Guild Wars 2

I had heard that GW2 dungeons were difficult so I put off running them until I got my character to 80.

These dungeons aren’t difficult, they are trash.

Die-rez-die-rez until you win is not a feature or a mechanic, it is a terribly tuned and sloppily designed dungeon.

I am really disappointed at how poorly designed these dungeons are. I am amazed anyone even bothers with them.

Brute forcing a dungeon by repeatedly dying, respawning, running back, and dying again is not required, and is really nobody’s fault but your own.

It’ll get you through a dungeon, but it takes longer, costs more, and is much less fun than playing it properly.

So…you heard dungeons were hard, went in there for the first time ever and got rolled and then you came on the forums to tell us you were dieing a lot? On your first time in the dungeon you might have to waypoint zerg a few parts. But after LEARNING the dungeons they become very manageable and some become very faceroll easy without dieing.

Rovaeden.8546:

Die-rez-die-rez until you win …

That’s pretty much Arena Nets only mistake: They allow corpse running. If the would make it impossible, simply by locking all waypoints as long as there is a fight going on, people would have to deal with the mechanics and not just act like a mindless zerg.

This seems to be a common line of thinking: I die constantly and have to rez and run back with everyone else in my group several times just to complete a fight, well, it must be poor design decisions. I mean, that’s obviously the case right? Couldn’t possibly be an error in how your group is going about the fight, of course.

I don’t know what to tell you. On the few fights where I’ve had to do them several times, it was due to clearly identifiable errors in tactics or playstyle on the part of myself or other players in the group, and certainly not to the degree you’re indicating.

If you want to be constructive, you can point out where exactly it is you’re running into trouble and what it is that’s holding you up so we can give advice or, at worst, indicate that yes this is a known problem area of a dungeon that is poorly tuned and is generally accepted as requiring a fix. But… you’d prefer to complain aimlessly and without any constructive end.

So would you like them to make it that you die once and you’re out?
Dying = repair. The more you die, the higher your total repair fees.

If the dungeons were so trash, you shouldn’t be dying so many times.

You can find rabid vocal fan boys for anything in this world.

Yes, dungeons are horrible in this game.

Just because with hard work and a great group you can learn to get on farm mode in these dungeons does not mean that they are well design or fun. They are not.

Anet has the numbers and I’m sure there is a large large problem with dungeon participation.

You think months from now anyone is going to bother with dungeons?

I know loads of people who find dungeons a lot of fun, just some of the fights are terribly bugged – but aside from that, they’re actually the best i’ve ever seen.

nachtnebel.9168:

Rovaeden.8546:

Die-rez-die-rez until you win …

That’s pretty much Arena Nets only mistake: They allow corpse running. If the would make it impossible, simply by locking all waypoints as long as there is a fight going on, people would have to deal with the mechanics and not just act like a mindless zerg.

I’m all for locking the waypoints as long as the mechanics are balanced and working.
As of right now, they are not. Please do not encourage arenanet to tackle the symptoms of the problem rather than the cause.

Anders.6425:

You can find rabid vocal fan boys for anything in this world.

Yes, dungeons are horrible in this game.

Just because with hard work and a great group you can learn to get on farm mode in these dungeons does not mean that they are well design or fun. They are not.

Anet has the numbers and I’m sure there is a large large problem with dungeon participation.

You think months from now anyone is going to bother with dungeons?

I’m curious as to where you see elements of fanboyism in this thread. You’re welcome to point them out.

Meantime, I repeat what I said in my previous post:

“If you want to be constructive, you can point out where exactly it is you’re running into trouble and what it is that’s holding you up so we can give advice or, at worst, indicate that yes this is a known problem area of a dungeon that is poorly tuned and is generally accepted as requiring a fix. But… you’d prefer to complain aimlessly and without any constructive end.”

All you’ve said here is “dungeons” and “horrible.” Unspecific and unhelpful.

It hasn’t taken hard work and a great group to get dungeons on farm. I run almost exclusively in pick-up groups. I’d say a good 80% of the time I don’t know anyone in the group going in. Sometimes a guildy or someone I’ve run with before is along, once in a very rare while I run with several guildies, but they don’t do a whole lot of dungeons.

Dungeons are not easy. They should not be easy. Some are moderately difficult. Some are HARD. There are also some that are poorly-tuned or overlong. They’re definitely not perfect and ANet has some things to learn from, in my opinion. That said, I enjoy them.

Have you considered that perhaps dungeons just aren’t for you?

Asagi.1405:

I’m all for locking the waypoints as long as the mechanics are balanced and working.
As of right now, they are not. Please do not encourage arenanet to tackle the symptoms of the problem rather than the cause.

Most mechanics work very well once you figured them out, there are some minor glitches, but that’s it. The biggest problem is the player himself and hist indignation to adapt to a new kind of dungeon. It’s not about doing as much dps as possible and performing a single task until the boss goes down, that’s how it worked in WoW and co.

Well, nachtnebel, you speak like if dungeons on WoW are not fun, guess what, they are. In fact I think they are more fun than this game’s dungeons.

I agree with OP, and I think the game could improve alot with a dungeon “reimagination”. What I disagree, is that many “fanboys” to try to say that this is a good system, and that the game is so much more difficult or technical than WoW, or others. Because it doesnt have trinity. When even developers like Robert Hrouda, say somethings like:

" There no sense in blowing all those things, and just through smart positioning and auto-attacking, I can put out bunches of condi-DPS."

this was posted on the thread about implementing damage meters

Meaning, that in this game to run round auto attacking is enough… Where is the technique there?
Try to play WoW and auto-attack and then tell me about it.

