Guild Wars 2

Greetings!
As the title says, dungeons should be more like a real adventure…
To be honest, when someone says the word ’’dungeon’’ I just imagine Indiana Jones style dungeons and fun ’’quests’’ to do. The dungeons we currently have here are all about ‘’kill, kill, kill, skip, skip, don’t watch cinematic, SKIP, kill boss, get loot…go down, get up, go down again…etc.." In my opinion, I do not find it fun at all. I am aware that some dungeons in this game have traps and things which can kill you unexpectedly…but I would love to have that feeling of a real adventure.
Someone would say “Go do jumping puzzles”…I did them all, yet I would love dungeons to be more like this and not just hard-core killing…some mobs are even pointless…
Imagine trap-doors, falling somewhere, activating some traps accidentally…you step on pressure plate, all the sudden the ground collapses, you find yourself in a room with spikes…you must find a switch in the dark to stop it else you’ll die…but in these super-dangerous rooms you have the chance to find some rare chest which rewards you nicely. Rolling boulders (Like from GW1), more traps, more adventurous feel…and certainly better rewards.
I do understand that some people are not good at jumping, avoiding etc…but this is also a challenge and to be honest, I prefer it more than just killing and dodging…
The laser part in CoE is amazing!
FotM dungeon has some of these elements and I really like them…and I would love to see more dungeons in this style, more traps, more adventurous challenge, less hard-core killing…and in the end, one could come across some nasty boss, which requires you to think! (Example with the Frog King from SAB…even if not too hard, the fight is still interesting.)
One more thing…I know this is an MMORPG, and before anyone ’’attacks’’ me…I want to say that I truly dislike the fact that almost all dungeons are designed for 5 players…
I play with no more than 1-2 friends and I truly dislike teaming up with random people…I never know what to expect and I truly do not need stressful time…
One friend and I have decided to do CoE duo, path 1…we did everything without struggle, yet when we reached the laser part, we could not go further, for the door was locked and it was impossible to shut the lasers down…
I also understand that dungeons are meant to be high-end content, extremely hard, etc, etc…but I also want to have fun in them…
When teaming up with random people, it’s all about skipping, speed and raging most of the time…(Some will also say “Go find a guild”…I am leading a small guild and I love it that way.) All I am asking is that I would certainly love future dungeons to also be possible for those who want to play with 1-2 friends and enjoy them…to be honest, I can’t even watch cinematics in explo mode…and I would very much like to see what’s happening in them.
In GW1, I could simply take heroes, a few friends and go to the dungeons (Hard mode, yes)…and certainly enjoy!
Adding infantile mode, or simply ’’scaling’’ as to how many are in team would be more than great! Depending of how many are in team=drop rate gets affected…if more players, better drops, yet harder enemies…etc.
I know that ANet are busy working with maaaaany things…but there’s certainly a lot which could be added to the dungeons to make them enjoyable for everyone.
Thank you kindly!

I really agree with this…I am not fully satisfied on what dungeons are like, at the moment. Doesn’t feel adventurous, but just a different and hard-core farm, for tokens and gold. It’s all about killing and dodging most of the time and as far as I can see, this fact is causing some professions to be “unwanted” for some dungeons paths. I really dislike it how as a Guardian, I am often kicked from parties as soon as I join, just because I am not a berserker warrior, and this doesn’t happen only when it comes of CoF path 1, not anymore. When it’s all about kill and speed-run, all that is wanted is the highest damage, that with a support Guardian I don’t manage to get.
Dungeons should definitely require more than this…they should require you to think, in order to finish a path. To me, making them harder doesn’t make them funnier, since it might change the place where you have to stand, but basically it all remains about dps and dodge.
Trap doors and very dangerous situations like described here would make them very awesome and more worth to be played, not just by people who are looking for a quick farm!
And I also agree about the fact dungeons should be possible to be run by less than 5 people…honestly, a while ago, used to run loads of dungeons every very day,..now, even less than 1 run in 3 weeks. Why? Because some people are simply uncivilized and unable to behave, show no manners and keep offending and put down others as soon as the slightest mistake is done.
I play this game because I want to have fun, I really love it no matter what! And I am really grateful to ANet for giving us such an awesome game, I would just like a few things to be slightly different. As people behave like that, I just lose any will to team up with unknown again. I know that as there is many of those people, there is still many others that are totally different, kind and polite, but I don’t feel like to take the risk anymore.
Besides, I used to run CoE because it is my favourite dungeon honestly. I ran it loads of times in the past, and I never was allowed by team to watch a cinematic. If I did, they would scream at me and eventually kick me for wasting time. Personally, if I can’t know what’s going on, what is the story of the path…what is that makes a dungeon different from any event-chain for example?
Please, consider changing dungeons. Make them something more than just other farming sites.

