs; too much rush, too much emphasis only on the tokens, only few ppl take the time to explain things to new-comers.

- Weak organization: People can skip trash and leave weaker players behind. It’s a bad sign people skip trash at all. It means, it’s boring. Too leave people behind is bad for the group play. So at least place WPs in between the skipped areas. I suggest to make the trash un-skippable (they follow the group through the whole dungeon) or make them an extra reward, i.e., you get more tokens when you don’t skip them (they could be in a separate optional room to be fought).

- Give individual members a special role, so they feel more vital to the success of the dungeon run. Some fractals are a good example where you need party members stand on pressure plate or pour hot iron, etc. Having an extra task makes ppl feel special.

I played LOTRO before GW2 and I must say a major part of their instances is more interesting/fun then the GW2 dungeons. Maybe watching videos of Moria/Isengard instances makes the differences clearer than I can describe them (it’s not the trinity, that makes them interesting).

- GW2 has superior tech: Level scaling, self-sufficient classes (no trinity), cross-server-parties which make finding groups and playing dungeons very easy. Keep that! :-)

My 10 cent of Community Voice. Hope I could be of help.

Sadly, i agree with your post in the fullest, but it’s just the 1000th post who will be ignored , we asked billion times to give us back our game as it was pre geargrind patch, and more deep and fun. We gave hints to make a legendary as a real legendary path for a worthy player, not just a stupid cheater posting when done a thread here. We gave fix and ideas to make dungeons more enjoyable. Fractals too. Etc etc. They listen the community? Nah

I’ve been a big fan of Anet and Guild Wars since that first day of GW1 when I walked on Ascalon. I think the dungeons of GW2 are a vast improvement over the elite areas of GW1 which remained practically inaccessible to me and my tiny tiny guild right till the end because of their difficulty and low population of GW1 players.
I think there’s some very small things that could be done to make dungeons more accessible to more players without reducing difficulty:

1) Better LFG system – a full pane with a proper search interface

2) Brighter red (possibly flashing) used to mark AoE circles. Something I noticed during my last visit to HoTW was I was one of two people actively dodging out of the way of the bosses nasty, nasty AoE. Perhaps also ‘helpful hints’ could appear during the death scene related to the last cause of death. These don’t need to provide tremendous insight but just reminding people to dodge or the usefulness of potions etc would go a long way I feel.

3) Friendly reminders to high level players that don’t have underwater skills equipped. Again a HOTW thing. I didn’t even realise this was a thing but it seems some high level people don’t realise that you have to re-equip slot skills when you go under water. If they’re level 80 and they have blank slot-skills, then maybe a tooltip could pop up occasionally and go “hey, see this arrow here? Press it!” (or something to that effect).

4) More engaging boss fights: As annoying as the evolved destroyer boss fight is in CoE, I like it and respect it for the very interesting fight that it is. On the other hand, I can’t begin to describe how much I hate subject zero, or sure-shot seamus etc with their absurd damage (which I’m not THAT annoyed at) and their grotesque health pools (which I’m absolutely flabbergasted about. What is this a time sink-MMO? Did I wander into Azeroth when I wasn’t looking?). A hard fight is a good fight but a hard fight that goes on for 30mins, not because it’s particularly hard, but because the mobs have an ocean for a health pool is just plain cheap design with no imagination. Maybe some groups can knock off these dungeons in a reasonable amount of time even with this awful feature, but that still doesn’t mean they’re having fun.

5) Rewards are great although I feel CM has noticeably crappier rewards than the other dungeons. Perhaps some kind of interesting effect on the weapons would be nice. Also some of the CM vendor prices are borked (particularly the focus which I still can’t afford due to said bug).

6) A new category of items found in dungeons would be really nice. I can’t think of what but adding dungeon specific back items was a good start. Something that you can get from each dungeon, that is unique and will make you want to return to that dungeon long past you hitting level 80 and being in all exotics. Perhaps some ridiculously low drop legendary or something (not account bound). Even if something is cosmetic it would be good. Like an exotic/legendary drop from CF which when activated cause a (cosmetic) fiery fist above your head when you get a crit or something. Doesn’t have to be amazing but good enough to get peoples attention and make then want to visit said dungeon.

7) More dungeon specific rare/exotic recipes. I got my first drop of a dungeon specific recipe from CM last week. It caught me entirely by surprise. It’s not good enough for me to make it and wear it but I quite like it nonetheless. It’s the first time anyone in my guild has received such a drop so it’s either a rare drop or not common across all the dungeons. Dungeons having more relevance to crafting would be good for both aspects of the game I feel.

