Guild Wars 2

Sebber.4952:

So people who are highly skilled and want a challenge in PvE should just have no content to do?

I am not saying that dungeons shouldn’t be challenging.

But they should be more then just enemies with 10X hp and do 10X damage, and bosses that spam attacks that do 13K+ damage attacks faster then even the shortest cooldown heal can recharge, and faster then your stamina can recharge.

I really it hate it when people try to use the “you want it less hard so you MUST mean you want it incredibly easy” argument.

Most bosses in this game are either too easy, too hard, or just plain exploitable.

Easy is tank and spank the entire fight, set autoattack and wail away for 5 minutes until the boss dies.

e.g. Fyonna in TA second path

Hard is a boss that does 2k ranged autoattacks on guardians that have an attack speed rivalling that of a ranger’s shortbow on quickness buff. God forbid you are a squishy profession, you get to take 3-4k damage instead.

e.g. Caster boss in HotW first path with unlimited adds, Greater Nightmare Vine in TA with 15-30 second respawn timer blossoms.

Exploitable is….well, pretty much all the dungeon paths being farmed at the moment. Most bosses there are downright bugged and not working the way they should, or just too faceroll.

All of these hard bosses are more than doable, I must say this, but they are obviously flawed and frustrating to deal with. For that caster boss in the first path of HotW, you must have projectile reflection, or you exploit it by a method I will not elaborate here.

I like difficulty by means of combat mechanics. Not by artificially inflating damage of a boss then trying to pass it off as something intellectually and emotionally engaging.

I remember the early days of DoA where you needed a tank of some sorts, three Elementalists, two Monks, and two Necros … or something like that. Everyone else were shelved for that oddball group. That sort of ticked me off at the time because my main was a Ritualist.

Eventually, I devised a build that would replace one of those Elementalists in the group— an AoE Channeling build of some sorts. It worked for the most part but I only finished City of Torc’qua and Foundry of Failed Creations … my guild disbanded soon after and I haven’t actively played GW1 until two months before GW2 came out.

Returning back to DoA, I noticed that the zone-wide debuffs were gone (at least they were in Normal mode. Hard mode felt like pre-nerf DoA with the debuffs back up). I eventually finished the last two zones I needed with just 7 Heroes; and went on to kill Mallyx two hours before GW2 pre-launch servers went live.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=91600748

It felt good at the time, but I kind of wished I did it with 7 other human players during DoA’s primetime to show that breaking the meta-game is possible. On the other hand, I’ve always been under the impression that some people out there are just plain stubborn and aren’t willing to innovate past the “go with what works” stage.

Anyway, I do appreciate that group composition is a bit more lenient in GW2 and allows for greater variation. Personally, I don’t find it too hard. There’s some iffy parts where we resorted to waypoint-zerging to accomplishing it, but after learning the pulls, we relied on that method less, and became better players. I think it’s just about learning the encounters, pulling trash responsibly, and watching out for your surroundings. It’s moderately challenging. Funny that I say that and I’m currently wearing Berserker’s gear with a glass cannon-like build— truth of the matter is that once you learn the dungeons and know your abilities can synergize with your teammates through combo fields and finishers, the encounters will eventually be cakewalk, and you can afford to swap out some of that Toughness gear with a little bit more damage.

Pikafan.3792:

For that caster boss in the first path of HotW, you must have projectile reflection, or you exploit it by a method I will not elaborate here.

Using dodge and LoS-breaking aren’t exploits.

Morelia.6835:

Pikafan.3792:

For that caster boss in the first path of HotW, you must have projectile reflection, or you exploit it by a method I will not elaborate here.

Using dodge and LoS-breaking aren’t exploits.

Artificially deaggroing resummoned boss adds, are, which happens to be the side effect of doing the LoS-breaking. Sorry to break your bubble, though.

I hope you don’t nerf zerging completely to hell right away before I get to figure out the mechanics hehe. Maybe a cool down on waypoints would be a happy medium, so you cannot keep using the closest one and the more times you die you have to start further back if you release to run back?

I’m super stoked to see some dev responses in this thread, and I’m glad to know that you are looking at the dungeons! Coming from a long time raiding background I’m really enjoying the challenges and I do hope that you take a look at the rewards. I ran CM story this morning twice in a 25 minute period and the reward is the same as Arah which took my group over 2 hours last night. I’m not advocating exotic drops etc, but the cash reward at the end needs to be at least the same as 2 hours spent grind farming overworld zones.