Genuinely happy to see someone suggested this. I am typically one of those that would always declare “I’m really not that good at precision jumping” but even I have to say this sounds a whole lot better than usual speed run dungeon farm.

Since I like most of what is said here, I would only add to not over-do with insta-kill traps/puzzle. Case in point is the rolling boulder puzzle of CoF p1 or laser puzzle of CoE. (prefer the latter than the former, personally speaking) I’m not saying never at all, but to keep it sparse. I always prefer at least a little room for recovering from mistakes, more so in puzzles. An example would be like Loreclaw Expanse Jp in plains of ashford. hit one trap wont kill you but bulldoze thru more than the one and ur dead.

I dunno, I don’t mind the traps or jumping bits so much, but it gets old very fast after a few times. Then there’s parts where one player messing up can waste the whole party’s time. For example, in the Giant fractals if the guy holding the hammer falls down, everyone needs to suicide to make the hammer spawn again. Or they’re 1 guy down until everyone is out of combat, because the one who fell cannot respawn during combat.
Or in the case of Harpy fractals, the team just continues to die from knockbacks if the people in the party aren’t prepared, which isn’t fun. It’s not even fun if the party is prepared, just wasting player time with annoying game mechanics.
The frog boss isn’t anything unique or special compared to other bosses in the game. The fight doesn’t require you to think. Once you know how it works, it’s dead easy, just like other bosses in the game.

You ask for ArenaNet to cater to people who want to solo or duo dungeons, because you don’t want to go with random people? Really? When they haven’t even finished the other 7 dungeon re-balances yet? Lol, talk about selfish. Dungeons were advertised as 5-man content way before game release, if you hate being with people that much, I wonder why you even got this game. Or why you think ArenaNet would make dungeons for solo/duo players when they’ve stated they’re going to be for 5 players years ago.

@ Milennin

I still don’t see why would it hurt if they added this though, I’m finding SAB way more fun than actual dungeons, but that’s just me.

With all due respect, I do not mean to cause any argument here and I believe I was clear enough in my post about 5-man dungeons.
I also have no intentions to explain myself but I will say a couple of things, I clearly love this game and this is why I am posting suggestions…there is no need to offend nor attack, seriously.
I am expressing my opinion and suggesting what I would love to see added.
I am also well aware that ANet are very busy working with other things, but this is something I would love to see in the future.
You say selfish, I say I like to stick with a small circle of people I know…do consider the fact that we are all different and I bet there’s a lot more people who would love to see infantile mode in dungeons or the scaling system, like I have stated above…
I just do not understand why would it hurt if ANet implemented any of this? Who wants to team up with 5 people can still team up and get waaay better rewards than those with fewer people. It would only do good for everyone, seriously…
And like I have said, I know ANet are busy but I hope they consider this.

There’s a difference between being fun once or twice and being actually fun.

Not saying it applies in this case (didn’t read any posts) but it’s always good to keep in mind.

Milennin.4825:

I dunno, I don’t mind the traps or jumping bits so much, but it gets old very fast after a few times. Then there’s parts where one player messing up can waste the whole party’s time. For example, in the Giant fractals if the guy holding the hammer falls down, everyone needs to suicide to make the hammer spawn again. Or they’re 1 guy down until everyone is out of combat, because the one who fell cannot respawn during combat.
Or in the case of Harpy fractals, the team just continues to die from knockbacks if the people in the party aren’t prepared, which isn’t fun. It’s not even fun if the party is prepared, just wasting player time with annoying game mechanics.
The frog boss isn’t anything unique or special compared to other bosses in the game. The fight doesn’t require you to think. Once you know how it works, it’s dead easy, just like other bosses in the game.