8) The difficulty of AC story and explorable should be lowered as it really puts people off doing dungeons for the rest of their career. It took a lot of persuasion to bring 2 guildies back into the fray after the royal rapings they received in said dungeons and from what I hear/read, others have had similar experiences.

9) This may be asking too much but some sort of fancy particle effect on every dungeon weapon would be really nice. I know some are harder than others but it still would feel like a nice incentive that could rally the masses to go to the neglected dungeons.

10) I’d like to reiterate again how crappy the CM rewards are compared to other dungeons.

I strongly feel that some of my recommendations would revitalise dungeons (not that they’re dead) and encourage more of the community to try them out. Dungeons are great and recommend them to everyone I can but it’s quite hard motivating some people due to the difficulty and rewards not always being on par. I love dungeons and would love to see Anet take some steps to keeping them relevant long after most people are in exotics and ascended gear.

Thanks for reading my (hopefully) post!

Shoitaan Shattered, Guild Leader of “Tuskforce” [Tusk]
Borlis Pass

tl;dr version:
Read the long post >: (

Svarty.8019:

I think Arenanet alienated people from some dungeons by:

1) Making them hard, especially supposedly trash mobs – many are brutal. This can be fun but is sometimes horrid – depends on the team, their gear, their level and experience playing their character.

Precisely why I won’t partake in any dungeons, because they’re not designed for newbs or people who don’t have the right gear… if that were the case we’d be allowed to take more people into these dungeons to stand a fair chance. But as it is right now, we don’t really, and people with the limited experience that I have (and I know there’s a lot of you out there) just won’t go near them because they feel like they’re designed for more experienced teams and newbs will get slaughtered in a flash.

If we all had exotic gear throughout and knew what the dungeon was about (and I’m including any pitfalls that experienced players only know about) then it would be so much easier. But as it is, that’s exactly the reason that inexperienced people are being alienated from dungeon groups, particularly explorable mode dungeons, because so many ‘experienced’ players just won’t have the patience or take the time to help the newbs out, unless they’re part of their guild or something.

I’m sorry, but for me it’s creating a negative atmosphere when it need not be, and until the higher level dungeons are brought down a notch (can we say Normal Mode and Hard Mode here?) there will always be a stigma for inexperienced and casual players with these dungeons.

I believe the rewards have already been covered… make tokens available for both modes and more of them for explorable so it’s less of a grind to get the gear you want, or make the gear require less tokens to obtain.

Finally I’ll say that dungeons are supposed to be a challenge, but not at the expense of the fun of the game. Give the inexperienced and casual gamers a bit more impetus to participate in dungeons. We won’t learn a thing from people telling us about them.

I have difficulty telling when I am out of danger when it comes to overlapping red circles, like the case for Subject Alpha. I think I am out of danger/standing in a safe spot and then bam! I get hit by AoE and it’s all over.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Svarty.8019:

I think Arenanet alienated people from some dungeons by:

1) Making them hard, especially supposedly trash mobs – many are brutal. This can be fun but is sometimes horrid – depends on the team, their gear, their level and experience playing their character.

Precisely why I won’t partake in any dungeons, because they’re not designed for newbs or people who don’t have the right gear… if that were the case we’d be allowed to take more people into these dungeons to stand a fair chance. But as it is right now, we don’t really, and people with the limited experience that I have (and I know there’s a lot of you out there) just won’t go near them because they feel like they’re designed for more experienced teams and newbs will get slaughtered in a flash.

…

Finally I’ll say that dungeons are supposed to be a challenge, but not at the expense of the fun of the game. Give the inexperienced and casual gamers a bit more impetus to participate in dungeons. We won’t learn a thing from people telling us about them.

The thing most people miss is that explorable mode dungeons were designed as part of Anet’s “end game content” (or at least were, if they’ve hence changed their standing). They’re meant to be done by players who have maxed out their character level. They are possible to be done by lower levels than 80 (to an extent, dungeon depending) if the players are competent.

That being said, the story modes need to not be on that same level. Story mode dungeons give more back story to coincide with the players’ storyline. As they stand now though, they are far too hard for most to consider doing at the “recommended” level for the instance.

The only 2 thing i really want to see is more/all stat distribution for each dungeon armor at dungeon vendor and lowering the annoyingly high health that some boss has where you only need spam buttons until he falls down

Sarcasmic.6741:

The thing most people miss is that explorable mode dungeons were designed as part of Anet’s “end game content” (or at least were, if they’ve hence changed their standing). They’re meant to be done by players who have maxed out their character level. They are possible to be done by lower levels than 80 (to an extent, dungeon depending) if the players are competent.

