Guild Wars 2

I had high expectations from GW2 dungeons, i was expecting boss mechanics.
Different ways that needed to be discovered, coordination in the group.

However here it’s just about the quantity of DPS, with someone to support, or having a heavy class playing tank style with a bunch of support on him.

I feel like dungeons are repetitive in the way of how you complete them.
Explorable dungeons being able to be done by pug groups even bugs me more, there isn’t anything difficult about them, sure you have to move out of the way if you don’t want to be 2-shoted, but that’s it….

I’d really wish that Anet worked on boss mechanics, instead of having no tactic involved in a fight, just plain DPS….

Ex

It’s kind of an every man for himself kind of game. Dungeons are the only place in the game (save for sPvP) where you have to actually use team strategy and I agree it could be better. But the problem is some of them just have horrible design (TA for example is just a miserable experience, AC, CM and SE are both challenging but fun).

Overall I am also pretty disappointed with them

They disappointed me, too, considering the majority of bosses have super inflated health bars and no interesting mechanics to justify it. Honestly, most of the time I’m just auto attacking, not much strategy needed.

The boss mechanics are boring. The boss’s have way to much health to just be tank and spank fights or way too over powered to be fun. I raided in Wow for years so I don’t mind hard fights, but some of these are crazy stupid one shot abilities. To top all of that off you can be in a pug for a few hours and get no loot for the other bosses you down, it feels like such a let down. I was really excited to run these dungeons but every time I get into one after the first boss I hate my life. I know they said they are going to patch that “hopefully in the next patch” so can we expect to see this on the 22nd? or a smaller patch before then?

I don’t understand what you expect. Just saying do it better or do it different doesn’t cut it. What is your idea of what is boring? I’m not sure what you expect in the manner of mechanics. There is so much stuff going on here. I’ve seen people on the forums complain about “why do I need to know raid tactics to finish this?” and others saying “Why is this so easy?” I can name multiple boss mechanics already at play in this game, and this is just the starting phase.

I expected dungeon explorables to require more teamwork to survive or optimize your damage potential as well … and enemies to show some teamwork too. GW1 delivered a perfectly reasonable precedence for the latter.

Torvarren.6295:

I don’t understand what you expect. Just saying do it better or do it different doesn’t cut it. What is your idea of what is boring? I’m not sure what you expect in the manner of mechanics. There is so much stuff going on here. I’ve seen people on the forums complain about “why do I need to know raid tactics to finish this?” and others saying “Why is this so easy?” I can name multiple boss mechanics already at play in this game, and this is just the starting phase.

I think, in some cases, the mechanics just…aren’t interesting really, and they are hidden behind a lack of information. For example, the second champion in Twilight Arbor summons the spiders that turn into poison clouds. The mechanic that they lose health naturally then explode has no real information to it nor an easy way to identify it. It took my group a few tries to realize it, and then upon that realization the fight becomes “run in circles for 10 minutes.”

Now, the lovers in Ascalonian Catacombs have an interesting mechanic that requires the group to coordinate and pay attention. It’s a challenging fight, and you can understand your mistakes. You can address what you did wrong and see that make a difference. Personally, I’d like more fights like this or perhaps the last encounter in Twilight Arbor story.

I expected rare skins from drops/chests and what did i get? Blue trash worth under 80c… Anet should seriously consider adding tones of skins (as drops and not obtainable with tokens) exclusive to dungeons or in couple of months they will be completely dead (when everyone gets all they wanted from them with tokens)… oh wait, did i said in two months? No. They’re already dead and game was released a month ago… You see some CoF and AC spam, that’s it… Did the game launched with two dungeons? Anet, add loot worth a ****! It was perfect in gw1 and i absolutely have no idea why this changed… I don’t want your stupid tokens but rare drops that i can wear AND sell if i wanted to.

I would like for one, once you clear mobs in a zone, traps are clear as well. If you die the next two fights up, rez to repair and die numerous more times hitting fire and floor traps just trying to get back to your team, it’s super frustrating. Add that to the issue if you chose the wrong option, and end up doing something like an epic heroic mode, can you say repair bill inflation? I leveled to 80 without doing one instance/dungeon. Did my first, got stuck in the middle of it so I was told, wasn’t even the end boss was so hard, after over an hour, we gave up. Honestly, one and done. No more dungeons for me. Just my choice, had enough already.

