Dungeons 6 months from now?
to be fair, many will have started new character’s, so i dont see this as an issue TBH.
Anet have always had exciting expansions and new content to offer. Could see a dozen new dungeons by then or different/better rewards or even harder difficulty, etc.
With the amount and type of play my friends and I do, I suspect we won’t all have finished all the dungeons yet 6 months from now, almost certainly not all the explorable mode paths (we’ve generally been playing a bit over 3 weeks now, and just managed our first dungeon, with nobody over level 41). We are coming from an MMO, now sadly shutting down, which is 8 years old, and I just went on an equivalent of a dungeon there with someone who had never seen it before. So I think with the wide range of players and alts out there, they will still be getting done.
I think enough people will probably still be trying to grind out gear. I’m not entirely sure people will want to repeatedly farm 1000 tokens for all their alts, though. More incentives may be required, or perhaps old dungeons retuned as new dungeons are released.
To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time
To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time
Certainly hope this is the case. At the current state all exploration mode can be learned/completed within a week, with ~3 hours a day. That isn’t a lot of PvE content for a game of this caliber.
If you are expecting this to last for months to come there has to be another objective besides just a completion. Horde mode/timed runs?
To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time
Certainly hope this is the case. At the current state all exploration mode can be learned/completed within a week, with ~3 hours a day.
The problem is , theres no reason to complete them.
Also they aren’t fun, so that’s 2 problems.
^
A report that dungeons won’t be the same six months from now is the best news I’ve heard since release.
Since i’m level 80 (over a month) all i’ve been doing is dungeons. Got evertyhing (but MF set from CoE) i wanted from all the dungeons so now all i do is get random weapons with tokens and mystic forge them… So if there’s some1 who REALLY want new reward from dungeons is meeeeeeeee.
To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time
Dungeons are incredible, having so much fun doing them but we do need some really hard stuff, that requires Guilds and Time(days perhaps), i miss the guild calandars in WoW. the planning and time it took to complete dungeon content. made you feel good as a guild.
Also they aren’t fun, so that’s 2 problems.
A subjective opinion. One your entitled to of course but not one that serves to benefit anybody or anything.
I hooooooope they change things.
But at the moment it seems like a lot of talk and no results!
I fear GW2 will die long before we see any new content to bring back the players.
I hope you are looking into changing a lot of the boss fights. Right now there’s very few that are fun to repeat.
Alpha is fun, but since he’s in all 3 paths it’s a little overkill.
Lt. Kohler in AC is fun, but everyone tries to skip him.
Too many “wave” events, or “everyone do this at the same time” which boils down to “Who do we blame when we’re at 4/5 and can’t go any further”. Events and bosses need to promote teamwork, not each person “solo’ing” within a dungeon.
Paths were promoted as being vastly different experiences, and while a few of them are. Places like AC, the bosses are pretty much the exact same. CoE alpha is pretty much the same in all 3.
A lot of your underwater stuff is great, but man the boss fights in Honor of the Tides underwater are booooring.
What if would have been awesome, is if you gave each boss around 10 abilities. Take the 3 end bosses in AC for example. Instead of 3 paths, they’re all now in the first path. Each time you do the 1st path it could be 1 of 3 “types” of boss. But that would take more time to create, it’s just a little disappointing to do a “new” path, only to fight the same bosses just with 1 different ability that really doesn’t change a whole lot.
They are fun in a sense that no run is really the same and they are fairly dynamic with a ton of paths to learn and play through.
They are not fun due to:
-some of the mechanics involved that are unavoidable or unfair or favor certain playstyles/professions
-the fact that trash is sometimes more difficult than bosses
-the last boss in a dungeon isn’t always the hardest or most challenging
-some mobs/bosses have lame mechanics that have a high chance to OHKO you even if you are skilled/diligent
-several paths basically require a certain group makeup or at least make things way way more doable with certain boons and skills
-everything is usually complete chaos especially in pugs where people just zerg stuff (they need a better balance between controlled chaos and the new trinity)
-in premade groups gimmicks are often used to skip content or “cheese” through more tedious/difficult encounters probably because playing them the right way isn’t really that fun in the first place
-some mobs/bosses just take way too long to kill and aren’t interesting/difficult…there are some bosses where you can literally stand there and autoattack but it takes literally 5 minutes before you kill it and you’re left wondering why did they even bother making this boss take so long to kill when you can just autoattack it to death WHATS THE POINT?