If this is true( and Im not saying it isnt, I just dont understand the design) why arent all the explorables lvl 80 as opposed to 5 lvls above story mode? Yeah, they all give out lvl 80 gear but they also give lower lvl gear too, if AC exp wasnt meant to be done by lvl35 characters why does it have lvl 35 gear available as rewards?

Just be creative. More fun and interesting mechanics in boss fights. Imo, this is as important as rewards distribution if not more. Some dungeons already have pretty nice and interesting mechanics in them (CoF, Arah, FotM), but some not so much (CM, SE?). And all of em could use some fine tuning.

Webba.3071:

If this is true( and Im not saying it isnt, I just dont understand the design) why arent all the explorables lvl 80 as opposed to 5 lvls above story mode? Yeah, they all give out lvl 80 gear but they also give lower lvl gear too, if AC exp wasnt meant to be done by lvl35 characters why does it have lvl 35 gear available as rewards?

Not entirely sure why the explorable dungeons are scaled down. The only idea I can come up with (and this is since making the tokens account bound) is providing an additional way to gear up your alt characters. A little bonus for having gotten through once already. Purely speculation though.

Also, found where I read about the explorable modes.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-endgame-reimagined/

Shoitaan.7405:

2) Brighter red (possibly flashing) used to mark AoE circles. Something I noticed during my last visit to HoTW was I was one of two people actively dodging out of the way of the bosses nasty, nasty AoE.

>.< Are you serious? Flashy? Maybe add gong sound and announcer “move your kitten ”? And implement some way to electrocute players, so they would notice AoE coming at them for sure? Or maybe just remove all AoE from bosses all together and just give us “win” button. This is general awareness issue, imo the red circles on the ground is already may be too much, that’s why there’s an option to turn it off.

Shoitaan.7405:

The difficulty of AC story and explorable should be lowered as it really puts people off doing dungeons for the rest of their career.

Make story mode easier all you want, but how AC exp mode can be too hard is beyond me. If anything, it could use some boost to difficulty. Or maybe just adjust scaling system, so lvl80 toons in full exotics won’t be able to faceroll solo Kholer.

Well, the issue remains that the inside of the circle can be a little hard to make out. Especially when that circle is bigger than the platform you are standing on like in some infamous fractal

All classes have some save abilities for that. xP

Sarcasmic.6741:

Not entirely sure why the explorable dungeons are scaled down. The only idea I can come up with (and this is since making the tokens account bound) is providing an additional way to gear up your alt characters. A little bonus for having gotten through once already. Purely speculation though.

It is weird, right? I mean Orr mobs dont drop lvl40 rares so you can gear up your alts with them.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Also, found where I read about the explorable modes.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-endgame-reimagined/

Oh yeah, I remember that article. I read it a little differently though – I took them to mean that people at lvl 35 and people at lvl 80 are playing the same sort of content, as opposed to lvling with one type of content and then the end game being completely different ie playing AC at lvl 35 to level up is the same sort of gameplay as doing Arah at lvl 80. Either way, Im still inclined to believe the dungeons were always intended to be done at the lvl they adjust you too, as they actually were right at release before everyone had lvl 80 chars coming out their wazoo.

First I would like to say that I like and enjoy dungeons and that I find discussion so far quite interesting.
Now to suggestions:
1.Set all dungeons to lvl 80 and allow players from 1-80 to participate.
2.Make more tiers of difficulty: story,easy,normal and hard.
Story : I think story mod should not count as difficulty tier rather as a mod in which you casualy experiance the story of certain dungeon,it should not reward tokens.
Easy: This mod should be for low level,casual players.Low hp on trash mobs,mini bosses and bosses.little to none regarding mini bosses and bosses skills and mechanics.Minimal token and silver reward.
Normal: this mod should offer middle ground suitable for most people that run dungeons.Normal hp on trash mobs,few higher hp mobs with special skill.Mini bosses with special skills higher hp,bosses with higher hp and at least 3 phases each,Normal token and silver reward.
Hard: this mod should be for people seeking greater challange(vent,skype..).High hp for trash mobs,special trash mobs with special skills and high hp.Mini bosses with high hp and at least 2 phases mechanic,bosses with high hp and more then 3 RANDOM phases.Max token and silver reward.
3.Make tokens count allowing exchange for all types and tiers of gear, food also(flaming pizza in cof for example with bonuses that match dungeon theme).This will make leveling from 1-80 just doing dungeons posible becouse you can get all your weapons,armor and jewels in exchange for tokens.
4.Special skin sets for each dungeon very rare,and more skins in general,maybe even refresh of some existing skins.
And to summarize can you at least tell us which armor will new proffesion use light,medium or heavy ?

