Guild Wars 2

I am not opposed at all to the idea that explorable dungeons are one of the main facets of end-game GW2. Some of the others being sPvP, W3, skin hunting, map completion etc.

I have noticed some significant problems, however, with the current state of explorable dungeons.

The precursor: After my first time running story-mode AC, I LOVED IT. The dungeon was hard, boss mechanics (especially the lovers) were awesome, and I had a great time with the entry level dungeon. I think this is what set the stage for noticing the problems with explorables to an even bigger level.

Explorable dungeons are NOT ON PAR with story mode dungeons, in my opinion. I’m not referring to difficulty level, i’m referring to

1. Mechanics
2. Epicness
3. POLISHING

Mechanics
Introducing new mechanics every single path of an explorable dungeon is obviously not very viable. However, I think at least one of the three should introduce a new way, a new thought process, a new method of killing or doing an event or boss. I say this first comparing to the lovers (story mode AC) separate the two, and kill them separately. Not a CRAZY concept (was used in other games) but still was a “whoa” moment. I’ve come across MANY explorable paths that didn’t have that “umph” factor to keep my interest.

Epicness
Let’s just be quite frank – some of these explorable mode dungeons suck. I say that because they were designed as an endgame. When I think of endgame, I think of the first time I saw Ragnaros in Molten Core – I almost !#$ myself. I'm not saying the game doesn't have these moments in general, in fact, GW2 has some AMAZING oh !#$ moments that I feel are very epic. But the fact that the explorable dungeons lack this on so many levels is a bit disheartening.

POLISHING
The biggest of the problems is the polishing. I can’t believe ANet offered token rewards and “endgame” gear for dungeons that weren’t thoroughly tested (it seems). People have been “speed running” CoF to get awesome gear, weapons, etc. This was in a way that was obviously NOT INTENDED – the worst part is, now I have to work my !@# off to get the SAME GEAR that these individuals got – except I have to spend 5x more time doing so.. for the same reward.

Moreso than the buggy reward system, is the polishing of the dungeons themselves. Here what I refer to is difficulty levels, bugginess, and overall feel of the encounters. I feel that many encounters have huge, pain in the !@# problems that a tester should be able to identify with like, 3 runs through the instance. It’s just a little shocking to me that ANet would even release the explorable in their current state.

I think some more work should have been done with explorables in general. My personal belief is that there should have been less available from the start, and the ones available to be polished and fun, to an extent (not looking for perfection). But I really think if explorables are going to be such a big part of the end, there needs to be more man-power and dedication towards improving and streamlining these instances.