Guild Wars 2

Eight months ago, on the 21st of November in the year 2012 it was announced in a news post by Chris Whiteside that Anet was “Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.”

Have any significant changes happened to any dungeon other than Ascalonian Catacombs?

Is the revamping still in the works?
Have the changes been scraped or delayed due to the split response to the AC changes?

There are a lot of changes announced in the most recent news post by Colin Johanson. Is the revamp coming after some of these changes due to balancing of more stats from the Ascended armor and weapons?

Just curious about the satus of the remaining dungeons.

Yeah, apart from AC like you said, I’ve only seen small things (that cliff in CoF 1 for example) being changed, nothing significant. I think that Colin’s recent post that you linked is going to be the next major revamp reward wise.

Dungeon mechanics wise? Maybe that come along with the upcoming completion awards. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

There’s not a dungeon team anymore and the outcry from AC probably discouraged and future updates. That’s what it seems like, at least.

In all honesty, the AC fix did not fix anything. You can still skip mobs and still exploit bosses. On top of that, the new bossfights have scripts breaking faster than you can say glitch. To round it off, the critter balance now is such that only the most hardened of players can take their level 35 character through this mess.

If we are honest, AC should be a very easy dungeon tutorializing the idea of coordinated PvE team play. That there is more to this game than 100 players standing next to the right leg of the Shatterer. Something deep in the AC shimmers through, but ended up totally overgrown. There are the graveling burrows where you have to coordinate a split, there are the burrows where you need to move in a train.

AC looks to me as if too many designers and too many teams tried to “outfix” each other, while none of them really ‘got’ what the itch of playing dungeons in a team is all about. It is a good thing the same is not happening to the other dungeons right now. maybe someday there will be a coherent design idea of how to use dungeons to introduce coordinated PvE to the game instead of what we have now. Some of the Fractals have proven that it can be done. Maybe in 2015.

Dungeons aren’t the meta in Gw2 sadly they are what I find most enjoyable apart from a sick run in tPvP and it’s because people respong to things in a negative way the Anet team scraps all possible work because people don’t enjoy change when they want something.

I guess the outcry against the AC changes really was that bad after all. Curious though how we were told to just wait 3 months and we would see that the changes were the best thing since sliced internets. Well now here it is and we have not a whole lot of anything really…

So dungeons are pretty much done for now then I guess.

I am curious to see the how the new dungeon reward system plays out.

I doubt we will ever see any changes.
Speaking of changes that likely wont happen this whole Champion Loot and Dungeon Change likely wont ever happen for MONTHS. Even if they push someting out, Anet will mess something up, and people will still find a way to abuse the hell out of Something and farm gold just like we all do in COF P1. And this thought makes me sad, Anet Should be better than this, but they say things months go by and they release something sub-par.

Living World is cool and all, but they need to gut it, and add Good Perma content, not Good Temp content like they been doing. I know they are adding some perma mini-games in….Who cares, they are mini games, I want real content. Better Dungeons ( like they said they were gonna do ) MORE Dungeons, Not Fractals, not everyone like fractals. Now if Fractals gave rewards like dungeons do now, then maybe more people would do them.

Ok I think I got off topic. But ya, Anet wont ever makes the changes they said they would. And I’d Love for a Anet Dev to tell me I am wrong, then Ill giggle inside as months go by and Nothing happens.

Well Colin mentioned that
“Some of the dungeons that we may not think are as exciting? We may just blow them up entirely and come up with something else from the ashes. New mechanics, new new bosses, new rewards. Polish-wise, some of our dungeons are much closer to where we’ll like them to be and maybe, you’ll see smaller changes and smaller upgrades.”

The interview were this was said was posted less than an hour ago over here

He talks about a lot of stuff but that dungeon part is relevant to this thread.

Xar.6185:

Well Colin mentioned that
“Some of the dungeons that we may not think are as exciting? We may just blow them up entirely and come up with something else from the ashes. New mechanics, new new bosses, new rewards. Polish-wise, some of our dungeons are much closer to where we’ll like them to be and maybe, you’ll see smaller changes and smaller upgrades.”

The interview were this was said was posted less than an hour ago over here

He talks about a lot of stuff but that dungeon part is relevant to this thread.

No Offense to Colin, but Ill believe it when I see it. Which sadly I doubt I will, I hope I am wrong and that Anet blows me away with awesomeness.

I remember them fixing minor things for other dungeons too, such as those annoying flowers in TA that were changed to be less frustrating.

I like some of the changes to AC, but I think the dungeon still encourages skipping, and is unbalanced. It is way too hard for an early dungeon, and there are no alternatives to learn how to do these dungeons. This is the dungeon, along with CM, that encourages players to not do any more dungeons.

I also think Kholer is way too strong for a sub-boss, which is another reason people skip him. He’s far more dangerous than most of the end bosses in any of the paths. He has interesting mechanics though, but sadly this is combined with an instant-kill mechanic (which are all over this game) and poorly telegraphed moves. It makes for either an impossible fight with insane armor repairs, or an extremely easy fight. Either way it’s bad, and the rewards are not worth it.