Tinni.4351:

I have difficulty telling when I am out of danger when it comes to overlapping red circles, like the case for Subject Alpha. I think I am out of danger/standing in a safe spot and then bam! I get hit by AoE and it’s all over.

THis is a good call. The overlapping circles are sometimes safe and sometimes a 1-shot kill… and once you’re downed, this boss doesn’t let up. It’s too random, to fix the Subject Alpha battle, I suggest that when he does his multiple rings power;

• make it so circles don’t overlap,
• Make it so that being outside of a circle is completely safe from whatever is happening inside the circle – at the moment it is not, the rock splash thing hits you even outside of it.

Please don’t make it so that there is nowhere to dodge to. Often I find myself dodging out of one set of circles and into another.

• fix bugs
• fix loot from bosses.
• replace some of the mindless zerg encounters by smart mechanic (hint hint, increase player CC duration in PVE by 3 or even by 4 then develop the content around it…)
• implement grouping tool.

Acronos.2638:

All I want for this Xmas is a LFG finder for every dungeon in game… Like an NPC that puts you on a queue and when full it portals you in with your party.

To this LFG system, no. That is the system that everyone screams they do not want.

The bulletin board system of an LFG is WAY better, would work pretty much like the LFG site now. This is the LFG tool from Aion, and it was awesome (http://zam.zamimg.com/images/1/0/109a16c593ed9a5f5740f0f612255073.jpg)

On the topic of making dungeons better:

Diminished returns on running the same path over and over.

Why is this even in the game mechanic? If a player wants to go kill mob “x” 4550987287 times, they shouldn’t be punished for it. (If DR is in some form a way to “Stop currency inflation” then I implore you, give the guys at CCP a call, they have an ENTIRE TEAM devoted to “Market Watch”. Just youtube some fanfest vids and you’ll see what I mean, it’s amazing!) We all BOUGHT this game to play it, we don’t PAY for it monthly, why are you telling us how many times a day we can play content, your current dungeon model is setup for a Pay to Play game, not a Buy to play game. This is the main reason why you can’t find a group to run something, people are only going to run things once a day. Before FoTM a lot of people, myself included, would run the same path on multiple characters, THAT is why it was so much easier to find a group, because FoTM changed the daily rewards mechanic. Not because everyone is off doing FoTM now. Also, the Jade Maw Fractal is effect by DR, no matter what level of it you run, can we get that fixed since you guys have NO IDEA how to price things? Please?

Bosses:
Lower the HP pools, that’s pretty much the ONLY thing you would have to do to satisfy 99% of the player base. I personally do not want boss mechanics so hard that it requires 5 people who are highly skilled to get through a dungeon, that’s why I personally do not do Arah and CoE, their a “pita”. That’s why I despise raiding based games, I shouldn’t be punished because 19 other people in my raid are morons. With the dungeons now (at least the ones I run, including FoTM) you only need 3 people who aren’t kitten to complete them, which brings me to the next topic

Difficulty Scaling:
FoTM has it right with selectable difficulty scale, BUT, I would like to see them scale based on the party size. If I walk in solo I get normal mobs and a veteran at the end. Let it scale up as you take more people into the instance. Myself, that’s the reason why I LOVED guildwars one, and why I LOVED Eve-Online, I could solo everything I wanted to. I personally don’t play MMO’s to “find friends” (That’s why going outside is for) I play them to escape reality, while I’ve meet some really cool people to play games with, it’s not MY personal motivation, and I know I’m not alone in that feeling.

Loot:
Pre-Loot “Wow, we just killed that epic bosses! Good job!” Post-Loot “WHAT THE F(*(&^K!!! Greens and blues after all that work! what a waste of time….” And that pretty much sums up every dragon/dungeon chest most of us have encountered. Personally I knew that the NCsoft RNG hates my guts, hates me with a passion. I know this because in both Lineage 2 and Aion I had ZERO luck, zero. So I figured “Well its Anet! Not NCsoft, it’s going to be better!” Slap A guy can dream I guess! Anyway, Rule #1, we’re NOT Korean (mostly) It’s been universally agreed that people DO NOT want to come home from work…. just to go back to work in a video game. That DOES NOT MEAN we want loot to just rain from the sky everytime we log in, what it means is, that when we do things that require effort, no matter how small an effort, we want to be rewarded (tokens are not a reward). At the end of the day, the MMO gamer is just a real life Skritt, we all want shiney’s!

