Guild Wars 2

And that is saying a lot of such a beautiful game. I can honestly say, that the time I’ve spent in GW2 dungeons have been the most frustrating, least rewarding, head banging, face palming experience in ANY MMO to date. As primarily a PVE player, with limited interest in PVP and exploration, dungeons are by far the content I like to do the most.

That alone, makes this game not the game for me. I wish you the best, the game is free – I’ll try again in a couple months.

I sincerely hope that anet is paying attention to these posts. I know one of the dungeon designers posts here. I’d love to hear his insight on why the dungeons were designed to be so frustrating! I consider myself a good gamer. I am very alert in dungeons and raids. Yet, I’ve never been so frustrated with a gaming experience in all of my 30 years as a gamer and yes that includes ghosts n ghouls.

Yeah my sole reason for getting this game was hoping there would be good 5 man content in it. GW1 was really good with that. I have been massively dissapointed. I realyl could care less about running around in the open world zones picking up pumpkins for farmer Jones. Or the zerg events, where you just race in and mash buttons trying to tag as much as you can to get the gold medal.

I PVP very very moderately. But its more of a sideshow for me. So GW2 is kinda a broken game for me in its current state. They need to change their design philopsophy, and that is why I dont even think it will get better.

After the last patch for the dungeons the rewards got bugged and they are insane low, but a developer said they were working on it, i would recommend you to wait for the new patch that should contain the “fixes” for this incident. Another thing that doesn’t help are bad groups, even with this bugs if you get a good pug the dungeon will be fun

Scarlett.9256:

And that is saying a lot of such a beautiful game. I can honestly say, that the time I’ve spent in GW2 dungeons have been the most frustrating, least rewarding, head banging, face palming experience in ANY MMO to date. As primarily a PVE player, with limited interest in PVP and exploration, dungeons are by far the content I like to do the most.

That alone, makes this game not the game for me. I wish you the best, the game is free – I’ll try again in a couple months.

You didn’t really say what the problem is, are they too hard?

Ive decided to play minecraft instead of gw2 until they will fix dungeons… it is unbearable and impossible. i am not going to farm that hard for akitten reward. the game is not rewarding COF is way too hard and there is 0 end – game. sorry but farming skins and having “fun” with friends can’t be called “the end-game”

Scarlett.9256:

And that is saying a lot of such a beautiful game. I can honestly say, that the time I’ve spent in GW2 dungeons have been the most frustrating, least rewarding, head banging, face palming experience in ANY MMO to date. As primarily a PVE player, with limited interest in PVP and exploration, dungeons are by far the content I like to do the most.

That alone, makes this game not the game for me. I wish you the best, the game is free – I’ll try again in a couple months.

If you want changes, kinda have to outline why you feel this way. Saying you’re frustrated with something is fine, but to get them modified to how you want them – have to say more than “these dungeons make me face palm!”,

Is the difficulty too hard for the group you’re doing the dungeons with? Is this because of the boss mechanics? Is there too many mobs to fight? Is it the design of the story/exploration modes? Are you finding the time spent in dungeons is too long? Is it gathering a group?

Sometimes it feels like the dungeons are tuned for people with permanent swiftness and infinite dodge rolls, it doesn’t really help that some classes have limited utility in dungeons due to the nature of their skills.

Melee is still a terrible idea 90% of the time due to high damage, non-telegraphed moves, low combat mobility and some very melee unfriendly mechanics, like that one boss in CoF story mode that has a 900+ range aura that burns anyone within range.

Tera managed their bosses a lot better than GW2, melee classes get better tools to evade attacks and the bosses can’t be covered in overpowering particle effects so it’s hard to miss their tells.

i have to agree. dungeons and pve in this game are an utter disapontement. its sad because i enjoyed the game so far even if i have no interest in pvp. i hope arenanet does improve endgame pve. i dont care for raids but i realy thought they would add awesome 5 mans wich are fun and rewarding. now pve endgame is a boring grind like back in 1999.

its beyond me how game designers just FAIL to create an rewarding and fun loot/progress system these days.

bye and hopfully cu in a few month arenanet :/

I WANT TO MINDLESSLY FARM BADGES FOR EPIKZ ON EZY MODE LOL OMGQT. Really guys, it’s not that hard. Learn your class inside and out, learn the mechanics, learn the bosses and mobs.

Do not cry until you get your way and ruin this for those of us who are actually competent at what we play. Yes we still wipe, but that’s part of the learning process. Ask yourself this… Are you really doing everything you should be doing (blinds / dodges / LoS / speed buffs to get out of dodge / tossing heals / really and truly supporting your team) or do you run in there with a guardian and think he’ll tank and you just dps like crazy?

hard is good! If you are wiping on dungeons its probably time to change your strategy. Stop comparing it to other MMO’s cause its not one of them. this is not a a tank and spank game, learn to dodge, learn the bosses learn the maps. The same group that I started on AC with wiped on the the first mob, but now we learned and can clear it efficiently. We are hoping to do the same in exploration and other dungeons!

