Guild Wars 2

After having recently attempted to finish the story modes of all the dungeons, and finding it difficult simply due to the lack of interest, I feel part of the problem is the popularity of FotM. I’m not sure it was a great idea to introduce a tier of equipment demonstratably better than anything else beside legendaries, and make it exclusive to a single dugeon. So, my suggestions for improving the dungeoning experience for people like me is:

1) Give tokens rewards for Story Mode!!! Seriously, why is this not done? It’s incredibly frustrating failing to get a PUG together for a Story Mode, despite plenty of people advertising interest in Explorable Mode. Maybe only offer tokens for the 2nd attempt onwards, and at a reduced rate or whatever, but there really should be an increased incentive in experienced players helping out those of us who are lagging behind with their dungeon completions.

2) Make it possible to acquire Ascended gear from all dungeons. Make it half the drop rate of FotM even, just give the masses of people clogging up the /map channels of Lion’s Arch somewhere else to go for a chance of their Ascended rings.

revlob.6073:

Make it half the drop rate of FotM even

Won’t work. People will always choose the path of least resistance.

Iehova.9518:

revlob.6073:

Make it half the drop rate of FotM even

Won’t work. People will always choose the path of least resistance.

To say “people will always choose the path of least reisistance” is a generalisation. The goal is not to balance the scales, only to make focus slightly less biased. If perhaps 5% of people LFG in LA for Fractals level 10 for a 10% (or whatever) chance at a ring went and did other dungeons instead (be that via Story or Explorable Modes), for a 5% (again, or whatever) chance at a ring then that would represent an improvement.

Don’t require same zone to be able to enter Fotm. It was late at night, none of us could get into overflow. I had to leave the party and try to re-zone and get into overflow (because I was in a zone with 2 others already) and the players on another servers by themselves switched characters trying to get into overflow. In the end, I had to post on gw2lfg.com asking someone to invite me into overflow LA so we could all enter Fotm.

Reduce materials for ascended recipies Devs said it was intended to fill the “time gap” between exotic and legendary, but if it uses the same materials, such as ectos, this only lengthens the time because you have to acquire more, not only that, it increases the prices on these materials. It takes 50 ectos to make a back piece and 500 more ectos to upgrade the next two levels. So, ascended gear didn’t really fill the gap as it extended the gap.

Lighten up on the diminishing rewards No incentive to help others after we’ve done our daily run. Before the DR system, I met so many players doing dungeons. Running dungeons was how I met most of the people I play with today.

Increase party size (for future dungeons) so we can play with more friends. So many times we end up with a few left out because party is only 5. Do like GW1, make it 8

Don’t use fractal levels for future dungeons it has split our guild. From level 5 to 25+

Don’t become the Henchmen/Heros of GW1, awesome idea, but it killed the social aspect of the game.

SOLO DUNGEON MODE!

Call me lazy but I didn’t read through the whole thread so this may have been suggested before. The same dungeons with the same paths but lowered difficulty, still harder than general PvE but quite do-able on your own (Or perhaps duo dungeons), like a personal instance where no one else can enter! I for one would love to be able to run these in my own time at my own pace. Lowered rewards of course. That would be a huge thing to recreate though I know :/. It would also allow me to grasp the basics of each dungeons paths before running them with a group and making a complete kitten of myself and I feel it would cater for the casual gamer far more than the current system does.

TRASH MOB TOKENS!

Very simply, alternative tokens that have a chance to drop from trashy mobs, all these tokens would be the same through out every dungeon and with a relatively high drop rate. Example is a stack of 250 “Universal Dungeon tokens” could be turned in for 25 tokens from a dungeon of your choice. This would help make people rethink if they want to skip the majority of a dungeon (which annoys me to no end) and would allow for at least some progress towards the gear that you want even if for whatever reason the dungeon run fails to be completed.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’d love to hear from you folks about this thread

I’d also love to post in the thread about what some of our plans are, but there is a time and place for everything.

Well can you maybe tell us that maybe some updates will come at Wintersday or are most of the dungeon overhauls coming at January and February?

And would love a sneak peak at your plans and if maybe some plans of the things you read here are actually coming in the futured updates ^^.

Love the dungeon armor – never going to do the grind.

I have 2 sets of CoF gear + 4 weapons, 1 set of TA gear, 1 set of AC gear + 2 weapons, and tons of other tokens just sitting in my bank however not nearly enough for a full set of HotW, SE, CoE, Arah. I’d love to have these sets but in reality grinding for this gear just isn’t going to happen, crafting is relatively cheap and infinitely faster.

So why the grind Anet?

Roll.6329:

Love the dungeon armor – never going to do the grind.

I have 2 sets of CoF gear + 4 weapons, 1 set of TA gear, 1 set of AC gear + 2 weapons, and tons of other tokens just sitting in my bank however not nearly enough for a full set of HotW, SE, CoE, Arah. I’d love to have these sets but in reality grinding for this gear just isn’t going to happen, crafting is relatively cheap and infinitely faster.

So why the grind Anet?

As you said. The crafting is cheap and faster. If you are fine with that armor with the looks and stats by all means. That is fine.

But there are people who actually want to have the skins of some of the dungeons. My girlfriend for example has almost her whole TA set. She never stated it was a grind at all. She just did it when she wanted too. It didn’t feel like she HAD too, she had fun getting to it.

I for example had the whole set of Sorrow Embrace. In the end I was like, meh didn’t like it and transmuted it with my Cultural Set TIER 2 for my Asura. When I had my Sorrows Embrace set.. I had done dungeons for about 2 months so now and then. Never it felt like a grind at all. So…

It’s probably also how you feel about it..

ANYWAYS: I am going to make a summary of the mainpost. It will take some time and maybe people where expecting one. I like to put my time in it but I have my exam week this week so :p. Probably after thursday when I am done. I slowly start with the summary.

If people wanna help would be awesome and just send me parts of the things you saw come by often to me and I will look at it and post it in the OP.

Thanks up in front

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’d love to hear from you folks about this thread

I’d also love to post in the thread about what some of our plans are, but there is a time and place for everything.

#1: I’d push for using the checkpoint system in all dungeons that is currently being used in fractals. It makes it more dynamic, skillful, and intense simply by not being able to wp zerg. Just put a checkpoint where every wp is (sometimes add some more please like in ARah for example, maybe after each boss/miniboss) and allow people to teleport between them only when alive and out of combat.

You die you stay dead until wipe or rez, period.

#2: I would love to actually feel like im getting loot in dungeons… i never have. Having tokens drop from bags is great but I’d love to see the dungeon sets drop from boss chests, (I say chests so that we have extra incentive for people like Kholer and also so Magic Find doesnt matter) on occasion, a rare rare find. Also add more unique dungeon skins. For a game with almost solely horizontal progression there are a depressingly low number of models for each weapon and piece of armor, especially in the basic ones just leveling up. I used the same model sword through almost the entire game on my warrior while leveling.