Loviatrix.1589:

I hope you don’t nerf zerging completely to hell right away before I get to figure out the mechanics hehe. Maybe a cool down on waypoints would be a happy medium, so you cannot keep using the closest one and the more times you die you have to start further back if you release to run back?

I’m super stoked to see some dev responses in this thread, and I’m glad to know that you are looking at the dungeons! Coming from a long time raiding background I’m really enjoying the challenges and I do hope that you take a look at the rewards. I ran CM story this morning twice in a 25 minute period and the reward is the same as Arah which took my group over 2 hours last night. I’m not advocating exotic drops etc, but the cash reward at the end needs to be at least the same as 2 hours spent grind farming overworld zones.

Story mode should be something you do once and never return unless you want to help others to begin with.

Yeah I had 30 mins to kill this morning and a couple people who wanted to do a quick run. SM is fast, easy, and the reward is worth it. I save the explorables etc for evening when my kids are in bed. Darned kids and always wanting attention and stuff!

1 easy path and 2 hard with different reward quantities. Casuals and pugs get to spend a bit more time but STILL get the armor they want while the wannabe “pros” can still bash their head against the wall for double the reward and twice the effort. It’s kinda pathetic to deny people content just because you have those extra 5-6 hours per day and sat for 2 months infront of database before release untill you know everything possible in the game.If people want a challange they can have it, but give the rest a chance too.

Loviatrix.1589:

Yeah I had 30 mins to kill this morning and a couple people who wanted to do a quick run. SM is fast, easy, and the reward is worth it. I save the explorables etc for evening when my kids are in bed. Darned kids and always wanting attention and stuff!

CoF, TA, HotW, CM and AC all have at least one completable-under-30-minutes explorable path.

CoF, for one, is generally done 20 minutes and below with an experienced team.

There should not be any need to be “blackmailed” into doing storyline dungeons.

I don’t need the dungeons to be easier, but what I would wish for would be more feedback from the game about what’s going on, for example could bosses yell something or the lights could begin to flicker. Theres also the problem of ranged attacks with traveltime – which they don’t have if they hit a melee.
Also: the combatlog should show me what hit me, not just what damage I was doing, I know that myself.

As it is with certain classes/weaponcombos in my group, there are so much spell effects on the mobs I can’t distinguish certain Animations. Other ways of feedback would alleviate this.

Thank you Anet. You basically told us to L2P in a nice way

It’s nice not facerolling content. Unlike some other MMOs that shall not be named.

Xista.7391:

Thank you Anet. You basically told us to L2P in a nice way

It’s nice not facerolling content. Unlike some other MMOs that shall not be named.

see

Sajuuk Khar.1509:

I really it hate it when people try to use the “you want it less hard so you MUST mean you want it incredibly easy” argument.

as for “, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics.”:

pics or it didn’t happen. I would especially like to see which melee builds they were running to find it “too easy”.

yep basicly told us sorry your not skilled enough to even see endgame content…. thanks for your money though. but did it politely.

The Second Golem in SE is a a huge troll. ; ~;

But I agree with the OP. The level of difficulty is great. It’s really challenging but it is very rewarding once you actually know what to do.

Very very awesome to hear that boss mechanics will be looked at, I am so happy to hear that. But colin, I have a question for you. What about the incentive to do these dungeons? Doing them 60+ times for the tokens for dungeon gear is extremely grindy. The drops in the dungeon just…suck. They’re only good for vendoring for a few silver. I was very disappointed when I saw they didn’t drop any of the dungeon gear or rarely drop any exotic/rare gear. It makes getting the tokens feel like such a big grind.

As others have mentioned, some explorable modes are much longer than others…and you still only get 20-30 tokens per run as well as the repair prices/money gained throughout the runs. Will any of these be addressed? Is this the way it was intended? If you can reply to this so I can gain a better understanding, it would be wonderful.

I’d rather like some dungeons buffed…

CoF for example is too easy – 15 minutes per run. Compared to that the easiest CoE still takes about 40 minutes. And the reward is exactly the same.

If not tuning the difficulty – i’d like at least see the reward adjusted to the average time requirement for each path.

17 minute on average CoF Magg runs.

Good farm, 1 gold a little over half an hour.

I have no complaints

Those are good news.Explorable dungeons won’t be nurfed.I find them to be like WoW hc raids.They are not for everyone.