I am sorely disappointed in the way Guild Wars 2 dungeons work.
First of all, the waypoints are sometimes way to far away from the encounter where alot of groups die. Having to run back for 3-4 minutes every single time is just too much.
Second, normal mobs have the health and attack power of bosses. Clearing one simple group of mobs should not kill the group 2-3 times. I’ve seen players in very good gear, getting killed by two fast melee hits – thats a bit too harsh, specially considering the very poor quality of loot in the story mode dungeons.

Arenanet – you can do better!

I actually don’t really mind the waypoint jogs, and at any rate, it’s better than how WoW used to be where if you died in a dungeon you had to respawn outside the instance, run all the way back (sometimes from across the zone), re-zone, and then back through the instance.

That being said, I got the impression they wanted dungeons to be balanced around the downed state and waypoint use so in that context, the waypoints are a little far off in some cases. The downed state is also kind of annoying because if someone gets wrecked and goes down, you’re more likely to get iced yourself when trying to rally that person. The mobs have pretty good AI and will try to target you while reviving (this is fine and makes reviving someone kind of a thrill) but the damage on AoEs and other abilities is so high you take a lot of damage quickly or the person just dies anyway (this is not fine).

Exactly Roctod, I agree with all of your points. The reviving is best left to classes with abilities to protect while reviving. Thieves can even cloak the revivers and revivee with Shadow Refuge.

Torvarren.9295 said I don’t understand what you expect. Just saying do it better or do it different doesn’t cut it. What is your idea of what is boring? I’m not sure what you expect in the manner of mechanics. There is so much stuff going on here. I’ve seen people on the forums complain about “why do I need to know raid tactics to finish this?” and others saying “Why is this so easy?” I can name multiple boss mechanics already at play in this game, and this is just the starting phase.

What is easy to one person may be difficult to another, the issue with GW2 is that you have this great system where team tactics could be required. Instead in most cases you have button masher scenarios or puzzles that doesn’t require team effort.

I’m not saying make the bosses or mobs more difficult. They are difficult enough and many cases too difficult IMO. The problem is the game is designed to not need specific team strategy, but team strategy is what keeps players coming back to MMOs. This is where the fun is, it’s where social gaming meets team work. Granted without some coordinated effort you will not make it through any dungeons, but players want and expect more out of modern MMOs. Collectively we want great puzzles we must solve together and great rewards when we solve them. GW2 dungeons still need work in both areas.

You can’t have it both ways.

You break apart the holy trinity and say you have a better solution, that’s fine. The problem is after playing in many team scenarios it’s not refined enough. There are moments (e.g. Sorrows Embrace story mode, Catacombs story, both fun but need some work). I’m looking forward to playing the others

In general the game needs more instanced team content. I greatly miss cooperative missions in GW2 and dungeons are they only thing that resembles that in GW2. Dynamic events are their own thing and do not really replace cooperative missions because they require no team strategy/tactics.

These are all good points and I think that in the future many will be improved. But in the meantime I think we should step back and have a different perspective.

When I am in a dungeon I feel that the bosses are actually trying to do the most hurtful thing to our team, I think this is very good. I don’t want a boss to take the bait like the trinity. A boss should be able to determine okay who is hurting me most and who has low armor and will die fast and who is trying to revive or is low on life. I want the boss to attempt to attack those targets and its the rest of the teams job to change his mind or slow him or something. Knockbacks are a good example, you can use those to save yourself and team mates.

I think the best way to increase difficulty in this game is element of surprise, that is more fun than powerful abilities or 20 minutes of life. Giving bosses abilities that root and then they charge the person they rooted, or going invisible or jumping up and landing on someone.. the ideas can keep going, but they need to do something that creates confusion.

Not everything is bad in dungeons but as a whole, it is indeed poorly designed. Which is weird considering that the only MMO that’s so close to other game types, even solo games. There’re many great sources of inspiration out there.

In GW2, dungeons are the only content for competitive PvE. People expect challenge, unique exiting rewards, teamplay and building strategies. Challenge isn’t there since pug group can do those easily. Epic rewards? Zelda has the best chests: suspense, iconic music, great epic items, fancy animation of Link holding its precious in the middle of the screen with shiny effects. GW2 has the worst: some crapy unrare items in the bottom-right of the screen, no suspense and sometimes some currency for an “artefact” some guy is sitting on in the capital since you’re lvl1. Teamplay? Close to none since no one cares about roles. Stategies? A single one works in most cases: Avoid red circles, avoid melee, rez downed players, run back if you’re dead.