#3: This is controversial but i think it would improve the game a lot. Vertical progression, or rather the lack of it, keeps MANY people from coming back to the game. I’ve seen 3 guilds fall apart because people just dont see a reason to log on with pvp in its current state and nothing to keep them there once they get a set of exotics. A scale within each item tier would be nice since all lvl 30 masterworks are the same in terms of stats they provide numerically / value for example. Maybe it is just me but i dont understand how horizontal only progression can sustain an mmo that doesnt have esport support or playerbase in its pvp. You either have one or the other, without both there is going to be a LARGE exodus from the game and we’re already seeing it.

I dont want massive leaps in power or infinite gear treadmill, i want stuff to be based more off of skill than stats but at 80 you hit an abrupt wall after getting full exotics because ascended stuff is minimal and legendary is a huge time and money sink. I just dont see what we’re are supposed to do when the incentive to keep playing isnt there.

I for one find the game extremely fun and have leveled several characters but i feel my interest draining, something i fear and hate because i love this game and was excited about it for a long time. I would like to see a constant stream of improvement as a gear treadmill would provide, without the necessity of it. I know this is hard to execute but unless we start seeing TONS of new models then it just isnt going to be worth it for long.

#4: This is my proposition to fix #3. This is also not expected and is my ideal system.
Dungeons weigh your party as you enter and scale to provide the best challenge.
Paths are reworked to be more engaging and inventive, have an easy (40 token), Med (60 token as difficulty is now), and Hard (75 Token) path. Have story give the same as easy.

-When you complete all 3 paths of a dungeon ELITE MODE is opened for 1 week before resetting. this is a fourth and unique path from the other 3 paths, not a rehash. It is VERY HARD and the drops are SIGNIFICANTLY greater with chances to drop the dungeon set items of exotics and lots of skins.

-Monster stats (dmg / crit / toughness / NOT health) are weighted against each individual player as damage is exchanged between them. This is not hard to program, just a variable system that requires quick arithmetic. This way each player is being scaled to the monster and each monster is being scaled to the player dynamically as combat goes on. Use variable toughness to manage player damage, health should be constant. Have a pool of 12 abilities per enemy, 20 for bosses. Each enemy has a random 3 assigned to them (+1 per difficulty above easy path or to accommodate better players.) Bosses are treated the same but have a base of 5 randomly chosen from the pool of 20 instead of 3 from 12. At least 1 for monster and 2 for bosses(per phase for people like lupicus?) of these abilities should be automatically chosen as a constant to provide for mechanics, preparation, and stability in a boss fight (IE AC Path 3 last boss always has scream and falling rocks / lupicus always has grubs / aoe barrage etc).

If you complete ALL exploratory paths and elite modes in a week 1 final dungeon is opened up with 3 paths. They are all elite level and after beating them all there is 1 final boss fight where the reward is a large chance at a precursor and a guaranteed exotic piece from this new dungeons set (which will have to be created). The theme of this dungeon set is dragons, bosses are dragons, the armor has dragons on it etc… you get the idea. You should have to enter it through killing one of the world dragons, a portal will spawn for your party once you have done it or you all get a unique stone from the dragon chest since you will all have cleared all the exploratory dungeons for that week or two weeks, whatever the reset timer will be for this thing. Either way you will be teleported into the “Dragon’s Den” (i know the name is stupid but this is conceptual stick with me). This gives a constant progression, a reset of that progression through time limit which makes it an achievement in itself, real doable goals that help you in dungeons to get to the elite dungeons, and makes “farming dungeons” more active and fun. This will also make ALL dungeons wanted to be done since you will have to do them to open up the content.

I know this is a lot of stuff…

Thoughts?

I’d like to see alternate, skill-based ways to get Rewards. Right now it’s pretty much “spend x hours to get your reward”, you can’t really make it go faster or slower (other than complete failure / technical issues), it’s pretty much just stay on the treadmill for x hours.

What I mean by skill based rewards is hard optional bosses with special victory conditions that give significant extra rewards for doing the boss in a certain amount of time, or keeping x things alive, or whatever.

For expansions, I’d like to see the next rewards tied to completion of stuff. Completion of every Dungeon, every zone, every personal story quest (with an option at the end to redo the ones you didn’t pick first go around, like in GW1 Nightfall), and every achievement (with extra hard ones added in).

That’s a lot more fun than grind 1 million karma and 800 gold, or grind 1830 fractal tokens.

As a very frequent dungeon runner I thought I would give my input on the matter, sorry if I’m repeating points already made in other posts, I didn’t read through all.

I don’t think dungeons are hard. I run with the same group of people and generally don’t do pugs for other dungeon than AC. But what I think is that the dungeon bosses often are tedius!
Large health pools does NOT make a boss hard if it just has the same set of moves for the entire fight. What I really miss is more phased fights (lupus, archdiviner!)(though archdiviner still could use some adjutments:P)), they offer more challenge and more excitement.

I currently think the exploreable difficulty is fair enough for pugs, but as dungeon was meant for truly organized teams, I feel there should have been another harder mode for organized teams.

wasted.6817:

@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.

Well I can’t speak for your experiences but I regularly play with several guild mates that flat out do not see the red circles over half the time. This could be an issue of hardware (as they’re typically on laptops as opposed to my gaming PC) or just general inability to see a thin red line amid a sea of explosions. The notification of the AoE is VERY necessary especially if you’re a cloth wearer like me as several bosses can down you with just one round of the AoE. The warning at least gives you a chance to survive otherwise the game would just be plain not fun. I’m convinced that even as a veteran gamer, I’d hate dungeons if the warnings didn’t exist.

I understand that you think it’s unnecessary but I’ve personally experienced the need for having the warnings and have seen in my non-gamery guild mates the implications for not having them more visible.

As for the extra visibility I’d like to see, it doesn’t necessarily need to be fluro glowing colours. Just as the Green AoE marker you’re going to cast is nice and noticable, an option for the Red incoming AoE marker to be AS noticeable is all I’m asking for.

Story modes need addressing to give appropriate nice loot and materials , there is a reason people dont do them

All dungeons explorable should be lvl 80 , theyre just way too hard for the levels set to complete or find a group

Diminishing returns on completing the same path more than once a day. I know the reason it was implemented was to keep people from running the same easy path over and over for tokens. Here’s a solution, have DR reset once all explorable paths have been completed. That way people will have to finish the paths to do that easy one again. As it is right now, some people still just log on and do the easy path and wait for the next day to do it again.

This way, people who just want to get their complete sets don’t have to wait due to DR. That mechanic reminds me severely of the time waste that weekly raid resets were in other mmo’s. This game doesn’t have a subscription to keep me paying monthly, why use a mechanic that would suit the subscription model perfectly? It’s a waste of time.