I don’t mind difficulty, i just hate how much armor costs to repair because they implode all the time from dungeons.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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We’ll be doing the same with the Gw2 explorable dungeons, our own internal testing teams and alpha test groups learned to beat them using a combination of player skill, synchronous builds, strong use of cross-profession combos, use of cooking/consumable buffs (these make a huge difference!) and well formed player tactics. By comparison, after having months to play the game and the time our alpha was complete, some of our better dungeon groups felt the explorable dungeons were too easy for launch, we decided not to make them any harder given the expected player skill on launch.

We’re actively monitoring every dungeon and working on balancing issues we encounter appropriately. We’ll be keeping an eye on bosses we think don’t have enough varied mechanics to warrant their large health pools and updating them over time to make them more varied/interesting fights. We’ll be monitoring, and continually tweaking/adding to dungeon rewards over time and of course balancing where we see the need. And of course, we’ll be looking at adding more dungeons as well!

All of that being said, the game is VERY new for most of our players, and I can absolutely promise with more knowledge of the game and advanced player skill, the explorable dungeons can all be overcome by being skilled groups. We’ve seen many groups do it just fine in our internal alpha test once they had time to learn how to play the game well. Just like Domain of Anguish in Gw1, it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.

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Does that mean story mode is getting looked at? Because at the moment while I can and have have finished them all, I only enjoyed the last one, except for the ending. While I want to go back to them, I’m not doing something where I’m not having fun and that’s where they are now. I’m glad exploration is kept as it is, make even harder ones for those who want them. Personally I have no interest with them, but I would still like to be able to do dungeons and have fun in them too. I endured trough them only because I wanted to see the story line trough, and enduring doesn’t sound and shouldn’t be something for a.. well you know.. story dungeon.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Yeah graveyard zerg and some bosses having a few balance issues (or needing more varied skills at various health percentages so they are fun to fight for their large health pools) are absolutely things on our radar. Make sure to note specific locations/bosses when leaving feedback on the forums!

As for the question about PuG’s for explorable dungeons, we’ve said all along that explorable dungeons are intended for highly organized/skilled groups of players. That is absolutely the case

Graveyard zerging is definitely a problem. It encourages the group to keep fighting, instead of waiting for all members to participate and retry again. What ends up happening, is that players just run in, one by one instead of fighting as a group.

Agent Noun.7350:

They didn’t in Guild Wars 1. Why would they now?

because gw2 is not gw1. as easy as that. and gw2 wasn’t a mmo.

as mentioned above, DOA had a more or less rigid setup, which excluded some professions/build outright. but it was only a miner problem because you could easily roll another char and do with that one. if you want to compare the “endgame” here and there you also have to compare the systems around it. pretty much everything in gw1 was unbound, you could use it on another char or even sell it. if you wanted you could get a tormentor weapon without ever setting foot in DOA – instead you could get the money through activities that were more suited to your playstyle and skillset.

now show me how I could do that in gw2? heck, I can’t even bring another char to the instance because the tokens are soulbound. this means I have to do it with exactly THIS char in THIS instance for THIS loot. that’s hardly revolutionary, that’s a step back compared to gw1
but hey, it’s an mmo, right? then it’s ok because instance grind is the status quo in mmos – funny tho that other mmo’s nailed the whole “grind stuff in instances for a reward” way better and more entertaining.

another thing that bothers me: with all the bugged stuff left and right, people really expect that suddenly dungeons are bug free and tuned to absolute perfection?
god beware a fix makes it easier, then it’s allegedly nerfed into oblivion because the casuals can’t handle it (I wonder how many vanquished minister cho’s estate HM pre-nerf and actually enjoyed it).

what matters in the end: is it fun? and it the current form it isn’t. the pacing is off, grinding down trash was already annoying 2005, even if you nail a mechanic the next 5 minutes you spend tediously whacking on a boss which becomes dull fast, and let’s not talk about story mode which is the same only with crap rewards (good luck finding someone to do the story mode after the initial rush).
why not use story mode to easy players into the mechanics (plenty of npcs around that can explain stuff)? why not award tokens for repeated runs (so players have an incentive to drag other through it)?
EDIT: crap reward in terms it offers no incentive to do it again. the helm is hit or miss depending with which level you do the instance or which build you have.

Been repeating this for a long time..

Nerf story modes so casuals can clear it.

Buff explo as they are way, way, waaaaay too easy. There is just not enough interesting mechanics. Fights are not deep enough. Exploration modes need to be harder, more engaging, challenging and.. interesting.

Some things I would possibly suggest:

If you’re gonna introduce newer players to dungeons, you should switch around Cadecus’s Manor and Ascalonian Catacombs. Because as it stands, AC is among the most brutal of the instances, and it’s the first one they get prompted to.

