Guild Wars 2

Based on Regina’s recent comments about summing up suggested changes for each individual dungeon or path, I wanted to throw this suggestion out into the community. I (obviously) think its a fantastic idea, but would love to get some feedback on it from the community.

Please noone comment on the difficulty of adjusting the design of dungeons to this extent. It is a major overhaul, and so I doubt it will be pursued as long as the current stance on dungeons is maintained, but one can hope.

The structure and concept of this have been applied, and explained for AC. I have some ideas for the other dungeons, and if feedback is positive I might expand on them and post those ideas. However for now I just wanted to get feedback on this ‘template’.

Currently some of the main complaints (outside of the trivial nature of boss fights) are the pointlessness of trash mobs, the annoyance of NPC’s, the stupidity of stacking, and the tediousness of rerunning the beginning portions of dungeons in order to complete all 3 ‘daily paths’ or two in the case of easier paths.

So here goes my suggestion. It begins by making dungeons legitimately “explorable”. There are no closed gates, no restricted content based on event completion. For all intents and purposes, you can run straight past every boss/event/mob in the dungeon, to the final boss and kill it if you wish. However, to do this would be INSANELY difficult, as mechanics are implemented to the boss fight that are counterable through successful discovery and completion of sections within the dungeon. Each boss, or event within the dungeon either removes abilities, or defenses or obstacles from the final boss, or provides avenues to overcome them, making it easier, reducing in difficulty from near impossible to mechanically fun, but doable.

So here is my suggestion for AC:

FINAL BOSS
There is one final boss for the dungeon in the howling king room. He has the summoned adds and scream of P1 boss. The Ghost Eaters shield from p2 boss (reduced to -50% damage), and the random kd aoe’s from path 3 boss. Double his health, and slightly increase his toughness, so he isn’t such an instant melt. No more “select path”, the purpose of the dungeon is to determine HOW you fight the boss, not WHICH boss to fight.

START & GRAVELING BURROW
The start is the same, with the breeder and escorting NPCs to priory camp. Then the changes begin. As I said, all paths are open, so you can take the ‘story’ route around the back to spider queen, or run down the stairs past the graveling burrow. However, the burrow is spawned either way (has more HP, and spawns elites similar to later burrows). These monsters run towards the spider room, and have no leash. Kill the burrow to prevent spawning of this, or skip and run around/through. Killing the burrow needs to be more than just dropping an Ice Bow 4 on it. So probably 6 or 8 times the health of a current burrow. Easy enough to kill, and only about 30 seconds with 5 people. But enough of a challenge to make it an actual choice as to whether yo kill it or not.

SPIDER QUEEN
Fight remains as is, but door after it is open, traps are gone. As long as spider queen is alive, spiders randomly spawn at parts of the dungeon. On you. Occasionally some of the stronger TA like spiders which are actually problematic.

NPC’s
After this room, you have the option of pursuing the events on hodgins, dessas, and tzarks paths, except the 4 burrows at the end of tzarks path in the ghost eaters room, and the second scepter event as that is the only room which has coinciding event and both these events are semi redundant.

HODGINS
Completing the hodgins event gives an environmental weapon which allows the summoning of the firefields that hodgins currently summons at the end of the path. You can kill the spawns through normal means, or try and ignore them. Or you can complete the event, and have them instantly die through tactical field placement.

DETHA
Completing the detha events(the trapping now provides a power source from the gravelings, not bait for the sake of lore). The traps become carry-able objects, which can be installed at the final boss room, and then become turrets similar to those at Tequatl. Each has a skill which removes the shield (and all stacks) on a 10 second CD. The shield is similar to Tequatls in that it builds up stacks to full power. He starts with the shield, and it takes 1 hit to remove it. It builds up stacks every 5 seconds until it has 5 stacks, then the shield recharges. So it only needs to be shot once every 25 seconds, with the skills on a 10 second CD to keep it off, however similar to Mai Trin, each stack reduces damage taken a little bit. 5% each stack, with 50% reduction when at full stacks.