Other than that? Some bosses need their health pools adjusted (looking at you, HotW). Big health pools are okay when there’s a mechanic that is really dangerous, it encourages you to kill that boss as quickly as you can before he kills everybody else. For some boss that does hardly anything to you with a huge health pool? (yawns)

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned this already, but I’d like to suggest a “scorecard”. Remember back in GW1 when we completed missions and a shield popped up with 1, 2, or 3 swords indicating whether we completed all objectives? Why not have a dialog screen upon dungeon completion which tracked all progress and awards players accordingly.

For example in AC:

1. Number of bosses killed. Spider, Kholer, Patriach all killed? Then 3/3 for boss kill score (more reason to not skip bosses!)

2. The number of mobs in the entire dungeon could be counted also and a score given for the number killed (less chance of people skipping every mob they can)

3. Track the number of times the player died (rewarding skillful play)

4. Take note of the amount of time taken to complete the dungeon, obviously the shorter time giving the better score

5. “Daily Completion”, done once a day per character and resets together with the server

6. Miscellaneous – number of combos performed, number combat rezzes achieved

With the score, players are then rewarded accordingly to different tiers of items and varying amount of gold/silver.

If a player killed all the bosses, downed every single mob, not die a single time and completed the dungeon in record time (timing for full completion + survivor could be on a GW2 dungeon leaderboard), then perhaps he could get max rewards of X gold, Y rare material (charged lodestones, etc), and Z exotic/ascended item, ALONG with the usual silver/karma/tokens for the Daily Completion, and chests and dead body loot.

Score thresholds should be set up for the item where the lowest could be a random piece of exotic armor, then a random weapon, up to a new rare skin or ascended item.

The leaderboard could be set up to reward monthly top players with precursors (for current or future legendaries) and invite hardcore PVE competition amongst players. Scores would be per account, per dungeon (all paths). So only 9 precursors given to 9 players per month with the rewards announced beforehand and the more coveted precursors being rewarded for the harder dungeons.

The way GW2 is played without the trinity means that every player/profession should have an equal chance of doing all of the above. Those with builds that skew towards a certain direction (like glass cannons) will have scores skewed as well (towards kill count rather than survivor and thus balances out).

Player gets DC’d? Relog and rejoin, your progress is tracked and you don’t lose anything.

Leader kicks someone and adds a friend just for the final boss? The new player’s scorecard will be empty and get nothing extra.

Player has to leave and be replaced with someone new? Well, the new player won’t get max rewards but does get what he played for. Half the dungeon? Then half the rewards.

Player wants to have full Magic Find gear? Maybe he won’t have as much survivability and get a really bad survivor score compared to those in gear with battle stats.

Player hangs back too much to try to stay alive? Maybe he won’t have as high a kill count or combo/rez score as the players who are brave enough to be in the fray.

Nothing as satisfying as getting loot according to the time and effort you put in. Also rare skin recognition for skilled players for actually achieving something and not simply having the time to farm all day and night for materials/gold.

On the topic of Dungeon Bosses, particularly concerning the frequent complaint of their health pool sizes: everyone here can see the symptom, but few have noted the actual problem. When someone claims, “bosses have too much hp,” they actually mean, “we spend too much time fighting bosses to enjoy the tactics required to beat them.” The boss fights all lack depth.

The solution is simple: Good boss fights have Phases.

Imagine a boss that takes ten minutes to kill. You can expect to spend the first minute adjusting to the situation, mechanics, and teammates; another minute pinning down your skill rotation and utility timings; and then eight minutes of routine action. King Adelbern, the final boss in AC Story, is a good example of this. So long as you stay out of the fire and save a defensive utility for the Pull, you spend the fight pushing your damage buttons when they go off cool down. Bloody Victoria (CM path 1) is another great example: cleanse her bleed when she reappears from stealth, deal damage, and win.

Tactically, these fights barely differ from regular trash mobs; aside from (often) a single unique mechanic, the battle will take substantially longer to play out, but will demand the same basic acts for as long as it endures. Anet cannot improve upon the experience by tinkering with boss’ stats, either. Diminish the health pool and you bring the boss closer to feeling like an ordinary mob: more nuisance than interesting event. Heighten the level of danger, and you end up ostracizing those players who do not or cannot react perfectly. These sorts of changes only damage our experience in the long run.

Instead of stronger or weaker, we need more complicated bosses. The fights need more layers- more dimensions. Fighting a boss should feel like an exploration. Pretend, for a moment, that a boss fight is like hiking into a cave: at the mouth, at the beginning of the fight, the scenery looks different from outside, but the new surroundings are not overwhelming. Two miles further down the cave, near the end of the journey, we are surrounded in a completely separate ecosystem. It’s the same cave, but an entirely new vista. This keeps the experience fresh, and a boss fight needs to feel the same way.

This is where Boss Phases come in to play. To explain: when I say Phase, I mean any distinct shift in the method or tactics required to kill the boss. Classically, this refers to a system where at certain points in their health bar a boss will adopt new attacks, sometimes accompanied by a change in appearance. For example, a boss with a bow will, at 50% health, swap the bow for a Greatsword. Master Ranger Nente, in AC story, is an example of classic Phases. At ~60% and ~25% health he abandons his archery post to pick up a sword and summon a companion.

The Phases do not need to feel so rigid, either. A change in scenery (bosses that can be kited), adding distractions (bosses that summon adds), or simply sending your team scrambling (near-total wipes) can produce the necessary change of pace. Ralena and Vassar (again, AC story) showcase this point. At no time in the fight does either boss change their behavior, yet your party’s strategy can shift drastically if the bosses get too near one another. The sky is the limit here. Let the boss use the surrounding environment (see: Snowblind Fractal), let the boss force our scenery to change, you can even let the boss put the players themselves against each other.

But whatever you do, don’t make us fight the same routine mechanic for 10 minutes at a time.

Jay.3284:

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…

That is definitely part of the problem. I think GW2 dungeons fail in several aspects:

• Bosses have too much HP and too few mechanics. Fights just get boring. Nearly every boss should have 30% less HP and multiple phases or abilities (preferably triggered at random times and /or in random orders). A lot of them just stand still firing projectiles, or chase players repeating the same attack over and over again.

• Bosses make little or no use of their environment. For example, the door guard in CM has a ton of potential. When I first saw that room I expected the boss to do things like run to a rope, cut it and make the chandelier drop (causing AoE damage in the middle of the room), shake the walls causing books to fall (causing damage near the edges), run to the fireplace and throw out burning embers (forcing players to use furniture as cover), or something like that. Instead, we get a guy that just chases players, then stops and swings his sword (damaging players who are behind him and nowhere near the sword, BTW). Boring, boring, boring. And he’s not the exception, he’s the rule.