As for the rewards, they know, they are fixing it and it seems that Anet has been awesome about addressing issues.

If you just want free handouts so you can get your epics without any effort there will be no reward in achieving it when you look around and everyone has the same gear as you. A little effort can go a long way, and seeing as how the game is free to play i would not expect as many additions to the game as a subscription based MMO’s that have teams dedicated to grinding out new material. They are taking what they have and making you work for it, if you don’t like it play something else so the rest of us can enjoy it without people whinning till they get it nerfed. I heard you can get to gladiator in SWTOR in about 3 hours, try that out if you like easy.

You guys seem to think dungeons are supposed to be simple. It’s endgame content, you’re supposed to bust your skull learning it.

This thread is what happens when children are given contestant ribbons while growing up instead of shaming them and not making them work hard to achieve greatness

kovaux.2371:

This thread is what happens when children are given contestant ribbons while growing up instead of shaming them and not making them work hard to achieve greatness

I know, lol, it’s seriously making me re-think my parenting strategy. I just can’t believe the amount of QQ. The dungeons are great fun.

I would enjoy a more sophisticated dungeon finder / grouping tool, aka Rift’s was perfect. I’m new to the game so i could be missing something. But it seems the only way to get a group for AC, for instance, is to port to the zone, stand by the entrance and spam LFG.

Rorrin.4016:

I would enjoy a more sophisticated dungeon finder / grouping tool, aka Rift’s was perfect. I’m new to the game so i could be missing something. But it seems the only way to get a group for AC, for instance, is to port to the zone, stand by the entrance and spam LFG.

There is a LFG system already in the game…i have not used it and it only works on the map that you are one. So it wont work with people in overflow etc…i wish i could share more but i don’t have that info since i haven’t used it, but i do remember reading about it…its not great but its a start.

since when is rewarding content ment to be easy or hard? you guys must have a realy low satisfaction level lol.
the rewards are just terdious to get, a boring grind 60 times dungeon x etc. zero effort was put into pve items, encounter diversity, quantity and quality. but everybody its own.
grinding rl > kitten

Rift is a completely different game with a completely different set of rules, if you tried to bring that type of dungeon finder to this game, the crying on the forums would be beyond ludicrous about how they need to rebalance for groups with No desire for communication or to be strategic.

I don’t mind and in fact agree with some enhancements to the current LFG tool, but nothing in line with what Rift or WoW have in place. Ever.

Quote Nihilus: “You didn’t really say what the problem is, are they too hard?”

Once he states what he thinks the problem is, the dungeonn gurus will flood in stating how they took a PUG and easily cleared it and that the dungeons are fine.

Then they’ll state that it was a “big mistake” of him going into a dungeon with a team oriented setup, that this game is not about being a “role” its every man for himself. YET, you have to perfectly organize without group, at the same time, to perform combo abilities and layered disables. But it’s a mistake to enter a dungeon with a team play build though.

I think you are confusing the term team play, and thinking it means you have to have some semblance of the holy trinity.

Why do u find the dungeons so frustrating and unrewarding?

Personally I’m having a blast playing the explorable dungeons with my friends even tho I do find some of them to easy.

But it’s still so rewarding to see those 350 tokens and knowing “just two more runs for that weapon I really want”

The only thing i don’t like in dungeons is the fact that you can teleport to the waypoint while fighting a boss. That makes the game easy!

Remove teleport to the waypoint and stop giving infinite lifes to players. Make it more challenging

Urrelles: that’s ENTIRELY WRONG. Yes, I think they overcompensated with cm story mode, I think they overcompensated with path 2 of exp citadel of flames, but if you go in WITHOUT a support orientated build and utilities etc, you’re gonna fail hardcore.

You’re thinking that the problem is your support is not enough, when the problem is that elementalist with the signets of earth, or the 4 signet warrior with nothing to offer but damage who gets annihilated when mobs sneeze at him, and who has stacked toughness thinking that will offset it.

I got fooled by the issues as well, I still think it should be a little more “appealing” to have a type of support skill in every setup ie: regens not stacking goes against this, but ultimately if your rangers not using healing spring, or your thief is not using shadow refuge or your warriors or guardians are using all derpfaced damage builds solely with no support or combo field generation or use, then really they’re not built for the dungeon and should gtfo.

I don’t particularly like that it’s a balanced or “dungeon” build for some classes, but many players who i noticed causing difficulty in pugs in story and explorable are the ones with the “dps” setups. you don’t suffer in overworld pve with a balanced dungeon buld, but you suffer with a glass-cannon build in dungeons, in fact you ALL suffer. That guy who has all stacked mf? he’s a liabilty, that guy who’s got all his dps skills in his bars? he’s more of a liability than the other guy, if they can’t adapt to what will help the team if possible, be that taking off the mf that will net him a few more rags to salvage. or switching to a better combo manipulating weapon loadout/utility set then literally tell them you’re sorry, but they’re not there for a team they’re there to be carried and ask that they cop the frack on.