There is no value in this system, its boring, unrewarding, bugged and anti-fun. And the faster they change it the faster we can start to have fun.

We all love GW2, thats why we are all here. There are no wars, no hating. Just different ways to see things. Please, let’s improve this game that we all so much love

Dungeons in WoW were – stopped playing after BC cause everything got way to easy – fun but they were also different. You did not just spam auto attack, but a lot of times it was enough to repeat the same rotation over and over again while standing still until the encounter was over.

I agree that a change might help GW2, but the change has to be towards more encounters like Lupi, Simin or Alpha and most definitively not making dungeons feel more like in WoW or just handing out more and better rewards.

I can agree to a point. There are many different gauges to “i’m a causal player”. The dungeons in gw2 just aren’t for everyone ( me included). They are primarily for cosmetic stuff, save for a few sets. As there really isn’t any form of progression in gw2 you shouldn’t try to force yourself to do the dungeons. I tried to do that and it just ended with me frustrated. I look like i want, have the gear i want and i have only done 2/3 of asc. I have no desire to ever step foot into any of the other dungeons.

GW 2 dungeons are definitely the worst of any MMO I can remember. I think it boils down to a few things really.

1) Long term hardcore WoW raider experience was utilized to create the dungeons. So the AOEs, the boss attacks are all like end game raid mechanics. They one shot you or disolve your HP bar in a second. Just did TA explore and boy did the worm boss just suck. It is not that the content is not doable, it is just that its cheap and totally unfun. Having a plant spawn and do AOE poison puff that kills me in a second is garbage. And the pure volume of these AOE clouds and boss red circles make the game more about staring at the ground then strategizing your next round of attacks.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen. The game plays like WoW without a tank or healer, mobs just run all over the place and people are kiting for their lives. Utter chaos and it removes so much strategy and planning from the game. Its a mindless zergfest now. Having those intricate class roles and creating a viable team was a lot of what makes MMOs engrossing when grouping. Its like a football team with nothing but running backs, and no playbooks, and no designated player positions.

3) And I guess more of an offshoot of number 2, the dungeons are still copying the WoW model or typical MMO dungeon design. But in those games you have support, tank, and DPS roles. So we are playing dungeons that feel like we ought to have designated roles but we don’t. So its a lot of dying, a lot of annoying kiting, and the dungeons are tuned down just enough to make it viable. But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

Also this game has that really uninspiring Korean MMO feel to it. The levelling in the beginning is so grindy, the mindlessly copied one shotting from other games end game raid content, the absurd implementation of a no class system. It all feels very Korean MMO to me. I have always thought that MMOs from Korea lack originality and tend to totally miss what makes a game fun or not, they simply copy X and Y from successful games like its a formula you can just reproduce.

As in most Korean games the artowrk and polish are top notch, but they really dont seem to get what makes RPGs and MMOs fun in my opinion.

Anders.6425:

You can find rabid vocal fan boys for anything in this world.

Yes, dungeons are horrible in this game.

Just because with hard work and a great group you can learn to get on farm mode in these dungeons does not mean that they are well design or fun. They are not.

Anet has the numbers and I’m sure there is a large large problem with dungeon participation.

You think months from now anyone is going to bother with dungeons?

I literally force myself to try and group…but I rarely if ever get any real satisfaction from grouping like I do in other games. There is hardly any teamwork or group dynamics present. In other games when you are in a good group who is working together you get that feeling like hell yeah we are getting this done, a sense of teamwork. In this game people will zerg run through content and wont even bother to revive downed people who get left behind.

I don’t even think its fair to compare dungeon content in this game to other games they are two totally different gameplay experiences.

Cromx.3941:

GW 2 dungeons are definitely the worst of any MMO I can remember. I think it boils down to a few things really.

1) Long term hardcore WoW raider experience was utilized to create the dungeons. So the AOEs, the boss attacks are all like end game raid mechanics. They one shot you or disolve your HP bar in a second. Just did TA explore and boy did the worm boss just suck. It is not that the content is not doable, it is just that its cheap and totally unfun. Having a plant spawn and do AOE poison puff that kills me in a second is garbage. And the pure volume of these AOE clouds and boss red circles make the game more about staring at the ground then strategizing your next round of attacks.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen. The game plays like WoW without a tank or healer, mobs just run all over the place and people are kiting for their lives. Utter chaos and it removes so much strategy and planning from the game. Its a mindless zergfest now. Having those intricate class roles and creating a viable team was a lot of what makes MMOs engrossing when grouping. Its like a football team with nothing but running backs, and no playbooks, and no designated player positions.

3) And I guess more of an offshoot of number 2, the dungeons are still copying the WoW model or typical MMO dungeon design. But in those games you have support, tank, and DPS roles. So we are playing dungeons that feel like we ought to have designated roles but we don’t. So its a lot of dying, a lot of annoying kiting, and the dungeons are tuned down just enough to make it viable. But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

Also this game has that really uninspiring Korean MMO feel to it. The levelling in the beginning is so grindy, the mindlessly copied one shotting from other games end game raid content, the absurd implementation of a no class system. It all feels very Korean MMO to me. I have always thought that MMOs from Korea lack originality and tend to totally miss what makes a game fun or not, they simply copy X and Y from successful games like its a formula you can just reproduce.

As in most Korean games the artowrk and polish are top notch, but they really dont seem to get what makes RPGs and MMOs fun in my opinion.

