Guild Wars 2

I have heard that TA and CM are “on the list” of dungeons to be re-worked.

My question is this though, What would you rather have? New scenery with new bosses and lore or Old scenery with the same lore and re-worked bosses?

I’m on the fence about this because on one hand. Most of the dungeons are STALE and nearly every boss comes down to banish/wall of reflection/dps/and the odd dodge. The exception is lupus of course. A new dungeon will freshen things up, but I’m still going to need to run the current dungeons too.

That said FotM was introduced in November (correct me if it was December) and it has been almost 6 months since we saw some real new content to dive into.

I will say this though, the current AC is lackluster at best. Buggy bosses tied with trash with a gorillion knockdowns and CC is not fun, its just irritating. Keeping stability up 100% is a chore that shouldn’t be a requirement to make it acceptable. Maybe a larger QA or beta test sample could be made? (ahem test realm ahem). I know Rob and Will worked hard on re-working AC but maybe they missed the target a little.

Personal opinions aside, I’d like to see what you guys think. Maybe post the bottom 3 dungeons that you run daily too that you think need improving. Best case scenario we get a new dungeon, then a re-worked one, rinse and repeat.

P.S. Just speculation but i’m really hoping the team didn’t flop out on the opportunity to add a new dredge/flame legion dungeon with the final part of flame and frost.

I believe it was Colin Johanson who said that Anet wants to focus on reworking existing content. If they add too much new content, the playerbase will be spread out to too many different areas, and you’re left with even more stale areas.

My personal opinion is that it’s a good idea because we play the current dungeons enough that our feedback is way more valuable now, doing the current dungeons regularly, than it was when we were just getting our feet wet. As much as I would like a change of scenery, I think the primary dungeon mechanics are more important, so we have to start with something we’re very familiar with — the current dungeons. If we can manage to find a decent balance between the rewards, the play experience, and the dungeon mechanics with the current dungeons, then it will probably be much easier for the dungeon team to implement newer dungeons by using a template from what they have learned.

One of the dungeons that I think is in serious need of a revamp is HotW because the boss fights in that dungeon are an extreme example of tank and spank. You will probably spend 5 minutes or more on each boss in there, seeing the exact same attack rotation, almost falling asleep from it. The only thing actually difficult about the bosses are their absurd amount of HP.

Lupicus should be one, if not the only, inspiration for some future boss designs. Even with all the particle effects, you can learn his tells because of his massive size. He has transitioning phases, with each phase granting him a pool of abilities that he uses randomly, for the most part. This is the only boss where I took the time to learn every single tell and how to counter his attacks to the best of my abilities. Of course, a boss like Lupi would be very punishing for the lower level dungeons, but I think having one as interesting as him would bring some life into those dungeons, and hopefully, the clear tells will help newer dungeon runners realize that they can anticipate deadly attacks.

If you think about it, a new dungeon is pretty much a re-skin of relatively the same experience, so why not enhance the core experience? You’re 5 players navigating through a container to find the carrot on a stick. We will eventually get the carrot, but it’s the journey that I think we want to remember most.

New dungeons are severely needed right now. Almost every dungeon runner I have played with (and there are 100s on my friend list) has left the game. Used to fill the screen with names online and now there’s 5-10. That’s a problem. When I do see them log on it’s ‘to do dailies’ and there is zero interest in running old, stale, dungeons that were never that well designed to begin with.

If you go back and try to ‘fix’ dungeons, you will get the same result as AC… Failure. People will go the first week or two, realize there’s nothing truly exciting with old content. Making it more annoying certainly does not help the case.

Lupi is good don’t touch him.

Focus should be on developing new, cutting edge, dungeons that are fresh and exciting with completely new mob types and more interesting boss fights (AC is not more interesting now. It’s more annoying. Again, bad design.).

Put at least SIX new dungeons in the game as well as about a DOZEN new fractals. Then, we can talk about how things are starting to shape up. Until then, PvE is suffering.