@Cultrix

i kinda have the feeling using a waypoint to hop back into the fight is an intended design decision for an additional gold sink and camouflaging lazily-tested boss encounters :p

that and not being able to do anything until the fight is over is boring (not that clobbering a boss for 10 minutes is less boring.. ) HMMM

I dont have a straight dps build on my thief. I rotate utilities to fit the situations needed, my traits are devided up fairly well to give me not only survivability but skill traits that help out my group as a whole. I know boss mechancis well enough to dodge teh big incoming attacks so taht I dont get flattened.

Yet knowing all this, some areas in the dungeons have rediculous mechanics that unless you are incredibly skilled over achiever with perfect reaction times, you are going to die a lot, pay a lot for repairs, and eventually get frustrated.

For all those who say everyone is just a bunch of QQ whiners and babies and that you have fun times and no difficulties in dungeons, congratulatoins. You are the “1%” in this game. Its great that you are skilled and very very very competant at yoru class and group mechanics and have great timing and reflexes, but this game isnt made just for you. Its made for a large player base. And when most of us who are fairly competant gamers have mind numbingly frustrating times with dungeons, the concensus is that its no fun.

To be honest, I wouldnt have nearly as bad a time with dungeons if they were not only more interesting event wise, but if repair costs dropped a little bit or atleast were set to match the difficulty and expected wipe amounts so that it doesnt become a test of how much money we can afford to lose before we wont be able to run dungeons all together.

I wasn’t planning to come back and post in this thread but since multiple people asked what I hate about dungeons – here goes.

1. There is absolutely no sense of control – it is very chaotic. It feels like a giant game of aggro ping pong. Yes, you blind, you dodge, you roll, you bubble, you slow, you pray – but at the end of the day you are doing these things because you have aggro and you are trying not to die. When you no longer have aggro, it becomes someone else’s problem. The people in your party may be doing the very best they can to use all abilities to aid the group, but the way the game is structured I never notice them (even if its being done effectively). Dungeons FEEL like they are every man for themselves even though that may not be occurring. Bottom line: They feel like a massive cluster bleep.

2. I’ve crafted a full set of exotic armor. In this game, exotic armor is exotic armor is exotic armor. Doing 9-15 or so dungeons runs for a piece of armor (lets say gloves) that has the same exact stats as the gloves I just spent 5 minutes crafting makes zero sense to me. I do not mine hard content. In fact I enjoy hard content, but every single game I play beating that hard content gives me something in terms of a reward. In this case, I’m expected to put the time in to lean all these different dungeons, wipe, spend money, develop teaming arrangement that works – all for a vanity item? So for THIS GAME, the dungeons are way too hard for what you get out of them. In other games, hard dungeons/raids are fine because the reward is there. But for this game, no way am I doing that – plus my crafted gloves look better than the wonky looking stuff they dreamed up.

3. No looking for group tool that allows me to continue playing while we try and find that last person we need. Having to camp the front of the instance and shout (until the spam filter cuts you off anyway) is asinine in today’s market. Every dev says the same thing – “it builds community!” – No it doesn’t. It frustrates people and they go find something more fun to do.

4. Zero boss mechanics. Crank up the hp, max out the damage – one shot kill. Fun stuff. Actually, it would be fun if you could tell what the boss was doing through all the spell effects and the giant Norn Guardian in his face. Boss fights are just giant target dummies with massive amounts of hit points with poorly telegraphed one shot kill mechanics. How many times have you died with ZERO clue of what hit you because it was masked for whatever reason.

5. The number of tokens required for one piece of armor makes these dungeons the grind of all grinds.

Bottom line: They’ve always said that this would be the game that gear didn’t matter. This would be the game that you would play because it was fun. Unfortunately, the dungeon portion of the game isn’t fun enough to carry this mantra for me. I need some type of reward for “putting work into it” as some posters said above. Unfortunately, fun isn’t reward enough. It could be, but it isn’t.

I wasn’t planning to come back and post in this thread but since multiple people asked what I hate about dungeons – here goes.

1. There is absolutely no sense of control – it is very chaotic. It feels like a giant game of aggro ping pong. Yes, you blind, you dodge, you roll, you bubble, you slow, you pray – but at the end of the day you are doing these things because you have aggro and you are trying not to die. When you no longer have aggro, it becomes someone else’s problem. The people in your party may be doing the very best they can to use all abilities to aid the group, but the way the game is structured I never notice them (even if its being done effectively). Dungeons FEEL like they are every man for themselves even though that may not be occurring. Bottom line: They feel like a massive cluster bleep.

2. I’ve crafted a full set of exotic armor. In this game, exotic armor is exotic armor is exotic armor. Doing 9-15 or so dungeons runs for a piece of armor (lets say gloves) that has the same exact stats as the gloves I just spent 5 minutes crafting makes zero sense to me. I do not mine hard content. In fact I enjoy hard content, but every single game I play beating that hard content gives me something in terms of a reward. In this case, I’m expected to put the time in to lean all these different dungeons, wipe, spend money, develop teaming arrangement that works – all for a vanity item? So for THIS GAME, the dungeons are way too hard for what you get out of them. In other games, hard dungeons/raids are fine because the reward is there. But for this game, no way am I doing that – plus my crafted gloves look better than the wonky looking stuff they dreamed up.