CONTINUED:

Each of the turrets also has one of : A skill which drops 25 vulnerability on the boss, 25 might on the party, and the third has a wall of reflect skill which is ground targeted. (For the sake of this dungeon, and possibly a permanent game change reflects will work like in real life. If the boss shoots a projectile at 45 degrees into the wall of reflect, it will shoot out 45 degrees away from the wall, hitting anything in its path. So this means that a well-placed wall can massacre the boss, but if he moves he’s unlikely to hit himself. Plus if there’s an ally on that line, it hits that ally. If this is too difficult to implement, wall of absorb. We don’t want to boss trivialised by reflects)
TZARK
The Tzark path provides an item which creates an environment weapon – ghostly shield with 5 slots of the shield that warmaster grast currently uses, which allows the player to protect their team from the falling roof. The roof is more telegraphed then now, so it’s easier to move out of. But the turrets can be destroyed if not protected, and so can players stuck/immobilized by potential spider spawns/stunned by gravelling’s.

KOHLER
If Kohler is defeated, he agrees that the grave lings are a threat, and sends 1 of each elite ghost to help you. So 1 warrior, Mesmer, necro, monk, mage, and ranger. Not a huge benefit, but still a slight bonus to help you out on a random path.

FINAL BOSS FIGHT
Removed defiance from the boss. As long as the shield has any, he cannot be stunned. (I’m calling it a shield, but I believe it’s technically phase shifted). However, if it is down he can be stunlocked as long as the party is capable of doing it. (Roof falling down, and mob spawns are not boss skills so these will happen regardless of stunlock)

DUNGEON FAILURE

All NPC’s are unressable. So if any of them die before completing their task you must fight the final boss without their mechanics. They now have follow/wait/return to base commands so that you don’t have to look after them in a fight, but still need to escort them. This can be changed midfight as well, so if they are losing health you can tell them to run away by talking to them.

Waypoints are removed. Wipes are punished by the restart of the entire dungeon. Res orbs are useable only whilst someone is still alive.

OPTIONS

So now, with this dungeon, you can run straight past spider queen, through the tunnels and to the boss if you want. You will have to fight a boss that has a huge aoe scream, lots of spawns, reduced damage, and random falling roof. If you are skillfull, good, and work as a team this is intended to be balanced that it’s killable in long duration fight, with very high risk. However, 99% of parties should not be able to do this, and even full pro’s should have trouble. However, run all events and he becomes a short fight that as long as you have people thinking about the mechanics, using the tools provided successfully will succeed. A completely un-organised group will need have a struggle on the boss fight, promting good team communication. Nowhere near impossible, but the chances of succeeding a run where you drop an LFG, and run through the entire dungeon without saying a word are next to zero.

With a full party it should be relatively easy to complete if successfully clearing all events as you could essentially have 1 of each party member as a shielding ghost, scepter killer, and one on each turret, and have the help of the ghostly ‘elites’ to kill the boss, which would trivialise all his mechanics.

This introduces huge strategic elements. Most parties will not rush the boss as it is unlikely to succeed, so it comes down to which events do you do or not do? Do you run all the events as a 5 man party, or split to save time? “Speed Clears”, similar to the way they ended up in GW1 was how can you optimally split your party to complete each event simultaneously as quickly as possible. But this was obviously riskier.

Skips also become riskier, as anyone who dies needs to be ressed where they are, possibly requiring the mobs to be killed by 2 or 3 players depending on how many don’t make it.

REWARDS

Daily reward for the dungeon should be increased to 5 gold, and 200 tears of Ascalon. Each run (non daily rewards) returns one Ghostly Covenant, a new token which [insert challenging, but not ridiculous number here] of which can be traded for a coloured reskin of the Ascalonian Weapons (Think TA Aetherblade weapons). These weapons are also rare, random drops. Add an achievement for completing the dungeon without completing certain events (like Queens Gauntlet Gambits). For each event not completed when the boss is killed, the party gets 1 additional Ghostly Covenant.

