Guild Wars 2

Well…did a dungeon I had completed several times before the patch, enjoyed found fun and was able to complete with a variety of guildies.

Gone back to said dungeon, new way point system 100% complete fail. Wont be going back in to such a un-fun area of the game again.

I’m going to revise my previous post where I said I won’t try dungeons again. I really want to give it a chance, because I appreciate the intentions that developers had in making this change.

I tip my hat to developers for creating a dungeon system that is the most challenging I’ve experienced in an MMO. High dungeon difficulty isn’t necessarily a bad thing because high difficulty = high sense of accomplishment upon completion, and this makes it a more satisfying experience for players if there’s a balance between difficulty and achievability.

However, in its current form, dungeon content is excessively difficult and accessible only to extremely skilled players due to some minor design issues. With a few tweaks, dungeons can be a more organic, functional, collaborative and less frustrating aspect of the game for players, especially in the lower level dungeons. Dungeons can maintain difficulty while being slightly more forgiving.

I have some suggestions on how to solve this without compromising on the much-loved challenge.

I will bold suggestions for developers (for ease of reference). These are constructive suggestions intended to help developers achieve their vision of a collaborative dungeon experience and are not angry demands.

1. Create a tutorial dungeon (similar to the PvP tutorial) for inexperienced players to run either alone or in groups. This will act as an introduction to GW2’s innovative dungeon paradigm. This will be especially useful for players who are accustomed to the “trinity” model and will help them to make a mental shift out of the formerly established way of playing after years of being accustomed to that model.

It would consist of one boss encounter (random boss with different abilities), and a random group of 4 NPCs to run with whose classes are also random. Each time the player runs this tutorial, they will be able to practice different roles/spells/weapons with their class and tweak their talents/skills if they desire. It’s important not to make these tutorials too easy because the point is to prepare them for a real dungeon so they won’t be in for a shock. The advantage of this is that a player can play with a group of NPCs and/or a group, decreasing the feeling of hopelessness and increasing a player’s confidence & skill.

In real dungeon encounters:

1. Increase auditory and visual cues of boss spells & actions. Make the animation/voice prompts of bosses more obvious when they’re about to cast a major spell (ie: when Lieutenant Kholer is about to pull everyone in, he can yell something like, “C’mere!” a second or two before doing it, giving players an auditory cue to dodge).

Players are so busy trying to DPS bosses like this down while watching everyone else that it’s not always easy to keep your eye on the boss to watch for when they’re casting a major ability.

2. Increase rez time in lower level dungeons only (ie: AC) and scale rez times to be slower in higher level dungeons.

3. Create a temporary buff on players rezzing others, especially in encounters like the Spider Queen where there are AOEs everywhere. Some possible examples:

A. A short (5-6 second) immunity buff when rezzing FULLY dead players (no damage taken, immune to getting pulled to boss, etc) with a moderate (ie: 20+ second) cooldown. Once the rezzing player starts taking damage, they can dodge out and other group members can go and continue rezzing when another player is on rez-immunity cooldown. This will motivate players to rez downed players while maintaining a reasonable amount of difficulty.

B. While rezzing a partially or fully downed player, the player doing the rezzing gets 10 seconds of health regeneration. It’s not much in terms of health gain (especially when the immunity cooldown runs out and they’re in a boss AOE) and will maintain the challenge.

4. Give players a more obvious visual (or auditory) cue when a player is partially down (ie: like raid messages in other MMOs), ie: “[Player Name] is fighting for survival!” or “[Player Name] has died!” In the heat of battle players don’t always notice when a player is down until it’s too late.

5. When a player is partially down, make it so right clicking/double clicking on them makes your character jump to where they are to expedite rallying them. If they’re on the other side of the room, this saves time running to them through AOEs, etc.

These suggestions are my theories on how developers could achieve their artistic vision of a collaborative dungeon experience. I’m not educated as a developer/programmer, so I don’t know how difficult these suggestions would be to implement.

Developers, thank you for this wonderfully innovative game. I understand that, in the light of remodelling an entire genre, there will be kinks to iron out. When reading the more emotionally charged posts, don’t take it personally, people are just frustrated and it’s not personal.

Really Dislike this new Update.
As many people have pointed out it really separates those Elite Players and guilds from us standard players who rely upon PUGs to get through dungeons.
Without Voice comms etc PUG runs are really about trial and error being locked out of combat due to waiting for team to be wiped ect only adds to the rage in these such groups and causes random players to DC more then they normally would forcing re-runs etc.
This update has only broadened the gap between die hard players who are luckly enough to play the game as much as possible and those of us who for what ever reasons can only play the game a few hours a week.
REALLY BAD MOVE

I agree with Castrella on suggestion.
I did a lot of dungeons. With 2 different characters, with very good players and with starters, enjoying it everytme. I have a good experience in quite every path.
Now after last patch dungeons are just frustrating.
You didn’t want rushing people? well, now all rush.
New players don’t feel confident, they don’t learn bosses and won’t proceed in exploring.
Was better to put phase 1 and 2 togheter, with more waypoints and different boss fights.
But the lack of waypoints was a problem also before.
In this way you’re not encouraging team play, you’re destroying it.
The “no rally at wp” thing works kinda well in fractals, because dungeons are little and quite fast, and has a sense. But in normal dungeons you get the opposite result: people stay dead on bosses,
there are useless endless fights, you get killed in seconds while rezzing someone, even with shields on.
So I think that a dungeon redesign is needed, before is too late.
Sorry for rant, but is the first time I’m really disappointed from an update.

I think you should scale the dungeons with the number of people in the party. Sometimes my friend and me want to do and dungeon but we cannot get a party of 5 and therefore are unable to do the dungeon. If not that then implement a dungeon queueing system where we can easily find a party for doing the dungeon.

I no longer whant to run dungeons and am considering not playing gw2 anymore, the so called evening, has effectivly eliminated the feeling of being able to help even if one dies alot, because now we can’t rush back and help finish the fight we have to wait, way to go devs, this just became the same as every other mmo out there, you will see the seperation of lvls and classes and the exclusion of the lower level or geared players from the ones who are already geared and leveled well, it was an even playing feild for a geared lvl 80 toon to run a bunch of lowers through a dungeon, they could rez and rush back to help, it was fun, now it is just agravateing…

Ya on that note, really refix the waypoint rush back and help thing, and settle down all the high damage and health of the dungeon occupants too, do we really have to die 20 times to finish a dungeon run, and thats being generous, don’t act like we are just not skilled at playing, it is way to hard to complete a dungeon run at any level or player skill, I don’t like a tank and spank either, but we can’t even tank in this game, no one player has any one certain job for example the healer can’t keep everyone up even if he or she is really geared and super skilled, the occupants will over damage the group, someone will die and now they have to wait because you will die if you try to rez someone wile the fight is on, ya sometimes it works but more often than not it fails and the whole group wipes only to have the bosses reset and the run takes like 3 hours to complete, for what a single green drop, or maybe a gold every fith run or so, not worth the effort, I really like this game for the graphic quality and the content, even the whole class system and weapon skill system, but the dungeons are out of control and really feel impossible now, especially for an avid gammer or less, we dont have that kinda time, we want to get online and do something productive with three hours a day, like run a couple dungeons and get some decent loots, not just try and die…

I took some time to get familiar with the update, and from what I’ve seen I can only say that it’s a disappointment. When the update was being announced and being eagerly awaited, I mostly thought about the bugs and exploit fixes that would open up new dungeon opportunities with friends and guildmates , or just making dungeon runs more interesting.

