Guild Wars 2

I want to see the numbers, and some dungeon elements still desperately need review and rebalance, (and debugging; still end more runs on broken events than deaths) but on the whole…

I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I decried this change as horrible and dungeon-killing, but for the most part, the worst offenders that I’d seen were changed to not require res-rushing (first boss TA exp was the worst offender here), and there’s actually a point to teaching new players tactics now. I’ve personally helped three new guildies learn AC and TA this month, and my wife’s done the same with CoF and Honor… And that’s with not even playing that much.

Edit: One note… stalkers in AC still kill more players than any boss. Keep them in mind when you’re balancing? Long, high-damage stun against potentially low-level players is not a good idea. Not everyone has awesome stun-breaks. Especially when the stun is regularly chained.

Edit2: Hodgins is worse than useless and I hate him more than I hate Traeherne.

Ohoni.6057:

I didn’t mind dying as much in the old dungeons because it only cost me a few silver to fix per run, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what I was making back so it didn’t really bother me.

If anything I’ve seen runs go smoother and much faster since the change because people are not as willing to make the dumb mistakes. And compared to the past money making? Really? You might want to switch out who you are running dungeons with if it’s really taking you that much longer.

Ohoni.6057:

The new Magg event, for example, is pretty cool, but more frustrating than the old method if players start dying because there’s absolutely no time to waste rezzing anyone. That’s the real problem with the “no rez rush” philosophy, it only works if nobody dies. Ever. I know you seem to believe that players should be capable of rezzing dead team mates, but that’s just silly, it takes waaaaaaaay too long to be practical in any situation that is deadly enough that it would have killed someone in the first place. Most dungeon events tend to have either a time factor or an “infinite spawning until complete” factor, either of which makes it impossible for even one character to waste time trying to rez another, especially given that the group is already a man down.

This sounds cliche and elitist, but this is really a learn to play issue, and again it sounds like you are running around with people that are unable to pick up on game mechanics very well, or are unwilling to change up strategies.

I have no problem ressing party members during the defend Magg event, and if it’s really that much of a problem try having the party utilize their downed party member res skills (e.g. warbanner, pet res, shadow refuge), it’s really not that difficult.

If you want to talk different strategies feel free to PM me or start another thread, I know I’ve tried a variety with different group compositions leading to a lot of interesting results and would be glad to share them, that however is not the issue for this thread in my opinion.

InfamousBrad.5879:

Guilds that (a) have figured it out and (b) have exceptionally patient teachers, people who are willing to have it take a lot longer to get to the reward chest because they have to stop to type, including answering questions, before each fight, will work out the way that you think it will. My experience with MMOs tells me that such teachers are so rare that there will never been enough of them to go around, that not 1 player in 20 will ever get to play alongside one.

Then my guild is apparently in said minority. We have no problem teaching our unfamiliar members how to run dungeons, and then they go forward and teach other members and pugs what they know as they run them. Despite running with guildies often, we also frequently pug via gw2lfg.com and more often than not come across people who are competent or even more skilled and teach us a thing or to.

Guild Wars 2 has a very nurturing environment, I think you are taking on way too cynical of an attitude.

If anything I’ve seen runs go smoother and much faster since the change because people are not as willing to make the dumb mistakes. And compared to the past money making? Really? You might want to switch out who you are running dungeons with if it’s really taking you that much longer.

I’ve experienced both, sure. I ran with one group the other night that was my best run ever. I never died, I’m not sure anyone in the group did, we all knew what we were doing, cleared every objective in record time (for me at least), and everything worked great. I think it definitely has upped my own game, as I’ve learned a few tricks that turned rooms that used to be kamikaze runs into rooms where I stand a good chance of surviving through some new tactics, but then, I’d prefer being able to do both.

If I could guarantee that I’d always end up with a group like that one, then I’d have no problem with these changes, but I can’t, and I don’t want to engage in any of the elitist practices that witch-hunt potentially “bad” players. Dungeon design needs to take into account that maybe only half the players will really be “on the ball.”

I’ve also, since the patch, had one or two much more frustrating runs, in which certain events took way more tries, and when being downed meant not rejoining my team and continuing to play, but just laying there for at one point several minutes straight, while the rest of my party continued to fight but it wasn’t worth stopping to rez me because it was either too dangerous to stand still over me for that long, or they were too preoccupied with the task at hand. There’s nothing fun about laying on the ground.