I would love for feedback, suggestions, additions, changes that you guys think based on this idea. But lets keep it positive and constructive (I dont mean dont hit my idea, but if you are going to criticise it, please give reasons and be open to discussion).

Hopefully you all like my idea, or it sparks someone elses idea, and we can help anet head towards a new dungeon system that is a vast improvement to what we currently have.

EDIT: Here is a TL;DR

Remove paths. Open all avenues throughout the dungeon, with events that provide methods to remove/counter boss mechanics. All final bosses combined into one uber boss. Boss can be killed straight up from start of dungeon, but VERY DIFFICULT. Or Event can be completed to remove/counter mechanics.

Dungeons will be almost impossible to complete without chat communication. New ‘split’ strategies with risk and rewards will be implemented. New rewards combining concepts of reward tokens, rare drops, aetherblade-esqu reskins and risk/reward achievements/benefits. Plus better NPC controls.

These are some interesting ideas, but I fear that making dungeons harder would be counter-productive. Make them TOO hard and it will just turn off the casual crowd, resulting in less people doing dungeons. In time, ANet looks at the metrics, sees that only a tiny percentage of people are doing dungeons, and decides that it’s not worth it making any more new dungeon content. We’d only be hamstringing ourselves down the line.

I’ve been rolling around some ideas myself. I’ll see about making my own post when I’ve structured it better.

I agree that making them too hard is counter productive, which is why theres tiers of difficulty based on how many bits you want to complete. Each event won’t be particularly hard. They will be of the same, similar difficulty to now. Yes, completing all the events will take longer then 1 path. However, it will take less time then completing them all individually as you only have to fight kohler, queen, cutscenes once.

Then, if you have completed all the events, its no more, difficult then before. However, it will require 30 seconds of communication (Ill take care of shield, ill burn adds with scepter. Ill protect from falling objects, last 2 dps down), or run with more shield takers to buff npcs etc.

The difficulty is only increased if you choose to skip events. Which is rewarded in the end.

For instance, I would expect that most people would skip kohler for the extra rewards, and possibly the spider. But most pugs would want the fire scepter to protect from mobs, and the turrets to remove the shield, gain buffs.

Way too much work.

This is Anet here, I think they’re looking for simple stuff. Some random examples:

• add a skill fact to Spider Queen’s description.
• make Lupi’s projectiles unreflectable.
• make Lupi use all his skills independent of player position.
• make Aetherpath’s cutscenes skippable.

Lord Kuru.3685:

• make Lupi’s projectiles unreflectable.
• make Lupi use all his skills independent of player position.

I’m sorry if I sound rude I know you were talking about Anet view on things, but those 2 changes would make lupicus unbearable, annoying and boring. I’m ok with nerfing or even removing damage from reflects (some monster/bosses get 0 damage from their reflected projectiles), but removing every possible projectiles in the game won’t make it better, it will make it worst by rendering a nice mechanic useless.

Making lupicus use any skill independent of player position is also a bad change, position awareness is a nice addition to GW2, I don’t mind if boss don’t LoS, but knowing where to stand on a boss add a little dept to the combat, a good example is when you are doing a high level fractal, you are fighting mossman and someone with the aggro just circle around him, cleaving everyone in the party, instead of using active defenses to mitigate the hits.

We have two threads for AC. Can we choose one to use please?

Lord Kuru.3685:

Way too much work.

Not responding to this comment, because I started by saying please don’t comment saying its alot of work. This was a post about the concept IF it could be implemented, not CAN it be implemented. It is designed to be an entire dungeon overhaul.

sazberryftw.3809:

We have two threads for AC. Can we choose one to use please?

This isn’t really something I want to include in the changes to the current AC based on it being an overhaul of the entire dungeon system, with using AC as an example. Maybe I should rename the thread to something like Dungeon Overhaul Suggestion – AC to avoid confusion. EDIT – rename to avoid this confusion

Ah, yeah that might be a good idea.