Token Vendor’s:
They need to sell more then just some gear as just about every post before mine has stated. I like the idea of the jewel recipies, I DO NOT however like the fact that they are not only RNG based, but also account bound. Come on, who thought that crap up! They require tokens, which are account bound (a good alternitive use for tokens) but now if I want to make them, I have to sacrifice a small goat and burn incenses to the NCsoft RNG God…. What?! Please, fire the guy that thought that up and hire me, I’ll work for HALF his salary and do a better job at coming up with ideas for the game! Outside of how boring the personal storyline of this game was compared to Gw1, after that patch and seeing that the vendors didn’t sell them had to be my biggest disappointment thus far in the game. Again RNG is bad…

@ Other changes:

Give us more things to use karma for. I’m starting my 3rd monthly of jugs and just about the same amount from dailies, not even counting all dungeons vials. The only thing you have to spend karma on, is 3 sets of gear (Which the skins drop in FoTM and that’s lame) and the crap you need to make a legendary (Which is cool if you want one, but not so much if you don’t). And where in the H**L are the exotic aqua breathers! You FORCE us to do lame underwater combat and we can’t even get an Exotic Aqua breather to do it!?

250 Ectos to craft… EVERYTHING ascended, 500 for Infused Ascended (why is there a difference!)? Really? IF we had a way to farm them IN ADDITION to salvaging RNG based drops, I could understand it (or at least be less annoyed about it). And why does EVERYTHING only stack up to 250?! Who came up with that number?! Increase that, by about 1,000 fold please.

Well that sums up my “what I would like to see fixed, added, changed idea/rant”

I have some ideas that is not necessarily new ideias… anyway here it goes:

• An collective bank for the dungeons sets
• Dificulty oriented path: Story(easy), Path 1(Normal), Path 2(Hard) and Path 3(Extreme! ;D)
• All combination of stats for all dungeons, example: I want the CoE skin with the Arah stats! This is NOT cool!
• Comestic related items: Miniatures, dye colors with special effects(CoF with Fire effects), town cloth…
• Looking for Group! Please????

I don’t ask for less bugs, exploits or somenthing like that because I know… more content = more bugs and exploits.

Thanks for listens us devs! ;D

bump up the lodestones drop rate, and expand some mobs to drop different lodestones in different dungeons, instead of forcing to run one dungeons for one specific lodestones.

Oh, I would also like to ask that things like the torch sync garbage in CoF path 3 be got rid off. I don’t mind syncing games in most dungeons cause they are doable without voice chat and stuff. CoF path 3 sync is pretty much not doable in a PuG without voice chat. That is not on! It’s not challenging, it’s just frustrating. Please get rid of crap like that.

Also, can we not have Knowledge Crystals and Mist Fragments look the same? Please?

Tinni.4351:

Oh, I would also like to ask that things like the torch sync garbage in CoF path 3 be got rid off. I don’t mind syncing games in most dungeons cause they are doable without voice chat and stuff. CoF path 3 sync is pretty much not doable in a PuG without voice chat. That is not on! It’s not challenging, it’s just frustrating. Please get rid of crap like that.

Also, can we not have Knowledge Crystals and Mist Fragments look the same? Please?

its far from impossible without voice chat, learn to use countdowns and coordinations

Oh yea! Story modes.. They need to be fixed, they are “Story” dungeons after all, not “lets work our behinds off for nothing”. And PLEASE GOD, make story mode completion ACCOUNT WIDE. I can’t think of things much worse then having to do pointless and annoying things like story modes with all of my characters. Odds are I’m not the only person who feels that way about it.

Something needs to be done with story mode.

1) Give tokens in story mode
2) Let players do it multiple times and make it worth somthing

or

3) Make difficulty scale based on # of party members (only for story mode). Setting a range of 2-5 for party would be fine.