@Robert Hrouda;“To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time”
i swear if the dungeons are not pug friendly in 6 months, i will delete the game,,i have yet to find a good guild, they all have the same “i done it already” attitude or “we dont farm that dungeon”,,, i do my best to avoid guild invites now
that said, Trash need better drop’s, trap doors, need to be dropped when trash spawn so people cant avoid it and do FAST FARM’s, there not fun and GL finding groups who wont skip trash…AC explorable:Howler King, need to fix the fire timing down the stairs or make the NPC “invulnerable” for the stairs(the 1’s that lead to the burrows), cus he dies every TIME, and it’s an annoying revive…
some of the pull in+KD+stuck last to long for some proffesion’s and they just get insta killed cus they cant do anything(expecially when K.D)(as a mesmer, staff skill 2=escape, so we got an advantage), and there no balance about them TBH.
some bosses=almost the same as a WvW gate but no “siege” weapons to speed up the DPS, and when u see a hit damage foe 12,375 healh and it barely moves the HP, u just say to yourself “for a game that over makes the point about a balance game, theres nothing balanced about there bosses”(same thing in most gw1 content)
I don’t think the dungeons are not “pug friendly”, I have puged almost every single dungeon and more then 1 path in each and barely had any problems with any of them. I mean once you know the mechanism a dungeon/boss has in most cases its way to easy.
As long as dungeon bosses keep require individual player skill only for the most parts and not much team work the dungeons are pug friendly.
S P E L L B O R N —~--Necro —~--Sylvari lvl 80
I Kira I —~--Ele —~--Sylvari lvl 80
I routinely PUG explorable dungeon paths in the game, and often take a back seat to someone else who is the leader (I don’t rep my ArenaNet tags so I can remain hidden) to get a better sense to what the meta is, and so that I can play the game from the true perspective of a PUG. I don’t always complete the paths with bugs, but I’d say 70% of my PUG groups finish dungeons.
We have a lot of work to do on our bosses and reward systems. We’re actively working on them right now by playing through with our Live characters here at the office, and sifting through feedback.
Why talk about dungeons six months from now when I cannot even get a PUG to do story mode for dungeons? It seems there are folks who want to do explore, but few want to do story mode, esp. the later dungeons like HotW, CoF, CoE and Arah.
Want to know what is not fun? Spamming for LFG on Lion’s Arch and the maps for people to want to run story mode dungeons. for hours on end. I can’t even see the content for dungeons because nobody wants to run story mode.
I’m sure this will get worse as time wears on. There probably needs to be incentives for folks to want to re-run story mode, else the pool will shrink even more.
Which is frankly a shame, because the times when I’ve run dungeons — mostly PUGs — are when I’ve had some of the most fun in the game.
Few things devs should consider:
- Difficulty normalization: each dungeon should have appropriate overall difficulty, comparatively, scaled to their recommended level to enter.
- Rewards need to be rewarded. There should be a long term incentive to run dungeons even after a player gathered enough tokens. For example, tokens should be tradeable, exchangeable, or have more uses.
- Mechanics should be fun and challenging, not tedious an infuriating. Mobs (normal and boss included) shouldn’t have unnatural amount of HP. Encounters shouldn’t be done most effectively by meta-gaming (such as requiring one person kite and inevitably die, then the next person rinse and repeat).
- Important bugs need to be fixed ASAP. Why are some graveling burrows in AC are still a kitten to land a successful hit?
Dear Robert,
As usual we have a playerbase that wants hard content and another that wants normal difficulty.
You resolved this very well in GW1 by splitting difficulties, hope to see the same here at some point.
So here is the question: Do you plan on adding harder modes?
I’ve heard Arenanet say a few times that dungeons are intended to be difficult, and require planning and coordination to complete. I’m in favor of this, but I don’t think it should apply to story mode.
PaperD also has a good point that players need more incentive to help others with story modes that they themselves have already completed. Whether that incentive is dungeon tokens, influence, or even an achievement for helping others with their story mode dungeons and personal story quests, it needs to be something that gets players who have completed them to help those who haven’t, without becoming all about the loot.
Sorrow’s Furnace Commander
“You’re the mount, karka’s ride you instead, and thus they die happy!”-Colin Johanson
This is our intent.
Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
I am not sure how changing the EM will work that much. I would love either more dungeons or more paths though.