Instead of this, we get changes to things that no one seemed bothered by, except maybe some new players that weren’t used to “res-running”, not that I am a fan of it, but it makes sense considering the time it takes to bring a dead player back from the dead ( and it shouldn’t be shortened either, for the sake of other points in the game, like WvW ). One way of fixing this is making at least the profession-specific resurrect skill work on dead players as well, but that will also raise a lot of questions and changes to other aspects of the game. I realize what was the goal of accomplishing with this, and the reasons people hate this change, in turn because people mostly just got used to the way it was set up before, in turn because it makes things harder. But all it makes is people wait while others try to resurrect them, and stay alive themselves at the same time, or just give up and suicide, which i don’t think was the main idea. Also this introduced new bugs, such as players that are not in combat showing up as they are making the entire group unable to use waypoints, so most of the time that player relogs his character (also i don’t think this was intended at all), and for example the laser in CoE making players constantly in combat, so the ONLY way to get back up is to relog. I can see some of the positive things that might come out of making these changes, but they are severely outweighed by the downsides.

But even in all this commotion during the new change, it’s not hard to notice that most of the old dungeon bugs still remain. I won’t name any of them here, partly because this isn’t the place for it and partly because i think that the developers should take a closer look themselves, not just by relying on comments posted here.

In general, this entire update introduced a lot of things that players were unhappy about, but, after seeing most of the comments posted here, i think they will make an impact on the developers, and what will become of this update remains to be seen.

I hate the no res thing, it makes it practically impossible to do dungeons with random or inexperienced groups :/

I would like to start by saying that I think the idea behind removing the re-rushing mechanic was a good one. That being said, I can also agree with the few non-nerd-rage posts here where it has already been pointed out that this is the type of thing that should have been implemented in one phase, not two. I can totally understand why players are frustrated with this update but I think many of us are forgetting why this post exists: constructive criticism, not QQ rants and players threatening to quit (and the poor people with what appears to be a ‘kitten’-themed version of tourettes).

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I have a few suggestions that the devs might find useful:

1. As another player suggested, changing the resurrection skills to apply to dead players instead of just downed seems your obvious choice. Most players never use these skills because the window they can be applied within is simply too small (dead before in range or finish casting).
2. Re-scaling your loot tables within dungeons (or at least in dungeon chests) would give the incentive and motivation for players to learn to adapt to the new difficulty level. This way players would find an 11 silver repair bill less irritating if they are getting better drops or more loot/tier 6 materials.
3. Perhaps allow players to slot non-elite skills in the elite slot – I know in guild wars 1 you could opt to take a build that did not include an elite skill (though this was uncommon) and certain events would greatly benefit from not having a wasted slot on our skill bars. I find many classes don’t even use their elites due partially to many classes not having a viable elite (many tend to bring racial elites instead of their class elites e.g. norn wolf form or sylvari takeroot).
4. Adding a short-duration (stability?) buff that applies while a player is ressing another player during boss fights (could be tricky to apply this one to pve only as it would ruin pvp). This way a player still has to stay out of danger while ressing but can’t get yanked across the floor or knocked around while trying to get another teammate back into the fight. This could have a debuff applied after it expires, keeping you from abusing it in a fight.

I ran path 2 CoF 3 times since the patch; first time we got through the new Magg event in one shot (geared players, I was the only pug), second time with guild mates we died once/twice but we had little trouble (also geared players, core dungeon group new to this version), third time we had a few newer members and tried about 8-10 times before people got frustrated and left. Mind you, we run this dungeon and clear path 1 and 2 in under an hour and we’re all at Fractals 10+ so we’re not exactly pro but we’re not casuals or newbies either. The re-vamped version of the dungeon is fun, there is more protecting of Magg as far as the event goes which is way better than the 1-2-2 method everyone seemed to think was necessary before, but the knockdown is a tad excessive and puts the event just outside the realm of fairness to the average casual player. I don’t think the developers intended for this to be a “you need this EXACT party composition to complete” event.

I would like to close by noting that I am a programmer myself by trade, and I respect the amount of work and testing that goes into a project like this. I want to encourage the developers to keep creating great content and not to let your day get soured by people who have no idea the amount of collaboration and effort that goes into generating the content required to make a game as great as Guild Wars 2 has been so far. Our guild enjoys the game thoroughly, and I would like to point out that people don’t come to the forums to compliment you on your hard work, they only come to whine and complain when they can’t faceroll a boss encounter or kitten kitten kitten kitten…um…kitten…(sorry that really annoys me – some people need to pick up a thesaurus).

I ran Citadel of Flame after new patch came out with my friends team and with “randoms”.

With friends team I completed path 1 in 12 minutes and path 2 in 15.

As for randoms which included some inexperienced players I had some trouble keeping things organized: they didn’t listen to us and because of this they were downed almost in every minute making the rest of the team do nothing but run all around and revive. This is linked to risk of being exposed to spawned monsters which deal nice damage to knock you out in few seconds while reviving a downed player or even worse if player is dead. I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.

I had to start some sequences over and over making people impatient and enraged and in the end it gave it’s result: me and one of my friends were left alone and the rest just rage quit after calling each other noobs, suckers, idiots etc etc…

In conclusion I can say that this patch is not bad for people who know teamwork and are patient enough to try again if something goes wrong but on other hand it made me stick with more experienced players or friends with who I ran often dungeons just because they don’t rage quit, insult and it won’t be a waste of time in summary, but patch also separates players which I don’t like. I think this patch needs re-balancing of damage coming from spawned monsters or a bit boosted up reviving concept so casuals will also have chance to complete the run. But all dungeons are still doable.

And one last thing I’d say Glass Cannon is a bad idea as you risk get downed pretty often. Party has to be balanced so it can take some punch and yet survive. But most of all coordination is a MUST !

Hey Robert, I just wanted to share some follow up feed back. I was one of the first few to post here and was a little worried on this patch. Let me tell you what I found.

I have no issue still pugging Arah and still don’t have issues with Lupi. I always enjoy that fight. Thanks

Sorrow’s Embrace is a nicer for path 1 that now allows an average group to get through the beginning with some challenge as appose to only a excellent group of good players who are well prepared. Also you may want to fix the typo on the dungeon entrance WP once you enter in instance. It has to many rrrrrrrr’s in Sorrrow’s

CoF is a nice dungeon but I only have a couple of concerns with it since the update. In path 3 the end boss can be a challenge with the knock backs. If you make it out of the lava but still have 1 toe in it you will take sooo much dps you cant be rez’d. Kind of annoying to lay their for 10 mins for the group to finish him off. Not even a chance of rez from being downed in 1 hit/knockback. If we could spawn dead on the bridge or something after dying in the lava or something that would be more fair. Although with the right group who is use to him he’s not the worst thing out there. As for the end room on path 2 with the new assassins, I would guess this room would be next to impossible with out 3 heavy’s and hopefully at least one is a guardian. We had some trouble and had to re-balance.