About dungeon exploration, it may be interesting to change the overall experience breaking the present linearity in the paths. The several events and mid-bosses composing the different paths of a single dungeon, may be organized as possible contents of a unique instance. However, instead going through all of them, the events may be randomly chosen and arranged every time a new instance is opened. The map itself, may be composed like a jig-saw puzzle with rooms and corridors changing order and position every time. In this way a sense of exploration and variation may be preserved also after running the same dungeon several times. Also, the map itself (both from pressing M or in mini-map) should not show areas that has not been approached yet.

Each of the main room composing the dungeon may host a main event or a mini boss presented to the player in a small number of random variations (let’s say three like the number of paths composing each present dungeon). Upon completing a main event, doors and passages may grant access to new areas. Only one of the open paths, however, will trigger the events leading to the final boss while the other routes will access corridors and areas containing trash mobs; or hosting secondary/hidden objectives; or just void. In this way, players will have to explore most of the map in order to find the correct route. Variety may be add in time by introducing new events and rooms in the rotation (which may take less time than creating a whole new instance or a whole mini dungeon like for the Fractals).

Similar dungeons may co-exist with the present ones leaving to players the choice to follow a linear or non-linear adventure. These “new paths” may access new areas of the already existing dungeons; a new path in the Catacombs opened after an earthquake, for example; or a labyrinth in Caudecus Manor expanding the already existing Halls of Madness. It may work similarly to the Fractals but organized in a single instance.

Trice.4598:

Lord Kuru.3685:

• make Lupi’s projectiles unreflectable.
• make Lupi use all his skills independent of player position.

I’m sorry if I sound rude I know you were talking about Anet view on things, but those 2 changes would make lupicus unbearable, annoying and boring. I’m ok with nerfing or even removing damage from reflects (some monster/bosses get 0 damage from their reflected projectiles), but removing every possible projectiles in the game won’t make it better, it will make it worst by rendering a nice mechanic useless.

Making lupicus use any skill independent of player position is also a bad change, position awareness is a nice addition to GW2, I don’t mind if boss don’t LoS, but knowing where to stand on a boss add a little dept to the combat, a good example is when you are doing a high level fractal, you are fighting mossman and someone with the aggro just circle around him, cleaving everyone in the party, instead of using active defenses to mitigate the hits.

Oh I agree…

… I’m just giving examples of changes that Anet seems capable of, or willing to implement (see: Malrona and Spider Queen). Major overhauls aren’t going to happen: Anet has already come out and said exactly that.

As for the Lupi changes I listed as examples: I’m predicting at least one of those two will (unfortunately) come in a future patch.

Lord Kuru.3685:

• make Lupi use all his skills independent of player position.

All I can think of is lupi kicking in phase 1 while people are ranging, making it look like he is dancing

Lord Kuru.3685:

Oh I agree…

… I’m just giving examples of changes that Anet seems capable of, or willing to implement (see: Malrona and Spider Queen). Major overhauls aren’t going to happen: Anet has already come out and said exactly that.

As for the Lupi changes I listed as examples: I’m predicting at least one of those two will (unfortunately) come in a future patch.

Can we please not talk about WHETHER this will be implemented, or if its too difficult. Second paragraph I stated that it won’t happen under anets current stance on dungeons. Can we keep the discussion to the concept please.

I don t like your suggestions at all

1):
We play a game with offensive and defensive skills.
Making skills like reflection and block useless is just wrong.

2):
Issue is Always the same.
Bosses are OP and stupid

The spider queen fight is the perfect example.
ANY player facing this without knowing what to do, will wipe.
Skill is not involved, just memory.

3):
If anything, they have to use fractals as a design guideline and not dungeons.
You see more people playing boss like they were intended in fractals actually.