The other problem is that there is nothing in the game that gives any indication (other than learning the hard and very NOT FUN way) that Dungeons are serious busnies even on Story mode. This game has all manner of tutorial and help and guidance installed for the PvP experience- but in Dungeoneering you are thrown to the lions-given no guidance, not even prepared for the imminent destruction that awaits the new-bloods.

First Impressions are very important-and when people’s first impression is AC, it’s the feeling after you suddenly stick your face in a blender. The second most brutal dungeon should not be the welcoming mat to your experience, given all other factors at play.

And if we’re going to be expected to be dressed to the nines in Exploration mode-wether it be traits and the like, having a separate template (that again, you extend to Competitive PvP, but not the other way around) to have a dungeoneering panel with to make the whole “Be whoever you want to be” mantra more realistic, because not everyone wants to walk around in a dungeonieering spec for the off chance they want to go dungeoneering out of their soloing and adventuring if the two don’t coincide.

Colin, what about boss HP? Do you feel giving bosses 10 million HP makes the fight better/fun?

I’m really fed up with the HP on some of the mobs. It just takes ages to kill them and it doesn’t really make the fight harder either. If I can avoid AoE for 5 minutes, I can probably do it 10 minutes, too. I have yet to meet people in-game that actually like these 10-15 minutes boss fights that feel like they will never end. Maybe I’m exaggerating with the numbers a bit, but you know what I mean..

Boss HP and the fact that I need to do 50+ runs for a set (who don’t even look good compared to some of the crafted/classic armor skins) really don’t make me feel like going back to dungeons very often. I just finished my Gift of Ascalon, and I don’t think I’ll be going back there any time soon. The fact that most dungeon sets don’t even come with the stats I’d want as a guardian (power, toughness + vitality/precision) doesn’t help either.

Also, bonus events need to do something. Whenever the troll spawns in AC I just feel like bashing my head against a wall. Oh joy, another boss with 10 million HP to kill! And guess what, he doesn’t drop anything! Shouldn’t people actually be happy to see a bonus event?

If you’re gonna introduce newer players to dungeons, you should switch around Cadecus’s Manor and Ascalonian Catacombs. Because as it stands, AC is among the most brutal of the instances, and it’s the first one they get prompted to.

I do not agree. The only hard thing in AC right now is the last part of the second path, where you defend the NPC while she repairs the cannons. The other fights are all really easy. People may be having problems with Kohler, but that’s their own fault. His animation is really obvious. The burrow fights are fine too, but obviously their hit box needs to be fixed (this is mainly what’s making it hard; melee being unable to hit the burrows at ~50% hp and less)

Caudecus on the other hand is pretty hard. It all takes place in very small rooms (which can cause some very annoying camera issues btw). Wall of reflection makes this dungeon a whole lot better, but it’s definitely harder than AC.

I’d rather like some dungeons buffed…

CoF for example is too easy – 15 minutes per run. Compared to that the easiest CoE still takes about 40 minutes. And the reward is exactly the same.

If not tuning the difficulty – i’d like at least see the reward adjusted to the average time requirement for each path.

Because one dungeon takes 15 minutes, they should all be buffed? Makes no sense.

Creepjack.2851:

Been repeating this for a long time..

Nerf story modes so casuals can clear it.

Buff explo as they are way, way, waaaaay too easy. There is just not enough interesting mechanics. Fights are not deep enough. Exploration modes need to be harder, more engaging, challenging and.. interesting.

I’m curious as to what you find hard, challenging, engaging, and interesting and…Deep? iF Exploration is just too much of a stroll for you,

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the question about PuG’s for explorable dungeons, we’ve said all along that explorable dungeons are intended for highly organized/skilled groups of players. That is absolutely the case

Forcing the overwhelming majority of dungeon content to require this level of competency and cooperation will hurt the longevity of this game. There are only 8 dungeons, 3 max level and the scaled down versions don’t give proper rewards. Dungeons are the only thing that you can do as an organized group outside of PvP. Having 3/4 of the dungeon content unpuggable severely limits peoples options to just pick up the game and play. If all explorable modes are this difficult and require this much synergy to complete the overwhelming majority of the community won’t do them. There isn’t much else to do. Arena Net should take a serious look at their design philosophy and ask themselves if they really want to be the “best MMO ever” because a game that nobody plays due to of lack of accessible content won’t be.

Well make mechanics reasonable without having to resort to cheese strategies like glitching pathing and such.