I have to agree with most of this post. It actually captures most of my opinions.
The problem could be in the lack of the trinity.
I don’t mind not having it, in fact I commend the game for being different in that sense. But the fact is that, if you don’t want to have a trinity you cant create a dungeon system like if the game had it.
The dungeons are indeed confusing, and we spend alot of time kiting and fainting and getting up, and running around, and going back to fights etc etc.

Thats why I think the whole system must be reimagined and since I think it is very unlikely to change the game to the point where we will have a trinity system, they must come up with a dungeon system that works with the current gameplay type

For all the talk of removing tank healer dps trinity, I have to really disagree with it. Tanks still exist in GW2, and you might be surprised how much smoother a dungeon run goes with someone who isn’t flopping over dead because a mob looked at them and can somewhat control mobs.

I’d say healer was removed and replaced with support. Yeah support can heal, but healers were called healers because thats all they did was heal. In GW2, that isn’t there anymore. You can support with some heals but that’s more a secondary function.

I’d say GW2 didn’t destroy the holy trinity, they just made it Tank/Support/DPS. Although support can coincide with both dps and tank but thats beside the point.

This means that individual players need to pay attention to their own self-sustainability in the form of condition removals, break stuns, and healing. Full DPS only works if you’ve got the skill to back it up and even then, it can still be really difficult without tanks or supports.

I hope the developers don’t listen too much to the ‘Need to be more like WoW’ comments. The general ideas of the encounters in the dungeons are awesome. The only problem I’ve had with them is bosses with too much health and a few bugs/balancing issues.

Most of the comments I’ve read here say to me that the people don’t know how to approach the dungeon encounters, They don’t understand what is fun about it because they go into a dungeon with certain expectations and being confused by the difference of mechanics to dungeons in other games. They expect the dungeons to be X and will hate them till they are X rather than figuring out how to run them in a positive, fun way.

Also remember that these dungeons aren’t the equivalent to WoW dungeons but rather WoW raids. That’s what the dungeons were intended to be…Difficult.

Me and the people I progressed through dungeons with, we did all the encounters almost entirely by making up our own tactics through trial and error. It was hard and in some cases we were in a dungeon all day. But it was very rewarding and fun when we finally managed to beat an encounter.

If people are just standing auto-attacking then they are almost certainly being carried by the rest of the group. It’s about teamwork, figuring out the most efficient ways of combining the different professions abilities to make the run smoother. By being responsible not just for yourself but for the others in your team.

Speaking of being carried I’ve seen some pretty terrible players who managed to complete dungeon master titles by being carried through a dungeon. So those who think dungeon master equals skill (sure the chance is high) be wary.

Anet I hope you don’t pay too much heed to the people who want a complete overhaul. I think more bosses like kholer, lupicus, alpha, alphard is the way to go. Fights that are engaging, that require a lot of movement, activity and focus.

I think CoE Path 2 and Path 4 of Arah are good examples for interesting bosses but that there are some bugs and their excess health that need to be revised.

Over the last two months the QQ’ing about dungeons has decreased to just the particular fights that are really hard or a bit buggy. I’m so happy you stuck to your guns about difficulty and I hope it remains so. I remember when everyone said how hard AC was. People need to learn how to play their profession, how to play in a team and how to deal with the mechanics.

It’s not a problem with dungeons in general but the problem with the players foremost. I’ve helped so many people do dungeons now both from the guild and pugs who had awful experiences running dungeons with other groups and who didn’t realize how much fun they can be till they ran it with me and my party.

If you dislike dungeons you’re most likely playing them wrong, playing with the wrong people or they are simply not for you in which case you should consider playing a game you do enjoy or content you do find fun rather than the content changing for your sake.

That’s my two cents anyway. I considered not posting but most people who love the dungeons are actually out there enjoying the game, avoiding these topics and so I felt the need to say something about it.

Here’s the deal, Anet…if you’re listening. There’s no reason it can’t be both ways. Leave existing dungeons just the way they are (save for fixing the bugs), and design a handful of dungeons with the casual player in mind…dungeons that play more like the world-wandering PvE content.

Not all players are hardcore enough or have enough time on their hands to put up with the frustration of learning the mechanics (as should be evident by all the posts stating that “dungeons suck”). Some find it to be very fun, but many will not. Many will say “well this isn’t fun” and never try it again. Then those same people will get bored and quit the game because there is not enough existing content that is to their liking.

Don’t forget that you are a business. If you alienate a sizable percentage of your customer base then they will cease to be customers.

PaleRider.2189:

Here’s the deal, Anet…if you’re listening. There’s no reason it can’t be both ways. Leave existing dungeons just the way they are (save for fixing the bugs), and design a handful of dungeons with the casual player in mind…dungeons that play more like the world-wandering PvE content.

Not all players are hardcore enough or have enough time on their hands to put up with the frustration of learning the mechanics (as should be evident by all the posts stating that “dungeons suck”). Some find it to be very fun, but many will not. Many will say “well this isn’t fun” and never try it again. Then those same people will get bored and quit the game because there is not enough existing content that is to their liking.

Don’t forget that you are a business. If you alienate a sizable percentage of your customer base then they will cease to be customers.

The storymode dungeons are for the casual players, explorables for the more hardcore though I’d say the majority of the games players are able to run dungeons just fine just probably not the higher up ones as much.

I like these dungeons. As long as they work. There are too many bugs in my opinion. We just did AC explorable path 2 and the end boss would not come. We did not even skip, we killed Kohler and all other mobs but while the NPC and the cannons were all flagged with red shields/cog, the Ghost Eater did not appear.