This focus on prohibiting players from using many abilities on bosses and overloading content with stuns, knockbacks, cripples, etc., is simply bad design. Good design is dynamically changing boss mechanics that allow for players to have full capability with their skills and does not require spam CC or over-zealous hit points to ‘beef it up’.

I prefer them focusing on revamping current dungeons. I don’t know, but they could have 2 seperate teams? A team for revamping current dungeons, and another team for creating new content?

Ultimately, I’m for dungeon revision, but only if it’s accomplishing things and not revising for revision’s sake.

The content honestly does need to be remade so that it doesn’t favor direct damage so much and exploration into control/support builds can really open up. In that same vein, the Defiant mechanic seriously needs to be reconsidered as it’s basically shoved the entire control facet of combat and character building to the wayside.

They also need to fix the broken base, and get the entire pool of dungeon runners sharing a common experience when they run a dungeon. Tethers, jumping puzzles instead of trash mobs, more scripted encounters – it really doesn’t matter what happens so long as everybody ends up on the same page at the end.

Also, I’d like to see the open world scavanger hunt for legendary weapons to be introduced before dungeon changes are implemented. Honestly there’s some false sustainability in the format that’s going to evaporate into thin air, and I think the dungeon reward system should be calibrated to feel rewarding and have re-playability on it’s own terms and not because it’s bearing the brunt of acquiring legendaries.

I think that most dungeons need a serious rework before anything new is released.

AC is probably the only dungeon in good shape right now. Moderate HP pools, interesting events and bosses, some guaranteed silver drops here and there, …
Path 3 is probably a bit lackluster, since both events are about destroying burrows and Grast´s behaviour is pretty incosistent (from what I’ve read), but path 1 and 2 are close to perfection. I would love however to see the troll receiving some changes.

COF 1 needs some kind of change ASAP and HoTW needs a deep and serious rework more than any other dungeon, probably followed by SE and Arah.

SE Path 1 is even in worst shape than HoTW. The first event is OK, but after that is about killing a champion that seems to do many things but is far from dangerous, running forward, using LOS with golems in order to split them, and luring a final boss wich is somewhat like a subject alpha with an insane HP pool.
Path 2 is extremely long and boring, filled with annoying champions with high HP pools.
Path 3 is on par with most other dungeons (OK, but most events/bosses should get a rework).

Arah can be almost reduced to Lupicus (which is the best bossfight in the game btw).
The usual path 3 PUG run consists on: fight 4 risen veterans (just because the gate is closed), exploit boss 1, skip, exploit boss 2, run orbs, carefully avoid every single enemy but the 2 berserkers on the door before lupicus, fight lupicus, skip, fight final boss (which is a joke).
There’s no reason for placing so much enemies if they are going to be avoided. Trash number should be seriously decreased and replaced by events and/or small packs including a champion with some kind of loot (like in AC). Terrain exploits should be obviously fixed.

Once every dungeon is fine (free of exploits and “cheesing tactics”, free of most of the useless trash that is going be to be skipped and tank&spank champions , and with similar reward/time ratios), then it would be possible to work on difficulty levels, which is something that a lot of people is asking for.

I’m divided on this. For certain I want more dungeons to run, because I just love the team-based play that dungeon offers. Certainly that there are rewards at the end that are better than most activities makes it nice too. I’ve run all paths (DM title) and the only challenge it seems is getting the right team to do runs. Get a bad team and we might take a llooong time to finish, otherwise its smooth.

But I also agree that content currently in existence needs polish. Still many people running dungeons make use of exploits. It just kills the excitement when the party resorts to such methods. Some fights also seem stale. But make no mistake in thinking I’m simply advocating just to notch up difficulty. Come on, not everyone is as skilled as the best players and just because some find things easy is no reason to ask for ruining other ppls fun by making it very hard. Make content interesting =/= make it hard.