• Mobs also have too much HP and hit way too hard. When a group of level 80 adventurers with exotic gear and elite skills goes into a dungeon, they should feel powerful. They should feel that they’re overcoming incredible odds. Instead, it takes 5 “heroes” almost one minute to kill a couple of nameless guards – guards who are able to kill them in 3 hits. This is ridiculous; it makes players feel like wimps. No “trash” mob should be more powerful than a fully-geared player of the same level. Instead, the party of 5 players should be pitted against larger groups, or groups with some tactical advantage (ex., access to cannons, turrets, traps, etc.). That’s how you give players a challenge while making them feel powerful. It’s dungeon design 101.

• The only enemies that should be clearly more powerful than players should be bosses and mini-bosses. And that extra power should be justified by their appearance (i.e., they should be big, or look like powerful wizards, or carry some menacing weapon, etc.). Not just another humanoid guard who happens to have 50x more HP than any player can ever have, and 10x more attack power than any player can ever have. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen players say something like “GW2… where trash mobs kill you in 2 seconds and bosses die with 5 minutes of auto-attack”. It’s not even irony; it’s just true.

• Mobs’ behaviour is often nonsensical. I’m talking about things like riflemen and archers who don’t move at all (did someone glue their feet to the ground?), like the ones in CM, or armies with infinite soldiers that spawn out of thin air but attack only 3 at a time (like the ones in SE). If you want to have an enemy that just shoots and doesn’t move, use a turret, not a human. And if you want to have a steady but infinite stream of enemies, justify it in some way (ex., make them robots, coming out of an assembly line – not living creatures popping out of thin air but choosing to attack in small groups instead of just steamrolling the enemy). What are the mobs doing there in the first place, anyway, besides waiting for players to come kill them? If you can’t justify their presence and behaviour in some credible way, rethink the dungeon.

• Explorable mode paths are often extremely similar, sharing parts of the terrain and even some bosses, not to mention the first third of the dungeon is always identical. Before launch we were told that dungeons would have “several bonus events” that could “surprise” players. In the end, there is effectively one random event (the troll in AC). Everything else is fixed.

Overall, dungeons are one of the weakest parts of GW2. Unimaginative, unrealistic, unrewarding, repetitive and boring. The fractal dungeons are better (at the cost of making even less sense), but still suffer from some of the problems above (bosses with too much HP, that just get boring half way into the fight, “low end” mobs that are far more powerful than any player, things that pop out of thin air with no justification, etc.).

It feels like the dungeons and their inhabitants were designed by completely different people, and that the latter didn’t really have a RPG mentality and weren’t even trying to create believable places, just sprinkle the dungeon with some semi-random mobs with semi-random abilities. Their guiding objective (reinforced by most of the changes introduced after launch) seems to have been to make players spend time rather than make the players have fun.

I think nearly any player with a couple of years of gaming experience could design more interesting dungeons. Maybe not code them, but certainly design them.

1. Dungeon Finder:

My desire to play this game wanes every day that I have to spend hours spamming map chat, while waiting around in Lion’s Arch, to get a group. The worst part about spending this much time spamming map chat for a group is not the time spent…its the fact that after all this time…I still don’t get a group for the dungeon I want to do. Add the fact that I have to keep logging off and back on to compensate for getting suppressed, due to actually asking for group.

You can listen to this vocal minority that keeps saying a dungeon finder is somehow going to ruin this game…but all that is going to do is cause you to lose players. I feel there are significantly more players who are tired of having to spam map chat for a group that never happens, than there are players who will be upset because other players are able to find groups more efficiently or at all. There is no sense of community achieved by having players log off in disgust for not being able to get a group for their desired dungeon(s) during their available play time. Those who prefer or can get a guild or friend group, will continue to be able to do so, whether there is a dungeon finder or not. Please implement a dungeon finder. Please make it filter out players wearing excessive magic find gear.

2. Fractals

Please implement a tier grouping system for fractals like one of the above posters mentioned. It is extremely frustrating to not be able to get a group/progress due to lack of available grouping options due to everyone being scattered across so many different fractal levels. Tiers of 10 levels grouping together would be perfect. I think you guys did a great job on the fractal dungeon design, but grouping is killing this dungeon. The successes of this fractal design should be carried over to the previous dungeons in their overhaul (reasonable trash mobs, interesting mechanics, more open environments, drastically better rewards). The RNG is overly painful however…mainly referring to the chances of actually getting a useful ascended item or any ascended item at all. I’m at fractal level 8 and all I’ve gotten so far is one ascended crafting material item. I’m nearly at the point where I’ll be needing some agony resistance and I have none at this point. It would be fantastic if you would implement ascended rewards as a higher cost token reward for the previous dungeons…maybe even a new path in previous dungeons to give comparable rewards to the fractal dungeons.

3. Trash mobs

I agree completely with above posters about the problems with trash mobs in regular explorable dungeons. There is never a good reason, with the current set up, to engage the more difficult trash mobs. One example in my favorite dungeon (Crucible of Eternity) is the champion frost wolf near the entrance. That one trash mob seems to down players nearly instantly…much more difficult than any boss in the entire instance. This same mob very rarely gives up anything other than a blue or green item. Rather than punish players for doing what only makes sense, rushing past that mob, why not reduce its difficulty to reasonable levels or provide some real incentive to killing it?

4. Difficult dungeon paths

I think some dungeon paths could actually use a revision or two. Someone earlier posted about dungeon paths that were not fun because they required players to die repeatedly to achieve success. One in particular is path 2 (magg) in Citadel of Flame. I don’t find any enjoyment in dying repeatedly to accomplish that and as such, I choose not to do that path anymore. It would be different if it was not necessary to die to get that done. The mobs in that room are just over tuned. The various traps/obstacles in dungeons like the laser grid in CoE and the fire boulder tunnel in CoF should not cause equipment durability. It just wastes time having to unequip your items to not end up with a repair bill from an obstacle course.

5. Melee combat in dungeons

Dungeons are overly punitive to melee players. I find myself letting out an audible groan every time I realize I am in a party without at least one guardian. I’d even take a dagger off hand necromancer. If you can’t tell, I play a dps warrior (better known as a glass cannon). Your current dungeon design is 100% easier on a warrior if there is another player there to hold my hand (give me defensive buffs). It would be amazing if we had either protection or weakness as one of our utilities…instead of it being tied to a specific weapon. I have no knowledge of how it feels to play a thief in dungeons, but I do know how it feels to be focused by a champion mob or a boss as a dps warrior. Just being in parties and feeling the effects of aegis, I have an idea of how it feels to be a guardian in dungeons. If spike damage is going to stay as it is, please spread the love with reasonable cool down defensive utilities (not tied to some specific weapon choice). I have tried going up to half way through the defense trait line and there was not even a noticeable survival difference.