Simply put what ever happen to Anet’s hype about you’d be able to run with parties no matter what the level and there won’t be a need to spam chat or wait hours on end for a team.
I don’t want to use an outside source to find a team, I don’t want players leveling a team because so and so is not equal to their level be that game level or dungeon level.
I hate seeing spam on chat for players looking for teams.
is it that Anet have thrown in the towel and made the game just like every other MMO already out there.
We have bugs that are abundant, spam chat, botters, broken toons that get one shot killed even in nooby areas.
Kill the spam and Kill the waiting time

1. add visible castbar with skill’s name under boss’s HP bar , this way players could see any dodge or die moves clearly unobstructed by minions and the insane skill effects covering all over the screen
2. add show HP pool number for all trash mobs and bosses
3. better yet show mini window target’s target to ease which player is holding the aggro

FIX AC STORY!!!

Laugh at me if you must, but I did AC Story again recently. It was harder than Arah p3, to say the least!

Maybe the people I played with are simply new or simply trolls, but I never had the problems I had in AC Story as I ever did in any other dungeon.

Seriously ANET. Foes can 2KO you? AND they have ridiculous CC-skills? It should’ve been the easiest of Dungeons. Instead it’s a chore! At least tone down their CC skills, please! You can’t even dodge some of the bosses because their stomp knockdowns are instant!

And please fix the “Door trick” at the Mesmer boss. If we pull them too far, they disappear. Considering you implemented a door hallway specifically for fighting this boss, it doesn’t make sense how they disappear if pulled too far into it.

Malediktus.9250:

Tinni.4351:

Oh, I would also like to ask that things like the torch sync garbage in CoF path 3 be got rid off. I don’t mind syncing games in most dungeons cause they are doable without voice chat and stuff. CoF path 3 sync is pretty much not doable in a PuG without voice chat. That is not on! It’s not challenging, it’s just frustrating. Please get rid of crap like that.

Also, can we not have Knowledge Crystals and Mist Fragments look the same? Please?

its far from impossible without voice chat, learn to use countdowns and coordinations

We tried both but it does not work with the mobs beating on you and stuff. Not with 90% of the PuGs. I am sure there are PuGs that can do them but it is an unnecessary and annoying barrier to progress that no one will miss if it was taken away.

I am going to make this short and sweet. These are the things I think that need to change.

1. Dungeon level scaling( instead of lvl 80s downleveling to 35 for ac it should be the opposite)
2. Have “ALL” loot from trash mobs scale with your level. nothing like getting 4 level 35 blues that salvage/ sell for less than lvl 80 ones.
3. Dungeon finder in game would be great.
4. make trash mobs weaker than bosses.
5. force people to kill trash mobs, If i had it my way i would make each silver worth 1 token, champions 5 ,legendary 10 tokens. and 20 tokens for finishing dungeon.
6. Make Fractal level only mandatory for 1 person in group instead of all 5.

wasted.6817:

Shoitaan.7405:

2) Brighter red (possibly flashing) used to mark AoE circles. Something I noticed during my last visit to HoTW was I was one of two people actively dodging out of the way of the bosses nasty, nasty AoE.

>.< Are you serious? Flashy? Maybe add gong sound and announcer "move your kitten "? And implement some way to electrocute players, so they would notice AoE coming at them for sure? Or maybe just remove all AoE from bosses all together and just give us “win” button. This is general awareness issue, imo the red circles on the ground is already may be too much, that’s why there’s an option to turn it off.

Shoitaan.7405:

The difficulty of AC story and explorable should be lowered as it really puts people off doing dungeons for the rest of their career.

Make story mode easier all you want, but how AC exp mode can be too hard is beyond me. If anything, it could use some boost to difficulty. Or maybe just adjust scaling system, so lvl80 toons in full exotics won’t be able to faceroll solo Kholer.

I find your reaction to my red circles suggestion somwhat absurd personally but anyway… Yes, it is an awareness issue. Veteran gamers know enough to be aware of the red circles over lapping or not (but even I struggle to notice the larger AoE’s if the camera isn’t the right angle). But players who weren’t raised on Street-fighter struggle with such things.

I’m not saying the AoE’s need to be nerfed (or removed all together like you dramatically suggest) or traits be put in to help players auto-dodge or anything silly like that. I’m not asking for anyone to hold the players hand. I’m asking for better information about impending threats. I’m asking that options be put in so the warning which Anet very rightly, already wrote into the game is more visible. A small change for an existing feature.

And for some players, if thats too much crap on the screen then a simple option on the graphics menu to revert it to normal is easy. A minute change that suddenly makes the lives of PUGs, casual gamers and the generally inattentive (WAY too much of the player base) easier and dungeons a more attractive prospect for the broader community.

I do agree with you on the scaling though. Instead of scaling to level, scaling to ‘stat level’ (maybe working off how much +bonusStats the group as a whole is receiving from their gear over the baseline) so every dungeon remains a challenge to the higher geared people.