You ask for ArenaNet to cater to people who want to solo or duo dungeons, because you don’t want to go with random people? Really? When they haven’t even finished the other 7 dungeon re-balances yet? Lol, talk about selfish. Dungeons were advertised as 5-man content way before game release, if you hate being with people that much, I wonder why you even got this game. Or why you think ArenaNet would make dungeons for solo/duo players when they’ve stated they’re going to be for 5 players years ago.

It’s exactly people like you, unable to respect others’ opinion nor to express your own without using an offensive tone, that drains me from any will to team up with unknown people.
If there is someone selfish, it’s you since here it was said to leave a choice to every player,, whether they want a small team made of only few friends or big team of 4 pugs.

I’d rather not argue about people and their attitude here, but the idea and facts being pointed out. Millenin has some points to consider, but I think that is subjective still. JPs and such puzzle may get old pretty fast to some, but to me personally, speed running CoF1 gets old faster. I’m literally bored out of my mind with it. I’d rather test and improve my jumping on such challenges, but as i said subjective and thats my personal preference which some might share and others not.

When I heard harpy fractals gets knockback at lvl 10 +, considering i am slow at getting good at jumping, i thought i’d hate that kitten level. In fact, I find others even more annoying (grawl shaman, svanir fractal) and the harpy fractal, I’m starting to enjoy it more. Climbing up those steps as a group and trying to mitigate the knockdowns really was fun for me. I know, not everyone will feel the same, but I could also whine I dislike perfect timing dodge stuff, so should that be a bad thing in dungeons too? Again I stress, its subjective, but then if some ppl feel dungeons shud be harder, require more dodge in fights etc, then this is but one variant of difficulty/challenge. (The same goes for colossus fractal.)

The living story instances could be done solo or with groups, specifically mentioned here because in can be done with less than a full party. I did one solo, but the rest i did it a few times in a group of 2 or 3. It was enjoyable, it’s not really as big or as rewarding as the regular 5 man dungeon but yknow what, i had fun. I don’t think the discussed idea here should be a solo-able thing, but I don’t see much harm in making it viable for 2-4 ppl, instead of a full 5.

I also would like to add that this here thread is a discussion which hopefully ANet might look at and consider. I don’t think any of us should be too bothered about the specifics of ANet managing their resources. Best we can do for that is politely suggest. It is their job to decide what to allocate their resources on.

Wethospu.6437:

There’s a difference between being fun once or twice and being actually fun.

Not saying it applies in this case (didn’t read any posts) but it’s always good to keep in mind.

This is a good fact to consider. But as I pointed out, harpy fractal, i find it fun, so there’s potential at least that a good amount of people wud share the sentiment, i hope? :P It’s a change from just dungeons being a strictly/largely ‘vs mobs and bosses thing’.

I think a level of randomness in dungeons could be really fun, sort of like the bonus bosses that sometimes pop up. But…I feel like that would be impossibly difficult for the developers to do.

It could add a sense of adventure and novelty when doing the same dungeon over and over though.

generalraccoon.3857:

This is a good fact to consider. But as I pointed out, harpy fractal, i find it fun, so there’s potential at least that a good amount of people wud share the sentiment, i hope? :P It’s a change from just dungeons being a strictly/largely ‘vs mobs and bosses thing’.

I wouldn’t mind the harpy fractal so much if it made at least the starting position safe and an out-of-combat location. Sometimes my group agros the harpies before I’m able to switch my weapon set or utility skills, and heavily cripples my performance for the first part of the fractal. It doesn’t help that it’s basically impossible to get out of combat, because the harpies can hit you anywhere at the starting point.

I think it would be great idea to have some special type of dungeon, but for jumping haters who wouldn’t want to do this dungeon and not lose anything, it would have same prizes as evrey other one, TOKENS.