HOFTW dungeon, story mode: I´ve been lookig for people for this dungeon over 2 months.
It´s time to make henchmen or heroes because people are useles thing in GW universe when it comes to making party for action.

As a casual player, I feel that loot drops in general in dungeons are horrible and make dungeons an absolute waste of time. Mobs that take 4-5 times longer to take down than regular mobs consistently drop trash. Then perfectly executing an incredible boss fight as a team (take Kohler for example) rewards me with a chest that consistently drops nothing but blues for me. I never get rares as drops in dungeons, much less exotics. You created dungeons to be the hardest content in the game, why have you given them the worst drop rates? I think it’s completely broken when it is more profitable for you to play mindlessly in Orr’s events while never even coming close to dying than it is to test your mettle in a dungeon. I can play for an hour in Orr and come back with crafting materials galore and 3-4 rares.

The only worthwhile rewards in dungeons are tokens. Oh yeah, let’s talk about tokens… So I finally grinded out the tokens to purchase the ghastly shortbow from AC only to find the d@mn thing is bugged and doesn’t glow!? It’s still broken to this day!?

I’m seriously disappointed in the current state of dungeons.

-logga

just starting doing explorable dungeons this past week, after having been so frustrated by them a few months ago in story mode that i almost didnt want to do dungeons again. my first suggestion would be to make story modes easier in some way, to ease ppl into the dungeon style of combat. my guild would attempt the first 3 story mode dungeons and wipe so many times because none of us really understood what we needed to do in each different situation and the big boss attacks would kill us off before we knew what was happening. ppl would get frustrated, and never want to do dungeons again because the reward was less than the cost of repairs (as well as time spent/wasted)

i’ve really gotten some enjoyment out of the regular explorables lately, because i have gotten into some good groups using the GW2LFG site, and right up front when i join the group i let them know that i was new to that particular dungeon – once that is out, ppl have been very helpful and patient with me, explained what to do in certain portions of some dungeons which helped a ton and kept me from getting frustrated. i’d like to think i’ve even been fairly useful in those groups i actually feel pretty confident on about 4 or 5 of the dungeon paths that i have repeated a few times now

that being said, theres still some dungeons that are more enjoyable than others, both because of their challenge being just right, as well as the amount of time required to complete being adequate to the reward received. some paths take so long or seem such a grind that i am much less likely to do them again.

i dont mind a reasonable challenge, but i am not such an expert at this type of game that i can always know when to use every skill or know exactly when to dodge every time at the right time. having story mode bosses perhaps do more base damage on normal attacks, but a bit less damage on their big attacks would spread things out some, and help relieve that pressure that some new dungeon players feel. since story mode is already a fairly low reward (no tokens, less silvers/loot) it should also be less risk (either fewer deaths or low repair costs)

I agree with a lot of stuff in this thread. I’ll put my hat in on the following

• Increase rewards for Story Mode. Story Mode tends to take much longer than exploration, and has much more interesting things going on. I don’t see why they shouldn’t give dungeon tokens on top of their rewards. I don’t see any incentive to do Story Mode at all
• Progression through FtoM should be by level range, rather than strictly level. For instance, if your max is level 3, you should be allowed to progress to level 4 by doing a level 2, 3, or 4 party. Right now, there’s little incentive to do a run under your FtoM level, so lower level players get left in the dust.
• We really need a place to put these tokens.

Loggahead.5402:

As a casual player, I feel that loot drops in general in dungeons are horrible and make dungeons an absolute waste of time.

Although I agree dungeon loot is a bit messy and boring (there should be more interesting and unique items dropping in dungeons, like mini-pets resembling the bosses, themed armour and town clothes, etc.), I don’t think that focusing on the loot is a good idea.

If a dungeon is well-designed and fun, people will enjoy playing it even if they get no “loot”. Increasing the amount of gold or items that players get should never be a valid replacement for improving the gameplay; that was precisely the kind of design attitude that led to the decline of certain MMORPGs. It might appeal to number grinders but in the long run it makes the game lose its core RPG player base.

The dungeons in GW2 need better gameplay. The drops are a separate issue, that is more related to crafting, the game economy, etc., than it is to the actual dungeon design.

Just attempted CM path #2 and while I am fully aware that there is a way to finish it, the whole concept of infinitely spawning enemies is ridiculous. There is absolutely no reason to have it. It destroys immersion and seems to be a mechanic designed by either lazy devs or people who can’t think of better ideas. (This applies to ALL MMOs not just GW2)

If your dungeon requires never ending spawning of enemies for it to be challenging, then you need to rethink your dungeon. Here are several alternatives:

Snipers on roofs
Hidden switches
Jumping puzzle to find alternate route around area
Negotiations with bandits to allow passage
Disguises

There are many other ideas, those are just ones that came to me while writing this post. Please take some of these into consideration.

Short and to the point:

As a fairly new player, I am very dismayed that almost every dungeon path I’ve done so far, has had some seemingly mandatory player glitching or mob or boss skipping that is now the standard way to do them.

This is a combination of the design of the dungeons overall, and the risk/reward involved in getting through one.

Trash mobs are uber tough and hit like trucks, bosses are often snoozefests of repetitive action.

Random drops are generally worse than junk, so there’s no incentive to ‘clear’ anything.

The less you have to do to get to the chests/token rewards, the better, according to the players that have been taking me through them.

No one is in them for the dynamics of group play, or the good boss fights or challenge, or even to pray to the RNG gods for drops.

They’re chores that are apparently best ‘worked around’ and glitched, than done with care or and desire for legitimate completion.

I like the dungeons the way they were made, but as anything with a set purpose; well it get his good and bad aspects of this purpose. I think many people don’t like them, well because they don’t really understand the purpose they were designed for, the whole competitive pve aspect is not something they really grasps, or even want to understand frankly, simply because they play a “game”, and want it to be as such. And since GW2 dungeon are clearly more or less about that competitive aspect of pve, they don’t like it much. Even fractals are set this way, even if they are really better that the usual mind set as the older dungeons (tank and spank rather than team work).

What i would like to see is a “chill out” dungeon (if that make any sense), a place set up as a labyrinth, but rich enough so that any kind of combination of team/squad could find some place and challenge for them. A place you could go deep inside and form groups on the fly or even go solo in the easier paths, and those groups could evolve with more or less difficulty to explore it depending how deep and what paths they go. In any case it should be quiet big so that people could get lost Much like an underground world as the concept was done in the old days of rogue like games/pen & paper. And it should always be a bit too difficult for your group setting to push you to group more.