CoE is suppose to be a hard dungeon and it’s fine imo with the new patch. It was getting boring we ran it so much but now we have to be a little more on our toes. We also cant have more then 1 inexperienced person in the party. The front door now pretty much requires at least 1 ranger or 2 people very good at standing on a pebble at the edge of the lava with out touching the shield. Again I do think lava deaths in dungeons are no longer fair since it’s impossible under any circumstance to get the person up again when they take 7500 dps to their dead body

AC I haven’t done yet but I know a lot of AC groups are having trouble on Kholer and people now insist on skipping him. He seems very OP since he downs lvl 80’s who used up their endurance in one pull. I usually run a War and cant stand fighting him on my Ele. I would also rather skip him if i’m going to be downed on my ele that fast or be the only one standing due to the WP combat issue here.

Oh and please nerf the hell out of Caudecus’s Manor explorable or make it a much higher (like 75-80) dungeon. Why is such a low lvl dungeon such a pain in the kitten.

To address my other concern we do now have to be careful of who we bring in a party and now have to form dungeon parties in private chats to avoid getting to many in experienced lvl 80’s even for low lvl dungeons. If we want something that anyone can do we do some low lvl fractals with them.

Thanks though for all your hard work. I really enjoy gw2 dungeons over the ones in gw1!
you’re all amazing!

So today i did lvl Fractals Lvl 20 and got a daily chest after Solid Ocean. A few hours later (same day) I did Lvl 10 and after defeating Jade Maw there was no chest.. Wasn’t there suppose to be a daily chest at each tier??

ALSO VERY IMPORTANT

Can we have the option to Rez a dead player first over a dead NPC they are dead on top of. . . . . This can be very stressful and aggravating under the new system in dungeons

Hi,

I know you must hear alot about Arah Path 4, specifically Simins. But I would like to share my opinion of the patch. The sparks do seem to be fairly good with following, though I have never done the path nor the fight before myself. But Simins seems to bug at 50% health and the window to push her past that once you unstealth her doesn’t seem to activate. She just kept going back into stealth even with only taking 15 seconds to get her back down to 45% health. This made our 1.5 hour fight with Simins a complete waste and took away my entire afternoon trying to kill her to get my final dungeon path done for Dungeon master. Will make another attempt tomorrow with the hopes that we can finish the fight.

ok, subject Alpha is now impossible even when stacking. This whole waypoint restriction thing is more a cruel joke than helpful or balancing at all

Waypoint fixing: I’m fine with it, I’ve had no trouble with any dungeon in that respect. everyone pulls their weightand supports others or the party caves. Good work there.

My only suggestion thus far: Fix Arah p4

Also don’t touch Lupicus, Lupicus is absolutely fine.

Fernaz, high priestess of Lyssa should be a tad more dangerous, its a curb stomp battle.

Melandru should be a more active fight,but that may be a bit hard to pull off.

Simin, High Priestess of Dwayna needs serious fixing, sparks are fine, its her healing and hiding mechanic, Her hiding after 10 seconds of setting all five sparks after getting her down a respectable amount is just a kick in the face.

The bloodstone shard needs to be fixed so that it doesn’t become invincible,thus invalidating the whole dungeon attempt.

I don’t mind the idea of eliminating rez-rushing but I think the multi step approach to it is what is causing some issues. In certain dungeons TA, SE where there are limited waypoints it gets to be a frustrating run back to the fight after death. I know this is being fixed but I think it should have been done at the same time.

The bigger issue I have is that there is an increased importance on ressing while nothing was done to allow it better/easier/faster. Someone else mentioned the limited use of res skills which mostly work from a downed state only. Ressing in combat takes 3 times longer than out of combat. And most times, an enemy will continue to target a player that is downed or will retarget to the ressing player.

I actually said during a recent guild run that I wasn’t going to res any more during the run because the only time I would die is if I tried to res someone. Too often I ended up getting downed from adjacent AoE or an attack while trying to res a downed person. I was better off letting that person die and continuing to DPS. I don’t think that’s the intent of the patch nor of the game’s design.

Hopefully once phases 2, 3, 4 etc of this are implimented it will sort itself out but in the mean time there will be much frustration.

It’d be a nice incentive to greatly reward a team for completing their first run ever of any dungeon.

The more difficult dungeons for the average team of players is a long difficult process. It should be greatly reward for their 1st, 2nd, 3rd run through – though tapering off to the normal return rates as they continue to complete it.

Those first few runs are far greater in difficulty as a team/player learns the dungeon. It should be rewarded accordingly.

I would love to see the stats on how hard the number of people running dungeons tanked after this update. I know that my guild has been widely MIA this week. I understand what you’re going for, and I suspect that “Phase 2” will help a lot, but the multi-step implementation may be a poor choice if it damages dungeon running as a whole.

Also, for the LOVE OF GOD, CHANGE THE RES AGGRO PRIORITY. Seriously, there’s nothing more frustrating than getting insta-killed by a boss who HAD been ignoring you, just because you tried to help a teammate.

Why not let dungeons be as they were, so that casual players could go there and have some fun with their guildmates etc, and then have a hard mode, with more difficulty and better rewards for players who seek challenge.

Nothing in this update is solo friendly your still forcing people to group. my opinions can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Solo-Dungeon-option-end-forced-grouping

It’s been a week, what is going on? Not even a single quick fix update so far to temporarily change things until phase 2.

Ten pages of this thread later and still no comment from the staff, not even a: “We have read the posts in this thread so far and acknowledge your frustration that many of you have expressed and we are looking into ways that will balance dungeons that will make them an enjoyable experience for everyone. And we are planning on implementing these changes soon, either during or before phase 2”.

Which by the way makes me wonder when phase 2 is supposed to come out. I hope that it comes out very soon (no, NOT in several weeks, that is not very soon, more like early to mid next week or something).

I want to do dungeons often again with numerous characters, but I’m not going in there when a single mistake can cause the run to be demoralizing to want to continue or incite anxiety in the fact that one may simply be kicked out if they make another mistake or if they are just having a case of bad luck.

I’ve done most dungeons, the main exception is Arah and I only started to get my toes wet with CoE before the 1/28 update. But I know I can’t just go in there now with the characters I used to use in dungeons (guard, war, nec, sometimes my ele), not with the current status of the dungeons.

I’m not asking you guys to change everything back, I’m just asking that a quick fix patch/update be implemented very soon so that we can all start doing dungeons again on a regular basis, or pump out Phase 2 a lot faster and give your customers a time table of when your product will be delivered.

At least just do something, do not leave us in the dark during these trying times.

Avatar of Indra.6908:

It’s been a week, what is going on? Not even a single quick fix update so far to temporarily change things until phase 2.