Harpy fractals, yes, that one can be a pain…but to be honest, every time I did it, my entire team laughed, we found it rather hilarious!
Anyhow, randomness and unexpected things would be great in dungeons!
I also had an idea of driving in mining carts, enemies jump into your mining cart, you fight them off, the tracks collapse etc etc…It would be hard to develop, for sure…but seeing the Rapids level in SAB (the ending with the river), makes me think it’s possible.
Variation and randomness would be lovely…this way we just have dungeons which are about killing (mostly).
As for rewards, as g e o suggested, each of these dungeons could have their own set of tokens and different weapon and armor skins to exchange these tokens for.
I would like to take AC as an example…we have 1 Skelk boss for each path…first time I did AC I thought that we would face different boss with each different path…some Skeleton, some Ascalonian Necromancer or anything similar which would fit the creepiness of the catacombs. I also expected more ’’surprises’’ in dungeons…
Adding pressure plates, some hidden doors which open a way to a chest, rolling boulders…etc…I would love to see these things in the future! They would also give that adventurous, epic feeling!

@generalraccoon You have a point where you said that traps should not kill you instantly, it would be better if some of them gave you ’’space’’ to dodge-roll or get away from them. First time I did Ascalonian Basin puzzle (I totally loved it though!) the fire traps were a bloody pain…I always ended up instantly killed by them, they were also bugged, so impossible to get away from the flames.

But the shaking camera, the falling boulders and the effects that puzzle gives is just great! Adding similar things to dungeons would give one a great feeling! And also adding some ’’puzzles’’ where one has to think in order to work things out. Maybe a puzzle on the ground with letters, one has to guess some ’’name’’ or ’’year’’ from lore in order to unlock the path…If you step on wrong letter, the floor collapses and spikes await you from below!
The story in dungeons could also be related to some ancient artifacts, weapons from the past…you have to venture inside to retrieve them…there’s so much which could be added to expand the experience in dungeons!

I just don’t like how boring the dungeons and boss fights are, and no one seems to run them the way they are meant to any more.

Everytime i get into a dungeon, people skip everything possible then moan if someone messes it up and can’t get past without dying (just kill the kitten mobs it’s easier)

Also boss fights are boring it’s just stand there with auto attack on for 5 mins and loot chest, best example is the mine cart thing in SE, you can actually go AFK for the whole fight and get the chest.

I’ve done all the dungeons story mode and most of the explorable ones but still yet to watch the cutscenes because people moan they don’t want to stand around waiting, and say they will kick you if you don’t hurry up. I like the story and lore behind the game and i like to watch the scenes but feel i can’t in dungeon groups because i don’t want to be kicked.

The loot is pointless too, you kill a giant boss that takes ages and get the same loot you get from killing a crab in kessex hills, only worthwhile thing from a dungeon is the tokens, which leads to people speed running, skipping everything they can and finishing in the quickest time to farm tokens.

I hope Anet can really improve the dungeons and make them more fun and worth your time, the fractals is a move in the right direction but think they can go further than that.

Isi.1453:

I think a level of randomness in dungeons could be really fun, sort of like the bonus bosses that sometimes pop up. But…I feel like that would be impossibly difficult for the developers to do.

It could add a sense of adventure and novelty when doing the same dungeon over and over though.

I’ve suggested this in the past. I don’t think it’d be that tough to do. Just make some obstacles in an instance and sometimes they trigger and sometimes they don’t. These obstacles stop your progress until you defeat [insert group of mobs/boss].

Also, create multiple variations on the main bosses. Each variation of these bosses require different tactics. Imagine this:

You get to Rumblus at the end of AC. Everyone does that dumb stack maneuver so they don’t get knocked back by the boss…but it turns out he’s the old-style Rumblus and he burrows under you, pops up and downs everyone not paying attention (like he used to). You won’t know if you’d have the old Rumblus that does the KO scream and burrows or if you get the new one that needs the NPC bubble to stop the falling rocks.

@Isi – Troll boss in AC is a basic example of random boss tht might pop up at several possible points through out dungeon. If this mechanic is there already, so… :P Also, in dredge fractals for example, there’s a possibility for you to randomly get either one of two possible paths (which of course has different mechanics to do) and 2 possible end boss (with some differences in skills and challenge). This is basis for some randomness i spose.