Kwith.8321:

Here are several alternatives:

Jumping puzzle to find alternate route around area

This used to be in the game (in CM path 2). Not exactly a “puzzle”, just a couple of jumps requiring precision. They removed it. In fact, they recently did the same in one of the fractals. Apparently funnelling everyone into a single “right way” makes the game more fun, in the opinion of GW2’s dungeon designers.

Arah Explorable mode is a nightmare… too few waypoints and Giganticus Lupicus in the first 2 phases are overpowered. the grub eating and the warping… many attempts, no victory…

Lupus is just about the only boss which needs minimal tweaking (and that is grub attack not targeting NPCs). Don’t touch him.

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

As a casual player, I feel that loot drops in general in dungeons are horrible and make dungeons an absolute waste of time.

Although I agree dungeon loot is a bit messy and boring (there should be more interesting and unique items dropping in dungeons, like mini-pets resembling the bosses, themed armour and town clothes, etc.), I don’t think that focusing on the loot is a good idea.

If a dungeon is well-designed and fun, people will enjoy playing it even if they get no “loot”. Increasing the amount of gold or items that players get should never be a valid replacement for improving the gameplay; that was precisely the kind of design attitude that led to the decline of certain MMORPGs. It might appeal to number grinders but in the long run it makes the game lose its core RPG player base.

The dungeons in GW2 need better gameplay. The drops are a separate issue, that is more related to crafting, the game economy, etc., than it is to the actual dungeon design.

I agree to your point that the dungeons need better gameplay but I still stand by my argument that the rewards need to be much better as well. Take for example Underworld and Fissure of Woe in the original GW. Those were challenging, fun, yet rewarding dungeon experiences that yielded good loot that could only be obtained there (Obsidian and Ectos, Obsidian’s Edge, Chaos Axes / Shields, etc.). Challenging gameplay is part of the equation but no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

In short, dungeons need both challenging / better gameplay and at the same time better loot.

PolarApe.9351:

Short and to the point:

As a fairly new player, I am very dismayed that almost every dungeon path I’ve done so far, has had some seemingly mandatory player glitching or mob or boss skipping that is now the standard way to do them.

This is a combination of the design of the dungeons overall, and the risk/reward involved in getting through one.

Trash mobs are uber tough and hit like trucks, bosses are often snoozefests of repetitive action.

Random drops are generally worse than junk, so there’s no incentive to ‘clear’ anything.

The less you have to do to get to the chests/token rewards, the better, according to the players that have been taking me through them.

No one is in them for the dynamics of group play, or the good boss fights or challenge, or even to pray to the RNG gods for drops.

They’re chores that are apparently best ‘worked around’ and glitched, than done with care or and desire for legitimate completion.

Skipping foes has always been a guild wars tradition, I think it is fine that arenanet rewards players that looks for shortcuts. And yeah glitching is unfortunate, and some of the glitching is so obvious you’d think arenanet planted them (like skipping directly to lupicus in path 3).

What foes hit like trucks? My ranger has no problem surviving regular foes.

Agree on drops, people who love dungeons aren’t rewarded well enough.

You can find plenty of people who do arah because its far more challenging than the other dungeons (and then again not that challenging once you get used to it).

I loved grinding FoW in gw1 because you were actually rewarded with mats that were always in demand. Sure you get tokens here, but don’t think many have become rich after doing lots of dungeons.

Just repeating two of my favorite suggestions in the thread so far:

1) Tailor the rewards to fit each path. Nerf the rewards for the easier/quicker paths, buff the rewards for the harder/longer paths.

2) Switch all dungeons to the fractal system where you can’t zerg stuff. Kills two birds with one stone if you also make the checkpoints more convenient than the waypoints.

I think that’s all I’d really change. Overall, I love the dungeons in this game.

Yo u know after beating Simin what do I get, blue trash (not even a green). At least give something more rewarding, even a charged core or some rare item (considering gw2 wiki said that this is one of the hardest boss). I don’t even care if it is account bound.
That is why nobody does path 4 Simin except for finishing title. You get the same loot table trash as if u defeat some ac boss in 1/8 of the time.

And really, a pile of incandescent dust in arah? I could have got that in ac and still spend 1/8 of the time finishing it. Give us a chance to get some t6 mats as reward In higher dungeons (even 10 or even 5 random t6 mats is better than 15 incandescent dust).

Another alternative is that I love multitasking. Give us a chance to get more 6 mats or better loot while completing the dungeon bosses for our legendary from chestsor mob. Right now u get 1 crystalline dust from a random weak mob in cursed shore and u still only get one crystalline dust from a champion in arah, for example. Wtf!!! My party worked 10 times as hard on a champion or mobs of silver enemies and i still get the same crap as if i down a ordinary undead. Give us a chance to drop 2 blues or better items on unique enemies or something.
Also, it is such a turnoff to spend 3 hrs farming at a specific place for random t6 mat to drop in a sporiadic manner.

Certain dungeon rewards seem slightly unbalanced. CoE for example takes a very long time to complete, sometimes even with a competent group especially in the case of Path 3 with the destroyer. Not to mention the risk is higher than say AC or CoF with less reward. Rewards should either be increased or certain lengthy aspects of it need to decrease in time (e.g. cut Subject Alphas health, cut the Destroyer’s health).

ArkisTruefire.1746:

Certain dungeon rewards seem slightly unbalanced. CoE for example takes a very long time to complete, sometimes even with a competent group especially in the case of Path 3 with the destroyer. Not to mention the risk is higher than say AC or CoF with less reward. Rewards should either be increased or certain lengthy aspects of it need to decrease in time (e.g. cut Subject Alphas health, cut the Destroyer’s health).

yes yes! very much this

risk or time spent should be relevant to reward earned

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

As long as players continue to focus on the drops, that gives developers an excuse to keep the same boring / buggy / illogical gameplay mechanics, and just “up the dose” of loot to hang on to the number grinders and addicts.

Like I said above, adjusting dungeon drops is mainly related to the game economy, crafting, and so on. It should never be a concern of the people designing the actual dungeon, coding the behaviour of its inhabitants, writing the NPCs’ lines, etc.. Their job should be to make sure the dungeon is fun to play. And if people play so much that they get bored, then they get bored and go do something else (play a different dungeon, or explore the game world, or turn off their PC and go do something else). There’s no merit to keeping people playing the same thing over and over again (it’s not even like they’re charging a subscription).

Unless the drops are something you use inside the actual dungeon to accomplish something, loot is not part of the dungeon’s design. It doesn’t mean players shouldn’t discuss that too, but always make it very clear to the developers that one thing cannot be used as a replacement for the other.

I’d like to see dungeons where tons of people can simply join in, much like the rest of the game. Have dynamic events in the dungeons, multiple branching paths, and do not make it instanced. Have groups of up to 30 people battle their way through a dungeon and fight the final boss together. Why are the dungeon mechanics so different from the rest of the game? Something is wrong in the basic design of it all. I would like to see them bring the design of dungeons closer to the design of the rest of the PVE. Make it a more coherent whole rather than this weird exception to the rules.