Ten pages of this thread later and still no comment from the staff, not even a: “We have read the posts in this thread so far and acknowledge your frustration that many of you have expressed and we are looking into ways that will balance dungeons that will make them an enjoyable experience for everyone. And we are planning on implementing these changes soon, either during or before phase 2”.

I actually prefer silence over an empty political response

Robert Hrouda.1327:

The boss and monster re-designs/improvements are something we have wanted to do since launch, and we want to include the community in the process. There’s room to improve, and we want to make things better. We are looking at each dungeon individually and doing what we can to make things more interactive and entertaining while staying true to our promise that dungeons will be tougher content that requires coordination.

Do not nerf Simin!

My guild just tried to do CM explorable #2 Find the Seraphs. We died so many times that two of our players lost all hope and we decided after 2 hrs to give it up. It was very disheartening because usually we work very well as a team, we rez each other if we are able and we rez-rush when we can’t, we still felt that it was a team effort to get back into the fight asap.

Soraya.9165:

I’m not an experienced dungeon runner by any means – I haven’t run any one path more than three times and haven’t run most of the explorables either – but to me this sounds…painful. And quite bad unless dungeons are changed to accomodate it. A lot of the dungeon runs I’ve done are with people who aren’t very experienced at all, or who have only run as much as I have. None of us are pros, and yes, it shows in our boss battles. They’re painful, and more often than not four out of five of us end up running back from whatever far away waypoint we have because it just takes too long to rez someone when they’re fallen. That time means the boss gets free shots at us, and again, more often than not, we end up dead right next to them and having to run back ourselves. It’s especially bad when three die at once and then we’re 2vsBoss and relying on them getting back fast enough to not lose the aggro.
I understand that the pro-dungeoners or even the players who love a huge challenge see this as at least another challenge, and something new to test their skills, but for a lot of us not-so-experienced it will make dungeons hell/impossible for us to get through without hours upon hours of torture. They’re fun as they are right now and challenging to me at least, and I feel this waypoint-only-when-party-has-lost-aggro-or-is-all-dead can backfire quite badly unless adjustments are made for it, to support those who don’t have time to run dungeons constantly/just wish to run them for fun.

This is how I feel about it as well.. I’d only add this… I don’t feel it adds to the teamwork aspect.. especially considering certain dungeons/paths already had issues.
Example: any area with infinitely respawning mobs that keep the mobs at a level meant to entertain 5.. if 1 goes down and cannot rez-rush then the party effectively loses 2 (while someone tries to rez the downed one for just as long, or longer, as it might take them to rez-rush). I mean if a party could afford to be at 60% power then the dungeons should be built for a party of 4, thus making a party of 5 able to do complete too easily to be a challenge. I’m no super-dungeon runner. Granted I spend way too much of my spare time playing as it is.. just ask my orphans. Granted the dungeon we tried Caudeucus Exp Seraph Path might have been doable if we could have gotten a fifth.. but after an hour trying to find a group.. constantly fighting the chat anti-spam and posting on the 3rd party GW2LFG.com to find a final party member for over an hour……Maybe it’s just scaling that needs consideration . I mean it is not as if the game doesn’t know the stats of the PCs. Could it not do the math and be able to scale the Mobs to a CR formula to match the PCs+NPCs capabilities.. and if teamwork is so ever bloody important can’t an NPC help with the rezzing once in a while? the CR formula could still make it difficult etc, but at least then it could scale it to the party size.. then those poor antisocial folks who have trouble filling a group could at least get a shot at the experience… Not all people are suited to dredging up a PUG.. and when you have a group of 4, dredging up that lat member can be more daunting than the dungeon… even if you aren’t a picky elitist (I’m not, I’m a casual gamer who has no problem working with/triaining up some who’s learning)

Oh, and there’s a difference in between hard and ‘requires reflexes of Flash, and a Masters in Hardcore Gaming, and a $2k system with an internet connection of < 30ms latency’

Just for the record – I don’t mind learning mechanics or hard fights.

So based on the following quotes:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I PUG dungeons quite frequently, and I often saw people not helping downed players, and not even trying to res people….

People really didn’t have to learn boss mechanics or communicate with each other to figure things out.

I am not saying that res-rushing was not a problem.

Some bosses – Lupicus being an example – have a habit of camping a person downed and causing the player to die anyways inevitably wiping other players trying to help (even if you aggro the enemy away – the red circles will get ya). That is why people were not helping downed players or they were in a spot that would get other players killed.

Yes, chances are you do not know the mechanic of the fight, but you still receive the death penalty without a chance of player redemption unless the group wipes and you all try again.

The new person trying to learn the dungeon suddenly gets booted from the group because they kept dying too fast for that fight, and the group finds someone with more experience. That is disheartening for the new players who want to learn the dungeons. (This can happen in really any MMO – just providing a scenario)

A question somewhat related to your class mastery comment:

What do you think about gear in dungeons?

Granted – everyone realizes the higher the tier, the better. So exotic / ascended is great.

However, there is a separation now where people are requesting Berserker geared people to take out Simin. If someone is a master of using Knight or more of a tanky build (less dps) – they now are missing out. I know some people are thinking to switch to Berserker gear just because they don’t see a point for the others. Next thing you know – everyone will be rolling a berserker geared warrior for everything.

Possibly developed that way because people don’t understand the mechanic of Simin? I am not sure but it shouldn’t be that way.

I’m just glad they finally gave you someone to help with all those changes ya’ll need to do. With the big priority on “open world” improvements I began to doubt there’d be any more dungeon updates for several months at least.

Dear Robert..

No, you should have implemented BOTH first. While we rarely used res rushing as an option, I don’t feel you should have implemented it until you had implemented both changes first. I am sorry, but putting out half a fix that punishes and does not resolve balance issues is just making people angry. No amount of spin doctoring can improve that. BALANCE is important and right now the balance system is so out of whack it is ridiculous. Making dungeons fun and doable should be your FIRST priority. Adding more misery should be your second. From what I have seen the Magg update, the lack of consideration for areas where a fallen player takes 100X the damage they are able to heal, the thought of revamping things so that the entire fight doesn’t contain a floor filled with circles that one shot most characters may have been a step in the right direction when it comes to alleviating the need to Res-rushing.

As I said before it really feels like you aren’t looking at the bigger picture. If people are res-rushing there is probably a balance issue that YOUR team need to address. Please step aside from your thought that everything is easy and it is all up to the players and that everything should be solved by making it harder. I do agree that Rez rushing needed to end. I also believe that it was up to you as the designer to be a good designer and implement both phases simultaneously. There is no amount of excuses you can give that will make this justifiable. You needed to be the one to step aside and think of WHY everyone is. Maybe drop the damage or take a look at the areas that were being rez rushed to redesign them. Instead you added a bunch of things to make it harder including that GOD awful Magg update, without checking balance. Not everyone is a damage build and maybe you should start looking to play in groups that aren’t all guardians. I implore you to really look at the reason people were rez rushing. Hint its not just because we are all lazy or want easy mode.