That is a huge letdown. But in general dungeons are really fun and they are not die-rez-die-rez events when you know how to do it.

The one real qualm I have is the hit point bar. It is ok for me that bosses are really strong. But why has the tree at the end of Twilight Arbor so many hitpoints? After half of them are gone we have proven already that we are able to kill him, have learnt to kite/not aggro the spiders and what we do then is mindlessly autoattack. Don’t misunderstand me: bosses should be hard. It is ok, that the end boss causes lots and lots of red circles which really hurt when you get caught in them. But it is boring and repetitive to do that as long as you have to do it with some end bosses (like the tree in TA). When you finally killed the boss you have proven more your patience than your skill.

Why would there need to be dungeons “that play more like the world-wandering PvE content”?
There’s eight dungeons, and twenty five zones on the world map. And 40-50ish instanced Personal Story missions per character that basically are mini instance/dungeons in the style of the overworld PvE, with at least three options for almost all of those missions so you don’t even actually end up repeating much/all of the same content if you do it again on another character.

If that’s not “enough” content for those people, then I don’t think there can ever actually be “enough” content for them.

Claudius.5381:

I like these dungeons. As long as they work. There are too many bugs in my opinion. We just did AC explorable path 2 and the end boss would not come. We did not even skip, we killed Kohler and all other mobs but while the NPC and the cannons were all flagged with red shields/cog, the Ghost Eater did not appear.

That is a huge letdown. But in general dungeons are really fun and they are not die-rez-die-rez events when you know how to do it.

The one real qualm I have is the hit point bar. It is ok for me that bosses are really strong. But why has the tree at the end of Twilight Arbor so many hitpoints? After half of them are gone we have proven already that we are able to kill him, have learnt to kite/not aggro the spiders and what we do then is mindlessly autoattack. Don’t misunderstand me: bosses should be hard. It is ok, that the end boss causes lots and lots of red circles which really hurt when you get caught in them. But it is boring and repetitive to do that as long as you have to do it with some end bosses (like the tree in TA). When you finally killed the boss you have proven more your patience than your skill.

This might seem like a silly question but… You did talk to Detha to start the fight? If so I never had this bug before that the boss wouldn’t start after Detha fixes the cannons :/

As for health on bosses, I agree as I said in my own post that some bosses have too much health than needed though the tree one isn’t too bad. Maybe a tiny bit less (20% less?) other than that it’s about right.

The anti-dungeon stuff is getting out of hand.

I agree that the bugs are huge problems (especially with SE & Arah). I agree that giving bosses huge piles of health, without much in the way of innovative fighting style, is boring and time-consuming (I’m looking at CM story mode & the SE Foremen for this one).

But I’ve had a lot of fun in the dungeons. I really enjoy AC, SE, CoF… even TA (except for the kitten vines bit). A whole lot of it isn’t broken, a whole lot of it is, in my opinion, genuinely fun. Some of the bosses may be broken, but others are genuinely fun to fight (The Iron Forgeman, Baelfire, the Graveling bosses).

I’m not arguing that there are huge problems with the dungeons… just that the rhetoric has become ridiculous now.

Fay.2735:

I hope the developers don’t listen too much to the ‘Need to be more like WoW’ comments. The general ideas of the encounters in the dungeons are awesome. The only problem I’ve had with them is bosses with too much health and a few bugs/balancing issues.

Bugs are one thing, but there is a problem when the trash mobs, (or sheer volume of trash per pull) is harder than the bosses. The problem comes when everyone has to play all three roles, in a dungeon design that seems more setup for the usual trinity. Mobs stick to one person till they die, some classes don’t have the ability to deal with that.

Fay.2735:

Also remember that these dungeons aren’t the equivalent to WoW dungeons but rather WoW raids. That’s what the dungeons were intended to be…Difficult.

Even WoW raids were not as thrown together as some of these dungeons feel. CM exp. the hallway filled with traps that takes you to a room with a 40 mob pull. In which half are silver. If something wasn’t totally messed up, than you wouldn’t see people constantly looking for some sort of exploit or gimmick to bypass the trash.

Fay.2735:

If people are just standing auto-attacking then they are almost certainly being carried by the rest of the group. It’s about teamwork, figuring out the most efficient ways of combining the different professions abilities to make the run smoother. By being responsible not just for yourself but for the others in your team.

What I think they mean by that, is that at times you have to run around auto attacking and just avoid all the damage that’s being thrown around. Judging by the context of that mod’s claim tho, he was playing a ranged class. Melee characters most often are forced to get away from the mob a lot.

Fay.2735:

Over the last two months the QQ’ing about dungeons has decreased to just the particular fights that are really hard or a bit buggy. I’m so happy you stuck to your guns about difficulty and I hope it remains so. I remember when everyone said how hard AC was. People need to learn how to play their profession, how to play in a team and how to deal with the mechanics.
If you dislike dungeons you’re most likely playing them wrong, playing with the wrong people or they are simply not for you in which case you should consider playing a game you do enjoy or content you do find fun rather than the content changing for your sake.
That’s my two cents anyway. I considered not posting but most people who love the dungeons are actually out there enjoying the game, avoiding these topics and so I felt the need to say something about it.

While I agree with some of that statement, your still going to run into problems where the dungeon feels like chaos and a kite fest. Or insta-gib attacks happen out of nowhere (either by bug, spam CC to death, or insane auto attacks type mobs). While I enjoy a challenge, the basic design of the dungeons in GW2 is flawed.