Also updating the armor sets to provide set bonus particle effects. For instance a poster talked how he wanted if you had ALL AC armor look you should glow at night just like the weapons. I went a one up and said it should transform you into a ghostly version of your race while it is night. That would make armor unique like weapons (AC weps glowing for instance). I would definitely run EM again to get a full set to see the dungeon specific effects (HoTW freezing you/Arah making you drip poison and rot etc).
@William
TBH you got some of those swapped. To me TA final boss is 10X more memorable than the nightmare tree (on any path) or any boss on UP path. It just has more mechanics and things “going on” than the EM counterpart.
This is a personal experience but speaking purely from a scripted scene TA SM Final boss has multiple abilities going on at once, players have to watch themselves from melee/range/ AND have to focus targets while being kept alive. The rez tosses a nice change of pace as it is a DPS race to stop her. This has everything from EM tied up into one intense fight with “hero” characters gone “evil”.
The tree from UP path? Spawns turrets nobody cares about. I melee it and don’t even bother with them. Healing turrets? Please. Basic DPS him and avoid AoE/watch for hit cues (slamming fist into the ground for instance).
F/Up – The adds are a nice change of pace and add some group play. But it always goes down to – chill in tunnel – DPS adds – DPS boss. That is the entire fight.
F/F – Only did this once, but it was basically kite adds and DPS boss. Nothing hugely special.
As you can see SM combines: Adds/kiting/DPS racing the rezzer into one fight which is everything the tree is, but in EM it is usually split up sadly.
This is our intent.
Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
I am sorry to say this but you failed with Explorable mode. I ve done almost every of them and I found them to be just easy and usually not even challenging. I am doing Arah daily with even random bad players almost with no problem and the worst thing is … Dungeons like CoF, AC, TA explorable can be done with closed eyes. Yes this is how easy they are, thats why you see everyone having these armors almost immidiately.
Ive been explorable dungeons with randoms that never done any dungeons before, even story mode and we facerolled it, no progression ever needed except lupicus and maybe one or two bosses … so tell me what is hard about your explorable mode? Nothing
I am sorry to say this but you failed with Explorable mode. I ve done almost every of them and I found them to be just easy and usually not even challenging.
I wouldn’t go THAT far. Yes they have easy paths and the difficulty curve is like a Bi-Polar roller coaster for some dungeons, just look at the amount of people that “beat” Magg encounter the “correct” way and those that use 2/3 strat.
2/3 Strat isn’t really beating it as it is bashing your head into the wall hoping to get to the other side. Sure you can make it, but it isn’t a good solution.
This is our intent.
Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
I think the story modes seem to be about right, but Explorable should be far harder, although some boss events in some dungeons feel appropriately difficult, some are able to be beaten too easily through bugs but would otherwise be ok… and some are just plain too weak. HoTW has some bosses that just take FOREVER to kill yet dont really do anything that makes them challenging, just tons and tons of hp.
Trash on the whole feels about right though imo, maybe some mobs a little harder here and there but most are just fine, its really boss events that will need some Tuning…
Also it would be nice to see ‘elite’ dungeons like there was in GW1, for an extra tier of difficulty sometime in the future (would love a new Underworld)
I am sorry to say this but you failed with Explorable mode. I ve done almost every of them and I found them to be just easy and usually not even challenging.
I wouldn’t go THAT far. Yes they have easy paths and the difficulty curve is like a Bi-Polar roller coaster for some dungeons, just look at the amount of people that “beat” Magg encounter the “correct” way and those that use 2/3 strat.
2/3 Strat isn’t really beating it as it is bashing your head into the wall hoping to get to the other side. Sure you can make it, but it isn’t a good solution.
Thing is … completed dungeons is still completed dungeon no matter how you manage to do that. When that path was possible to just skip or exploitable everyone was just doing it, they got no bans for it, that is just lame …
THERE shouldnt exist any way to skip it or do it somehow tricky like 2/3 or even Lupicus pulling to waypoint, really .. ?
This is just prove how poorly dungeons are done/finished, not enought tested and how Guild Wars 2 was released too soon. I am talking about bugs, exploits, skipping bosses … etc… ASPECT. How its possible that there are so many unfinished things in dungeons? You need really a lot of work to do to fix this. Its feels like beta version tbh.
(edited by Dogblaster.6713)
This is our intent.
Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Hands down dungeons are the worst exp I have had in any mmo in past 20 years, I have raided in EQ1, EQ2 and WOW. I have done massive battles in Eve Online.