Oxe.6142:

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the question about PuG’s for explorable dungeons, we’ve said all along that explorable dungeons are intended for highly organized/skilled groups of players. That is absolutely the case

Forcing the overwhelming majority of dungeon content to require this level of competency and cooperation will hurt the longevity of this game. There are only 8 dungeons, 3 max level and the scaled down versions don’t give proper rewards. Dungeons are the only thing that you can do as an organized group outside of PvP. Having 3/4 of the dungeon content unpuggable severely limits peoples options to just pick up the game and play. If all explorable modes are this difficult and require this much synergy to complete the overwhelming majority of the community won’t do them. There isn’t much else to do. Arena Net should take a serious look at their design philosophy and ask themselves if they really want to be the “best MMO ever” because a game that nobody plays due to of lack of accessible content won’t be.

Look at what happened in Cataclysm. Blizzard bowed downed to the communities whining and nerfed the hell out of the dungeons and raids. it’s pretty much became “Show up and hope you loot drops” It’s one of the reasons I stopped playing.
There is other content you can besides dungeons and if you want an easy mode dungeon experience just join a dynamic event in the over world.

And lastly story mode is not that hard. Have a look here:
http://youtu.be/Gihg4ciH3og
That is my first dungeon run done at level 35. I did try it in BETA but it was so buggy and we were down a player so we didn’t get far.

I’m glad to hear that the dungeon team is working on making the dungeons better, and very happy to hear that dungeons are not going to be nerfed, instead just polished and made more interesting.

I also wanted to say that after reading a few of the replies on this thread, I am so glad that the players replying are not game designers.

As a quick gauging question, have the people who’ve been complaining played GW1? I saw somebody mention that you -had- to have certain builds for the GW1 elite areas, but that was in reference to PUGs (where, yeah, you better be able to sell your build and the average person only -knew- this or that common pvx build). The dungeons here? Designed to be as hard as the entirely optional elite GW1 content which means you have several choices for completing it (and the average player isn’t expected to have completed it…since there’s so much other stuff to do if it isn’t your thing):

1) use a cookie-cutter build and join a PUG, but only if your class can fit into such a build
2) join up with friends or guild mates to complete it, but since none of you really want to put in much effort, copy the cookie-cutter builds you’d use with a PUG
3) join up with friends or guild mates to complete it, failing and failing as you learn the dungeon and put together a somewhat unique party build that allows for completion
4) somehow find a PUG willing to do the same as option (3), which isn’t at all likely and probably why you have ANet saying the dungeons aren’t designed for PUG play. This was true of GW1, where PUG play meant doing option (1) most of the time.

From what I can tell, most of the ‘this is too hard’ complaints are coming from people who want the dungeon rewards without the dungeon effort. The way these things are designed, you are -supposed- to be bashing your head against the wall and feeling that everything is so cheap up until the moment your party puts together a build to tackle it. Each failure improves your party build (or should improve your party build) little by little until you finally get things right. Or you just copy/paste builds off the internet and cookie-cutter yourselves into them…but hey, you can’t really -complain- about doing something so boring/conforming when it’s your decision to do so in the first place.

As for the graveyard zerg, why not do what GW1 hardmode did and allow for a certain number of failures each? Or a collective number like monster hunter? Would mean implementing an explorable dungeon only counter to mimic the GW1 death penalty boot setup.

Hey, so. I’m fine with things being hard.

However, I do not think it is entirely fun for my personal experience to do something so back breaking on the difficultly scale that it takes a minimum amount of 5 runs for 1 single piece of armor. Right now I am looking at approximately 46 runs through what you define as an extremely hard set of dungeons just for the full set of armor it provides.

This excludes the fact that I have to deal with pugs who may not have the same skill as me, while also including that I just may not actually get ANY items worthwhile for me while on that run.

This makes the run end up in 30 tokens and a repair bill, and maybe a small chance at getting something I can use. This… This is not fun. All of this risk for no reward.

I’m not looking for a for the difficulty to be nerfed, but I am looking to be properly compensated with reward for my risk. Otherwise, this encounters a no-fun situation, and I am not keen of participating in microtransactions when PvE Dungeons only providing me with repair bills, and not reward for my time.

I’d also like to see AC\MC gear buffed to level 80 on the Exotic vendor, because you are not going be getting any items that increase your overall strength and are purely cosmetic.

This is my wishlist as a person who is wanting to enjoy PvE and feel rewarded for beating the content and spending 30minutes to 1 hour or more on a single run, and given no reward for my time other than tokens that take a minimum of 5 runs to be rewarded.