3. No looking for group tool that allows me to continue playing while we try and find that last person we need. Having to camp the front of the instance and shout (until the spam filter cuts you off anyway) is asinine in today’s market. Every dev says the same thing – “it builds community!” – No it doesn’t. It frustrates people and they go find something more fun to do.

4. Zero boss mechanics. Crank up the hp, max out the damage – one shot kill. Fun stuff. Actually, it would be fun if you could tell what the boss was doing through all the spell effects and the giant Norn Guardian in his face. Boss fights are just giant target dummies with massive amounts of hit points with poorly telegraphed one shot kill mechanics. How many times have you died with ZERO clue of what hit you because it was masked for whatever reason.

5. The number of tokens required for one piece of armor makes these dungeons the grind of all grinds.

Bottom line: They’ve always said that this would be the game that gear didn’t matter. This would be the game that you would play because it was fun. Unfortunately, the dungeon portion of the game isn’t fun enough to carry this mantra for me. I need some type of reward for “putting work into it” as some posters said above. Unfortunately, fun isn’t reward enough. It could be, but it isn’t.

@Scarlett.9256: They’ve always said that this would be the game that gear didn’t matter.
Well, they got that part right at least,

Scarlett.9256:

2. I’ve crafted a full set of exotic armor. In this game, exotic armor is exotic armor is exotic armor. Doing 9-15 or so dungeons runs for a piece of armor (lets say gloves) that has the same exact stats as the gloves I just spent 5 minutes crafting makes zero sense to me. I do not mine hard content. In fact I enjoy hard content, but every single game I play beating that hard content gives me something in terms of a reward. In this case, I’m expected to put the time in to lean all these different dungeons, wipe, spend money, develop teaming arrangement that works – all for a vanity item? So for THIS GAME, the dungeons are way too hard for what you get out of them. In other games, hard dungeons/raids are fine because the reward is there. But for this game, no way am I doing that – plus my crafted gloves look better than the wonky looking stuff they dreamed up.

I’d like to chime in on that bit. the problem I see with the current state is that anet royally dropped the ball regarding rewards. cosmetic armor is able to offer a enjoyable progression, but the only way to progress here if you want the armor is doing said dungeon 50+ times.

gw1 had prestige armor (the equivalent here would be dungeon armor) which took some time to get, but you could basically do whatever you wanted to progress towards that since almost nothing was bound (except the prestige armor and manually bound weapons etc.).
in gw2 it would roughly work this way: imagine dungeon tokens are tradeable. now you have someone who likes to run dungeons all day but doesn’t want the armor. on the other side you have someone who wants the armor but doesn’t like dungeons.
so person A has a lot of tokens he don’t need and person B has a lot of money/items/dyes whatever. you meet in LA, discuss a price and suddenly person B can have his armor and person A has a lot of money/items/dyes whatever. both persons are happy, don’t have the feeling their time was wasted and keep playing however it’s fun to them.

even anet would win this way, lets say person B doesn’t have the time to play that much, so he can buy some gems and turn them to gold. before someone screams PAY2WIN – it’s just cosmetic armor, remember?

i did my 1st dungeon today just in story mode arah and well the last boss…… what a let down.
i mean isnt he the poster boy baddie atm and yet they give him that dungeon makes little sence

overall the dungeon seem to be one big time sink for no reason 2nd and 3rd boss stands out here they both just stand still lobing things which are easy to dodge u just stand there spaming for 10-15mins thats not tactics or skills thats just outright boring
if this is the gameplay we have with no tanks n healers please bring them back.

The professions are really fun and interesting with their own playstyles. The leveling system is also diverse and provides a variety of things to do. The PvP is great.

The Guild Wars 2 dungeon system is pretty antiquated. The LFG system is old and feels simply tacked on. The dungeons themselves are not that interesting. This is coming from someone who has completed most of them and farmed an armor set. The stories seem like they come after the dungeon is designed. Oh, if you go this path, you must stop this person. It is of the utmost importance that you stop this person! If you go this other path, it is extremely important that you stop this person! None of it is truly memorable in Explorable. In Story Mode, the drama between the main characters of the Guild Wars 2 story keeps you from falling asleep, but their reasons for being in the dungeons don’t leave lasting impressions.

As for the dungeon designs, the layouts are interesting. I would like to commend the people who designed the maps. The Explorable paths, however, leave much to be desired. The dungeons end up being kill a group of trash monsters, kill boss. Kill a group of trash monsters, and, then, kill the boss. It feels uninspired.

I don’t exactly know what I want, but I know that, of all the MMOs that I’ve played, Guild Wars 2 dungeons do not stand out very much. Do not read this and become defensive of Guild Wars 2, because I do love Guild Wars 2. I’m just saying that the dungeons are the weakest part of it, in my opinion.