After 46 levels I still have no clue how to play this game and that’s not due to my lack of ability this game makes no sense and pretty much expects the player to have psychic powers. which skills should I buy ? how do they work… MMO generally award set skills based on class and level.
Then its up to the player to figure out the tactics needed to succeed at that class
This game pretty fills a hat with random skills for that class and lets the player randomly chose with no clue what they do or how they work.
I will say this is a far cry from lineage 2 days of giving a player the same skill over and over every 10 levels and just adding a roman numeral. but I believe the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
So in ending this I see dudgeons as another tease like lineage 2 was with the point system something only a hardcore player with no life will engage in. I have always hated that aspect of every ncsoft game Aion had the same problem with the points system too.
Lets be clear Raiding in EQ,EQ2, WOW wasn’t easy but it wasn’t impossible ether.
As for the tokens what are they i havent goten one yet cause i have no elite friends to teach me how to play ROFL
@Bluskyone
Just to be clear, this is not intended to put you down in anyway, simply just my reaction and suggestions to what you wrote.
I disagree with dungeons in GW2 being a bad experience, they can be very hard, but with practice and learning how to respond to the enemies and events in the dungeons you can defeat any dungeon, with almost any group, if you have coordination.
Your second point about skills and how to play the game, again, no disrespect to you, but Im going to say that it is not your ability to play that’s the problem, rather your ability to learn and experiment. GW2 isn’t a game that just gives you everything on a platter nor is it set in stone, you’re meant to play around with traits, skills and weapons and create a build that works for your play style. So my suggestion here is to read what the skills do, try them out on an enemy in pve, or a test golem in the mists, or even research them online. There are many sites that have builds as well as build creators, however I believe the best way is to test each skill and trait out yourself, it may take some time, but its a learning experience that will help you play so much better and really hone your professions abilities for every situation. This is the same for knowing which tactics to use in different situations, again experiment with skills and tactics to see how they work to counter enemy skills.
To your last point, dungeons are not for hardcore players only, perhaps some of the explorable modes are very difficult and could need an easier mode as others have suggested, though they are still doable with practice. However story modes, and most explorable dungeons are able to be done by both PUGS and organized groups. It can be very frustrating to accomplish these dungeons sometimes, but once you learn the tactics it gets easier, having a decent group helps as well.
So just research and experiment with skills, traits and weapons in order to make a build that works for your play style, and don’t be afraid to adapt to situations, GW2 rewards you for doing so.
(edited by Moderator)
Firstly I would like to say how refreshing it is to know someone from Arenanet is regulary exploring Dungeons, +1.
I could write a lot for you of my opinions but I think most of them have been said. However I do see people commenting about difficulty here, something I feel strongly about so I will limit what I say to that.
Player skill is not dependent upon level, if you play long enough you will eventually reach level 80 even if your skill at playing makes anything over a level 70 area too hard for you. I do think that Dungeons should be scalable with a minimum level, for example AC from 35-80. However please remember that some level 80s are not as good as others. I suggest scalable but include “Normal” and “Hard” modes.
Server: Gunnars Hold [EU]
Honestly, I can’t get myself to run them much now. I begrudgingly do them once in awhile because my new alt is going to need exotic gear.
My suggestion to improve explorable mode would be to give a decent chance to get an exotic drop off a boss mob and just keep tokens as rewards for finishing the dungeons.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
I must say I found this ^ hard to believe, some of the bosses get nerfed so much it obliterate their mechanics, for instance the last boss in CoF Path1; Sure I agree, he was to hard for a casual game, however after the nerf, there is no point of killing the crystals, all you have to do is stand next to the boss, spam your ability for a few minutes and dodge his big AOE attack. This boss had fun mechanics, but they are useless now.
Same thing goes for the last boss in AC path 2; First time my group where there, we came up whit a simple strategy; we had 3 guys on the cannons, 1 “tank” who where kite:ing the boss and one glass cannon who’s job was to kill all the adds asap.
We had a blast, the boss felt so well made for a boss in the first dungeon.
However, we soon found out that the fastest way to kill him was to just stand next to him and spam your attacks, ignoring the cannons and adds and dodging his burrow attack.
If I can come with a suggestion: you should make some HC version dungeon, who is made just to frustrate skilled groups of player, dungeons that takes day to clear and offer some real neat rewards. And make the Explorable dungeons Casual friendly.
This will satisfy both the casual and the “HC” players, it’ll give the casual pugs a chance to experience dungeons that give some really cool exotic rewards, but they can still complete it without getting to frustrating.
