Guild Wars 2

Current dungeon design encourages or forces players to skip content.

This is true for all dungeons, and what this means is that the content is not enjoyable and/or the reward vs time needed to discourage skipping is inadequate.

Excluding the special players who have the time, patience and opportunity to enter dungeons with multiple characters, multiple builds and a ‘hardcore’ team of the same—who even set themselves challenges such as soloing the Giganticus Lupicus;

The enemies in the dungeons have too many hitpoints, and/or deal too much damage (spike or otherwise) for the average player to enjoyably tolerate.

There are some great-looking enemies, bosses and mini bosses who have the potential to become exciting encounters, but currently find themselves at the top of the list of things to avoid at all costs.

This is because they instil a sense of dread; not of the kind that puts butterflies in one’s stomach, bringing a sense of excitement through danger, but dread of the unpleasant kind.

While I have plenty, I offer no suggestions on how to create exasperatingly, tantalizingly enjoyable dungeon experiences as this is not the suggestion section.
I am merely expressing my frustrated views, notifying whoever is relevant and making one request;

Offer regular online surveys on specific areas of the game, including of course, dungeons.

You are always able to improve your skill level and master encounters, and there are plenty or resources to help you as well. Making things easier doesn’t solve the problem, because people will get bored more easily than they already are. You shouldn’t be able to walk into a dungeon on your first try and fly through it. It should be a learning experience.

Expressing critism without solutions is like telling a person who got shot that he is gonna bleed out if nobody helps him in time.

Justdeifyme.9387:

Expressing critism without solutions is like telling a person who got shot that he is gonna bleed out if nobody helps him in time.

Lol xD

-I don’t want to sound like I’m making any criticisms, just putting my opinion. I agree that many of the enemies are a little too beefy at the moment and they don’t necessarily need to be to make them any more difficult, just more tedious and long fights.

-‘skipping’ however, is something that persists in many games and if you look at gw1, a LOT of runs that people did involved this kind of gameplay, just on a different scale because that’s how the game evolved. Look at FoW/UW runs for example, while it was completely possible for a full group to clear all the content, those groups were overshadowed 20/1 by groups running specific setups that allowed them to simple bypass many enemies and whole areas in order to make the run faster and more profitable. Using tricks that would ‘stuck’ enemies or allow you to exploit some mechanic was just another way to accomplish the goal.

No one was shouting at them that they should be doing it the ‘normal’ way, because going through every enemy was simply not worth the time if you could do it in a faster manner, and people accepted that if you wanted to do it the ‘normal’ way you could just join a group doing that.

Gw2 is the same, It’s my opinion that the game isn’t old enough for this view to be accepted yet and to become viable in many people’s eyes. That’s not to say anet won’t make some changes in the future that will make people more willing to fight through more enemies that they would have skipped before, but only time will tell I suppose. For now we can keep making suggestions to them and hope they listen.

I never said it should be made easier, I suggested enjoyment was an issue.
My suggestions, along with many others’ are already in the suggestions section—the relevant people know where to go if they want suggestions.

@Me Kill You

I’d be inclined to agree to some extent.
In GW1 I remember having some people “run me” to wherever, but I also remember that that was not a horrible experience.

Having someone “run you” through a dungeon in GW2, say Arah for example, is not exactly the same thing; It can be brutal, unforgiving and costly—for both the ‘runner(s)’ and those hitching a ride.

Ultimately, skipping will probably always exist in some form, but if it becomes the main goal of a dungeon such as it is now, it implies there are a lot of design problems. If it becomes the norm forever, Anet may as well just immediately place everyone standing right in front of the final boss in every dungeon. In fact, why have dungeons with any content at all?—just make “boss fight rooms”…

Pure Heart.1456:

@Me Kill You

I’d be inclined to agree to some extent.
In GW1 I remember having some people “run me” to wherever, but I also remember that that was not a horrible experience.

Having someone “run you” through a dungeon in GW2, say Arah for example, is not exactly the same thing; It can be brutal, unforgiving and costly—for both the ‘runner(s)’ and those hitching a ride.

Ultimately, skipping will probably always exist in some form, but if it becomes the main goal of a dungeon such as it is now, it implies there are a lot of design problems. If it becomes the norm forever, Anet may as well just immediately place everyone standing right in front of the final boss in every dungeon. In fact, why have dungeons with any content at all?—just make “boss fight rooms”…

Well yes “running” was a big part of gw1, but that’s not what I was refering to.

I meant more alone the lines of having an assassin run a whole 2-3 quests of an area on their own which usually involved skipping 90% of the mobs they came across. Or in some missions like for ex. Gyala Hatchery in factions the ‘alternate route’ which involved running around the back and not triggering the mission start thereby allowing you to skip a whole bunch of mobs (although I think in the end you ended up killing them, just not the way it was intended and in a much easier way)

Yup I get yelled at for watching videos, you don’t see many cutscenes so I like to enjoy them but its sure unenjoyable everytime one happens if you don’t skip you will get kitten chewed out.

Also one thing I noticed is that in most of these dungeons is some crazy super boss and the only way to kill them is by glitches. Like in CM one boss hits like a truck and has truck like health and only way to kill him is stand on stairs and because hes too short to hit you, he wont do any damage but you have to spam autoattack on him for like 10 mins just to kill him. Also in CM you have a bunch of archers shooting you so you go underneath something and hide behind something, but you can hit the boss but he cant hit you type of deal because the archers do crazy damage and have too much hp to even kill, the boss is another 10 mins of spamming.

All I see is so many bugs that one must know and if your new to the dungeon and don’t know all the bugs you will die a lot, it doesn’t matter if your really good at pvp and have lots of skill, these fights are bug fights because they are designed to hit so hard and have so much hp you have to use bugs to win.

The only dungeon that felt normal to me is FoTM… if you even consider that a dungeon because the trash mobs in there, have normal healthbar and do normal attacks compared to trash mobs in CM and other dungeons I been in.

The only real pet peeve I have with dungeons is partly the aforementioned HP bars, but I feel that those HP bars were put in place as a necessity because the AI of the enemy mobs is frighteningly stupid. They have no awareness of enemy or ally positioning, skill usage, movements, anything. GW1 packs felt like they were actually reacting to you. GW2 packs just lob everything they have at you whenever it is off cooldown.

Most glaringly obvious example of this lack of intelligence:

MF – In general, this dungeon was an improvement over the norm, but – Molten Protector – his shield negates damage to allies. Pull him away from the group before he uses it, and he will not approach. Instead, he will simply use the shield, while alone, in the corner of the room. WHY?! Your friends are over here!

There are many other examples, but that’s the key problem in a nutshell right there. In exchange for dumbing down how mobs react to players, their HP and damage are artificially inflated to compensate. Then, since they are so dumb, they are easily torn to shreds by a party of Berserkers once they get piled together in a brainless heap of meat.