I’m not saying that the old way was more money-efficient, the new runs, on average, are not much longer than the old, but the new runs are more punishing to PUGs with one or more members with poor communication or understanding of their roles, and I’m just saying, dying in the old runs didn’t really bother me, so long as I felt they were in service towards advancing to the end (now areas where deaths were too common and too pointless were annoying, but those still exist in the new model).

I have no problem ressing party members during the defend Magg event, and if it’s really that much of a problem try having the party utilize their downed party member res skills (e.g. warbanner, pet res, shadow refuge), it’s really not that difficult.

Downed party member abilities only work on living characters. If a player is just downed, sure, rez them if they can’t get up themselves, but in situations with dozens of mobs running around a character can go from downed to dead in seconds, or he may be “too hot” to rez immediately (since that would cause the rezzer to drop as well). I really think that they do need to change the nature of the “defeated” state to be easier to recover from.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

InfamousBrad.5879:

I laughed when I read this. I will be deeply surprised if this is how it turns out. Pleasantly surprised, but deeply surprised nonetheless. This is not what I would bet. My bet would be that what will happen, instead, is that outside of a few exceptional guilds, new people simply won’t be welcome on dungeon teams at all. What your theory leaves out, what this design leaves out, is any in-band, in-game way for players who start out with average skill or below to learn what the alternative to rez-rushing is.

Guilds that (a) have figured it out and (b) have exceptionally patient teachers, people who are willing to have it take a lot longer to get to the reward chest because they have to stop to type, including answering questions, before each fight, will work out the way that you think it will. My experience with MMOs tells me that such teachers are so rare that there will never been enough of them to go around, that not 1 player in 20 will ever get to play alongside one.

You will be deeply surprised. I’m currently trying to get permission to expose some of our internal data regarding our anti res rushing patch – you know, some before and after data where people can look at the numbers. Posting numbers is the tricky bit, but from what we have seen and can correlate from the data, more people are playing dungeons, and less people are dying. There’s more really interesting information that I won’t go into at the moment, but our data suggests that there is an overall positive affect from the patch that is measurable.

I was going to ask about this. don’t know if you guys would post it (figured you wouldn’t) but from launch till now, I honestly can’t see (even w/ perks added post patch) how people would play more now.

I’d be curious to see if there was in increase what the general population influx was like juxtaposed to those numbers (people who played for the first time post patch as opposed to before). I’m honestly done w/ dungeons till the old mechanic is back. I could care less about monthly’s or other perks. won’t finish story lines on new characters either. I don’t want to be able to rez-rush a boss, but I do want to be able to jump between points in the map like I did before.

don’t like the new elite system… if I’ve never played a dungeon, its going to be a terrible experience pick up style.

AC changes, except for Kohler, are terrible. It was a total waste of time to redo the best overall dungeon that you have – oh and loot still sucks. This patch had many other good changes but I am really losing faith in you guys.

I’m concerned about fractals.
We have new ascended gear, so probably 10 more AR to get (45 max), this will make fotm 40-49 more doable in normal way and make 30-39 with full resist.

My main problem is difficulty curve on fotm. IMO bosses on 20+ and 30+ are just the same, I don’t see any difference, but trash mobs on way…omg they are way way harder.
It makes fractals like dredge very very hard and long not because of fancy hard boss but because of hundreds of mobs on way, all of them hits like truck, got protection for ages, stuns, dazes and even have aoe. On the other side we have swamp fractal without any adds at all which for me it’s the same on level 38 as on level 10. Why higher level just mostly = more mobs, more vets, higher level mobs. Should fractals be made around dealing with annoying, overpowered mobs?

The dungeons are ridiculous, and the nerf to healing food made them so much harder its not even funny.

The changes obviously weren’t tested very well.

Yup definitely HATE path 2 of AC now. I don’t get how Anet thought that kind of fight would be fun. There is no instructions on what to do, you have to try and figure it out. You also have to an extremely coordinated group now.
Definitely hate the change. Gonna try paths 1 and 3, but definitely might be done with that dungeon.