Fix Arah event.

Make those event not happen that often. It sucks.

@Shoitaan.7405 I was being sarcastic, obviously. I find the idea that red circles r not enough, absurd. In my opinion it have nothing to do with u being experienced gamer or not, it’s not a rocket science here, fight’s mechanics r not that complicated and often straight forward primitive, what it is it ppl who can’t notice those circles doing there, that they don’t have enough attention for that? Watching soccer at the same time? Ofc u can miss it sometimes, but that’s just sometimes, it happens, it doesn’t mean that they should go into complete absurd and make them flashy, more likely it means that some, i believe and hope that very small part of em, players should pay just a little bit more attention during certain encounters. Srsly. Red circles. Where, in which other game u saw something like this? Only WoW with DBM etc. installed offers more. It’s more than enough for every normal person, if u was in some party somewhere, where 3 persons out of 5 didn’t move out of those circles this just means that those ppl were dummies, or they didn’t rly care, because maybe encounter was forgiving aka too easy/poorly designed. What u suggesting is to dumb down the game and fine tune it around baddies. For example, i have yet to meet such person who would have problems noticing those circles. And 99% of my time i pug dungeons. How’s that? Overlaping and circles being hard to notice due to their size or camera issues — that’s another topic, flashy kitten won’t help here.

And btw, I’am pretty laid back and casual player.

I’m actually pretty much fine with the dungeons as is. I’ve run several of them. If I have a problem, it’s with the community not being willing to run certain dungeons, which is something I don’t really hold ArenaNet responsible for. I’ve wanted that SE heavy chest and leggings for AGES, and I’ve never been able to get more than 2 people interested in running Exp for it because everyone cries about it being hard. It’s even hard to find groups for dungeons outside of Fractals because everyone INSISTS on grinding it constantly to get minor gear upgrades. It saddens me to see the community let itself get to this state…

I’ve been doing Twilight Arbor a LOT for the light armor set. In my opinion, this dungeon is not “hard” or “challenging” once you figure out what to do. What this dungeon is is ANNOYING. Basically, it alternates between frustrating (I’m looking at you, flowers and Knights) and boring as all get out (auto attack tree ftw.)

As far as I can tell, dungeons are just a big hassle you put up with to get what you want, and once you’re done you stop doing the dungeon. That’s sure as hell how it’s gonna go with me. I don’t do TA exp for fun. I do it because I want the armor and I have to slog through the stupid dungeon over and over to get it. I’ve had more fun talking with my party members while we all auto attack the dumb tree. Of course, all that’s likely to change is the tree moves around and you’re bored while mobile, like the rest of the dungeon.

I posted this under suggestions, and got some feedback, good and bad.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/alternative-to-grinding-dungons/first#post929093

It boils down to adding achievements to the game, which are rewarded with tokens only once for skillful playing.

I really liked the idea of scaling the dungeons down so that one person could play them on their own, I think they would be very fun and challenging.

I also had an idea in another thread I wanted to re-post- can’t quite call it a dungeon, but more then an event. A single group gets on a boat (between LA and Southsun?) and on the way they have to fend off pirates, or Karka; an Orrian ship; a Dragon- optional cannons or ballista. At points during the ride the captain is shouting for help to man the ropes or sails and the players have to go to points (labeled) and interact with the point. At the end they get a reward graded on how well they kept the ship on its path. No waypoint, instead when someone dies, an NPC slowly heals them, PC can help to make if faster if they are available to do so. No matter what they show up at their destination, but their loot reflects how well they succeeded either as a group or individually. Probably individually, so the whole group doesn’t suffer from one player not knowing what to do.

The reason I am re-posting this from my other post is because a threat started by a dev seems more likely to be seen.

Well to start to fix dungeons give better loot. Recently they said that now you can get exotics, they are still so rare its insane. They make it a requirement to get the following items and make it impossible to work for them.

Lodestones, cores, fragments, shards…. these items are insane as far as drop rates go. The whole item system is stupid. Lets look at an example.

Mjiolneir – Legendary hammer http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mjolnir

This costs around 800+ gold and it is exotic so it will not get upgrated status to ascended like legendary’s will. 350 Charged lodestones and no way to farm for them just plain luck.

so loot would be great to start off with in dungeons better loot also add in rare crafting mats. Increase Rare drops – (Yellow) by a Large amount this would help with the new insane amount of ecto’s people need for new items. Many people working for legendary’s have to pass up the new back pieces cause they need the ectos for the mystic clovers.