And the “HC” groups will get a real challenge where they have to use coordination, timing and real strategies. Instead of just the “Ok guys just go in and spam, however keep your eye out for the big red circle, when you see it, just w8 1 sec then dodge, after that just spam again”
I can agree to the HC version of a dungeon. Until we get 50% greens, 40% golds, 10% exotic drops (obiouvsly prerequisite legendary included on the loot table) from adds, and from boss chest 70% golds, 30% exotics (no trash). And double token rewards. THIS is a challenge worthing every minute attempting it.
(edited by Lucas Ashrock.8675)
The devs are already aware that the current reward solutions aren’t acceptable and are presumably working on bugs. So that’s great. But I haven’t heard much about the fact that half the bosses in dungeons are 5-10 minute autoattack snoozefests. That’s not fun, it’s just tedious. Or the bizarre roller-coaster difficulty curves, even in story mode (TA spider-swarm boss was way harder than any other boss, trash is harder than anything else, the last fight was well balanced, and the other bosses were autoattack).
If SM is meant to be “moderately challenging” for an uncoordinated group big changes are needed. Some instances (TA Story, second last boss of SE story) are completely out of whack with this, with bosses that require cheesing the fight or really intense coordination. Meanwhile 50%+ of EM bosses have no mechanics beyond autoattacking them to death.
I would also like to see some changes so that Arah loot (which is way harder to get than, say, AC/SM loot) is actually better in some way, or for Arah to be made comparably difficult (or at least comparable in length…) to AC/SM.
Edit: Thanks for being so transparent with us about this issue, devs.
I would like to see some random skins available at the end of the dungeon. I like the token system but what kept me doing dungeons in gw1 were the rare skins i could get in the dungeons and then sell to profit. I would like to see a system with tokens and a chance to get some rare skined weapons at the end of dungeons. As is, it is just not that exciting to get the same reward everytime
Also they aren’t fun, so that’s 2 problems.
A subjective opinion. One your entitled to of course but not one that serves to benefit anybody or anything.
Yet I bet he could come up with far more examples as to why they’re badly designed than you can come up with examples as to why they’re well designed.
Starting to scream “SUBJECTIVE OPINION LALALALALA” is a blatant sign you have no arguments left.
Dungeons are already pretty dead on my server (and its high pop). Its a shame, it will take you all day to find a group this game NEEDS a dungeon finder tool for all NA and all EU servers.
Keyser Soze 80 Warrior | Muted 80 Mesmer | Crim De La Crim 80 Necro |
Server: Jade Quarry
I’m not sure what reason there is for doing dungeons more than once; grinding for months for a cosmetic upgrade does not seem interesting to me.
The problem I see is that the kind of goad that other games provide to make people want to keep doing dungeons, that of slowly but surely increasing the power of your character, is in direct opposition to Anet’s stated game design goals of having all content accessible to players with enough skill.
Anet have said they have something in the works to make dungeons more worthwhile, but due to the above I doubt this will be more than making more exotic weapons with only cosmetic differences, or perhaps giving people titles.
wont be doing a single dungeon after i finish my set. Not fun, boring, getting 2 hit even kiting/dodging doing anythin you can and still getting 2 or 1 shotted. All the dungeons are the same. Just a dif story and reward everythin else is same. Sad thing is i think you can craft with same stats as dungeon gear. Dont know for sure but i think im right on that.
I see them as dead- like the game. Anet has let things go and my guild quit because of it.
WvW fell apart because of free transfers and hackers
Dungeons because of the poor loot for the effort and repair cost.
That is my experience with dungeons – not doing them.
I really hope others experience is different than my groups.
This is our intent.
Story Mode – Moderate difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of achievement and accomplishment when you and a group of strangers overcome a difficult encounter/boss.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
I thought the intention was:
Story Mode – Extremely frustrating difficulty for a randomly formed pick up group. Memorable moments of getting poor loot.
Explorable Mode – Easy difficulty for randomly formed pick up groups. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content too long and dull. Memorable moments of accomplishment of getting overused equipments.
4x Necromancer, 3x Mesmer, 4x Guardian, 4x Thief, 4 Revenant
since there are no dedicated healing classes or tank everyone is DPS in this game. No matter how much tanky stuff you got you will still get 2-3 hit in dungeons. Plus the loot is horrible. You spend more money repairing than you make off the drops. All blues. I have full magic find gear and still get blues/greens which have little to no value.