What’s sad is that we can see a lot of effort in the dungeon design. Each monster has different abilities, it’s beautiful, there’s a little story and voice over, etc. Some monsters (even trash mobs) are even interesting but since you can ignore their abilities, die and run back fresh as new, or run past them, who cares? You can get crapy tokens even with the dumbest strategy/group. I think the fact that even when you invade their home, monster don’t chase you very far, and when a boss kill you, he has in fact healed you, that kill a layer of complexity of the dungeons…

There are a LOT of bosses with no real interesting mechanics or threat to them.

I don’t remember which boss it was, but 2 days ago while running CM, I literally pressed 1, got up, went to make a quick jelly sandwich, ate it, cleaned up, and came back just a bit before the boss died.

…that should never be possible. For trash mobs while in a group, maybe, but a boss fight?

I too am disappoint. Anet please put some work into redoing the hole dungeon experience (hint try to make them as fun as Vindictus or WOW)

I used to play wow , w8ing the Anet best game to come for 3 years. The game came and yes is very very good. The only disappointment for me is the dungeon system. No taunt mechanisms , no healing mechanisms , no Boss strategy. Just a “Run for Your Life” strategy and huge damage.
From the other side the graphics are awesome , the characters , the bosses , everything is beautiful.
I wish Anet change in future the dungeons system.

The dungeons are uninterested and more frustrating than fun. Even once my guild figured out how to blaze through all the TA paths its still a huge chore to actually go through it because it’s uninterested. Arah is just absolutely kitten hard. The dungeon loot is laughable, and the token armor doesn’t provide anything special. Sure SOME of it looks nice but the stats are no different from anything that I’ve crafted and I can’t justify running these dungeons daily for such little gain. I truly hope these dungeons get the proper attention and fixes that are needed. With that said, the issues aren’t just with the dungeons. There are still very major issues with PvE skill/trait balancing. Elementalists have so many useless skills I stopped playing mine. I fell in love with this games concept and I’m trying not to become doubtful. ANet has followed through with a lot of the promises they made with this game which I’m happy about. But some of the more major and important mechanics need more careful re working.

Agree.

Two mechanics – mobs and massive HP pools. Boring.
Drops/Loot – horrible.
Time required – long.
Times killed/repairs – relatively high.

What is the value proposition? To me these places have negative utility. I can make more $ and get better drops with near 0 deaths farming DEs and dragons. The only thing you get from instances is the gems – like those are so special given the armor is same stats as crafted gear…

I don’t think I’d be quite so bothered by the loot or the token requirements if the dungeons didn’t feel like such a chore. I mean, in other games you’d have to get a billion tokens or points to get armor, but the process had the right mix of time, challenge, and enjoyment.

As far as dungeon gear having the same stats, I don’t really think that’s quite a problem. The idea here is to provide unique skins, not extra stats. The reward here is cosmetic, not practical. So I’m ok with this, but again, the trip there feels like a grind, which is not how timesinks should feel because it discourages play.

For example, the WvW exotics don’t really have the greatest stats, but they look unique. And the grind for tokens doesn’t feel like a grind since you can have fun getting into big fights if that’s your thing, or you can play in a small, tactical group as well. So it never really feels boring because you’re always actively advancing towards your goal in an enjoyable manner.
MMOs will always be built upon a foundation of grinding, but the trick is to disguise the grind in a way that feels refreshing and interesting. In just about every other aspect, I feel Guild Wars 2 nails that metric perfectly. The dungeons just come along and feel lack luster or even like a chore that you “have” to do.

To be honest I have been trying to complete one dungeon with my guild for a while dont matter which one all of them to us are stupidly hard at some bosses with massive aoe damage we have tried two.

First is sorrows embrace remember since we never completed them its in story mode when we get to the fire golem it just kitten the kitten out of us. One the over done lava font is way over ranged so you cannot get near it to do much damage then after it kills everyone it regenerates?? Wtf is that why its not like its not doin enough damage in the first place where we cant hardly touch it in the first place. Then we just did Honor of the waves and we got to the boss that puts out so much aoe damage u cant hardly get near him to do anything finally we got him down to about 2/3 dead he goes and runs off and heals why do these bosses have a regeneration of health at all? After that my guildies gave up.

How can I as a guild leader do things like dungeons if they are impossible to get through in story mode? I cannot see how people consider dungeons easy at all is there some kind of cheat code your using?

Anet said this game would be fair and all classes will be able to do anything on this game so to me and some others they would think you could take any class non specific even multiple of the same class and do these dungeons but nope its goin to be just like guildwars and the special teams again.