As far as dugneon mechanics well you got rid of the tank and healer so that makes it hard. Making classes that spec into certain rolls feel more like they are contributing. I play a defensive tank Warrior sword and shield, but I dont feel like a tank because I have NO TAUNT, So I have all this armor and survivability yet the boss or mob will almost on timed schedual switch to another party member and focus on them. I cant save them cause I have no abilities too. Guardians probably feel the same but they have a few more abilities to help others then warriors do.

Healers also have the same issue with no major heals in this game everything is small amounts over time, no Save the day heal on a long cool down. I dont play healer so not sure what they want.

More puzzles to solve in dungeons would be nice and it adds another dynamic to dungeons. Not all bosses have to be mobs with HP. Think Chess board in Karazan in WoW.

Kalagon.3120:

As far as dugneon mechanics well you got rid of the tank and healer so that makes it hard. Making classes that spec into certain rolls feel more like they are contributing. I play a defensive tank Warrior sword and shield, but I dont feel like a tank because I have NO TAUNT, So I have all this armor and survivability yet the boss or mob will almost on timed schedual switch to another party member and focus on them. I cant save them cause I have no abilities too. Guardians probably feel the same but they have a few more abilities to help others then warriors do.

Healers also have the same issue with no major heals in this game everything is small amounts over time, no Save the day heal on a long cool down. I dont play healer so not sure what they want.

You seem to misunderstand the “No holy trinity” concept in this game….. There are no tanks/healers/DPS so it might be beneficial to you to stop trying to play as one of those. Try a more “balanced” spec and you might find yourself feeling more useful. Warriors are a great class to have in any dungeon group be they shout specced, GS spec or what have you. Aggro is not based on taunts (as there are none, and I certainly hope there wont be) in this game, it’s more based on RNG (or seems like it) however there is a thread where people are discussing what the aggro system is based off of.

Originally I would have mentioned the loot, but it seems to have gotten slightly better. Still needs a little more of a tweak IMO. I also agree on the overlapping AOE circles that Alpha does as well as the Shaman in HOTW.

My biggest complaint however is the Fractals. Due to the way party grouping works, there is a lot of room for being a total jerk. For example, my last run of level 12, I had to pug and ended up in a group with 2 guys from the same guild (don’t know the name) one of which was party leader/instance owner, and throughout the entire run were complaining on how slow things were going/how they were carrying us (the usual elitist “Im level 30+ yadda yadda”). On the last part (Jade Maw) one of the members of the party fell off and died. We had no way to res him, so me and another jumped off the sides to reset the instance. These 2 from this guild went ahead, killed the Jade Maw, and left the group kicking everyone out of the instance and therefore couldn’t loot the chest/didn’t get the daily done (this might have been a bug). We asked them to suicide so we can all go do the boss together, they basically said FU, no, we carried you we don’t need you and can do this ourselves. This needs to be fixed as it can’t be that 2 players can do that to a whole group.

Needless to say that they are blocked of course, but that still isn’t something that should be allowed.

Guarantee at least one lode from their respective dungeon. Charged lodes prices are insane thanks to everyone and their sister Deborah farming Mjolnir (more expensive than sunrise LOL) and Sunrise.

Iehova.9518:

Guarantee at least one lode from their respective dungeon. Charged lodes prices are insane thanks to everyone and their sister Deborah farming Mjolnir (more expensive than sunrise LOL) and Sunrise.

Good point. If you want people to grind the dungeons, stick 1 guaranteed drop of a T6 material or lodestone in there. Done and done.

Personally, I’m just grinding the easy dungeons for gold to buy components because I’ve done all the components that aren’t oriented around market manipulation/ TP speculation.

Dungeon tokens should be accumulated on a currency tab that lists all tokens. It is silly to need to keep them occupying your bags and bank tabs, split in 250 stacks. Many players want to pool them until their alts get to level 80, but so many types of tokens are taking up so much spaces in your bank and bags. Normally we should be happy to see the number of those tokens going up, but in this case, it becomes much more annoying to see more pile up.

Another problem is, there are currently 8 dungeons but the unlock of explorable mode is character based. If you run dungeons with multiple characters, it is very hard to keep track of which character has unlocked which dungeon. Suppose you have 3 level 80s who run dungeons constantly, that is 24 unlocks. You don’t want to travel to the dungeon to confirm it. Same for the levels of FotM. We should be able to confirm unlock or level of dungeons we have achieved on our character status window.