Choch.8349:

I WANT TO MINDLESSLY FARM BADGES FOR EPIKZ ON EZY MODE LOL OMGQT. Really guys, it’s not that hard. Learn your class inside and out, learn the mechanics, learn the bosses and mobs.

Do not cry until you get your way and ruin this for those of us who are actually competent at what we play. Yes we still wipe, but that’s part of the learning process. Ask yourself this… Are you really doing everything you should be doing (blinds / dodges / LoS / speed buffs to get out of dodge / tossing heals / really and truly supporting your team) or do you run in there with a guardian and think he’ll tank and you just dps like crazy?

Nice post. I like the part where you were giving off this vibe of “I have in inflated sense of self-importance because I can play video games.”

I’ve played many MMOs in the past, and over time they turned me into the type of gamer who isn’t satisfied until I’m leading the realm-first group (and on several occasions, I did). If there’s a way to be better at what I do, I’m all over it. If I see someone doing something wrong, I make an effort to correct them without being a prick about it, because I refuse to sacrifice fun for success, and nobody has fun when the group leader is a jerk.

Now, I’ve spent weeks learning my Ranger, and I’m probably sitting at about 2g spent just on retraining talents to try new builds for PvE (I don’t do much PvP). I’ve tried everything from glass cannon and snare builds all the way up to full blown toughness/vitality “can’t kill me!” builds. I’ve encouraged others to do the same to see if the extra survivability makes much of a difference.

Simply put, it doesn’t.

Even with heavy defense builds, trash silvers can still hit for a ton of damage, and you don’t fare any better against bosses, though in my experience, it’s not the bosses that are challenging, it’s the insanely high HP trash mobs that take forever to knock out. What’s worse is that these same mobs have been given one-shot mechanics that either aren’t telegraphed at all, or have such a minor tell that it’s nearly impossible to notice and react accordingly, especially when every enemy is drowning in spell effects. Fortunately, every profession has unlimited Endurance and can just dodge forever, so it’s not like anyone’s ever in any danger of being cornered without a way to escape this swarm of one-shot-capable trash NPCs. Right?

Of course, there are plenty of annoying things that have nothing to do with player skill, such as AC’s graveling burrows and their “obstructed/miss x1000” crap. Only A.I. and AoEs seem to be able to strike them reliably. What upsets me most about them is that they would be so easy to destroy in a matter of seconds if this bug didn’t exist, thus making the encounter trivial. Is that why a day-one bug that makes paths 1 and 3 incredibly frustrating STILL hasn’t been fixed? There are other equally frustrating bugs scattered throughout every dungeon – artificial difficulty at its finest?

Speaking of artificial difficulty, how about these bosses that have piles of HP? You know the ones. Their abilities are pathetically easy to avoid, the group is never in any real danger of dying, and it’s been made abundantly clear by the time the thing hits 85% that the fight is over, but it’s going to take another 7-8 minutes for the boss to finally get the hint and fall over. Talk about fun times, especially for someone like me that can hang back at 1500 range and slowly chip away at the boss without any fear of retaliation. An even better example is SE explorable, where the last step before the final boss is boring trash that spawns more boring trash until it just becomes a kitefest around a cloud of red names.

I could go on for hours about all the problems that I’ve seen, and I know there are dozens more that I haven’t seen yet. The point is that dungeons in this game are poor in quality, mostly due to the “challenge” being less about player skill and more about dumb luck or corpse trains. That just sucks the fun right out of dungeons for me, and I’m clearly not alone in that sentiment.

Choch.8349:

… do you run in there with a guardian and think he’ll tank and you just dps like crazy?

This works extremely well. Not sure why people here think it doesn’t.

I think the high HP is to account for the giant range of damage people seem to be doing. I have no doubt that the upper echelon of powergamers can be found destroying encounters, whereas it would take others 4-5 minutes.

If we were to have a damage meter, I’m sure we would see how imbalanced the class damages are. I know that I shouldn’t compare simply damage alone, because other classes provide other benefits. However, I am just trying to explain that certain classes are more adept at blowing things up, and high HP is a lazy way of making content not easy breezy.

I know the point wasn’t just to let a group of 5 uncoordinated a**hats walk into a dungeon once and get everything they wanted, but I feel it has been taken it to the opposite extreme. If the Explorer Mode of a dungeon only has 3 different paths, then after completing all 3 paths, the player should have enough seals (or whatever currency) to purchase 90-100% of what that dungeon has to offer because they have experienced 90-100% of that dungeon. I believe that repetition is the bane of every MMOs existence and I enjoy this game too much to want to see it fall down that hole.

On the side of difficulty, I understand that because this game doesn’t follow the standard group dynamic, balancing can be difficult, but the rewards should still match the time and effort put to attain them; TIME being my biggest complaint. I don’t feel that a yellow helmet & 15 silver is a worthwhile reward for spending 2-1/2 hours down in the Ascalon Catacombs (and that’s just story mode).

The only reason I wound up here is that I just quit out of my 1st Explore Mode dungeon (CM) when I was told to only expect 20-30 seals. I’m not trying to hate on the game, I’m just trying to let someone who might have the power to fix something know that there is something (else) that definitely needs fixing.