I’d just wish story mode rewards were not worse than explore rewards. Maybe like 50s, 4.5k karma, and 60 tokens for the first time you finish it per char. Not like the rewards of the explore mode but without the tokens, that’s just… ~__~

penatbater.4710:

I’d just wish story mode rewards were not worse than explore rewards. Maybe like 50s, 4.5k karma, and 60 tokens for the first time you finish it per char. Not like the rewards of the explore mode but without the tokens, that’s just… ~__~

I agree to this. I have been doing explore mode dungeons only and I feel really embarassed when I do not have the story mode cleared and neither do any of my party members. There is just no incentive to do them while I am leveling. I do have them on my main, but on my other 3 alts, redoing the dungeons can be a chore.

Theres definitely mobs/bosses that feel like they need some health tuning but once you learn encounters they’re generally all easy enough without using the huge exploits people tend to do.

I chain run dungeons mostly for the money and get 1000s of tokens with nothing to spend them on. Usually just getting weapons/armor for alts or to feed into the mystic forge. I’d love for there to be a way to buy certain lodestones and other rarer mats for even large amounts of dungeon currency; give them a purpose.

For Fractal dungeons / lions arch I feel one thing is really missing. something like a command where you write: /overflow or something like that, and when you do it you get into an overflow. would make things so much easier.

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

As long as players continue to focus on the drops, that gives developers an excuse to keep the same boring / buggy / illogical gameplay mechanics, and just “up the dose” of loot to hang on to the number grinders and addicts.

Like I said above, adjusting dungeon drops is mainly related to the game economy, crafting, and so on. It should never be a concern of the people designing the actual dungeon, coding the behaviour of its inhabitants, writing the NPCs’ lines, etc.. Their job should be to make sure the dungeon is fun to play. And if people play so much that they get bored, then they get bored and go do something else (play a different dungeon, or explore the game world, or turn off their PC and go do something else). There’s no merit to keeping people playing the same thing over and over again (it’s not even like they’re charging a subscription).

Unless the drops are something you use inside the actual dungeon to accomplish something, loot is not part of the dungeon’s design. It doesn’t mean players shouldn’t discuss that too, but always make it very clear to the developers that one thing cannot be used as a replacement for the other.

I don’t want to be mean, nor discuss at all your “personal view of what fun is”.
Just… your post makes no sense at all on a fantasy mmo, maybe (as you explained) on an fps, where the fun to run around and kill or be killed is everything. The fun of it.
A fantasy mmo is related to content and fun yes, but still ,the shiny drop is what we chase and play for. My arah fullset is the only armor i desired, i chased it collecting tokens and completing it doing full paths when 60 tokens per path didn’t exists.
For what it matters, if was an uber rare drop from arah bosses piece by piece, still i was keeping my love for it and farming arah like mad until complete.
Shortly, you cannot play a dungeon wasting 6/8 hours (arah path 4) coming back to LA with.. a bunch of blues, some green, if lucky 1-2 rares, if uberlucky a lode, and a bunch of T5 junk? The time and effort spent on a particular, harder and harder task, should reward on a fantasy mmo way better reward compared to a stupid lv80 mob outworld killed in 1 minute. Simple concept of an mmo, clear from when the first fantasy mmo was even created, guess. Obiouvsly i don’t mean with my post “let’s grind”. Just a concept of “meaning to spend some effort on something harder and longer”. Noone asked a stupid “gimme precursor” nor “gimme fullset arah at the end”.
We have the same junk with fractals, reason becasue i don’t waste one minute more to progress, just making things longer without a minimal difference of drop compared to a lv1 fractal run ,except the daily reward

Account.9832:

That is definitely part of the problem. I think GW2 dungeons fail in several aspects:

• Bosses have too much HP and too few mechanics. Fights just get boring. Nearly every boss should have 30% less HP and multiple phases or abilities (preferably triggered at random times and /or in random orders). A lot of them just stand still firing projectiles, or chase players repeating the same attack over and over again.

• Bosses make little or no use of their environment. For example, the door guard in CM has a ton of potential. When I first saw that room I expected the boss to do things like run to a rope, cut it and make the chandelier drop (causing AoE damage in the middle of the room), shake the walls causing books to fall (causing damage near the edges), run to the fireplace and throw out burning embers (forcing players to use furniture as cover), or something like that. Instead, we get a guy that just chases players, then stops and swings his sword (damaging players who are behind him and nowhere near the sword, BTW). Boring, boring, boring. And he’s not the exception, he’s the rule.

• Mobs also have too much HP and hit way too hard. When a group of level 80 adventurers with exotic gear and elite skills goes into a dungeon, they should feel powerful. They should feel that they’re overcoming incredible odds. Instead, it takes 5 “heroes” almost one minute to kill a couple of nameless guards – guards who are able to kill them in 3 hits. This is ridiculous; it makes players feel like wimps. No “trash” mob should be more powerful than a fully-geared player of the same level. Instead, the party of 5 players should be pitted against larger groups, or groups with some tactical advantage (ex., access to cannons, turrets, traps, etc.). That’s how you give players a challenge while making them feel powerful. It’s dungeon design 101.

• The only enemies that should be clearly more powerful than players should be bosses and mini-bosses. And that extra power should be justified by their appearance (i.e., they should be big, or look like powerful wizards, or carry some menacing weapon, etc.). Not just another humanoid guard who happens to have 50x more HP than any player can ever have, and 10x more attack power than any player can ever have. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen players say something like “GW2… where trash mobs kill you in 2 seconds and bosses die with 5 minutes of auto-attack”. It’s not even irony; it’s just true.

• Mobs’ behaviour is often nonsensical. I’m talking about things like riflemen and archers who don’t move at all (did someone glue their feet to the ground?), like the ones in CM, or armies with infinite soldiers that spawn out of thin air but attack only 3 at a time (like the ones in SE). If you want to have an enemy that just shoots and doesn’t move, use a turret, not a human. And if you want to have a steady but infinite stream of enemies, justify it in some way (ex., make them robots, coming out of an assembly line – not living creatures popping out of thin air but choosing to attack in small groups instead of just steamrolling the enemy). What are the mobs doing there in the first place, anyway, besides waiting for players to come kill them? If you can’t justify their presence and behaviour in some credible way, rethink the dungeon.

• Explorable mode paths are often extremely similar, sharing parts of the terrain and even some bosses, not to mention the first third of the dungeon is always identical. Before launch we were told that dungeons would have “several bonus events” that could “surprise” players. In the end, there is effectively one random event (the troll in AC). Everything else is fixed.