Honestly, I believe some of the complaints regarding rezzes could be resolved if perhaps skills had the capabilities to completely resurrect KOed foes. With down, it’s too difficult a decision whether or not to res because you can easily heal them without needing to use a skill. On the other hand, this puts us in harm’s way and makes bosses like Subject Alpha frustrating for certain groups. So the solution in my opinion is to allow skills like Warbanner to resurrect KOed allies. This can be justified with their high recharge cost and use of a slot.

The main problem with no rez port during combat is when the player do die, it often is much too dangerous to revive considering the mob hatred of revivers. Sometimes it creates a domino effect leading to a wipe or the party is forced to just leave him there leading to a bored (or embarassed ) player that just do nothing while the party is doing all the work.

Why would I bother to do AC ever again. I have my gift, I have done all paths many times. The only reason people did AC was gold and AC weapons. I and many others salvaged our weapons into ectos because the rewards were pretty much useless. I feel this way about almost all of the dungeons. There is NO incentive to do them really except for gold. The new AC is trickier but doable, bugs aside. I would have rather seen something that wants me to come back rather than just the challenge(which I like).

Even AC path 1 which is a lvl 35 dungeon is hard for lvl 80’s in exotic and ascended gear. I was rolling a mace/shield guardian and I found the p1 end boss adds way way too op for adds. Even the Boss in P1 is hard with his zomg lazer. The KD of the adds is op. I had 2 stability skills going and a prot skill and still got kd enough for our party to wipe. I know it is the 1st run through but I can image a guild group of lvl 35’s trying it for the 1st time and never doing another dungeon ever again.

OMG this dungeon became now ridiculously hard, no not hard, FRUSTRATING.

I think they’ve taken the wrong lessons from the game. I think maybe they somehow got the impression that we found it too easy, and so they wanted to make it harder, which is ridiculously off base.

yawn simin incredibly easy so if i hear ppl asking for another nerf /kban

AC is godawful now and I have no desire to run it again.

cmerc.2081:

AC is godawful now and I have no desire to run it again.

been hearing this all over map chat for ac and arah (only two I saw in my 10 minutes of game play tonight)…

way to take something that ain’t broke (from the users perspective) and “fix” it.

gg

green plum.7514:

Brutal Arts.6307:

So why is everything so bugged/poorly thought out on release? There must be a disconnect in this process.

Because thousands of players (=dozen thousands of runs) are much more likely to find a problem than a few dozen runs with devs. To truly test something the system must be automated; e.g. use bots to run dungeons.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hmm, that seems like a bug. It was intended that you could interrupt the howl that caused the rocks to fall. I’ll send that over to our QA and get it verified.

Sounds like this game needs a public test server. Even the much touted Guild Missions were bugged on release. It’s not like it’s a one off incident something like this happens EVERY patch. Whether it’s QA or the programmers or some giant elephant between them there’s clearly something wrong.

Why hasn’t the new ascended gear been added to Fractals? Running fractals has become a waste of time when I could just be running 5 min CoF runs.

I used to enjoy taking level 35~40 players new to dungeons through AC path 2 to teach them the basic mechanics of a dungeon. I was never against having so-called ‘sub-80s’ in my party and I don’t harbour all this ‘anti-carrying’ sentiment that most ‘80s heavy armor onli’ parties do.

Unfortunately by increasing the difficulty of the very first dungeon that new players are exposed to by so much, I do feel less inclined to take new people on board and show them the ropes.

If you’d like to make AC a level 80 only dungeon, you should change the level requirement. As it is, I’d love to know if the developers did test out fighting the Spider Queen with 5 level 35s (this dungeon is meant to be doable with 5 level 35s, or so the recommended level suggests) in whites, blues and greens, or if Robert meant they’d tested it with mixed levels as in one level 35 in rares and four level 80s in exotics – all of whom already know the boss mechanics off the bat and don’t have to type to each other to explain red circles and cones.

The health of bosses in AC got reduced considerably and final boss mechanics became more interesting. Overall for fully geared level 80s, I think AC became easier and more enjoyable, save for FPS drops from too many mobs on some encounters.