I really hope we’ll see improvements to the other dungeons at some point. I wouldn’t mind if they completely redid some of the most annoying ones, like HotW (boring and takes too long), CM (grindy and annoying), SB (a mere shadow of how good this dungeon was in GW1), CoE (also annoying), CoF (too easy to speed run), TA (annoying and linear). And don’t get me started on Arah.

Xar.6185:

Well Colin mentioned that
“Some of the dungeons that we may not think are as exciting? We may just blow them up entirely and come up with something else from the ashes. New mechanics, new new bosses, new rewards. Polish-wise, some of our dungeons are much closer to where we’ll like them to be and maybe, you’ll see smaller changes and smaller upgrades.”

The interview were this was said was posted less than an hour ago over here

He talks about a lot of stuff but that dungeon part is relevant to this thread.

I hope “not exciting” is Marketing Babble for “utterly bad”, because excitement is the last thing revamped dungeons need.

I’m glad they removed the “holy trinity” as it used to exist, but it did come with a nasty consequence. If the holy trinity disappears, you can’t think of battles in terms of mitigating/eating damage or healing your way to recovery afterwards. What you’re left with is “damage, do lots of damage”. It’s the only pillar in the trinity that remains. This is why the meta for high end content clearing has shifted so much to zerker builds.

This also means that once you move into pure zerker territory, the desire to engage with mobs that provide no reward, at all (no loot, no exp) is drastically reduced because the effort per individual is higher than it is in a game with a trinity. Keeping up that level of effort with no reward over an entire dungeon run just isn’t what most people want to mess with.

The very end result is gameplay where the goal is to zerk dps down bosses while avoiding as much trash as possible through exploits/map glitches/stealth abilities/portal abilities etc. Exactly what we have, where most of the “learn the dungeon” is really learning how to avoid fighting trash and when to dodge.

Pugs and people that play for fun may decide to forego the optimal and play defensive builds (AH Guardian etc.) so they feel like a more active participant in mechanics, but as the ‘elite’ farmers will point out and several AH to Zerker converts have realized, it isn’t making your run more efficient, only more tolerant of mistakes.

Gamers flock to efficiency. Always. If you introduce the most mind numbingly boring task like “bang head against wall” that offers more gold/loot/experience per hour than the most fun and exciting activity ever, they’ll migrate to banging heads against wall. Not all, some overcome that ingrained instinct that constantly alerts us to lost time or inefficiency, but most will not. When a game forces you to play with others to enjoy that content, your love for fun at the cost of being inefficient is effectively moving you out of the larger community and into a subset.

What can they do to improve the situation without reintroducing a trinity? Every class has utility/support/defensive abilities. Reward their use equally to that of DPS. It will introduce a duality, where support + dps are required, but as every class can spec for either it shouldn’t be an issue. Add suitable rewards to trash mobs. Loot should drop at something between a veteran and open world champion per mob killed. If that’s “too much loot”, then reduce the trash mobs. Throwing in 100 distractions into a dungeon isn’t any better than 20 if everyone just finds way to skip 80 of them anyway. Even better, you’ll be less aware you’re gaming/gimmicking a system than you are now.

The best part about normalizing the need for utility/dps, is that every action you take is engaging. Those situational abilities and traits can suddenly become valuable. A mixture of gear can suddenly become valuable.

The best part about reducing the quantity of trash mobs and introducing loot to those that remain? Less learning curve for new players. You just learn to fight the packs, not have to memorize where to hug a wall and where to jump through a collision gap.

Another benefit to these changes is that they do not require total overhauls, only tweaks. Adding loot and removing monsters is grunt work, but no new systems are required. Changing up the abilities that a boss uses is more difficult, but still requires no new systems.

As a note, the way you introduce the benefit of support abilities without requiring a holy trinity is to tone down on the mega spike hits that force dodges, way down in fact. It’s fine for them to hit you hard enough to wince, but many of them are either insta-kills or death sentences. Binary success/failure. You’ve either won, or lost. There is no “become better over time at dodging thus relying less on support” because you either win every dodge or lose one and lose. Think of it like a motorcycle game where you jump across a canyon. You either make it across and win, or you don’t and you lose. You can’t win 70% and try to work to improve that to 75%. Change that game to have a series of jumps across plateaus in that canyon, providing better bonuses the fewer mid canyon jumps you need, and now you have people that can make it across in one jump being rewarded most while new players and less skilled can still get across with less rewards.

With dungeon bosses, by making so that you can’t eat every hit, but with proper support can eat many and get through slowly, you allow groups to improve efficiency in steps. It also increases the value of support skills as a nice side effect because mitigating and recovering from these hurtful but survivable abilities becomes a valuable tool to have in your belt.

On the other end, you also then force a player to take some hits. You have less potent but more frequent attacks. This makes it so the very peak of skill does not completely remove the utility of support.

shrug

Well all dungeons which have mobs that drop down and spawn when you approach the area are bugged atm. All those drop down mobs are already spawned. Quite amusing in TA up path and arah.

I liked fighting Kohler a lot better when he wasn’t constantly respawning Adds like elite Necros and Rangers who do even more damage than he does.

Worst change they could have made.

ilr.9675:

I liked fighting Kohler a lot better when he wasn’t constantly respawning Adds like elite Necros and Rangers who do even more damage than he does.

Worst change they could have made.

They have very little health and die easily to cleave or AoE.