Kind of irks me that so many people are just " lawl learn 2 dodge!" the problem is you only have a limited amount of dodge, are bosses are specifically designed to annihilate anyone in melee range, and generally speaking brutalize anyone that isn’t running a spec that allows them to spam sprint/dodge, ect… basically to do dungeons have to do the following

1: have ability to keep a CC effect such as blind or weakness on the target for the entire fight

2: have perma sprint or be able to sprint constantly

3: be ranged for every fight involving heavy hitters

We get it people… we need to dodge… the problem is that dodging isn’t the solution here. Are tons of problems with the current design of PvE. From particle effects to terrible tells, to one shotting skills have a range of half the area or more, to auras that punish anyone tries to get in close.

When it comes to balance you have to insure all styles of play are on a level playing field. The excuse of " well everyone can use ranged" is terrible excuse for making ranged so much better then melee. Yes melee does more damage but as a wise man once said…you cant deal damage if you are face down in the dirt.. so get the F!$$@ out of the fire!

Fact of the matter is ranged are dominate right now, most groups are running ranged because its just easier and safer, melee is not an option for some fights, and punishing learning curve in GW2 is a complete turn off. Want bosses totally annilate your players? want dungeons are so hard core only 1% of your player base gets to finish them? you put those as end game content at lvl 80, with a big " HARD MODE " icon so people understand that those dungeons are for hard core gamers…. and not your average person.

But right now almost every single dungeon is either balls to the wall hard or miss balanced and favoring a certain play style. Anyone that says otherwise is lieing out there teeth… The style of pve for GW2 can work just need to stop the brutal unfair mechanics, and buff melee so they can do more then tickle a boss and die and wait to be rez’d.

Looking at some of the posts in this thread I see ignorant people and I see trolls. The people that claim that the dungeons in this game are fun and easy are obvious trolls. Then there are ones who are just ignorant thinking that the people who complain are all running in organized groups using Mumble and just lack skill. This is what I see. I think that the people who are complaining are actually running in PuG’s, and this is reason for their frustrations along with some recent poor decisions made by ArenaNet.

@TwistedWarrior: that’s absolutely not true, about trolling anyway. I just now got out of CM explore and had a great time. I’m not trying to troll anyone and I don’t want to be condescending. I strongly disagree with people saying they are too hard. They ARE difficult, that’s for sure. Easy isn’t a word I’d use.

However, in that CM explore run, we had no total wipes, but there was a lot of downed time, but that’s part of the action. The more that I play the explore modes, the more I have come to admire the subtleties of the new group design that Arenanet has done. We were throwing up bubbles, Wall of Reflection, healing seeds, using our crowd control, focus firing on single targets, making use of combos, etc. all the tools at our disposal and it was a GREAT time. So intense and so challenging, but so fun. We cleared it in about 40 minutes, but we weren’t rushing.

About rewards, I don’t know. I think after vendoring all the blues and with picked up coins and the end reward, it wasn’t a huge money making operation, but I don’t really think of them that way anyway, so I was fine with it. I picked up one random rare that time, so that was good. All in all, a good time. (this was a PUG, by the way)

serena smith.2734:

After the last patch for the dungeons the rewards got bugged and they are insane low, but a developer said they were working on it, i would recommend you to wait for the new patch that should contain the “fixes” for this incident.

The problem isn’t the rewards being bugged

That’s a problem coming from a problem

The original problem is the fact that they made the rewards too kittening low. I couldn’t care less about the rewards being bugged because I don’t even do dungeons anymore because of the lowered rewards in the first place

Hawken.7932:

@TwistedWarrior: that’s absolutely not true, about trolling anyway. I just now got out of CM explore and had a great time. I’m not trying to troll anyone and I don’t want to be condescending. I strongly disagree with people saying they are too hard. They ARE difficult, that’s for sure. Easy isn’t a word I’d use.

However, in that CM explore run, we had no total wipes, but there was a lot of downed time, but that’s part of the action. The more that I play the explore modes, the more I have come to admire the subtleties of the new group design that Arenanet has done. We were throwing up bubbles, Wall of Reflection, healing seeds, using our crowd control, focus firing on single targets, making use of combos, etc. all the tools at our disposal and it was a GREAT time. So intense and so challenging, but so fun. We cleared it in about 40 minutes, but we weren’t rushing.

About rewards, I don’t know. I think after vendoring all the blues and with picked up coins and the end reward, it wasn’t a huge money making operation, but I don’t really think of them that way anyway, so I was fine with it. I picked up one random rare that time, so that was good. All in all, a good time. (this was a PUG, by the way)

I’m sure there are people that find the dungeons in this game fun no matter how few they are.

PuG? Thought you said it was a CM explore run? Well you must be a gifted gamer and every person in that PuG must have been equally as gifted. So not everyone is ignorant or just trolls, some are liars too! After all – this is the Internet.