Crater.1625:

It’ll get you through a dungeon, but it takes longer, costs more, and is much less fun than playing it properly.

Well… like most things that are missing Tutorials or gradual skill-curving content, the design of the encounters are indeed still poorly designed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say trash, but they have no “Crescendo” to their mechanics that teaches the player how to deal with them by doing it…

I can count on 1 hand the number of instances where your party gets a preview of how a specific mob’s mechanics are supposed to work (including the little hidden parts of it that aren’t so evident, or are just plain buggy … like scavenger lunges for example) …and then the fight itself get tougher after that. GW1 did a pretty good job at this. Most of GW2 dungeons however are trial and error (read: CorpseRolling from WP) for MOST people followed by Youtubing & guide reading for anyone else who isn’t a masochist. Sorry but that is not good inviting gameplay design

My opinion on dungeons:

What I would like ANet to do is to make Story Mode less tedious and just make it fun and at least a tad easier similar to WoW’s dungeons.

Keep Explorer Mode as it is. Hell, add another difficulty if people want it to be even harder. But make a mode for the people who aren’t that hard core and just want to have a relaxed adventure. (Missions from GW comes to mind. They were decently challenging and fun)

I just want to do the dungeons for the story, I’m not interested in anything else, but how can I do this when they are so frustrating to go through?

Last dungeon I did was Twilight Arbor, and we managed it fine but the last boss was horrendous. We died so much that I almost wanted to just rage quit, but I kept going anyway. I think we finished it in 2-3 hours. After this I decided to never do a dungeon ever again.

I thought this game was meant to be about fun? The dungeons don’t give me that feeling at all.

I haven’t done Arah yet, but ironically the toughest dungeon I ever completed in this game was AC story.

It was a mess of dying over and over and over, due to the mix of inexperienced players running the dungeon and the fact that most of the bosses one shot you with their special moves.

This does not encourage people to attempt other dungeons. AC explorable, for instance, is easier than story mode if you do path 1 and 2

Hufflepuffer.4201:

I haven’t done Arah yet, but ironically the toughest dungeon I ever completed in this game was AC story.

It was a mess of dying over and over and over, due to the mix of inexperienced players running the dungeon and the fact that most of the bosses one shot you with their special moves.

This does not encourage people to attempt other dungeons. AC explorable, for instance, is easier than story mode if you do path 1 and 2

I had that with SE story yesterday, mind you I was already in max gear and level 80 when I tried it (I farmed AC till level 80 from 35). God how I hated that constant boss fest where mobs throw you around like a ragdoll and then proceed to one hit you (seriously why give bossmobs a million hp and CC AND ONE HITS). Then did SE explorable path 3 and it was a breeze.

i keep reading people say “i’m never going into a dungeon again”, what are you peeps doing in gw2 at level80? gather all day?lol nice gameplay…. Dungeons sucks and have no rewards whatsoever but i force myself because if not playing dungeons there’s absolutely nothing to do.

Fay.2735:

The storymode dungeons are for the casual players, explorables for the more hardcore though I’d say the majority of the games players are able to run dungeons just fine just probably not the higher up ones as much.

My point wasn’t whether or not they are doable. The point was that certain players will find them horrendously non-fun. What’s wrong with making dungeons to cater to them also? Given enough time (and frustration) even a very casual player can learn to hurr-durr faceroll their way through w/o dying once, but do they find the learning experience fun? That is the important question that I think all the “dungeons suck” posts answer for us.

Crater.1625:

Why would there need to be dungeons “that play more like the world-wandering PvE content”?
There’s eight dungeons, and twenty five zones on the world map. And 40-50ish instanced Personal Story missions per character that basically are mini instance/dungeons in the style of the overworld PvE, with at least three options for almost all of those missions so you don’t even actually end up repeating much/all of the same content if you do it again on another character.

If that’s not “enough” content for those people, then I don’t think there can ever actually be “enough” content for them.

To answer your question, there needs to be dungeons “that play more like the world-wandering PvE content” because after lvl 80 and clearing the map what is left? Dungeons. I’m not advocating they make all the new dungeons they design in the future this way. Kitten no. Just a few. Say maybe 10%-20% of them. Make them challenging, but avoid the downright deathfest they are now to the uninitiated.

Once again, please don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the dungeons as they are. There should just be some for people who don’t have the reflexes to play Tekken.

I think it lies in boss mechanics. I loved dungeons in world of warcraft, and I liked them in Aion.
Bosses have big health pools, and there is this die-rez-die-rez thing going on.
What I think would make dungeons 10 times more worth it is adding difficulty to bosses through boss mechanics rather than giving them huge health pools.

Taken as an example from world of warcraft where the boss has 3 ’’stages’’.
At first stage he will set out bombs frequently that you had to dodge, but where you had to kite the boss himself into his own bombs.

2nd stage, where there is a fire-wall twirling around him, so your party had to slowly walk around him to avoid being burnt to death.

3rd stage where he goes mental and you had to nuke him down to 0% before a certain time limit was reached, making him next to impossible leading to a wipe most of the time.

These are the kinds of bosses that makes a dungeon fun! Sadly this is missing in GW2.

And most important, don’t make npcs two-hit us! You can dodge out of the way on melee mobs, but playing against a ranged one is a pain, especially if they are many. You can of course dodge, but when they are used up and you have to wait for recharge you’re doomed.

There are far worse issues to address with the dungeons.
Bulky monsters for no apparent reason is one of many.

I’ve done so much in the game already, but for the life of me could not do all the paths yet in every dungeons.
My steel nerves rust and dissolve whenever I do one for the sheer boredom I experience even at a 20mins run.