*Dungeons take longer now with new down scaling
*Rewards are still the same

• Getting Agony Res. takes too long, or costs too much (ectos)
• Trash mobs take even longer now

Won’t be playing dungeons/FoTM until rewards/time are improved.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

res-rushing is wack city

any word on the new hard fractal cap, besides considering the jade-maw bypass an exploit? is there a reason it’s gotta be hard-capped at 50+ with exponential / unavoidable agony?

why not restrict us from even choosing 50+, so that those who aren’t aware of this don’t waste their time?

=/

Res rushing meant that players didn’t need to be coordinating with each other or have character/class mastery – they could just throw themselves at content until they eventually completed it, incurring armor repair costs and having a negative experience as a result.

Just an FYI, having to put in a little repair costs at the end of a dungeon does kind of suck, but it usually only accounts for less than 10% of my rewards for the run, so it doesn’t really bother me. What does bother me is when a given encounter causes my party to wipe several times in a row, perhaps even preventing us from completing the dungeon entirely. That is a “negative gameplay experience.” So until you fix the situations that cause party wipes on a fairly regular basis, “fixing” rez-rushing doesn’t help anyone outside the ANet offices, so don’t pretend that it was for our sakes that you did it.

Oh, and also, speaking as a Refuge Thief who never minds rezzing a downed player, even I know what a huge waste of time it is to rez a completely defeated player in most cases. All you’re like to do is get both of you killed when the boss turns his attention your way.

Even in Fractals, which have always have the “rez-rush controls” in place, rezzing defeated players is a fairly rare thing, only done in certain encounters where the game doesn’t punish you for it and having that player up is more valuable than having a hole in the team. If you want players to rez defeated players during dungeons then you need to figure out a way to make it easier to accomplish, like making it as fast as rezzing a downed player. Also no more enemies that stack AoE DoTs on downed players.

i’m personally surprised at the complaints against the new resurrection mechanic…

i think everyone that is against it should keep in mind that they shouldn’t be getting downed/killed in the first place.

everything is avoidable in this game except for jade maw’s phase change agony.

and to be honest, the excuse of “i’m not perfect” or “i’m just a casual player” (what does that mean, exactly, anyways?) isn’t really an excuse.

i think that if most people just researched a boss/enemy/encounter that they had trouble with— or died on a lot— and just practiced their timing a little bit, there would hardly be any complaints about this.

i’m talking like 10 – 15 minutes of research, and then 10 – 15 min of practicing the timing of dodging / reflecting / distortion / etc.

in my opinion, even the most casual of casual gamers should be able to dedicate a half an hour towards learning how to deal with difficult parts of a dungeon….

I mean, won’t it take you longer than that (and involve a lot of frustration) if you skip research / practice and simply die or go downed a lot?

I can understand not wanting to spend hours on a dungeon— But I can’t understand not taking a few minutes to research and practice things that are usually not as difficult as they seem….

edit: i’m mostly talking about non-arah dungeons, since virtually every arah path is painfully long regardless of skill level. the pain is simply extended further if you wipe during the run

I am going into a huge detailed dungeon experience and my POV on them but in explorable mode, since i did all the story modes at release, for now the only dungeon i never bothered doing explorable mode would be CM. Overall I got to say meele classes feel very unfavorable in a lot of dungeons and are forced to go ranged way too much to avoid combat gimmicks.
First things first.
Boons vs Defiant
Pretty much why every group want guardians or suports, boons >>>>>>> conditions such as weakness or cripple or vulnerability. Defiant is a nice mechanic and promote smart use of crowd control but the effect it takes on conditions pretty much puts classes such as necromancers in disavantage and promotes stacking direct damage classes + suport classes in almost every dungeon ever, and imo makes no sense with how much handcap it puts in conditions, while boons, which are effects that can last more than conditions since they are not affected by defiant, really shine with protection and regen effects,. This would be the first thing that I would review if you are trying a dungeon system revamp. Not nerfing boons but reducing the tow defiant is taking on conditions, which would be a nice way to also promote meele targets on the boss and more variable builds in setup in the dungeon play.

Pets are way too weak, dumb and useless in Dungeon environment
This pretty much kills a lot of builds and make people avoid some classes/builds for a dungeon setup, Minionmancers are basicaly useless in a dungeon environment and rangers pets will stay dead for most of the time, ah I was almost forgetting that pets can also harm some boss mechanics and causing more harm than help(I can think on lupicus for example). I think one thing I like involving pets is the direction World of Warcraft took to solve their problems regarding pets in dungeons/raid environment by giving them 90% reduced aoe/cleave effect damages. It’s at least an idea to help pet classes/builds and since Guild Wars 2(at least Guild Wars 1 was doing it) can separate things in PvE/PvP content it wouldn’t harm PvP if this design was introduced for PvE only. Ah I was also forgetting one thing, why aren’t pets and minions affected by the player agony resistance????

Now for the dungeons and fractals

Ascalon Catacombs
The 3 paths are fairly easy, I think Kholer could use a reduction in the number of evades he can do, it’s hard meeling him and it takes quite some time to kill him at ranged, excessive evading on bosses tend to be a very annoying mechanic in my opinion and force to have perma cripple on him to avoid him reaching you, the hook + spin is fine imo and it’s easy to avoid. Affecting all paths there would be graveling scavengers and their bugged launch attack that can damage you even if you weren’t hit by it, I think ascalonian rangers are a little bit overtuned in comparison to the other ascalonian ghosts, I think those are the only things I would change or focus at AC atm.

Twilight Arbor
Some adds are way too overtuned(those dudes with the hammer for example, tough they can be killed if pulled one by one) , first boss(wurm boss) adds puddles might be doing too much damage for the quantity of puddles that can be spread across the room, the path in which the last boss spawn some turrets can also be annoying for meeles and force meele classes to sit there waiting or ranged attacking while classes like rangers or other far ranged classes do all the work, imo it’s not a fun design. TA could also use more waypoints to be honest.

Sorrow’s Embrace
I think path 1 plays really nice, path 2 is a pain to do and feels very very long, one thing that I’d like to add and that also affect the Underground Facility Fractal and everything else to be honest is that Dredges are way, way too overtuned in the category of what they have for them, they got lot’s of boon, self heal, a considerable amount of ranged damage, feels tough to kill and swarm a lot. I think they are the most high tier ranked enemy in the game in my opinion followed by Risens Ilusionists, mages and hunters in Arah. Path 3 also feels nice.

Citadel of Flame
All 3 paths are fairly easy, specially with the changes, p3 became a nice path to do, but almost everybody just want p1 due to how fast it can be cleared ignoring the DR effects. Maybe giving the bridge boss better loot reward and making it kinda obligatory fighting him to access the Crea’s add event would make p1 feels fair in comparison to other paths.

Honor of the Waves
Path 1 seems like a nice path, imo it’s one of those perfect ideas where bosses feels fun and varied and it doesn’t feel hard or long, Path 2 and Path 3 in other hand feel way too long, and I mean, waaaay to long. The two twin bosses fight in the bridge have way too much hp. The boss with the two quaggan pets also feel way too long. Last bosses of those two paths is basically an underwater ranged kite fest, that also, feels too long.