@TwistedWarrior: well, I don’t appreciate you calling me a liar. That’s pretty hostile and it’s not necessary. As I said, I’m not trying to say “wow, I’m so much better than people here who are complaining…” I’m just saying that I quite enjoy them, and people who are having a hard time with them should just keep with it — there is a learning curve, they take some getting used to for sure. But now that I feel I’m past that learning curve, and obviously some of the people I’ve pugged with lately are also, they are quite fun.

That’s kinda lame, I ran a pug cm explorable just the other day, in fact I ran two to full completion, path 1 and path 2 individually.

they are completely puggable, I am not busting your chops, I am not lying.
if you can get used to the mechanics and stop thinking like it’s a different mmo, then they CAN be enjoyable. but if you keep thinking “there’s no holy trinity” automatically means “we should all be pure DPS and leave our brains at the door” then you’re wrong.

THE LAST role ANY dungeon I’ve ran needed was dps, technically EVERYTHING is dps I know. but PURE dps, had little to no place :S
there was nothing to be burst down, everything had high hp but could be near enough permalocked in blinds etc, attrition is better than burst and I’m more and more becoming glad of that, because there’s nothing particularly exciting about bursting down a mob in one rotation several times before you hit a miniboss that requires an instruction manual and which forces me to shout for idiots to get out of the way of mechanics that they don’t fear or respect enough to get out of, because they only deal moderate damage to them, til the healer oom’s keeping their sorry rear ends alive, and then that lack of respect for the mechanic starts to add up and they die, which in groups then leads to a huge lack of dps because dead dps = 0dps

Does that sound familiar? because that’s what was happening before they IDIOT PROOFED dungeons in wow with the hour of twilight releases.
the irony? players STILL died on such woeful mechanics as ashara’s big “interrupt me now or wipe” skill. and we still had huntards refusing to spec for an interrupt which would have trivialised the content.

If I’m jumping the gun here, which I’m known to do somewhat, by all means correct me, but ask yourself if the problems you’re experiencing are truly problems with the core mechanics of dungeon groups, problems with your perceptions and expectations or just minor issues with conveyance

Hellkaiser.6025:

That’s kinda lame, I ran a pug cm explorable just the other day, in fact I ran two to full completion, path 1 and path 2 individually.

they are completely puggable, I am not busting your chops, I am not lying.
if you can get used to the mechanics and stop thinking like it’s a different mmo, then they CAN be enjoyable. but if you keep thinking “there’s no holy trinity” automatically means “we should all be pure DPS and leave our brains at the door” then you’re wrong.

THE LAST role ANY dungeon I’ve ran needed was dps, technically EVERYTHING is dps I know. but PURE dps, had little to no place :S
there was nothing to be burst down, everything had high hp but could be near enough permalocked in blinds etc, attrition is better than burst and I’m more and more becoming glad of that, because there’s nothing particularly exciting about bursting down a mob in one rotation several times before you hit a miniboss that requires an instruction manual and which forces me to shout for idiots to get out of the way of mechanics that they don’t fear or respect enough to get out of, because they only deal moderate damage to them, til the healer oom’s keeping their sorry rear ends alive, and then that lack of respect for the mechanic starts to add up and they die, which in groups then leads to a huge lack of dps because dead dps = 0dps

Does that sound familiar? because that’s what was happening before they IDIOT PROOFED dungeons in wow with the hour of twilight releases.
the irony? players STILL died on such woeful mechanics as ashara’s big “interrupt me now or wipe” skill. and we still had huntards refusing to spec for an interrupt which would have trivialised the content.

If I’m jumping the gun here, which I’m known to do somewhat, by all means correct me, but ask yourself if the problems you’re experiencing are truly problems with the core mechanics of dungeon groups, problems with your perceptions and expectations or just minor issues with conveyance

Ok I’ll humor you. Let’s say you did beat explorer mode with a PuG, my point is that the majority of people will not be able to do this therefore making it an overall unenjoyable experience for them. Why does this seem like a challenge for you to understand?

Beat you’re chest much? Don’t patronize me. Explorable content is not “completely puggable” as you put it and many other people in this forum would dispute that ridiculous statement.You must be really starving for some attention or to say something so silly like that.

I bought this MMO because it was different in some ways compared to others. You think that you have me figured out but have no clue about what my expectations were coming into this game or what kind of gamer that I am. Way off! Just foolish nonsense.

fyi – Providing some proof to back up certain claims go’s a long way toward ones integrity.

100% agree with OP.

It’s not the difficulty of these dungeons so much. From CM to Arah, they are just way too clunky. It’s very hard to tell what you’re supposed to be doing at first, and then when you do, getting the whole party to go from zerg mode to strategy mode is something else.

Melee die far too easily in dungeons, and having to bring up downed people in general happens far too often in some dungeons, to the point where it feels way too messy.

It’s hard to approach a situation and just stand back and know what to do. People feel compelled to jump in and start dealing numbers and this mentality itself is very hard to break. Out of the 25 dungeon runs I’ve done, 23 of them have been more of a chore and annoyance than anything else.