Kaaboose.3897:

And lastly story mode is not that hard. Have a look here:
http://youtu.be/Gihg4ciH3og
That is my first dungeon run done at level 35. I did try it in BETA but it was so buggy and we were down a player so we didn’t get far.

In how many topics have you used this now(3-4?) and still completely fail to understand one important thing. Not everyone is as good, or can be as good at something as someone else. Sure you can get some results by repetition, but it quickly becomes frustrating where I’m trying to enjoy the story, not learning about group mechanics, tactics or whatever, if I wanted that I would try the exploration mode. Also you did mention in of of the other topics you were there with 3 other guild members, that’s a huge difference and rare commodity for those who mainly do pugs.

Beyond drawing red circles on the ground and animations amidst effect spam, GW2 does not have good communication skills. ArenaNet is fetishist about constructive feedback, however their own game hardly ever gives the player any of it.

Take the Asaclon dungeon. There you have three different graveling challenges each trying to teach different group behaviors. One graveling attack requires the team to split. The other attack requires coordination of traps, the third requires a “freight train build” and swarm behavior. Three different skills, very interesting, very coordinated types of play. If you know that, you can grow as a player entering these dungeons.

But the game does nothing to introduce those concepts. Instead, the game just confronts the players and hopes fansites and magazines, along with Youtube take it up to themselves to instruct players and train them. That is the error of the way dungeons are made, not their initial difficulty! It is a lack of communication. For the most part, players are in happy attack spam country, a type of GW2 where anybody just does as he pleases. The dungeons are an entirely different game, have a different culture of playing. That does not depend on dropping the right cake at the right time, it means altering strategies, traits, weapons and utilities for “tough” boss encounters. Things a player never experiences in the outside world.

A game made for accessibility would take greater steps ensuring the NPCs gave feedback on what went wrong, or how the group needs to behave. Not in a click-away dialog box, but with “in your face” soundbites that tell the players what they did wrong and how they should behave. Red circles as a teaching tool only go so far.

Subject A’s red circles anyone? Did you figure them out? Or do you still run out of dodges? One line of dialog can turn this encounter from ultra-tough “I hate this game” to “hey this is fun”.

Colin is right in claiming that players will figure it out, but it is never about the players who master it, it is about the number of players who are turned off to the point of quitting GW2 over this “endgame”. Maximizing the amount of active players requires the game to start teaching its players better. Difficulty by means of obfuscation and activity never served anybody. Give me four willing pugs and teamspeak and everybody can do every dungeon. Give me four players with the wrong attitude and dungeons will never work.

Currently I’m not good enough at the game for explorable dungeons. It’s disappointing, because I’d really like to get better, but I die so quickly that I really have no idea what killed me or what I did wrong, and people really aren’t super-enthusiastic to take somebody along who just keeps dropping all the time. You need experience to get the job to get the experience, but then even if you get the job it’s really hard to translate the experience into actual learning.

Wait, hang on, just respecced from melee to ranged…

Ok. There we go. All set.

(I may be exaggerating, but I’m certainly not joking.)

poot.5487:

Currently I’m not good enough at the game for explorable dungeons. It’s disappointing, because I’d really like to get better, but I die so quickly that I really have no idea what killed me or what I did wrong, and people really aren’t super-enthusiastic to take somebody along who just keeps dropping all the time. You need experience to get the job to get the experience, but then even if you get the job it’s really hard to translate the experience into actual learning.

Wait, hang on, just respecced from melee to ranged…

Ok. There we go. All set.

(I may be exaggerating, but I’m certainly not joking.)

Apparently I also fall in this category.

@ FourthVariety

I agree with your post, but do you also think the DEVS maybe thought that players would eventually start talking to each other and discussing strategies? I believe that people CAN figure dungeons out, but it does take thought and discussion. I think ArenaNet wanted the dungeons to be this way so people would start talking to each other again.

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It really looks to me that ANet put together a team of some special classes with special abilites and then created some sort of “balance” for dungeons. Thing is – no1 knows what those classes were – what specs or weapons they were using – or even what sort of roles the players were taking.

Ive never been so dissapointed in dungeons of any MMO game ever. It has nothing to do with trinty or roles. Cause there are 100000s possible ones .. but only 10 seem to be viable. Bad design overall – Clearly balanced for PVP serg and thats the end of it for my dungeon experience in GW2.