Crucible of Eternity
Oh boy, this is actually one of my favorites and one of the most fun too. Alpha was nerfed(I agree he has too much health points). All paths are fun except for p3. With the Dungeon WP ress Alpha fight can be very frustrating on p3 due to the 3 ground spikes spell. It’s way too much things to dodge since people have to dodge already the ice spell in the ground. The guy that is “tanking” Alpha will go down, no matter what because it’s almost impossible to handle that much pressure and imo it’s not a fun design, people shouldn’t go down if they know what they’re doing just because the game limits them in how much they can do with their endurance bar, I’d probably increase the cooldown on the 3 earth spikes spell on p3. P3 ended up being a dungeon path that was really harmed by the new waypoint change(I agree with the need for the change tough, people were ignoring mechanics on almost everything) There are also two skippable bosses that people never do because their loot isn’t worth the while, that would be the destroyer crab boss on p3, and the champion wolf in the beginning.

Arah
Oh boy, I so freaking hate this dungeon. I had to run this dungeon a gazillion times to finish my necromancer’s entire arah armor. This dungeon feels long(either by map design and time take to clear all paths, p3 takes around 30-40 mins with a good group and is the shortest one lol), it feels like punishment doing it. Adds are way, way too overtuned(Risen Ilusionists, mages and hunters say hello). Some groups wipe just kill 1-2 adds from a pack, the damage from adds is just insane. Lupicus fight is soo not newbie friendly and some groups get killed at it, I have no problem with him beside the fact that he has too much health points, damage and armor reduction, the rest of the fight end up being just a kite fest. phase 1 can bug and give lupicus at least 1-2 stacks of grub during his phase 2 beginning because some grubs decided to spawn. Phase 2 is actually a nice design but if someone go down during phase 2 he is basically a gonner if the group ran out of res utility skills due to puddles + random projectile, and phase 3 is the kite fest i talked about. I usually kite him during p3 90% of the time on my warrior, and man, it sure is boring. But enough about Lupicus, let’s talk about the boss everyone loves to hate, Risen Priest of Dwayna. The sparks changes were really nice and I actually like the design idea of this fight. What kills it tough is the short window you have to dps her before she starts healing. I think her self healing during stealth should be reduced by a significant margin instead of increasing the window time players have to kill her, it wouldn’t harm the encounter mechanic and it would promote group play by making people collecting the sparks without feeling frustrated by it, also it wouldn’t force everyone to bring their full exotic zerker characters and pray they can kill her in time.

Ok that’s enough for the dungeons, let’s go for the fractals

Fractal of the Mysts
I actually love fotm, I think it was the best dungeon idea ever introduced in a mmorpg and it helps people to learn how to play their class better, setup utility/traits for different situations and to work together doing combo fields. that being said let’s focus each individual fractal:

Volcanic Fractal
One that everyone hates, I think the grawls on the first pulls do a little excessive damage and crowd control, but it’s maneagable. Last boss can be a pain depending of group setup, guardians and thieves make the fire shaman encounter 200% easier with their walls, but if you don’t have them in your group, well get ready to dodge a lot, but eventually people go down and end up dying from the pressure. I think the spawned grubs do a lot of damage tough, it woudn’t be a problem but there are too many of them.

Last part of my post.

Uncategorized Fractal Guide
The beginning of this map on lvl 20+ is a pain, harpies do a lot of damage and people end up bugging and dying during the fall, it wouldn’t be a problem but they tend to mass aggro players that get overwhelmed by how much damage they take by needless attacking harpies, also a way to exit combat during the beginning would be nice to help with the pressure, again another part where guardians and thieves with walls shine. The room with the 4 bosses is boring and feel way too long, they have too much health.

Aquatic Ruins Fractal Guide
I like this map, feels short and is a nice underwater map.

Cliffside Fractal Guide
This map feels a bit long, the hammer cultist bosses have way too much health points. The veteran and normal cultists do a little of excessive damage. The fractal design is really fun and smart tough, props to you Anet.

Snowblind Fractal Guide
A short but annoyning fractals. Svanirs on the beginning offer too much pressure. The elemental boss has way too much knockdown/stun effects. Last boss has way too much health poiYOUR WEAKNESS MAKES ME LAUGH! DRAGON WILL DEVOUR YOU!YOUR WEAKNESS MAKES ME LAUGH! DRAGON WILL DEVOUR YOU!—nts.

Solid Ocean Fractal Guide
Nothing to say about this one, I actually like everything about this one. Nice boss design by the way Anet!

Swampland Fractal Guide
I also like this one, it promotes good team coordination. I don’t like bloomhunger tough, some of his abilities offer too little time for dodge reaction some times and if you get hit you will probably end up downed. Mossman is kinda bugged with the culling system I think, sometimes he hits you in stealth and pop up later after the hit.

Underground Facility Fractal Guide
The longest fractal map ever, and also one of the most rewarding, most of my points about this map can be find in the Sorrows Embrace part when I talk about the dredges and also the part where it feels very long. Boss mechanics are interesting tough. This dungeon is easier with stealth kits but I don’t think it was what Anet designed for this. The bomb part is a pain without a thief in the party to give Shadows Refuge and end up giving free wipes sometimes.

Urban Battlegrounds Fractal Guide
Being a GW1 player for more than 7 years this one is my favorite fractal. I like the design, I think adds give a little of excessive damage and the last boss meteor shower is very annoyning because we can’t see the full area it’s hitting(it also happens on pvp too)
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Well this is my giant wall of text telling what i think on the dungeons, all points focus my PoV after the redesign too. Ty for your time, and sorry there is no TLDR version otherwise that the waypoint zerg removal was a nice thing. Sorry but I had to separate it in 3 posts.

Boons vs Defiant
Pretty much why every group want guardians or suports, boons >>>>>>> conditions such as weakness or cripple or vulnerability. Defiant is a nice mechanic and promote smart use of crowd control but the effect it takes on conditions pretty much puts classes such as necromancers in disavantage and promotes stacking direct damage classes + suport classes in almost every dungeon ever, and imo makes no sense with how much handcap it puts in conditions, while boons, which are effects that can last more than conditions since they are not affected by defiant, really shine with protection and regen effects,. This would be the first thing that I would review if you are trying a dungeon system revamp. Not nerfing boons but reducing the tow defiant is taking on conditions, which would be a nice way to also promote meele targets on the boss and more variable builds in setup in the dungeon play.

/second. As a player that loves the idea of condition damage, it REALLY needs help. They absolutely have to figure out something, even just a temorary patch on the issue until they think of something better, that A. provides a worthwhile benefit to players applying additional stacks after 25 bleeds or more than thirty seconds of poison/burn have already been applied. The answer I love is for stacks of bleed/poison/burn added after reaching these levels would instead deal a fraction of their total damage as direct damage, such that a 10dps 10s bleed would deal maybe 30-50 direct damage instead. And B. They need to deal damage to objects better, maybe treat Condition stat as if it were Power stat when dealing with an object immune to conditions.

