Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to list all the dungeons and see what can be improved NPC-wise:

NPCs in general

• We should be able to command to NPCs like “stay here”, “follow us close” or “skip” (as in “don’t speak your 100-times heard monologue”.
• NPCs all can run at light speed, so it shouldn’t be a problem for them to catch up with us much easier.

Ascalonian Catacombs

General

• Hodgins, Detha & Tzark at start really take their time to come to Priory Camp before we finally can make a path choice.

Hodgins

• Hodgins dies too often on the stairs towards the Archive of the Resting. Workarounds are easy, but if we all make it down, we shouldn’t have to use trick to get Hodgins do what he has to do.
• On the way to “help Hodgins loacte the second scepter”, he can skip the trigger by teleporting in the room where the WP appears if too many mobs aggro him. Doing this forces us to go back to the previous hall and run with him again.
• When the 5 scepter pieces are quickly recovered, Hodgins takes his time to allow the activation of the waypoint. This should go much quicker.
• If a guy comes out from the 5 scepter-pieces room before Hodgins was “activated” using the stairs, Hodgins is unmanageable and requires us to kill the mobs that follow the player. Hodgins is a scholar and should leave the fight to us.
• When going to the safe spot, hodgins again aggroes all the mobs and has a hard time staying with us.

Detha

• At the trap room, Detha should activate when we’re all there, we shouldn’t have to speak with her to “make her follow us”.
• At the trap room, Detha can bug out and not activate the trigger at all.
• On the way to the ghost eater room, Detha often aggroes all the mobs and she loses her aggro way too slow, making some parties bug out. She then has to die to properly reset and having her killed is a pain.
• Detha always tries to solo the Ghost Eater. This again is a loss of time. It’s good for us as she’s then dead and we can proceed as it pleases us. It still need to be improved.

Tzark / Grast

• Tzark has a hard time losing aggro in the first burrows room if we skip.
• Tzark sometimes bug after the 2nd burrows room if all party members port very quickly to the newly-appeared WP. This issue is not recoverable and should be fixed.
• As Hodgins in path 1, Tzark and Grast should stick with us and not aggro the various mobs on the way to the boss.
• On the boss, Tzark and Grast shouldn’t aggro the boss. They barely deal any damage, and we can get a hard time aggroing the boss as we intend.
• Half of the time when near a wall, Grast misses his shield while being with us, and not dead.

Caudecus Manor

Strangely, I have nothing to say against any of the NPC there.

Twilight Arbor

Nothing to say.

Sorrow’s Embrace

Fergg

Nothing to say

Rasolov

• The NPC is way too slow to retrieve his ore. Getting past this in a pug is hell.

I too rarely play this path to have anything else to add.

Koptev

• “No, no, no! We should go to the armory!” This is why I disable audio in SE.

Citadel of Flame

Ferrah

• Really takes her time to open the gate in P1.

Magg

• Magg can bug before defusing the bombs. Then he does nothing and force us to end the dungeon at that point.
• When retrieving the magmacyte, Magg dies easily and we often have to use a workaround to get him to his next point. The workaround is now the usual way to run it, so new players don’t even know why this is done: they just teleport to the entrance by habit.

Rhiannon

Nothing to say, this path is quite reliable NPC-wise from my own experience.

Honor of the Waves

Nothing to say NPC-wise for p1.

I too rarely play P2+P3 to notice anything wrong.

Crucible of Eternity

General

• Spire is way too slow to come to the control room, even if we clean the way. Time-wise, this is the most frustrating NPC from a mile.
• Her cynical monologues are becoming more and more boring the more you hear them. Please add some variety.

Submarine path

• Once the golem room is over she again takes her time to come to the second alpha room and show the option to help or kill the Inquest.
• She often dies as well. Making her revive automatically by going in the corner sometimes work but when it does, it bugs the instance.
• Spire aggroes Bjarn way too much.
• Spire aggroes Alpha (3rd encounter) way too much.

Teleporter path

• Spire aggroes Alpha (2nd encounter) way too much.
• Spire sometimes aggroes golem in the husk room.
• Spire aggroes Alpha (3rd encounter) way too much.

Front door path

• Spire aggroes Alpha (2nd encounter) way too much.
• Spire aggroes Alpha (3rd encounter) way too much.

