Do NOT nerf please.
While I agree that explorable dungeons should be a challenge and should cater to more coordinated style of play and certain setups I hope there will be something similar to dungeons that would be more “forgiving” in terms of teamplay.
As it stands now the story modes are just as much headache inducing as the explorables and apart from the experience of playing the dungeon as well as the story there isn’t much incentive to do it more than once, especially after the frequent changes. So those who cannot handle it for explorable mode (to get the perfect setup, coordinate using ventrilo/teamspeak, min/max traits, food and potions etc) you’re pretty much not given much of an alternative to something similar.
I hope the open world content will keep people busy for a while and it updates often, but I don’t think it would particularly hurt to give those who aren’t as up to the difficulty challenge a more friendly alternative way to do dungeons.
“What I would call ‘hard’ was trying to run Domain of Anguish and Mallyx with a balanced setup in the first weeks it was released. Many people called it impossible, but it was a heck lot of fun to do! Why? Because it offered veriety and fluid gameplay, quick and deadly like it should be. Not kiting a mob for 2 minutes and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat.”
Wait what? I could swear kiting a mob for 2+min and then walking into the next mob rinse and repeat is exactly what I’m doing here for pretty much every dungeon…
On a more serious note. I play with friends, I’m in a guild with them, we play together and as I have more time to play I try to learn about the various parts of the game so I can teach and lead them through. We did the same thing in guildwars 1, and they had some fun even though they were unable to get through DoA. However, in guildwars 2, I don’t think I will ever lead them through dungeons. Why? Because guildwars 1 did not punish people for wanting to try different builds, people who want to learn, or people who want to spend some time playing together just for fun. My friends don’t mind learning the mechanics of a place, or changing builds to suit a dungeon. But the current setup of the dungeons requires such a different setup versus the rest of the world that you’ll be spending money out the wazoo just testing different setups and
dying over and over again. Those repair bills add up, and its not fun to most people to not only waste hours of their time to failures, but to also have to FARM LOTS to make up for the bills they end up with due to the rewards being totally crappy for a risk-to-reward ratio.
Sure, the areas are for “elite” people who can afford to roll yet another alt to suit whatever the optimal setup for the particular dungeons are (good luck to that if you’re in a group of friends, however skilled, but mostly rolled the same class)… but look to GW1… the Elite areas were deader than dead before it was made easy enough for more people to do (and it still wasn’t really that easy with average players, even with the over-kill EoTN consumables which I don’t think should’ve existed, but that’s a different issue all together). The elite finished the runs, and due to the effort-reward unbalance stopped going there. There weren’t many people left doing the areas until the effort-reward ratio went back up (ie it was “dumbed down”. The so called “elites” happily grinded away when this happened while complaining at the same time how these areas were “dumbed down” for the general public, but at least this made the areas lively. In Guildwars 2, this won’t even happen. Why? because frankly the dungeon rewards are horrible, the token rewards are soulbound (they should at least be account bound in my opinion) and you’re going to end up with dungeons that no one are doing once the “elites” are done getting their gear. I don’t know about you, but a design philosophy that has a whole area designed for the 1% (or 5%? 10%?) that’ll be finished with them in a day~two of grinding (since its sooooo easy for them) and then never look back, while the rest of the populace is fed up with it seems very….. odd… to me.
But I’m getting off track. If you want to make the dungeons hard, fine, I’m all for it. BUT PLEASE DO IT IN A WAY OTHER THAN MAKING THEM HAVE RIDICULOUSLY HIGH HP AND ATTACK. Its just annoying, not “hard” or “challenging” this way. And please allow for trait respecing or cheaper repairs (or just make it a la PVP style and not break) for the dungeons so at least people can TRY thekittenplaces without feeling like they have to farm a few hours just to pay for the attempts. Hard is fine, but right now its more along the lines of “frustrating” in a boring way, than “challenging” but want to figure out.
And for the sake of god at least make the storyline parts easier so causal people can see the stories.
Edit: Oh, and if the repairs are staying the way they area, could you PLEASE at least cap the repair costs at the respective levels of the dungeon so high level players aren’t penalized heavily for trying to teach/help out with lower levelled people? Sure the drops scale.. but horrible loot is still horrible loot, and you KNOW you’ll end up dying when you’re teaching newbies….
(edited by Tora.8610)
Dungeons are awesome as is. But, while playing a thief my main strategy is to never get hit. Valid strategy, given it normally works. I put up projectile shields, go invisible, immobilize my enemy, blind to heck, and make use of vigor and caltrops on dodge. Long story short, I can outrun most enemies. The ones I can’t, i can dodge a large amount of their attacks, blind them, or go invisible.
Here’s my problem with the dungeons though:
I’m playing arah explorable, seer path. There is an absolutely HUGE boss – who looks really fun. And he is. Except whenever he hits 2/3 hp, he gains a new skillset. The second he hits that, he tosses an AOE attack that drops down about 20-40 (very hard to tell when you’re dead) red circles, the size of a guardian symbol, that ALL 1 hit kill you. Now, I was lucky enough to live past one of those… once… and he turned and did some other move (that I couldn’t even see coming) and 1hit killed me with that as well. Mind you I’m not in level 80 exotic gear.. but I am in level 80 rare gear. And I know a warrior in my group was in level 80 exotic. every single person in my group got 1 hit killed. Now perhaps there is something I am missing, but I don’t expect to ever beat that boss. Because IF there is something I was missing, I die too quickly to find it anyways. You can’t blind his attacks (since he’s a boss, only 1 in 10 hits will actually blind him), you can’t go invisible since he tosses all the AOE circles around randomly, and i can only dodge twice in quick succession. Sure with vigor my endurance comes back fast, but fact is I can only dodge twice.
Basically, I’m not asking for a nerf of dungeons. They’re awesome as is. (though it would be nice to ask a little less team effort in story mode. some of those things my entire team had to work together, and we’d of been screwed if it wasn’t people i knew.) What I am really asking is that re-evaluate bosses that 1hit ko you. I don’t think it’s nice to demand perfection of anyone. At the very least, you can make them drop half your health and put on a super strong poison. At that rate, you can atleast survive if you can cleanse the poison. Or giving them a tell before they do their 1hitko… Like, ONE or TWO rare 1hitko moves.. that’s understandable. But every move a boss does shouldn’t be insta killing me. I’ve lost any motivation I had to run that again. Especially after one of the guys in my group said he’d ran that 21 times just to die on that boss each time.
Anyways that’s my (obviously more than 2)10cents. ~~Juicy
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