This is coming from a person who can sit and farm for 8 hours mindlessly the same content.

So how fun is farming/grinding? Not fun at all yet ppl do it for hours on end.
The thing is YOU don’t get rewarded well for them so you pick them to pieces. There is ways to not zerg even the hardest ones if you just be creative, if you think die res is the only way your spelt mistaken. I’m really sick of seeing 1,ooo of the same post worded differently. If you don’t like them don’t play them.

Cromx.3941:

GW 2 dungeons are definitely the worst of any MMO I can remember. I think it boils down to a few things really.

1) Long term hardcore WoW raider experience was utilized to create the dungeons. So the AOEs, the boss attacks are all like end game raid mechanics. They one shot you or disolve your HP bar in a second. Just did TA explore and boy did the worm boss just suck. It is not that the content is not doable, it is just that its cheap and totally unfun. Having a plant spawn and do AOE poison puff that kills me in a second is garbage. And the pure volume of these AOE clouds and boss red circles make the game more about staring at the ground then strategizing your next round of attacks.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen. The game plays like WoW without a tank or healer, mobs just run all over the place and people are kiting for their lives. Utter chaos and it removes so much strategy and planning from the game. Its a mindless zergfest now. Having those intricate class roles and creating a viable team was a lot of what makes MMOs engrossing when grouping. Its like a football team with nothing but running backs, and no playbooks, and no designated player positions.

3) And I guess more of an offshoot of number 2, the dungeons are still copying the WoW model or typical MMO dungeon design. But in those games you have support, tank, and DPS roles. So we are playing dungeons that feel like we ought to have designated roles but we don’t. So its a lot of dying, a lot of annoying kiting, and the dungeons are tuned down just enough to make it viable. But the gameplay is horrible, no one wants to run around and kite as a melee character.

^ This.

Could not agree more.
The more I read, the more I learn about the game, my class and how to “do better” the less interested I become in even bothering with any of it. I came here (to GW2) to be a casual player. I did the full time WoW raid thing. I don’t have the time or desire to be “hard core” again.
I came here because the advertisements said this game was designed to allow me to play the way I want to play and enjoy myself…. what a crock of bullkitten! I should have known.
You want to play a S/D Thief? AAAAAHAHAHAHAAHA well you better get used to being useless at everything in the game, cuz we (Anet) havn’t bothered to make melee viable for thieves beyond D/D burst in sPvP and…. oh yeah, thats it. Sorry.

Want to try to melee the boss? Nope! Want to try to melee ANYTHING in a dungeon?
Cant do that either! Pretty happy you leveled your Thief now and not a ranged class (cuz shortbow is so strong and Pistols have such great AoE) right?

bah, theres no point. im done.

Rovaeden.8546:

I had heard that GW2 dungeons were difficult so I put off running them until I got my character to 80.

These dungeons aren’t difficult, they are trash.

Die-rez-die-rez until you win is not a feature or a mechanic, it is a terribly tuned and sloppily designed dungeon.

I am really disappointed at how poorly designed these dungeons are. I am amazed anyone even bothers with them.

And this is why you should start on dungeons early! Most people have gone through the die-rez-die-rez thing but usually at level 30 when doing Asacalon Catacombs in story mode. It’s a learning process like almost everything else. Once you learn, you can do the dungeons on auto-pilot.

Tinni.4351:

And this is why you should start on dungeons early! Most people have gone through the die-rez-die-rez thing but usually at level 30 when doing Asacalon Catacombs in story mode. It’s a learning process like almost everything else. Once you learn, you can do the dungeons on auto-pilot.

We WERE doing story mode. : /

Thats no excuse at all for a zerg of 20 mobs each with more HP that your group combined and the only way to get passed them is rez – zerg…. THAT is bullkitten design. Sorry but it just is. That is only one example out of countless.

It would definitely be bullkitten design.

But there aren’t any places in any Story Mode dungeon where the only way to win an encounter is to die and repeatedly rush back.

People that complain about trash mobs in dungeons just aren’t using their abilities well. Every dungeon and story mode can be 1 or 2 pulled. Every single one. Use a thief with scorp wire or a ranger with a pet, or body pull with ANY class(reminds me of my monk in EQ1). Not only that but every class has utilities that makes trash a cakewalk. Gaurdian, mesmer, engineer reflective shields make trash kill themselves. Use a thief,ranger, or warrior to relfect every projectile back to a mob. Use combo fields to do extreme dmg,heal and remove conditions.

This game is a friggen cakewalk once you do 2 things…

1)Quit thinking downed state = dead.
2) Build your character around group play.

Do those 2 things and I promise you, the dungeons all but complete themselves.

Anders.6425:

You think months from now anyone is going to bother with dungeons?

Yes, because getting 1.5g/hour (before vendoring loot) in AC is worth the hour of clearing it.

Ruien.9506:

This game is a friggen cakewalk once you do 2 things…

1)Quit thinking downed state = dead.
2) Build your character around group play.

Do those 2 things and I promise you, the dungeons all but complete themselves.

I redacted the beginning because that part sums everything up.
I would also like to add that you need to realize that:
3) DEAD = DEAD, DOWN = DOWN

Because too many times I see people ignoring down people and then going to res a dead person in a dungeon… mid-fight… or people just sitting dead and not going to a waypoint.

I didn’t know dungeons when I first started this game (I played BWE, but I never got that far) so I got the skills I felt that I would want as a Mesmer, then I proceeded to get the skills that I felt people would want, then I proceeded to get everything else. Because I got things in that order, I was able to play for my party at level 30 in AC, not for myself. I was running things that would benefit the group not me.