@Milennin – harpy fracs, the likely answer is to make sure nobody in ur party starts before everyone is ready. But you’re absolutely right in that start location should be a safe spot where you can prepare ur character. Also it baffles me too how sometimes harpy can shoot u but u can’t shoot them back. :p needs refinement I suppose.

@Whitey – the basic ‘tank and spank’ will be ever present in games like these (though i agree we do have quite a number of these already). Especially in some encounters where you bring guardians along which can ‘protect’ or reflect incoming attacks allowing the rest of the party to stand still and just spam attacks. I don’t think this will ever be gone nor should it. Too much ‘thinking puzzle’ can be tiring too, so having different stuffs in intervals help keeps the pace entertaining.

@Leo G – i actually lol-ed reading that. yea reaching a boss and anxiously trying to see which ‘variant’ he is. sounds nice.

honestly, dungeons are already more adventure like now than pretty much any other mmo ive played.

they’ve got traps, puzzles, stuff you can skip if you are clever (not exploits, legitimate stuff), multiple means to the same ends in a lot of places, etc. perhaps i had the luxury of getting this feeling coming into the game blind and only playing with 4 other people who came in blind. no youtube, no pugs, and no guides.

I like the idea of more intricate dungeons but I don’t think it makes for a particularily good enviroment in a team.

This would be better solo or in a group of 2.

In response to Leo G and generalraccoon, I think the difficulty might come from having to balance dungeons with a greater amount of randomization. Also, I think the response from players would be pretty negative since randomization would make skipping much more difficult. I think the developers would have to increase the rewards or make dungeons take a little less time to complete to balance out the difficulty to skip.

Personally, I’d still really enjoy randomized dungeons. Maybe not every dungeon needs it; there could be some engineered around randomness, so that players have a choice about what kind of dungeon they want to play.

Current dungeons do have some puzzle aspect but the overhwlming majority of things you do are fights, which most of them can be made “efficient” simply by learning mechanics/dodge and bringing an ungodly amount of dps (4 zerkers wars and mes anyone? :P ). My impression of the idea in this thread is a bit less fighting, more exploration and thinking and chance encounters. Also there was mention of the issue for ‘>5 member party’.

Personally, I don’t find skipping should be an overly major consideration because I couldn’t care less whether I skip mobs or fight them. I don’t dedicate myself to dungeons for speedruns, and will happily whack and kill all trashmobs or run past stuff, depending on party leader. I don’t mean to offend with this statement, mind you. But @ Isi, you are probably right that some players would not like it. I wonder if that can be helped though because this is usually a concern for speed runners, and I don’t know if devs even made the current dungeons with a lot of thought to making it viable for speed running. Speed running is likely a product of players who want efficiency concerning time vs reward. Content I think, is developed based on testing player skill and coordination and of course problem solving abilities. What do you think? And how long SHOULD a dungeon be on average? Me, I think Arah is LONG but those < 6 minutes Cof speed runs is way to short to enjoy.

Randomized stuff…based on fractals, they do have varying difficulty. There is some balancing to be done in designing them I’m sure, but some would always be easier than the other. Case in point, swamp fractal. One boss is easier than the other, and not counting if u reroll, players don’t really have a choice on which they get.

What attracted me to Leo G’s post was that instead of randomizing between 2 bosses (as mentioned for example the swamp fractal) it’s instead one boss (same model and name) but different skillsets and abilities, so to speak. So u wont know before hand which kind of fight it will be until it starts.

Rewards. This is a whole different bag of issues this one. I am personally happy enough with rewards (the one you get after you complete the dungeon, incl the tokens) from current dungeon. Drops from chests in the dungeons could be better (I JUST KILLED A 10,000 YEAR OLD ZOMBIE GIGANTICUS LUPICUS AND YOU GAVE ME…1 COPPER? ARE YOU NUTS? hehehe :P ). But that’s me so I can’t really say for others.

My suggestion would be to make story mode like a dynamic event where every time you enter you get a different experience like you mentioned. So randomized boss mechanics and randomized puzzles or traps along the way. The story itself could remain the same. Then leave exp the same so people farming gear don’t complain.