Kain Francois.4328:

Honestly, I believe some of the complaints regarding rezzes could be resolved if perhaps skills had the capabilities to completely resurrect KOed foes. With down, it’s too difficult a decision whether or not to res because you can easily heal them without needing to use a skill. On the other hand, this puts us in harm’s way and makes bosses like Subject Alpha frustrating for certain groups. So the solution in my opinion is to allow skills like Warbanner to resurrect KOed allies. This can be justified with their high recharge cost and use of a slot.

This would be great, either that or a timer on the rez port so if you wait a couple of minutes even with the group in combat you can do it. That would cut down on rez rushing, and is a significant enough penalty that people would try to improve their game, but cut down on boredom and frustration for the very people the devs are trying to incentivize to learn to play better. The couple of less skilled players in our guild spent about 70% of their time on the floor last time we tried to take them through AC, and they not only stopped dungeoning with us they stopped playing GW2 entirely for awhile. They were often going from up to downed to dead in under 20 seconds from the start of a fight, so it was hard for them to learn much.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

I used to enjoy taking level 35~40 players new to dungeons through AC path 2 to teach them the basic mechanics of a dungeon. I was never against having so-called ‘sub-80s’ in my party and I don’t harbour all this ‘anti-carrying’ sentiment that most ‘80s heavy armor onli’ parties do.

Unfortunately by increasing the difficulty of the very first dungeon that new players are exposed to by so much, I do feel less inclined to take new people on board and show them the ropes.

If you’d like to make AC a level 80 only dungeon, you should change the level requirement. As it is, I’d love to know if the developers did test out fighting the Spider Queen with 5 level 35s (this dungeon is meant to be doable with 5 level 35s, or so the recommended level suggests) in whites, blues and greens, or if Robert meant they’d tested it with mixed levels as in one level 35 in rares and four level 80s in exotics – all of whom already know the boss mechanics off the bat and don’t have to type to each other to explain red circles and cones.

I wouldn’t mind also seeing the group composition of the test group. From what I understand you should be able to run any dungeon with any class combo may it be diverse or all the same class. I’m think the test group had more than 1 guardian. That alone could make everything much easier than it actually is. The spider queen would be a cake walk using their reflection walls on the babies and the near continuous protection buff. I already leveled my guardian to 80 and don’t plan on swapping mid dungeon in a lowbie group because the dungeon trash wasn’t balanced well enough. The boss fights are fine as is but the trash needs to get a toughness/health nerf. Leave the damage as is.

I’m just curious, was gw2lfg.com ever added into any of these statistics? Have you guys actually LOOKED at the lfg posts on there? I have a guardian, and sometimes it is incredibly difficult to find a group. When I am looking for a pug, I’m not looking to do it with a bunch of inexperienced players so I can teach them the ropes. I teach my guild mates. The way things are getting with dungeons now though, most groups are looking for specific classes/builds/gear setups. Take Arah for example. I don’t want to spend an extra hour just to teach a person that is new to the zone. No one does. I’ve joined more than one group and seen other members get kicked for not being experienced. I’ve also seen more than a few get kicked for not having the “Right gear”. Heck, I’ve seen people get replaced at Simin because they weren’t “good enough”. Do you think that is fun for the person that got kicked? Especially when they might have put 4 hours into that dungeon, then came out of it with 6 or so tokens and a few silver.

Yes I agree there needs to be a good community with content that links people together. However, this is locking people out. I’ve had several people in my guild that just quit the game altogether because of the sheer amount of time it was taking them to get the hang of some mechanics. This in turn makes me feel like I wasted my time, trying to teach them. Granted, it doesn’t take everyone the same amount of time. Some people get things right away, others not so much. I’ll even agree that maybe the game just is not for some people. If they can’t grasp things right away, then maybe they should go somewhere else. Do you guys understand, that is your paycheck taking a hike though? Said person that just left the game because of all these frustrating things, just packed their cash and took it to a different game/company/whatever. I want Anet to thrive, so the game can thrive. Sometimes the “whiners” will have to be compensated also.

