Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the linearity of dungeons in GW1 compared to GW2. These thoughts were sparked by discussion on new rules for record runs of dungeons in GW2 and I thought it would useful to discuss the issues involved in the way dungeons in GW2 are completely linear.

Here’s what I mean by linear: dungeons in GW2 are effectively giant tubes with gates in sequence. To unlock each gate in the chain you must complete an objective (usually killing a boss or group of trash mobs). This means that the best/most efficient way to beat a dungeon is to run to each boss in the sequence and kill it while ignoring everything else in the dungeon that must not absolutely be killed. Tactics become very uniform and are not difficult for most players to master. IMHO this is the biggest issue facing the endgame in GW2.

Compare to GW1 endgame (UW/FoW/DoA) which were completely nonlinear: You basically just had a medium sized map with ~10 objectives that needed to be completed to successfully finish the run (and failure of any one of those events would fail the run). Now almost none of these events depended on one another so there was a massive variety of tactics that could be employed. If you weren’t particularly good at the game you could take the slow-and-easy(-ish) way and complete each objective sequentially. If you had a group of more talented players you could split up into smaller groups (or even solos and duos!) to complete objectives (designed for full teams) simultaenously for a fast run!

Because there was no sequencing involved, there were many, many options for completing the dungeon and the non-linearity opened up a massive number of advanced tactics. By offering players the ability to complete objectives out of sequence, the game suddenly has the option to be much, much more difficult. If you want to go for the fastest time possible, you can have each party member attempt to solo an objective meant to be completed by a whole team and the success or failure o the run is suddenly much more dependent on the technical proficiency of each player in the run. It provided a challenge that kept people playing the same content (happily!) for literally years because there was almost always a more advanced tactic to master.

IMHO that’s the kind of dungeon Anet needs to develop. One that truly tests individual technical ability and actually allows the best players to gain an advantage by employing advanced tactics. A linear dungeon just doesn’t allow that. So let’s hear your ideas. What do you think of developers adding non-linear dungeons to GW2? What’re the pros/cons? What’re your ideas for bosses/mechanics/trash groups that would be interesting for non-linear dungeons and would prompt players to employ advanced tactics?

This is not true, you can go under the map, over the map and through the map!

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

This is not true, you can go under the map, over the map and through the map!

I get that this is tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, but even those techniques are just efforts to break out of the imposed linearity. What I think we should be looking for is a dungeon in which linearity is removed: none or very few of the objectives require any other objective to be completed before they can be started and the failure of any objective results in the failure of the run.

Errant Venture.9371:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

This is not true, you can go under the map, over the map and through the map!

I get that this is tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, but even those techniques are just efforts to break out of the imposed linearity. What I think we should be looking for is a dungeon in which linearity is removed: none or very few of the objectives require any other objective to be completed before they can be started and the failure of any objective results in the failure of the run.

Yeah, right now dungeons are similiar to a Dora the Explorer episode :<

Ja, I loved DoA, I loved UW, I loved FoW and I loved Urgoz and Deep even more. No cons, it would be simply a delight and I’d probably cry of joy for a good week. Huzzah, freedom. I’m sure everyone would find it, at worst, refreshing…
/cough to then complain it’s too hard. But still.
I’d like to see the wipe=restart mechanic make a glorious comeback, because it’s about time playhowiwants learn to stop to graverush zerg and it adds that nice feel of taking a big risk, of danger.
To theorycraft such a large zone and project would take a lot of time and thinking… Might be an activity one could do to enjoy himself, why not, but we all know they’re never going to even take the mere suggestion into consideration.
Now if you could convince a tiny little dev, any dev, to bother reading this thread, it would be awesome.
Go for eet, you’re only the.. 1% of the GW2 playerbase. Ergh.
I already had an idea for a dungeon, I could keep the final fight as one of the bosses in that big open instance. Could be fun.

The question of loot was brought up on reddit:

EmporerPenguin

They could try to fix this by working on the loot tables and removing “lootless” mobs… I was in Arah the other day with an awesome group with some ridiculous DPS, so I decided to just kill everything. (This was path 3 from the first boss to the second) the mobs didn’t drop anything…
In GW1 you would farm the dungeons. Here? Forget farming, it could be exploiting if the mobs decided to drop some good loot.

Here’s my response:

I don’t think loot is the issue…it’s the challenge of the dungeon. Linear sequencing in dungeons necessitates that the group always stay together, and that tends to develop a single tactical doctrine which you just run over and over each time you do the dungeon. By having simultaneous objectives that were handled by splits in GW1, individual bars had to be flexible enough to take care of completing an area outside your pre-run area of responsibility in case someone failed. No one run was ever exactly the same and there was always room to do some other area if you got bored of one. Been doing T3 too much in UW? No worries, go play T2 or T4 for a while and see an entirely different set of content. It kept things from getting stale.

Just giving more loot to trash mobs in existing dungeons doesn’t really change the problem of dungeons getting stale because each path follows the same routine every time through due to sequential gating.