Anon.3041:

It really looks to me that ANet put together a team of some special classes with special abilites and then created some sort of “balance” for dungeons. Thing is – no1 knows what those classes were – what specs or weapons they were using – or even what sort of roles the players were taking.

Ive never been so dissapointed in dungeons of any MMO game ever. It has nothing to do with trinty or roles. Cause there are 100000s possible ones .. but only 10 seem to be viable. Bad design overall – Clearly balanced for PVP serg and thats the end of it for my dungeon experience in GW2.

No you exaggerate. Each class can either go Support, DPS, or CC. Now whats nice is there isn’t just one style of each of those play styles for each class. If I don’t want to use the bomb kit to CC then I can use something else. Just needs coordination on who is doing what.

Also, I loved my first dungeon experience, I ran it 3 times and each time was just as fulfilling as the last, really, really fun IMO.

lysander.6154:

(and the average player isn’t expected to have completed it…since there’s so much other stuff to do if it isn’t your thing):

for example? doing 100% on another char? the same broken events in orr for karma which is pretty pointless if you got the armor and don’t want to do the legendary grind? (I exclude pvp because that option is always available)

lysander.6154:

1) use a cookie-cutter build and join a PUG, but only if your class can fit into such a build
2) join up with friends or guild mates to complete it, but since none of you really want to put in much effort, copy the cookie-cutter builds you’d use with a PUG
3) join up with friends or guild mates to complete it, failing and failing as you learn the dungeon and put together a somewhat unique party build that allows for completion
4) somehow find a PUG willing to do the same as option (3), which isn’t at all likely and probably why you have ANet saying the dungeons aren’t designed for PUG play. This was true of GW1, where PUG play meant doing option (1) most of the time.

thank for proving my point. but did you even read the rest I wrote about it?

lysander.6154:

From what I can tell, most of the ‘this is too hard’ complaints are coming from people who want the dungeon rewards without the dungeon effort.

of course, anyone who disagrees is a scrub and wants welfare legendarys. it must be nice to see the world in black and white…

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

They allow players to play the playstyle they want to play. A warrior or guardian can be good at support if they choose and able to take hits, but they can also make themselves good at DPS but they will sacrifice survivability.

ANET did an awesome job at the system, you just have to discuss with your group what style you are playing.

Also, I played AC last night 3 times in a row and yea at times we had to stop and discuss what we were doing wrong, but all in all it was a great experience and we all had a great time.

When I heard dungeons were hard and that I should expect a lot of deaths and several hour runs for a typical 30 minute length dungeon in any other game, my first thoughts was HECK YEAH!!!!!!!!

I’d never played GW1 so I have nothing to compare to but maybe WoW Vael (BWL) fight. This is the stuff I remember. This is the times when I had most fun in MMO. Granted it was painful, but there was a huge sense of accomplishment.

Now I played two dungeons so far in GW2 and even though I did die a lot, and spent around 2 hours in the first. The very 2nd run with many of the same players, we flew through it and I didn’t die but a couple times. Does that constitute as hard? No, I’m more of a fast learner. I learned when I should get close, when I should use range, when I should dodge, when I should stick and move, when I should kite, etc.

After just two runs, these dungeons went from a scary and what seemed to be a near impossible (but yet simple due to useage of waypoints over and over in a fight) to extremely controlled and easy/smooth runs.

I see no reason to nerf anything. At least for a while…

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

They allow players to play the playstyle they want to play. A warrior or guardian can be good at support if they choose and able to take hits, but they can also make themselves good at DPS but they will sacrifice survivability.

ANET did an awesome job at the system, you just have to discuss with your group what style you are playing.

Also, I played AC last night 3 times in a row and yea at times we had to stop and discuss what we were doing wrong, but all in all it was a great experience and we all had a great time.

No – the system is just bad all around. And it will be the main reason GW2 will fail as anything other than Zerg WWW. Cause the classes are designed around that and not fun and intresting Dungeon runs.

And it will get even worse when they start “balancing” stuff because of WWW.

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

They allow players to play the playstyle they want to play. A warrior or guardian can be good at support if they choose and able to take hits, but they can also make themselves good at DPS but they will sacrifice survivability.

ANET did an awesome job at the system, you just have to discuss with your group what style you are playing.

Also, I played AC last night 3 times in a row and yea at times we had to stop and discuss what we were doing wrong, but all in all it was a great experience and we all had a great time.

No – the system is just bad all around. And it will be the main reason GW2 will fail as anything other than Zerg WWW. Cause the classes are designed around that and not fun and intresting Dungeon runs.