4):
We have a HUGE balancing issue in PvE.
Lupicus is the best example.
Try warriors and elementalists melee.
One can just sustan 1-2 hits and get healed automatically and has access to short cd evasions and invul.
The other is oneshot by almost anything if he wants to preserve damage (common issue).
Same for skips.
We need desperately to keep PvP balancing separated from the rest of the game being extremely cancerous to PvE and WWW.

5):
The answer is Always the same.
Something better than a 1980 Artificial Intelligence is a necessity for a 2013 PvE game.
But it costs LOT of moneys OR work (or both).
Some games invested huge sums of moneys to get a decent AI and they succeded.
In GW2 you find some openworld normal mobs with better ai that 99% bosses.

In my opinion every explorable path that is not played right now by the majority MUST be revamped.What i mean is rewards have to be buffed and everything from trash and bosses has to be redesigned like AC was.

Here is my list of what has to be revamped like AC was:

• SE – p2(to long path with such little reward)
• HotW – p2/p3
• CoF – p3(not hard path but with such sucking rewards.Compared to other dungeons like CoE for instance CoE is defenitely better)
• TA – return F/U and revamp the last boss in it.I have no i dea why the path was removed when only the last boss was buggy.Couldn’t Anet fix it?Also Aether path needs huge buffing from reward point of view.Right now it’s long and boring path.

LordByron.8369:

I don t like your suggestions at all

1):
We play a game with offensive and defensive skills.
Making skills like reflection and block useless is just wrong.

1)
This change doesnt render reflects useless, just alters the mechanic so they aren’t as gimmicky and OP as currently. Which means anet has an alternative to unblockable projectiles.

2)

Thats not entirely true. If you are all new, and are taking things carefully and ranging, yes it will be hard, but it is definitely doable if you can avoid red circles and learn to dodge when she glows.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree that bosses should be nullified by experience, but unfortunately anet has designed the game to avoid the trinity, which means you cant have skills that MUST be protted against, or you something that needs to be healed through since they don’t want dedicated healers. Etc. Consequently, going into a fight the first time, and having enough sustain to work out what is necessary to avoid, what are tells etc is not possible without a full ptv/clerics party, at which point it takes so long to kill that you get frustrated at the HP Time sink involved (such as the complaints at the beginning of the game).

3)

Considering you have a problem with OP bosses, I don’t think the fractal design bosses are that well designed. And again, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “as intended”.
Mossman most parties just end up ranging and kiting him.
Bloomhunger: trivialised by dps and reflects
Aquatic – Underwater combat timesink.
Uncategorized – Champs becomes a kitefest. Final boss becomes hide behind reflects and burn down, Old Tom is only interesting boss here, and is gimmicked by untraited wardens.
Ascalon – The NPC’s do a lot to trivialise this boss, especially when combined with warbanners.
Cliffside – Okay, this is actually reasonably well designed as the hammer mechanic is pretty cool
Molten – Whilst the concept is cool of avoiding the traps, its beaten by simply quickly destroying the final boss.
Dredge – This is a cool mechanic as well, however largely trivialised by simply ranging him.
Maw & Mai are both cool fights, mechanic wise.
Molten Duo is essentially same commetn as molten fractal. That is to say that they can be DPS raced out, or largely trivialised by ranging.

The only “reason” you see these being played more to their mechanics actually has nothing to do with their mechanics being better. It is to do with their HP and Damage they put out. They generally can’t be out dps’d or burnt down in 10 or 15 seconds, and as such their mechanics get the opportunity to come into effect.
Mechanic wise lets look at AC (as it currently is). For arguments sake, boss’s have 10* the HP so takes about 2 minutes to burn them down, instead of 10 seconds or under. Kohler has a highly telegraphed pull that is easy to dodge, but if not will do ridiculous damage when followed up by spin.
Howling King summons loads of mobs that will eventually kill you all unless taken care of. Kite through fields to beat mechanic
Ghost Eater is protected by a shield which summons mobs that can be used to charge a trap that temporarily removes his shield, and allows a short term burn phase. Currently, he is simply burnt down in one burn phase. If he took longer you would have to pre-charge all traps, and probably in combat charge another 1 or 2.
Collossus Rumblus has a dangerous AOE fall which is protected by grasts shield. If you are out in the open and get hit they are high damage, knockdown, and cover large area. Protection is in his shield.
In each of these cases the encounter is completely trivialised by DPS before the mechanics can be enabled.
A lot of dungeon bosses have cool mechanics. Yet 99% of the time they are trivialised by DPS. (