I really don’t get it! So many threads about people crying “this is too hard/difficult” and stuff like that…
I am by no means a pro-gamer! I’m actually lvl5 at fractals and have probably done a total of 6-7 explorable runs in total.

Though I definitely agree that a lot of fights are lacking in variety! That is really a problem…

Anyway, talking about difficulty and challenge:
Yeah, I’m dying from time to time, sometimes more often, sometimes less, not just in dungeons/fractals… But in general that just happens because I am not taking care that much about what I’m doing than I should do! And the reason for that is actually that 90 percent of the PvE content is soo kitten easy, that I fall in kind of a hole of “just push the buttons and you are going to win” instead of learning more and more, getting better in what I am doing!

I never raided in MMOs and I like to relaxe from time to time, but I think the whole PvE content should be more challenging and difficult.

Talking about dungeons, those should be so kitten hard that you can really be proud of yourself if you finished one of them, every single time. That doesn’t even mean that they necessarily have to be long, but they should be kitten hard, no matter how often you go in there! The bosses should bring a variety in each fight, that you most of the time can’t use that one routine over and over again with that you finished the dungeon once. You should have to improvise to some degree every time, keeping the fight interesting, for as many runs as possible.
It should be so kitten hard that nobody or 1% of the playerbase will ever see the end of the dungeons by themselves or just through videos.

Just to clarify: kitten hard shouldn’t mean “boss will one-shot you”! There are many others ways to make a fight really hard without just letting the boss hit you hard with every attack!
And the rewards should be implemented in a way that you get something out of it, no matter if you fail or if you are going to see the end of the dungeon. It should be worth for everyone to some degree. Sure, someone that finishes the dungeon should get a (little bit) more out of it, but in general just to be one of those that have beaten a dungeon/boss, that should be the main reward!

If dungeons would be like that, I’m quite certain that I would never ever finish one of those, though I’m still hoping for that kind of content, because when I think about games like “Dark Souls”, it was so kitten frustrating to fail over and over in specific situations, but when the day came, no physical reward (loot) could have made me more happy than the fact that I’ve finally beaten the boss!

As long as the dungeons doesn’t bring stuff that you HAVE TO have, this should be the way THAT content should work!

Talking about dungeons, those should be so kitten hard that you can really be proud of yourself if you finished one of them, every single time.

No, that’s silly. Dungeons are such an integral part of endgame that no players should be excluded from them because they are not “hardcore”. If the developers want to have ONE path out of the three that is their vanity project, and just punishes players relentlessly for not divining the exact tactics the developers intended to be able to survive the dungeon, then that’s fine, but at bare minimum one of the dungeon paths should be relatively straightforward so that players that have no interest in a “hardcore” challenge and just want to get dungeon tokens for fancy gear can do so without the frustration of wiping several times in the same encounter.

I know you guys were against the whole “trinity” class system, but it would definately help the dungeon experience. It’s hard to strategize boss fights when theres no set tank or healer. A couple of big hits and your down. My suggestion would be to implement a sort pick-up and go role system using the in game environmental weapons. You already have plenty of DPS, so you only really need two. A sword/shield set and a healers staff set. These of course coming with thier own set of skills designed for thier role. The tank set (sword/shield) would have skills that increase agro and reduce incoming damage. While the healer set, well would heal party members and perhaps provide bonuses to rezzing. Ideally the sets could be picked up and drop as needed, so if your tank takes a dive another member can pick it up and continue the fight!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I tend to let the discussion threads drive themselves, so that we here at Anet can watch them and what the players say without directly influencing what goes on in here. We do read this thread though, and I actively browse it when I get moments to do as such.

One of the things I’d like to address is the question of “Why would you do only half the update?” implying that phase 1 and phase 2 should have been rolled out together and made into one huge update some time further down the line.
The main reason is because res-rushing was a problem to the entertainment and longevity of dungeons, and was never an intended mechanic for players to be able to do. Our explorable dungeons were billed from the start to be harder content that required teamwork and would test your character prowess. Res rushing meant that players didn’t need to be coordinating with each other or have character/class mastery – they could just throw themselves at content until they eventually completed it, incurring armor repair costs and having a negative experience as a result.
I PUG dungeons quite frequently, and I often saw people not helping downed players, and not even trying to res people. They would just die and run back while the rest of the team held Agro, and this would cycle between players until the boss finally died.
People really didn’t have to learn boss mechanics or communicate with each other to figure things out. That was the inherent problem with res rushing and why it had to be removed.
Res rushing had to be resolved. Dungeons can be completed without res rushing, so we know the content isn’t impossible. It’s hard, and we’re watching carefully to identify places that may still be unfair. Anti res-rushing was going to be an update no matter what, independent of any other actions we wanted to do with dungeons. It only became a “Phase 1” when we decided we wanted to tell players about upcoming boss changes to dungeons, which we are calling “Phase 2.”

The boss and monster re-designs/improvements are something we have wanted to do since launch, and we want to include the community in the process. There’s room to improve, and we want to make things better. We are looking at each dungeon individually and doing what we can to make things more interactive and entertaining while staying true to our promise that dungeons will be tougher content that requires coordination.

So essentially, you intentionally destroyed the one thing about Guild Wars 2 that kept the majority of casual players coming back.
This was not a good move. Your intentions may have been good, but you’ve ruined dungeons.
I have several characters that I’ve level from 35 to 80 pugging dungeons. I’m not the best player in the world, but we still managed to get them done.
Since the update I havn’t completed a single !#$()*!#$)(!@#$) Dungeon. So thank you. *YOU may have felt the dungeons needed to be fixed, but it doesn’t appear that the player base has the same opinion. I certainly don’t. You’ve RUINED the dungeons.
Change Them Back.
Or give me a !@#$ing refund.

Well after a horrendous run thru TA the other night (first time since the changes) let’s just say we won’t be doing that any more till phase 2. Between the lack of being able to use a waypoint, the general inability for others to rez you (takes too long and seems to always put a giant bullseye on you), scaling changes that makes fighting trash mobs take twice as long as before with greater risk of death for no added rewards, and changes to the worms that makes them nearly impossible to fight (not a single square inch of safe ground to stand upon now that they spit twice as much as before, even around corners and thru terrain; oh, and that also cannot be reflected despite clearly being projectiles), there is absolutely no fun or enjoyment to be had. 2-3x the time and effort for absolutely zero extra reward. How is that considered an acceptable design choice?

I understand where you’re trying to go, but where you decided to make a pitstop along the way is a very poor choice. My friends and I will be sitting dungeons out until the final changes are made, because the current state is unacceptable.

Honestly, I’m pretty exasperated that dungeon runs were tossed as a monthly requirement after the patch. I feel a bit that Anet knew that not everyone would be happy with the change and are trying to dangle a carrot in front of our faces to try the dungeons out — except I am feeling like I am being slapped with a stick, because going through the dungeons with a PUG now is a gamble I am likely to lose and very not fun.