@twisted:

I’m not “beating my chest” I don’t take any sort of pleasure in arguing online for no reason and I certainly didn’t get it a few days ago even and my stance was that it was all a big mess, but I was WRONG and I was selling the game short, which has led to me getting snotty pm’s etc which is irritating because my views fall annoyingly in between both camps of “omg it’s too hard” and “it’s easy stop whingeing”

I don’t fully agree with EITHER side and believe me if you think one side has it tough over the other, try being piggy in the middle <_<

You want me, to what? provide proof? of what? that I could run cm explorable? It’s not rocket science :S if anything it’s EASIER than story mode cos of the buffs to that lame golem, and the chances that your team will be new and looking to start on cm etc and inexperienced thus using stuff that’s sub optimal for dungeons. when people go for explorable there’s a higher chance they’ll be more ready for it and not a “5 signet wonder” or “stacked toughness and damage and no hp” etc (honestly, I hate the toughness stat it’s horrid)

so let me now tell you the type of gamer I actually “think” you are, give you’ve already been paranoid and made accusations that I have.

I think you’re a player that’s been brainwashed, by BAD mechanics, spoon fed gear and rubbish and made to feel like you’re invincible by other games. Who’s first instinctual response, something I also fell prey to due to the same bad mentality, is to blame the CONTENT instead of doing the one thing they’re so deathly afraid of doing, looking at themselves, their teammates and saying:
“can I do something better, change something or better fit the environment and challenge”

I don’t think you’re a moron, a nubbinz, a noob, an idiot/fool/nubcakes/etc etc etc….
I DO think you, (like I had) have got a set of horribly bad expectations of what you THINK will be a fun enjoyable game but will end up as a hollow shallow and ultimately unsustainable experience which will be easily forgettable.
And rather than LISTEN, to how people are explaining the rationale behind how it is, are expecting the devs to cut all the holes into different shapes cos they don’t fit your ideals currently.

With the exception of some of the recent changes to story mode, which i feel should have a nice easy enough curve, and convey and teach players about mechanics safely instead of by getting hammered by them and repairing, explorable modes only have slight tuning issues, nothing that won’t change or be fixed.
Does that render some content a pain in the rear? oh hell yes.

Does it mean dungeons are horribly broken? hell no.

I try to listen to the person behind the complaints, and the brainwashing, I do honestly. But most of the time it’s hard to communicate with a player that won’t for a minute at least CONSIDER that dungeons SHOULD NOT be something you walk into and hammer your dps cooldowns in order and win, they complain because rather than make the game stupidly simplistic to accommodate the fact that we’re all a dps of sorts in our role. they created a system in which if you all contribute a little, no one has to take a specific role, and is more NEEDS based, as opposed to the alternative.

You can still go into a dungeon “how you want” no one is stopping you, except maybe the players that want someone with a team playing mentality and utilities in their bars. If that bothers you, (which it shouldn’t) well then… again as I’ve said to others before and as rude as it sounds, maybe you aren’t ready to play team based structured activities like dungeons.
But I’m sure if that’s the case, as soon as you are able to break this bad mentality you’ll find it’s a lovely system with stacks of potential even if it’s NOT perfect

Holy smokes this is a long thread with nothing of value. I have seen and experienced both sides of the fence, of what I think the thread is about, and I’m enjoying whats available as much as I can, with hopes that some improvements will be made.

On a personal note, making a thread with nothing of value is a waste of everyone’s time. To say XXXXX is the worst. It makes me so frustrating. They need to fix this.
And then end post, does nothing to help the game, or to help players. Please, add content to your post. Explain why, what things you encountered to make you feel this way. “This sucks, see you in few months” does nothing, and if I was a dev, I wouldn’t spend two seconds trying to figure out what your problem is.

It’s not so much that people aren’t giving the feedback, it’s people are spending more time attacking one another strzalka

^ on the real. I attempted to give some general tips and things that work for me with PuG’s, got blasssssssssted by some people, so enjoy arguing yourselves in circles. I’ll continue to post useful things such as how to find groups and get around buggy content (example: how to finish CoF 3 before it is fixed). As far as attempting to point helpful things out or discuss mechanics on these forums, I would rather dry hump a pile of broken glass.

Gies.3824:

^ on the real. I attempted to give some general tips and things that work for me with PuG’s, got blasssssssssted by some people, so enjoy arguing yourselves in circles. I’ll continue to post useful things such as how to find groups and get around buggy content (example: how to finish CoF 3 before it is fixed). As far as attempting to point helpful things out or discuss mechanics on these forums, I would rather dry hump a pile of broken glass.

I agree, but I’d then rather enter a shot term whirlwind romance with the broken glass before cheating on it with sandpaper and hot coals in a manage et tois of
“at least it’s better than being eaten alive on the gw2 forum for pointing out that both sides have some points”

I’d just like to put this out there. All you people who say “oh yes I’ve played many MMOs in the past and I think this game is hard” That’s your problem. GW2 is not like any MMO you’ve ever played. You need to get out of that mind set. People who have played no MMOs in their life have a better time doing stuff than you guys have.

New players have no bad habits, be a new player.