Dungeons are already pretty dead on my server (and its high pop). Its a shame, it will take you all day to find a group this game NEEDS a dungeon finder tool for all NA and all EU servers.
SM or EM? Big BIG difference depending on which you are running.
You doing EM? Go to borlis pass. I run them every day and see people run dungeons. Just did SE path 1/2 about two hours ago and that is a rare one to get a group for. Also make sure you are “timed” right with your server. People will LFG more during certain hours.
Groups mostly go by:
AC/TA/CoF/HoTW are common easy to get groups
CM is uncommon
CoE/SE/Arah is rare (Arah is prolly more tied to guilds not wanting to PuG it to speed up clear times/not wipe or explain Giganticus every single run).
One of the few people one the server to do CoE EM on a daily basis.
As for the Dungeon Finder. I agree 100%. /map LFG is one the most backwards things imaginable. I am not playing Everquest anymore.
William Fairfield Game DesignerThis is our intent.
Explorable Mode – Moderate difficulty for extremely organized and well versed players. Randomly formed pick up groups should find this content very difficult. Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement when you defeat an exceptionally difficult boss/encounter.
Just .. WOW. Should i laugh or cry, i’m not sure. Extremely organized and well versed players ? Memorable moments of accomplishment and achievement ? I’m sorry but : No, i can’t see them being enjoyable in six months, not even in 2.
Explorable dungeons are more like :
- Easily doable by extremely unorganized pugs
- Stupid anti-melee one shot abilities hidden behind thousands layers of foggy dazzling visual effects
- Time sink 350 Billion HP mobs/bosses with no strategy
- No interaction between members of a group (except when downed)
- There’s pretty much nothing to learn from them, except “how to dodge a red circle on the floor”
- Most encounters can be done with the amazingly stupid graveyard rush strategy
- It’s very hard to find a reason to keep running them once you got your “beloved skin”
- And most of all : no feeling of accomplishment AT ALL, useless loots/chests, absolutely no reasons to be proud of getting dungeons armor sets.
I hope it will get better in the future.. because at the moment, the way dungeons are designed around the “unholy trinity” philosophy makes them really zergy, and dull.
I’d say change is good, the “unholy trinity” bet is laudable, but you should learn from WoW (vanilla/BC) and use all these years of experience that we all have now in 2012. I know GW2’s not meant to be a wow-clone and it’s fine but still, there’s a lot of good things in their dungeons that you could use.
(edited by Hughs.6549)
AC – Fine as it is
TA – Fine as it is
CoF – path 1 & 2 are ok, path 3 is annoying due to pugs pick up have too much communication problem at the torch light part. Mobs either repop way too fast or people don’t listen and light too early or too late.
HoTW – Bosses have way too much HP, falling asleep almost every path. The final boss fight would take almost longer to fight than the entire dungeon itself.
CoE – Fine as it is, Subject Alpha could use some redesign, fighting the dude 3 times per path and doing the same crap gets kinda old and boring. Each phase should change a little in term of characteristic/pattern and special moves or something. Also wouldn’t hurt to make each phase looks a bit different.
CM – Too much camera issues when in such a confine space. I don’t enjoy this dungeons due to half of the time I can’t even see my character.
SE – Path 1 needs some fixing, path 2 is way too long. Path 3 is ok
Arah – nice boss design but the dungeon as a whole is way too long. The rewards suck too, not to mention if it bugged at the end of the run and you can’t get the reward that would be a major turn off. Too much trash mobs in between bosses which make the dungeon very long.
Beside arah, most dungeons are doable roughly 25-35 mins with exception of some path like SE path 2, HoTW path 2.
(edited by Riaky.8965)
to be fair, many will have started new character’s, so i dont see this as an issue TBH.
Yeah making new characters will make the dungeons new and fresh…..
@Riaky: great assessment, I’d mostly agree with your list there. Overall, TA exp is my personal favourite, with the exception of the last boss which is a bit of a snooze. COE has some fun moments, but also has a few issues here and there. I enjoy the dungeons quite a lot, but surely there is room for improvement.
Was digging for a good troll necro, but found this instead:
To say the dungeons will be the SAME 6 months from now isn’t going to hold up either. We’re going to be doing lots of updates to dungeons, changing things that didn’t work out, and introducing new features as we find the time/tech to implement them. Our hope is that dungeons will stay nice and fresh for a long time