I didn’t want to do dungeons until the next patch came in, but I had to try for monthlies. So! I tried AC story last night with a guildmate and three strangers. I think only two of us were at level 80 and I was an Elementalist. I put on a lot of my defensive utilities, made sure I had Glyph of Renewal (which is really useless, given the casting time, and at a certain range it just doesn’t WORK), generally skirted around aggro to heal and revive allies, and did my best to dodge, block, run from, and kite damage while throwing my lava fonts and AoE. We wiped maybe four times before someone quit, and then we managed to get half a stage through before someone else quit, and by then we’d all unhappily wasted almost an hour of our lives.

The thing is, I generally consider myself a decent player, and while I am somewhat a fool at dodging most of the time, I HAVE also completed AC enough times to get more than a thousand tokens in it. This means I know the dungeon pretty well and can usually finish a path dying no more than once or twice. There’s often only four of us in our guild online at a time, and we had loads of fun wrangling with AC with just the four — sometimes three — of us. Now it’s just lol. I can’t fathom how much harder something like CM and TA would be now with the riflemen and poison harassing you.

The result of all of this effort is that now I am even more unhappy about the dungeons. I WANT the monthly — this is the first time I am even getting the monthly because the culling and lag in WvW just meant I NEVER DID IT — but the dungeons have become pretty hard unless I go with my set guildmates. I’m on Oceanic time — where before I could maybe find a couple of PUGs for half the dungeons in my evenings, now no one’s doing dungeon PUGs anymore. I tried in Plains, I sat around in LA, and then I sat around in overflow. Nada, it was just crickets.

I feel that if reviving allies were easier, or if the enemies didn’t regen to full health, it wouldn’t be as annoying as the other night had been. But healing has always been a pain since forever, the glyph of renewal didn’t work as advertised, and every time we wiped even adds that were nearly dead would regain health to full. There’s also the ingrained AI of many bosses to wail on a dying ally as part of their aggro train. I feel that these should have been looked at first before the patch came on, and again before people even decided that dungeons should be put in monthlies.

(A guildmate also used my account while I was doing something else in the same room, and she did AC with our other guildmates. They took I think two hours to finish that one path of AC and all she got for it were blues from the chest. Can we maybe improve what we get from dungeon chests, too? It’s not actually rewarding at all as it stands, especially now. At least when I do dragons it doesn’t take the entirety of my free time between getting home from work and going to bed, so getting blues is more acceptable.)

GW2 dungeon boss fights needs some real tank builds that do no DPS and enrage timers on all bosses. That should be the first stage to make them more interesting.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I tend to let the discussion threads drive themselves, so that we here at Anet can watch them and what the players say without directly influencing what goes on in here. We do read this thread though, and I actively browse it when I get moments to do as such.

One of the things I’d like to address is the question of “Why would you do only half the update?” implying that phase 1 and phase 2 should have been rolled out together and made into one huge update some time further down the line.
The main reason is because res-rushing was a problem to the entertainment and longevity of dungeons, and was never an intended mechanic for players to be able to do. Our explorable dungeons were billed from the start to be harder content that required teamwork and would test your character prowess. Res rushing meant that players didn’t need to be coordinating with each other or have character/class mastery – they could just throw themselves at content until they eventually completed it, incurring armor repair costs and having a negative experience as a result.
I PUG dungeons quite frequently, and I often saw people not helping downed players, and not even trying to res people. They would just die and run back while the rest of the team held Agro, and this would cycle between players until the boss finally died.
People really didn’t have to learn boss mechanics or communicate with each other to figure things out. That was the inherent problem with res rushing and why it had to be removed.
Res rushing had to be resolved. Dungeons can be completed without res rushing, so we know the content isn’t impossible. It’s hard, and we’re watching carefully to identify places that may still be unfair. Anti res-rushing was going to be an update no matter what, independent of any other actions we wanted to do with dungeons. It only became a “Phase 1” when we decided we wanted to tell players about upcoming boss changes to dungeons, which we are calling “Phase 2.”

The boss and monster re-designs/improvements are something we have wanted to do since launch, and we want to include the community in the process. There’s room to improve, and we want to make things better. We are looking at each dungeon individually and doing what we can to make things more interactive and entertaining while staying true to our promise that dungeons will be tougher content that requires coordination.

So basically what you’re saying is that rather than look at your options, you just took away the option you originally gave us, and said, well, lets just pull waypoints and inject class dependency back into the game.

How about some sort of waypoint penalty for waypoint rezzing just in dungeons which adds to the death penalty (which can be removed by rezzing other players) and / or adding a set number of respawns, a “waypoint respawn counter” that limits the number of times you can respawn via waypoints per minute or something like that? If you’ve used up all your respawns in a short amount of time, you have to sit there until someone can rez you. if everyone has used it up, then its back to the behavior that’s in place right now unless someone’s timer rolls over and their waypoint counter increments and they can come back and rez people…

Things to think about, but give the option to waypoint, and give the ability back to the player.

back before I had multiple sets of armor I would often waypoint back to the repair station then back into battle when armor became cracked, and—not that I’ve done a ton of dungeons—but I played with groups that mostly rezzed… now that there is no WP, that option is gone, and I (like many I know) just plain REFUSE to do a dungeon (even complete my personal story on one of my alts) until there are waypoints back in the game.

if you care about your game here, if you care about your players

listen to them.

Find some other way to get us to play the dungeons the way you want us to play it but GIVE US the options / flexibility of not having to totally depend on random people 100% of the time. One of the things that made this game great was the removal of the hard dependencies of class and team throughout the game, and you turned it into something organic that ended up being very team oriented.

I think you can coerce people into organic natural play styles (like you’ve done everywhere else) without forcing them into structured dependency roles, which is what you’ve done here.

Just wanted to post about some faults with the no waypoint travel whilst a party member is in combat.
There are probably other dungeons in which this applies but I’m going to talk about CoF, p3 (I think it was p3).
1st scenario is the part where you have to run up a narrow tunnel that is filled with flame legion things that explode and kill you instantly. Good challenge, but if there is someone who has completed it and they are being targetted by the cannons at the end of the tunnel while the other 4 people are still trying to do the challenge, they cannot do it because if they die the person at the end is in combat. This is just annoying and long winded.

The 2nd scenario is the end boss; Tribune Burntclaw. I understand the thinking behind healing your team mates rather than everyone rushing to a waypoint during combat. But this boss knocks you into lava where you have little chance of getting out due to the amount of damage you take. And if you manage to get close enough to the side where sopmeone can rez you, you can’t be rezzed because the lava damage outweighs the healing.
No matter how careful you are, at least one person is likely to get knocked into the lava at some point and that person or people cannot heal, be rezzed or waypoint. In unluckier occasions, you can get his health really low (which takes forever as he keeps going invulnarbale) and 3 or 4 people are knocked into the lava. One person is left and there is nothing to do except wipe and start over.
If the no waypointing in combat does not get changed, specific mechanics need to be added in certain dungeons in order to aid teams in situations like these.

Man, nobody liked my idea about pick up and go classes…. was hoping for at least some feed back.