4)I dont believe this is relevant to this discussion but I will briefly address it:

The large issue describing there is HP. And I agree that there needs to be less of a difference between low HP and high HP classes so that warriors arent inherently so tanky. However you are looking at incomparable builds.
Im not quite sure which elementalist build you are assuming. But lets talk about a spec that can do comparable dps to a warrior – D/F Fresh Air. This build offers without touching any utilites:
6+ party might (and firefields to be blasted)
gains advantage of on switch sigils as often/more often then a warrior
5/50 seconds invuln
6/30 seconds projectile defence
2 stun/kd’s + shocking aura
2 blasts,
a dodge skill on a 10 second cooldown
a small party heal
condi removal without consequent projectile defence on multiple skills
immobilise
chill
decent vulnerability stacking
comparable DPS to a warrior.

Warrior has 1 3/15 block, slightly better vuln stacking, and a 1/10 dodge on skill. Heal signet is strong, but thats not to completely discount ele’s heals.

But yes, I do agree the health separation is over the top.

moiraine.2753:

In my opinion every explorable path that is not played right now by the majority MUST be revamped.What i mean is rewards have to be buffed and everything from trash and bosses has to be redesigned like AC was.

Here is my list of what has to be revamped like AC was:

• SE – p2(to long path with such little reward)
  HotW – p2/p3
• CoF – p3(not hard path with sucking rewards.Compared to other dungeons like CoE for instance CoE is defenitely better)
• TA – return F/U and revamp the last boss in it.I have no i dea why the path was removed when only the last boss was buggy.Couldn’t Anet fix it?Also Aether path needs huge buffing.Right now it’s long and boring path.

Whilst I agree unplayed paths need a revamp, the reason they aren’t run is more to do with difficulty/return/reward. I agree with SE2 and HOTW2/3 but I disagree with cof3 and TA:A

CoF3 is actually faster then CoF2, as it isn’t slowed down by timesinks. However, it requires coordination for certain parts, and that is a problem for pugs. Why organise when you can run P1/2 with no communication outside of “I’ll gate” and I’ll run lava".
The issues stems from the simplicity of current dungeons rather then the complication of other/new dungeons.

TA:A is actually quite fun when you learn how to handle the puzzles and bosses effectively.

@Raina

I agree that TA:A is on the same level as Arah as far the dificulty is concerned but the 2g reward just sucks.Compare Arah P1/P2 with TA:A.Well i’d prefer to do the 1st more often than the 2nd.One thing as a buff that TA:A can receive is increase in the final chest reward make that 3g instead of 2g.

Oh I certainly agree that TA:A needs a reward buff. Having said that, I think it is the most fun dungeon, probably because it is less run and the puzzles are not trivialized in general pugs yet.

I ran it last night with some pugs, and one of them commented after we completed the oozes (after coordination, and explanation) in the first try that she seemed to remember it being harder. The other pug mentioned that it was significantly better then the last time he spent 1hr at the ooze puzzle.

We also managed to successfully obtain all the achievements for one of the pugs (except grounded because she didnt move fast enough) with a little coordination, and discussion. I think the entire run took about kitten minutes. Its a lot longer then a pro Arah run, but considering it was a relatively inexperienced pug group that was being coordinated it went pretty well.

Its still terrible value though for 2g, especially considering that you only get 3 champ bags for the entire run. Each puzzle should offer a champ bag, since beating a puzzle is similar to beating a boss. And the champ bags should be given the ability to drop the Aetherblade Exclusive skins. And 3g. But thats the only change I would make to the rewards.