We don’t want rez-rushing, we want wipe-fests? Because it’s much more fun to start from scratch all the time if one makes a mistake. Why bring support, toughness or vitality, if dps is the only thing that counts? Attrition will get you, so there is only one viable way to do it. Ask yourself; is this fun? I’ll answer for you; No, this is NOT fun. Do we want Perma Shadow Form Assassins only again?
Make this AC the hard mode AC. Double the dungeon tokens at the end and bring back the old one. Let defeated players use waypoints after a minute, so the rest of the group doesn’t has to reset the fight to get a chance of success. Or make bosses not reset hp. And remove one-hits, chain-stuns, chain-knockbacks and -downs.

forget it folks, they’re not really interested in what we think or how it affects the people playing the game. They add legendary incentives for playing dungeons (which some people will do regardless of how terrible it is), then look at the numbers of people playing them since the patch, and say “hey, everybody must love it, and these people crying in the forums and all over map chat just must be a vocal minority, not the majority (because we have a statistic showing more dungeon runs have been played post patch).”

the game designers get what the game designers want, and the game fun goes away for the rest of us…

People only ran old AC for fast, easy gold. That’s why they liked it – same with me. Now, it’s fast, easy, and fun gold.

I like the concepts of this redesign. I think it was nice adding flavor to the bosses to make them more unique. However, it still feels boring to me. Fights rely on NPCs more than players, CC has become a nightmare, and what could have been really fun ideas just became tedious.

• Every path is too reliant on NPCS!*
  Why not give players control of the flaming scepters to create fire rings?
  Why not give players ghost-form abilities to kill burrows and create shields during Rumbulus?
  Please fix Detha who still bugs out and wont’ even start the events.

• Too much CC!*
  I remember in one of Anets posts they mentioned how players hate to lose control of their character so they wanted to limit that sort of mechanic, but my god. This entire dungeon is fear, KD, and immobilize.
  The graveling scavengers are particularly brutal as stability doesn’t work and there are many more than previously. If you get hit by 1 or 2 you aren’t getting up again, and that is that.
  This is also counter to Anets previous statement that skipping content is fine. When it’s impossible to walk past mobs and faster to fight than to skip, it just seems backwards to me.

• Flavor is fun!*
  That said I do like the themes of the different skelks and how they stand out now more. I was really impressed with Ghost Eater’s new blue ghostly form and I like that these mechanics we spent the dungeon unlocking (finding scepters, repairing cannons, and recruiting ghosts) actually tie into the boss fight.

• I love the new Kholer!*
  He’s essentially the same, but just a little less health and the extra mobs make for some interest.

• I hate the new Troll!*
  Fear, fear, fear, KD, massive AOEs.
  The lightning is hard to avoid and bounces around too.
  That said, he’s not terrible, and I can deal with this fight fine.

• Being One Shot:*
  Been said before, but in general (all dungeons, all mobs, everywhere) being one shot is not fun. The ceiling during Rumbulus is my main beef here. That skill occurs so fast you dont’ have time to get to the bubble if you’re even remotely far from Grast.

Too much stun/knockdown. Too many very deadly red circles. Too much one hit kill mechanic. Boss at AC path 2 was interesting concept but buggy.

This is my experience of AC Expl Detha’s path.

With my usuall group with 3 level 80 2 level 60-70.

I know it’s not the top group and we are not eliteists, but we have done CM and TA explorer paths with enough difficulties and good amount of fun.

Before Kholers update we could handle him on another path but couldn’t handle the kill burrows and protect machines becouse our main dps was condition damage and that does not work on burrows (Hah easy! NOT!)

Now we spent 4½ hours to figure out how to kill this guy, but since he spawns his trash little now and then and when the necromancers show up we are dead since they place the deadly puddles on downed allies and jadajadajada.

I read on the wiki that you can skip Kholer, with regret we did that.

We lost one member since he had to go to work and we finally arrived at Ghost eater.
Hehe, we figured out how to beat this dude but since we where just four it was hard to get it done, His puddles are way to powerfull imo and I read on wiki that one could kite him but when we got him in the first trap and turns back to a ghost he goes berserk spitting puddles on who ever he want’s and cripples another one while running after someone else, … after an hour figuring the boss out and lot’s of repair costs we gave up.
We have done CM expl TA Expl and Sorrows Embrace Story and havent run in to a brickwall as thick as AC Expl is
I have told my friends that I will never do AC Expl again until I see a nerf on it or when we are all level 80 with 80 gear and well it says Recommended level 35? Hahaha haha funny

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I read on the wiki that you can skip Kholer, with regret we did that.

