TL:DR – What happened ANET? Great world environment for questing and gameplay, then crap dungeon environments that are grindy and quickly get old.
So Ill be straight to the point, since quite a lot of posts have already said this. What happened to the dungeons?
From my personal experiance running quite a few of the dungeons, and to listening and reading people’s thoughts and opinions on dungeons, the general impression I get consistantly is that dungeons in this game are ok at best, god awfully frustrating at worst, and usually sit around being just plain terrible.
What happened ANET? The actual world environment felt dynamic in many ways. There were events and ‘quests’ that had you do a variety of things in a variety of ways to complete objectives or participate. Yet we get to the dungeons and they are generally grind fests, with buggy NPC, difficulty scaling thats inconsistant, and in some cases very anticlimatic.
Its quite possibly the worst aspect of the game, in my own opinion. I understand a few ideas and concepts you guys wanted to try, but this is just a big let down. The story mode dungeons are less impressive then the actual story quests more often then not (once again my opinion), and the explorer modes are all over the place in difficulty, and seem very grindy. Now people will argue that explorer mode exists only for challenge and cosmetic gear, and thats fine. I enjoy a challenge, and who doesnt want cool gear. But the current set up isnt so much a challenge in skill as it is a challenge in patience.
Why arent there more dynamic ways to do dungeons? Why couldnt there be complex timed puzzles or events that dont require burning down monsters in waves or the like. Why arent the rewards in some ways equivalent to the effort applied in many ways. For example, you could create a jumping puzzle where the platforms are destroyed after a duration of time, so you have to complete it before you fall to your doom. Sure itd require testing and work, but I feel like many players would find that kind of challenege to be rewarding and therefor fun. So long as the path in that case is very straight forward so you know where to jump to next.
Anyways, Ill use CoF Magg since its a popular example. You elongated the time for the bomb to be planted to kill speed runs cause it was gearing people too quickly. Ok I get that you dont want people to just grind one instance, and you want it to be harder. But they do it cause its the easiest to do with best pay off. But now its hard to do for the wrong reasons, and the pay off to little. People are going to run the dungeons with the best work/rewards ratio when the content is all the same and for the most part not that enjoyable.
I have to wonder why you do not cater to the speed run crowd a little bit. Create a system where the dungeon grades you based on personal deaths and the completion time. So the faster and more efficiently you complete a dungeon the better the reward. I dont know, but at the very least make the dungeons more interactive. What you have now is pretty much grindy and loses its fun and appeal after a few runs. And were it not for the armor, I feel that most people would be less than interested in running them.
So please tell us ANET that either the dungeon designs were a bit rushed and are considered incomplete, or at the very least that you all have plans to drastically change and reimagine the dungeon system. Way I see it, if it was rushed adn ANET came out and said so and it was there fault, I personally would not quit GW2. Id actually be impressed a company is willing to acknowledge its short comings and working to improve the situation. Takes kittens of steel to do that.
Its like the Explorer mode of the dungeon is lacking its own name. Theres no exploration in it. Just grind.
Anyways, just my thoughts as Ive been rambling for 99% of this post.
(edited by Iron Wolf.5973)