Woah, the one you’re talking about in SE in my opinion one of the few bosses with an interesting mechanic and also one of the easiest. Since you killed the golem and not that one, I guess you didn’t understand its mechanic. I don’t blame you for not noticing it, but I blame the game for not giving any hints about those things. Dungeons are not hard, they’re hiding the mechanics, casting times and animations. When you understand/memorize them, it becomes easy, disappointing, repetitive, carried by 1 man, etc.

Are there really that many problems with this game to so many? I think this game is great I have been enjoying every bit. Some parts I got frustrated in, but after a few tries I got better and it was fun. Try to give encouraging feedback and examples of what you feel would make it better and why. None of this “This game is so bad, easy, boring, no skill required, just mindlessly click on bosses and watch their health bar go down so slow”

interesting boss mechanics for a start. compare to WOW and old Naxx. All we get in this game is large CC fights and tank’n’spank fights where survival is not all that important as you just respawn and keep fighting. Compare to the differernt boss mechanics in Naxx where you actually needed a strategy, team work, etc.

Problems:
1. Dungeons are too easy(all can be pugged with retaliative ease) and too dull, they feel grinding and time sinky.
2. Loot is boring and generic. Why can we see super rare mini’s from final bosses, rare recipe drops with semi rare dungeon only components, rare drop only skins, rare fun flavor items that are silly. These things make looting fun not loot chest get green/blue maybe yellow>>>>sell all…
3. Tokens are boring no excitement on killing a boss like there is with drops ( solution make bosses harder so when you beat them you get item and feel happy and rewarded)

A dungeon should be able to be pugged, if you have players who are experienced and know the dungeon of course it should be possible to complete in a pug full of experienced players. Maybe the dungeons should be harder, if it is truly very easy for the most experienced players I can see how that would be lacking.

As for loot, I don’t know what to say. I agree with anets goal of not making more powerful loot only accessible to the best players. But how to make it interesting if it is not more powerful? Any ideas?

My disappointment in the dungeons are threefold:

(1) Loot: not much to say what other people have already said; the benefit of running a dungeon is less than most other ways of acquiring loot when factoring in repair bills, time, etc.

(2) Spacing (and this applies in other aspects of the game as well): the Norn are the biggest race in the game, and yet, we have dungeons that are built in such a way that we can barely fit in a space and see what’s happening around us, must less be able to fight (Arah airship, anyone?). If I can’t see what I’m supposed to fight and the area around me, how am I supposed to be of use?

(3) Dying as a strategy: seriously, this makes dungeons more frustrating/stupid/nonsensical than anything. So, the only strategy to move forward in a dungeon is for 2 people to enter a room, and run around until they die, to be replaced by two more people to do the same thing; rinse and repeat (explore CoF); or to have an area where the entire floor is covered by AoE that 1-shots (Arah). What’s fun for players to have no other recourse than “we just have to die enough to let some NPC do something on a timer”? I don’t mind hard mechanics or hard fights, but in order for a dungeon to be enjoyable, I think there must be a strategy of being successful – dumb AI or RNG luck or just dying and running back until a timer goes off isn’t fun – nor is it interesting enough to make me want to experience the content on other characters, since there’s nothing unique they can bring to the fight.

Another disappointment I have with dungeons – along with the boring drawn out fights – is that I don’t feel special in these dungeons. I sound like I need a big pat on the back or something. But what I mean is that nothing I bring seems needed or its already provided by someone else. I feel interchangeable. I think this is part of the plan of Arenanet so that people didn’t have to rely on certain classes or roles. But it leaves you feeling really unimportant. WoW has been slowly, slowly and reluctantly homogenizing for a while now because Blizzard knows that this feeling of importance is a kind of special sauce. In terms of rewards, I think there needs to be group rewards such as a currency that you can use to build a Guild Hall. All the rewards in the game now are depressingly individual…how does a legendary help a guild?

I take the holy trinity over this “dodge in 0.2 seconds or die” system.

I feel some of you, dude. I hope there’s more back to back actions against the bosses instead of trolling around those monsters you can skip to reach the quest goal. True.

I have only some issues with dungeons and that is a loot system and sometimes not getting tokens. Getting mostly blues or gray trophies isn’t my idea of great loot.

Another issue is that even if you play the smallest possible human, the camera in some dungeons is broken.

Leave dungeon balance where it is, it’s fine (maybe even making some bosses hard because they are snore fest). You’re supposed to use brain there, not happy tank’n’spank.