As always I’m curious on one aspect. Speed run/skipping mobs. I dont consider running past some mobs an exploit. (i think knowing when to fight and when not to is an application of strategy). I do prefer killing mobs when possible though, its just for certainty not to be plagued by them if we have to go thru an area again. But should content really be gated so as to deny skipping at all, and what would likely be the result of that given that the playerbase at large do speed runs?

Top 3 dungeons that need re-working.

1. HotW 1
2. HotW 2
3. HotW 3

Boom.

But should content really be gated so as to deny skipping at all, and what would likely be the result of that given that the playerbase at large do speed runs?

Ideally, revisions to the spaces between boss encounters would be less about ‘stopping people from skipping’, and more about ‘improving something that’s obviously not going over too well’. Less gates, more jumping puzzles/environment obstacles/scripted encounters/ minibosses /etc.

And I imagine there would probably be much bewailing, but that’s true for every change, and to some degree it’s just the natural state of an official forum.

I suspect it’s a lot easier to rework old dungeons than it is to create a whole new one. For starters, the old weapons and armour skins remain relevant. The voice acting and story (as weak as it is) don’t need to be redone and the environment and mobs remain the same. That cuts out a lot of the people needed for a new dungeon.

A lot of the changes made to AC were tweaks (like the Troll) and others completely changed the encounter (the Ghost Eater). Honestly I feel like AC is one of the least polished dungeons as a result. The burrow problems aren’t as bad as they once were but they still suck (not to mention condition builds still struggle to meet the efficiency of power builds or elementalist nukes). It might just be a graphical glitch but the graveling behaviour has them invulnerable for a period of time when they are above the ground but with no indicator of them being underground (and the short cooldown on their burrow skill makes them frustrating to fight even with a reduced health pool). The Rumblus encounter is too reliant on the NPC ally fulfilling its role and I personally hate the mechanics used for Ghost Eater (even if you ignored the bugs of him getting stuck, traps not triggering etc). I didn’t play a class to use an environmental weapon to dragon mobs onto a trap to kill a boss, once you get the foreign mechanic (syncing the guns) right, it turns into a tedious repetition of that and then is reduced to a DPS race like everything else.

I personally think they missed the mark on the AC changes and the dungeon is worse off because of it. There is a high risk low reward of changing old dungeons that were already popular. I can understand removing exploits or adjusting the balance of encounters, but remaking so many of the fights and making radical adjustments to the dungeon can end up pushing away the crowd that used to enjoy this content and all that work might not end up attracting a new crowd. It baffles me that AC of all dungeons was the one they reworked, it was one of the most popular dungeons to run and it was never on the level of CoF path 1 (the inability to turn tokens into ecto may have been a big part of this, admittedly Kholer is harder than anything in CoF path 1).

Having said all that, I would be slightly surprised and certainly disappoint if Flame and Frost doesn’t culminate in the introduction of a new dungeon. Braham has new armour and unique weapons. Rox has a new quiver. It seems like the obvious thing to do when adding new content to introduce a new set of rewards at the end of it. The most re-playability is offered by a dungeon (especially when you’re not adding a new zone to the game like Southsun Cove) and everything seems set to head into some mining caves to take on the big bad evil. Story mode can be the final chapter of Braham and Rox’s journeys and the explorable modes could be further expanding the relevance of the Molten Alliance.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Ideally, revisions to the spaces between boss encounters would be less about ‘stopping people from skipping’, and more about ‘improving something that’s obviously not going over too well’. Less gates, more jumping puzzles/environment obstacles/scripted encounters/ minibosses /etc.

Which will mostly result in more “LF1M mesmer” posts for portal or thieves for stealth.

Not entirely sure how Stealth helps you out with any of those?

But, I get your point with Portal on Jumping Puzzles. You know, technically, you could demand bringing a Mesmer to handle all your laser grid woes in COE. But how often do you actually see that happening in your standard pug?

In case it wasn’t clear, I’m not calling for an abundance of one thing to be replaced with the abundance of another (ex: all instances of trash mobs become jumping puzzles). I’m in support of a wider variety of things that brings us closer to a common shared dungeon experience.