Yeah you can skip him. Skip was rare to happen before the change, even if no troll, but now most PuG’s want nothing to do with it. Can’t say I blame them, repair costs and time is pretty heavy compared to the reward. But then it shouldn’t take a chance at greater reward to do it, it doesn’t make it any more fun, just mind numbing and finger numbing work. It’s also a lot harder to find a local PuG since the changes, and people on my friends list that I’d do dungeons with often are hardly ever on any longer since the changes. It’s not just Kholer getting skipped more often, but dungeons in general.

So what did you think of this patch?

SoPP.7034:

So what did you think of this patch?

Dude, you should’ve necroed this thread on the 28th, would’ve been funnier.

Wow I actually thought, for a second.. our guardian angel had returned. NOPE

For a split second i had hope… then i saw 11months ago Q_Q

@Robert:

Would you please set up a team to work on that darn Dredge Fractal? I have NEVER seen a group that, when they get this as their third fractal, they don’t curse their lungs out.

- Most players just skip the entire initial mechanic to opening the door because the dreges spawn too many groups, cannot be blinded and hurt like a truck.

- Without a class that can focus on reflects, this dungeon is a death fest

- Have the devs actually tried doing the door bombing sequence without pulling their hairs out? Is it part of the mechanic to die and die until the door is finally busted?

- Can that clown car contain MORE dredges? that is by far the biggest nuisance I have ever seen on this otherwise great game

- Again, can you guys , like, tone down the quantity of dredges and vets in this fractal? is not impossible by any means, but IT IS NOT FUN.

Robert was blackbagged and sent to Best Korean gulags; go back in time and try again.

Why are the necros so strong in dungeon (forum)?

Necros dont have a place in proper dungeons so they make do with dungeon threads.

Ha the 21st jan 2014 is also a Tuesday, even more trollolicous.

My first thought was why is there a dungeon patch on Tuesday when they already secretly patched dungeons last Tuesday?

SoPP.7034:

So what did you think of this patch?

6/10 necro.

Good idea, but a little premature.

Necros feel like they are being ignored in regards to dungeons. Please do something about Defiant/Unshakeable. And give us back our DS-one-hit tank ability. And no more insta-kills.

I dislike the dredge fractal, please simply remove the respawns of all dredge in that fractal.

Please do not design battles around reflect, when not every class has access to reflect.

Best necro ever.

Man, there was actually a time when devs actively solicited player feedback re: dungeons?

brb, crying…

Ah those were the days. So long ago they feel like a fairy tale.

arg fell for it, good job.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/robert-hrouda-on-upcoming-changes-to-dungeon-mechanics/

Also, and sadly I don’t think they ever really made it to Phase 2 =/

Making the bosses harder or adding more gimmicks doesn’t add anything other than taking more time to completing a path! You are only going to get more pay to play to complete by someone who knows all the Boss gimmicks.

Go play some old school RPG’s, dungeons should be about exploring, encountering the unknown, random monsters, hidden areas, hidden treasure. Treasure/reward should be more about how much you explore and find things, not on how many bosses you kill.

How about
- Random paths with Random rooms, doors (something to explore).
- Randomness to Dungeons, eliminate mobs and Bosses always in the same place.
- Hidden areas, random doors (with random fights, treasures), random traps in each path.
- Dungeon skills (finding hidden areas & traps, disarm traps, opening chests).
- Making finding Dungeon tokens be the goal, not just rewarding them!
- Get rid of the current dungeon design of gold runs, just enter Dungeon and kill Boss 1,2,3, yuck!

Just adding random hidden doors & rooms, random traps, random mobs, random boss location to existing dungeon paths would be a 100% improvement.

Hobby dungeon explorer x 72 times. Wasn’t a CoF farmer. 95% of the runs I did were for the dungeons token, I always had fun or I would have bought exotic gear from the trading post. Now that all my characters are geared up there is no point in replaying the dungeons. I might play once or twice a week I get bored enough to replay one, but the dungeons need new rewards for me to replay them more often.

Interesting topic to necro from the depths….

I am sad