And it will get even worse when they start “balancing” stuff because of WWW.

You have no evidence of your claim, you can’t just say “its bad”. Your argument is moot because of this and it turns into ones opinion rather then facts.

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

They allow players to play the playstyle they want to play. A warrior or guardian can be good at support if they choose and able to take hits, but they can also make themselves good at DPS but they will sacrifice survivability.

ANET did an awesome job at the system, you just have to discuss with your group what style you are playing.

Also, I played AC last night 3 times in a row and yea at times we had to stop and discuss what we were doing wrong, but all in all it was a great experience and we all had a great time.

No – the system is just bad all around. And it will be the main reason GW2 will fail as anything other than Zerg WWW. Cause the classes are designed around that and not fun and intresting Dungeon runs.

And it will get even worse when they start “balancing” stuff because of WWW.

You have no evidence of your claim, you can’t just say “its bad”. Your argument is moot because of this and it turns into ones opinion rather then facts.

Well – the evidence is that I am litterally forced to pay 15$ a month to play enjoyable dungeons.

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

Anon.3041:

Tharjax.9068:

@ FourthVariety

But maybe you are right, maybe we need to have more of a gradual tutorial to see how the GW 2 Dungeon system works with CC, Support and DPS.

It would be nice then IF the cc abilites of weapons were actually working in there for melee classes.

The issue with the game atm is that game is still built around the same 3 trinity elements without giving ANYONE a role of any of them – And since there are 100000 possible setups – ppl will more than not fail to get a group that works.

Its such a let down to see how badly Anet has designed this. I get the same feeling I got from games like WAR. But at least they were intresting in WAR. And many different mecanics. There are none with these dungeons.

And why on earth did they design melee classes in this game ?

They allow players to play the playstyle they want to play. A warrior or guardian can be good at support if they choose and able to take hits, but they can also make themselves good at DPS but they will sacrifice survivability.

ANET did an awesome job at the system, you just have to discuss with your group what style you are playing.

Also, I played AC last night 3 times in a row and yea at times we had to stop and discuss what we were doing wrong, but all in all it was a great experience and we all had a great time.

No – the system is just bad all around. And it will be the main reason GW2 will fail as anything other than Zerg WWW. Cause the classes are designed around that and not fun and intresting Dungeon runs.

And it will get even worse when they start “balancing” stuff because of WWW.

You have no evidence of your claim, you can’t just say “its bad”. Your argument is moot because of this and it turns into ones opinion rather then facts.

Well – the evidence is that I am litterally forced to pay 15$ a month to play enjoyable dungeons.

No one if forcing you to do anything, you choose to pay $15 a month to do that. Again, I haven’t ran into game breaking issues that cause me to hate this game. I love this game and the way it is designed.

Can things be better? Sure there is always room for improvement no matter if its a game, a job, a website, that is just in life general.

Why do players who grind forever and get this gear and have enough time and high level friends not want us to have a mid difficulty mode that rewards tokens?
Yes, you have your armor and thats all great but some of us don’t like dying 100 times due to pugs and inbalanced content. We aren’t all fans of Dark Souls.

Increase rewards for the explorable mode (hard), change the current explorable modes name to explorable mode (hard), and add a new mid difficulty one that provides a challenge while also not having bosses that pull the ENTIRE group into their melee range and 1hko them all at once. Yes, this happened and I had full yellow gear at my level with very nice runes. Entire, group, whiped.. from one attack. I was using long bow and at maximum range and was still pulled into the attack. Thats an attack the boss spams as well. We were all at full health before that. Next time we tried? I fell through the floor and saw the world. This would most likely be caught if they tested it so much. They had press people test it, people who are not interested in balance but interested in covering the footage primarily.

I want a challenge, but I want the option for a mode with fewer rewards than dungeon mode (hard) called dungeon mode (regular). I’d be fine with the current grind if I didn’t always end up in situations where everyone dies at the beginning of the battle and it resets all the mobs/event.

Reward the players who want the current difficulty more, and add a mode for us who don’t have the time nor patience nor resources (friends, elite gear) to spend so long grinding the same content to get an aesthetic piece of equipment. If I recall, the objective of the devs was to eliminate grind.. oops.

Do that, and everybody wins. Anyone who complains about it would just be doing it for ulterior motives because it doesn’t effect them.

Anet chooses tto reply in this thread and it is the most disappointing thing I have heard them say so far.
But rrather than Nerof dungeons… nerf the health of the dam trash mobs.