Trust me, it makes a significant deal. Like I tell all my friends: The game makes you feel like you know it all and are getting used to it. Then you hit 30, go to a dungeon, and pull down your pants to start learning all over again.

They don’t believe me and proceed to forget, hit level 30, then cry and pull down their pants.

Rovaeden.8546:

Tinni.4351:

And this is why you should start on dungeons early! Most people have gone through the die-rez-die-rez thing but usually at level 30 when doing Asacalon Catacombs in story mode. It’s a learning process like almost everything else. Once you learn, you can do the dungeons on auto-pilot.

We WERE doing story mode. : /

Thats no excuse at all for a zerg of 20 mobs each with more HP that your group combined and the only way to get passed them is rez – zerg…. THAT is bullkitten design. Sorry but it just is. That is only one example out of countless.

What were your specs? Did you have points in toughness and vitality? What was your group mix? Where any of you trying to control the situation? Did you co-ordinate? Talk to each other and explain the game-plan before jumping in? Did you call targets? Did you, in other words, do anything to make your run go smoother? It’s not bad design just because you performed badly.

Learning that utilities that you run with in world PvE, learning that you need toughness and vitality or be very good at dodging, hell learning dodge timing, learning to watch for combo fields, target calling and following target calls is something you start to do after you first dungeon. Although some read-up on dungeon encounters and prepare for it and thus do not get face-rolled. Ever. But the point is that you have to learn how to do dungeons. When you do, you will not die and certainly won’t have to apply attrition to win.

Ruien.9506:

People that complain about trash mobs in dungeons just aren’t using their abilities well.

Somebody brought it up in another thread, the problem starts with calling it “trash mobs”. I.e. you expect it to be trash that litters your path to the boss. However, Guild Wars dungeons do not have “trash mobs”. Bosses are tougher but the mobs surrounding them have always been part of the difficulty of the dungeon. That is also why they do not respawn, which they did in vanilla WoW at least.

Anet used Guild Wars 1 expansion the Eye of the North to experiment with a lot of the concepts now in Guild Wars 2 and if you look at the dungeons that Eye of the North introduced, you see that there is no such thing as “trash mob”. I think when people stop thinking of the non-boss mobs as trash, they’ll stop being upset that they are so tough.

2) They removed the tank, DPS, support from the game. Probably the stupidest move I have ever seen happen.

More like best move. Casuals like me do the dungeons fine, without having to wait for X player with Y role.

The only people hurt by this are raiders, who are so used to being coddled by the trinity system that they can’t be bothered to even check their own positioning.

This system is good for any gamer that isn’t just a mindless MMO-drone. It turns GW2 more into an action game, it feels quite a bit like Demon’s Souls, and the like (another game you shouldn’t try, because you won’t get past the first stage).

and the only way to get passed them is rez – zerg…

No encounter in the entire game is “rez-zerg”. Every encounter can be beaten differently if you don’t suck.

Your problem is that you use no strategy. You are using easymode. See, that’s what rez-zerg really is: An expensive easymode for people that suck at a boss.

You have to pay 10s to beat them. We casuals that don’t suck beat the encounter without ever dying.

Good system, and as it should be. People that suck at playing the game can still complete things, while being appropriately punished until they learn.

I still find it hilarious that casuals like me (I even click some abilities) have an easier time than people that consider themselves skilled.

The terms “casual” and “bad” are not interchangeable. Just saying.

ilr.9675:

I can count on 1 hand the number of instances where your party gets a preview of how a specific mob’s mechanics are supposed to work (including the little hidden parts of it that aren’t so evident, or are just plain buggy … like scavenger lunges for example) …and then the fight itself get tougher after that. GW1 did a pretty good job at this. Most of GW2 dungeons however are trial and error (read: CorpseRolling from WP) for MOST people followed by Youtubing & guide reading for anyone else who isn’t a masochist. Sorry but that is not good inviting gameplay design

Yeah it sucks for baddies who can’t telegraph things and figure things out quickly. For decent players with any sense of field awareness and keen eye sight for spotting things through particles (it’s not that hard though really, only baddies would complain ala charr/norn hate in the MK JP). The people who wrote those guides aren’t gods. They are just decent players that have a brain.

As I’ve stated various times, the step up from normal pve to dungeon is too much of a step up but along the way of dumbing down pve after BWE1 Anet just didn’t have a way to teach the rest of the supposed 95% of the population who can’t even be bothered to look at guides on how to play the game.

Sad thing is, these days there’s nothing new to see in dungeons so all that’s left is farming and people like myself are now past the point of figuring out mob mechanics and are more concerned about breaking dungeons to obtain more efficiency and are less patient with PuGs and that just creates a bigger barrier for newcomers in a way. But really, L2P.

Honest – I haven’t read all the replies.
However, I can tell about my own experience.
First time in a dungeon, AC, game was out a couple of weeks. It was a zergfest. If you die, return to a waypoint and run back as fast as possible to keep that mob or boss from resetting. After we got to Eir, 2 people quit and we dropped the squad. We all had died multiply times, had huge repair costs, and no. It wasn’t fun.