Overall, dungeons are one of the weakest parts of GW2. Unimaginative, unrealistic, unrewarding, repetitive and boring. The fractal dungeons are better (at the cost of making even less sense), but still suffer from some of the problems above (bosses with too much HP, that just get boring half way into the fight, “low end” mobs that are far more powerful than any player, things that pop out of thin air with no justification, etc.).

It feels like the dungeons and their inhabitants were designed by completely different people, and that the latter didn’t really have a RPG mentality and weren’t even trying to create believable places, just sprinkle the dungeon with some semi-random mobs with semi-random abilities. Their guiding objective (reinforced by most of the changes introduced after launch) seems to have been to make players spend time rather than make the players have fun.

I think nearly any player with a couple of years of gaming experience could design more interesting dungeons. Maybe not code them, but certainly design them.

Best post I’ve read so far, this needs its own thread.

Well ye, he pointed the lack of design and ai lol. Could have an entire new thread about it

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

I certainly don’t disagree with your point on making the gameplay more interesting. I feel you are wrong in thinking that that’s the only thing that will make the dungeon experience in GW2 rewarding. Again, go back to GW1’s Underworld and Fissure. It was a good balance. That is, if you have even played the original.

Something NEEDS to be done regarding loot imo. The perfect world will be fun gameplay with the added excitement of being rewarded with some worthwhile drops.

Loggahead.5402:

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

I certainly don’t disagree with your point on making the gameplay more interesting. I feel you are wrong in thinking that that’s the only thing that will make the dungeon experience in GW2 rewarding. Again, go back to GW1’s Underworld and Fissure. It was a good balance. That is, if you have even played the original.

Something NEEDS to be done regarding loot imo. The perfect world will be fun gameplay with the added excitement of being rewarded with some worthwhile drops.

I don’t understand this mentality when it comes to GW2. I already have full exotics so what do I care what the drops are? I prefer the consistent rewards of currency and tokens that I can use to get whichever skins I want.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I’m excited if something valuable drops like a lodestone or an exotic. But you know, the reason they’re valuable is because they seldom drop.

Did you play D3 at all? They kept buffing the drop rates and the feedback remained “Drop rates suck” Well duh people, your drops are going to suck compared to the rest of the economy unless you put in top 1% grinding hours. It’s just how it works no matter what the drop rates are. Anything you’re excited about seeing drop is gonna be rare and valuable, and anything that you see drop often will not be exciting, nor will it be valuable.

Khristophoros.7194:

Loggahead.5402:

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

I certainly don’t disagree with your point on making the gameplay more interesting. I feel you are wrong in thinking that that’s the only thing that will make the dungeon experience in GW2 rewarding. Again, go back to GW1’s Underworld and Fissure. It was a good balance. That is, if you have even played the original.

Something NEEDS to be done regarding loot imo. The perfect world will be fun gameplay with the added excitement of being rewarded with some worthwhile drops.

I don’t understand this mentality when it comes to GW2. I already have full exotics so what do I care what the drops are? I prefer the consistent rewards of currency and tokens that I can use to get whichever skins I want.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I’m excited if something valuable drops like a lodestone or an exotic. But you know, the reason they’re valuable is because they seldom drop.

Did you play D3 at all? They kept buffing the drop rates and the feedback remained “Drop rates suck” Well duh people, your drops are going to suck compared to the rest of the economy unless you put in top 1% grinding hours. It’s just how it works no matter what the drop rates are. Anything you’re excited about seeing drop is gonna be rare and valuable, and anything that you see drop often will not be exciting, nor will it be valuable.

I agree but my main point is that the loot drops in dungeons are out of scale with the rest of the content of the game. For instance, last night I played a 1 hour run in Fractals, level 2. I came back with 4 rares and 1 exotic. Last Friday night I played through several open world Orr evnts and came back with 3 rares and a lot of tier 5 crafting materials. Dungeon runs in their current state are never this profitable. Making the gameplay better isn’t going to be the be all end all for population at large. Rewards will need to be tweaked.

Loggahead.5402:

Khristophoros.7194:

Loggahead.5402:

Account.9832:

Loggahead.5402:

no matter how fun it is, you will eventually get bored if there isn’t that rewarding feeling of seeing something great drop for you. The loot you receive is half of the addiction.

No. I mean, maybe you will, but I certainly won’t. Maybe that’s because I’m not addicted. People who are will keep playing no matter what (that’s kind of the definition of addiction), so catering to them is a waste. If gameplay is boring, no amount of bribing with “loot” will make me overlook that.

This isn’t a job, it’s a game. It’s what I do in my free time, for entertainment purposes. If someone is using his leisure time to suffer through unpleasant gameplay in exchange for some random virtual reward at the end, he’s doing “fun” wrong, and would probably enjoy himself a lot more doing something less sporadic.

There are no “drops” in most games I play (sports simulations, RTS games, FPS games, etc.); I play them because I enjoy playing. And that’s why I play MMORPGs too, and dungeons in particular. I like the challenge, the teamwork, the teasing, etc..

Having drops is fine, but if the game isn’t enjoyable without them, its gameplay needs to be improved.

I certainly don’t disagree with your point on making the gameplay more interesting. I feel you are wrong in thinking that that’s the only thing that will make the dungeon experience in GW2 rewarding. Again, go back to GW1’s Underworld and Fissure. It was a good balance. That is, if you have even played the original.

Something NEEDS to be done regarding loot imo. The perfect world will be fun gameplay with the added excitement of being rewarded with some worthwhile drops.

I don’t understand this mentality when it comes to GW2. I already have full exotics so what do I care what the drops are? I prefer the consistent rewards of currency and tokens that I can use to get whichever skins I want.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I’m excited if something valuable drops like a lodestone or an exotic. But you know, the reason they’re valuable is because they seldom drop.

Did you play D3 at all? They kept buffing the drop rates and the feedback remained “Drop rates suck” Well duh people, your drops are going to suck compared to the rest of the economy unless you put in top 1% grinding hours. It’s just how it works no matter what the drop rates are. Anything you’re excited about seeing drop is gonna be rare and valuable, and anything that you see drop often will not be exciting, nor will it be valuable.

I agree but my main point is that the loot drops in dungeons are out of scale with the rest of the content of the game. For instance, last night I played a 1 hour run in Fractals, level 2. I came back with 4 rares and 1 exotic. Last Friday night I played through several open world Orr evnts and came back with 3 rares and a lot of tier 5 crafting materials. Dungeon runs in their current state are never this profitable. Making the gameplay better isn’t going to be the be all end all for population at large. Rewards will need to be tweaked.

Regular dungeons are since you get a bunch of guaranteed gold from bosses, though it depends how you count the tokens.

Yeah fractals feel kind of unrewarding. However, I thought the idea was you’re looking for precursors and ascended rings and you’re not meant to gain as much raw wealth in fractals as other places. If you did, what would be the point to regular dungeons or open world?