The Ruined City of Arah

I play those nearly entirely in the way they are intended to notice anything wrong (I even never play Seer path at all).

Fractals of the Mist

• Urban battlegrounds
  • The NPCs horde often dies without reason. We used to have them helping us, then they were carrying us, now they are mostly invisible. ArenaNet better find a middle ground where it’s both playable and enoyable.
• Molten Furnace Fractal
  • Bram uses his shield anytime for nothing. Just remove him that shield.
• Aetherblade Fractal
  • Kiel can die way too easily and we can progress up to the final part with her dead. When we notice she’s dead, we have to go back to the start of the fractal to revive her.
• Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal
  • Nothing to say, Kiel acts ok.
• Molten Boss Fractal
  • Again, Bram uses his shield for no reason, pushing the bosses to unintended places, possibly bugging the fractal if he pushes the Molten Firestorm too far in the “whirlpool” and we’re all using melee weapons. Going out of combat is then nearly impossible and requires great luck.

Conclusion

All this to show that the NPCs have some serious bugs and often are the main cause why we need to restart an instance.

If you have any other bug/annoyance to report especially for the paths I haven’t covered, write them below I’ll add them here.

This post is reserved for future use.

Step 1: Remove any NPC dependency in dungeons/fractals and make stuff player activated.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Happier dungeon runners.

In an ideal world, we’d have that. But we are not in such an ideal world

I play those nearly entirely in the way they are intended to notice anything wrong (I even never play Seer path at all).

What does this even mean?

maha.7902:

I play those nearly entirely in the way they are intended to notice anything wrong (I even never play Seer path at all).

What does this even mean?

Pugging, no skip except for trash mob, no exploit.

But your experience would maybe be valuable for this topic, especially in Arah. You’re welcome to contribute!

so not only were you somehow bestowed with the knowledge of how paths were intended to be played, but this knowledge also revealed to you that playing with friends was unintended

seems legit

Fror.2163:

maha.7902:

I play those nearly entirely in the way they are intended to notice anything wrong (I even never play Seer path at all).

What does this even mean?

Pugging, no skip except for trash mob, no exploit.

But your experience would maybe be valuable for this topic, especially in Arah. You’re welcome to contribute!

Randall himself is a bug. He constantly gets and breaks aggro, running at enemies, then going back, while doing so running at them again etc.

Also, Arah NPCs only exist to make your day worse imo.

Correct me if im wrong. But hes just saying he hasnt seen any issues with npc’s on those paths. However thats very lucky to be in that position as we all know that the arah npcs are the biggest trolls in the game. :P

spoj.9672:

Correct me if im wrong. But hes just saying he hasnt seen any issues with npc’s on those paths. However thats very lucky to be in that position as we all know that the arah npcs are the biggest trolls in the game. :P

But Varra Skylark is the best NPC in the game. Especially when she reveals herself while in stealth. She is probably only rivaled by Sam.

Yeah i know all too well how awesome she is. Varra op!

http://i.imgur.com/Msn9BYz.jpg

Inb4 someone discovers that I’m AI-controlled :/

Enaretos.8079:

Inb4 someone discovers that I’m AI-controlled :/

Reported for botting.

Thanks, as if I didn’t get reported enough today :/

That dungeons reward thread just doesn’t belong here.

Edit: Aw, kitten, wanted to post this on the general dungeons thread, sorry.

maha.7902:

so not only were you somehow bestowed with the knowledge of how paths were intended to be played, but this knowledge also revealed to you that playing with friends was unintended

seems legit

If you want to troll, please go somewhere else. You know what I meant. If you want to actually contribute on topic though, you’re welcome to do so, even more as your experience makes your advice more valuable!

The NPCs lack consistency. There is no 100% rule to their actions and it causes frustration.

NPCs can either melt instantly from damage….or they can agro a boss and tank it for 250 years.

NPCs can die and rez on the team as they go….or they can stay dead at a critical gated portion and require re-running or a buggy rez.

NPCs are 100% useless in any combat situation….yet somehow feel the need to attack and aggro enemies for no reason (looking at you Varra -__-)

Making them behave a certain way everytime would be a start to fixing the NPC frustration. Otherwise we are always left guessing.