A few days ago I attempted the same dungeon again. Only 1 person kept dying, who now figured out it’s because he was running a glass cannon. 3 mesmers, an elementalist and a thief.
We all had a blast. The only time people who died returned to a waypoint, was at the last boss, because well, whatever. The waypoint was 3 seconds away. Rest of the time if someone died, or got downed, you just waited around for a ress.
Granted, this was story-mode. But I highly doubt we wouldn’t be able to the explorable mode with the same people.
Sure, the first couple of mobs were kind of hectic, along with bigger groups of mobs, but we made it through, we never had a full party-wipe and always at least 2 people on their feet, running around, keeping mobs busy while ressing whoever you’re near to.
Another thing that really helps, if figuring out combo’s. From what can you get an aura, from what can you make a bigger aoe by shooting things around.

Honestly, I can’t wait till I find the time to run another dungeon. These dungeons actually require me to look what I’m doing, and to look at what my party members are doing. Unlike other games I played where I stood around clicking potions and surfing the web in the meantime.

I have few friends that play dungeons with me at night, there isn’t a single dungeon we didnt complete and none of those dungeons needed waypoint zerg rush. We did AC story when we were lv 25 and we didn’t need waypoint rush. PUG dungeon groups will be hard to coordanate, most people avoid CoF path 3 because it needs party coordanation, which you wont have in a PUG.

This thread is exactly like the clock tower jumping puzzle one, people complain it is too hard therefore it is not fun. Maybe not fun for you. If you find dungeons too hard you have the option to skip the dungeon content.

The fact that this game doesn’t have healers is just great! none of my friends like playing the boring role a healer has and when someone dies they always blame the healer, now in this game if someone dies, that’s the whole team fault. You have lots of interrupts, condition removal , imobilize, crippiling , chilling. With coordanation some meele bosses will never reach any party member and range bosses will always hit themselves.

Yo, I love dungeons, seriously I do, but Arah path 4 is one of the hardest dungeons of all time. Lup was a joke compared to Dwayna. I’d rather dodge 1-2 shots than hack away at a boss that petrifies and heals to a point where it’s as if she was never touched…so think again if you guys think AC or anything else is even remotely hard.

Wow, so much rage here. Guys, dungeons are meant to be the end-game, hard PvE content. From what I’ve seen, there are two schools of thought on current dungeons:

1) Dungeons are easy. This is the thinking of players who understand how to play this game, rather than trying to force other games’ mechanics on it. If you try and do these dungeons like other games’ dungeons, no wonder you don’t like them!

2) Dungeons are hard. This is the thinking of players who can’t get out of the mindset instilled by other games with trinity mechanics, where the tank just soaked up the aggro, the monk kept him alive and everyone else avoided standing in lava (or other bad stuff) and just DPS’d stuff down. I feel like most of the complaints come from these DPS players who aren’t used to ANYTHING coming after them (or just blamed the bad tank when it did), or the tank players who aren’t used to working to stay alive or healing themselves. Pretty sure the healer players from other games are just enjoying the break from redbar duty.

Here’s a tip: learn to actually play your class to the fullest. Your bar is only half of what you can do; pay attention to combo fields and your finisher skills. The amount of damage, healing, condition removal, condition application, protection, etc. you can do by successfully using combos is astounding, and massively improves the effectiveness of your party. Learn the synergy you have with certain classes, and play accordingly when you party with them. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen obvious DPS players from trinity games standing at range and dying, while up here by the boss we’re all fine because my guardian has PBAoE heals and prots constantly going and the melee are combo’ing off the fields. Do they ever consider coming up to us to survive better? Nope. Instead they die, and complain that it’s too hard/broken. Pay attention to your surroundings, for God’s sake! Bow of Truth’s command skill is a HUGE AoE heal that can fill up at least half of your health, depending on your total pool; sometimes more. Very easy to see, it’s a ghostly blue barrage coming down; but I pop it, and I see people with 25% health dodging around it like they think it’s AoE, or just not paying any attention at all. Placement is key! And on that note, if you’re super squishy and you really wanna dish out tons of DPS without drawing aggro, try placing yourself better. My necro is pretty tough for a caster, but even so I still find places to stand that are hard for enemies to get at while I throw wells and marks around, just so I don’t run the danger of getting swarmed by trash. There are places all over in dungeons to do this. I think a lot of the problems people are having with dungeons is insisting they’re set up for Trinity playstyles and treating them as such. They are not. Could you run them with Trinity if you had it? Yeah, they’d be pretty kitten easy, because they’re not made with those in mind. If you stop crying about the loss of your tank/heals, you might be able to see the screen better, and notice all the support/heals going off around you, the terrain you can use to your advantage, the bad stuff you shouldn’t be standing in, etc. I’ve done all the dungeons, and I can say that none of them are an issue inherently (there are some bugs that can be annoying, but that’s not a problem with the design, just an error). If I die, it’s because I did something stupid or I wasn’t paying attention. Every time. There is no way to play a dungeon well and die because “it’s not fair” or something.

In summation, the dungeons are not comparable to dungeons of other games, ESPECIALLY trinity games, and cannot be treated as such if you want to have a good time. Learning a new playstyle is difficult, but it’s necessary for a game with a new system. The sooner you let go of your WoW raid instincts, the sooner you will succeed in dungeons.

That being said, I agree with some of you suggesting smaller health pools for bosses and adds. Some of that is kind of unnecessary, and requiring more time to kill bosses not because of difficulty, but sheer time for time’s sake, is monotonous. This is the only “complaint” I have with dungeons, and it’s fairly minor; imo, maybe a 10% decrease would be perfect. Not gonna be upset if it doesn’t get changed. I have tons of fun in dungeons, and next to WvW they’re my favorite aspect of the game. I personally think the rewards are great, and I look forward to more dungeons for more variety in skins.