Guild Wars 2

To begin with, I would like to create this topic in the thread of dungeons, but did not find any answers from developers over the past 10 months, and it’s made me wary.

It is not whining thread in some sort of “give me more badges”. Just want to give my review.

It is worth to pay more attention to such issue as dungeons. It so happens that a lot of players are judged MMOs in general impressions of the dungeons. And local dungeons gives, to put it mildly… not the most pleasant experience.

1) – When are you going to plug up the holes in the geodata? Some dungeons can entirely bypass on surface of textures. I have seen such bugs, from which the eyes dazzled. And they still exist since the beginning of the game.

2) – Most packs badly (horrably) balanced. Some are simply impassable, or rather indestructibility. Therefore, most of the players prefer to just run past. It is clear that it is their choice.
But!
Why would they choose something else, because there is no profit from killing mobs. There is only a chance to get a bill for the repair.

3) – There is NO experience. The impression that everything was done in a hurry. Huge beautiful place, full of all sorts of nooks and places of interest and… emptiness. Packs, packs, packs, packs, and between them is void. There is no fill. Something interesting, some hidden events with awards, movies, achievements, bosses, dialogues. Something for which you would like to explore them. Or ask yourself “hey, what’s over there? Come check it out”.
It’s just running through the packs and bosses “would quickly”.
Different events brighten it, but not for long.

4) – Scantily uncovered story in exp mods. Not disclosed any skelk theme, or fate of Zhaitan’s corpse, destiny of nightmare court, etc. Just come and kill everything in sight. -“Who is this boss?” – “What is the difference – just kill him”.
- “From where this skelks came?” -“Do not care, kill them all”.

5) – Many bosses have absolutely no tactics (I am silent that many are killed with one or another bug (I swear, it’s a bug in the bug, the exploit on exploit.) Just ran as spacey and try not to die in one hit. Fractals – the progress in this direction but what about the simple dungeons? Forgot about them already?

Awards for dungeons is definitely a wide step in the right direction. But the way this is implemented just tears me apart.

Well, first: what king of difficulyt scale you used when distributing rewards?? AC 1.5g? But HotW, which is 2 times longer and 3 times harder – 1? CoE – I’m shocked. 4 path of Arah in complexity as the previous three combined, but the reward is the same. CM is triple harder then AC.

No offense, but it seems as if you’re never were in your own dungeons.

And finally, the most illogical question of all: the Story modes.
so… well… 75s and useless hat … khem…
I do not know what is your opinion, but for me most of the story mods, at least twice, more difficult than exp. SE story takes the same amount of time as all three exp paths of it. And not just any easier.

Oh, God, arena, you are greedy for badges? Give at least 40 per story and people will go to it!
10 months ago(!) you promised to “find the right motivators for people to visit them,” and that’s what was given!
Nonsense!
No other words.

Frankly, I’m tired of groups that are skiping 90% of the dungeon. And it’s haaaard to find different.
Basic solution would be to to add to the reward some sort of counter of monsters kill. Achieve in the the type of vanquisher from first part to each dungeon. But expectations are not met… sadly.

AC storymode is worth doing now at least.

Here is a more realistic list I’ve posted in another thread.

This list is based on decent dungeon experience and knowledge of actual difficulty/time required.

MeGaZlo.9516:

3) – There is NO experience. The impression that everything was done in a hurry. Huge beautiful place, full of all sorts of nooks and places of interest and… emptiness. Packs, packs, packs, packs, and between them is void. There is no fill. Something interesting, some hidden events with awards, movies, achievements, bosses, dialogues. Something for which you would like to explore them. Or ask yourself “hey, what’s over there? Come check it out”.
It’s just running through the packs and bosses “would quickly”.
Different events brighten it, but not for long.

I take it you are not a native English speaker. That’s okay, I understand the point you are trying to make here, and this is one I strongly agree with. All of the dungeons are just long corridors filled with mindless trash mobs, and emptiness. It is as if at least a decent effort was made to make the dungeons look pretty, but not to fill them with anything interesting. You’re left with this feeling that you’re not really exploring an underground maze, but clearing a very long boring corridor. And since there are not that many obstacles along the way, you might as well skip it all. So that’s what most players do (and who can blame them?).

Any maze given enough reruns is going to feel like a “long boring corridor”.
I genuinely don’t understand you Mad Queen. You want an underground maze? Go do Jumping Puzzles without using guides, you’d receive just as much reward for your time as if such a system were incorporated into dungeons.

People want some sort of Skyrim-esque dungeon with multiple places to explore, let’s say you do, and those first few runs will feel like the first times you ever ran the already existing dungeons. You find the noteworthy loot, learn the spawn/s, learn which mobs do and don’t need to die, until eventually after so many runs you’re just bullrushing through it as fast as you can, nabbing the loot that gives a reasonable time to reward ratio and abrakadabra we’re back at square one.
I’ve done very little Arah, and that place feels like a kittening labyrinth. I’ve no idea where to go or what I’m doing, and that makes it interesting. But eventually I’ll learn it and it will just become another ‘slash n dash’ bullrush like every other dungeon, there’s nothing you can do about it. These paths are meant to be run over and over, so trying to implement any sort of ‘explorer’ feel to it just isn’t going to work.

I think you’re looking for something that never will, nor ever was meant to be part of the ‘dungeon experience’.

Dolan.3071:

Any maze given enough reruns is going to feel like a “long boring corridor”.
I genuinely don’t understand you Mad Queen. You want an underground maze? Go do Jumping Puzzles without using guides, you’d receive just as much reward for your time as if such a system were incorporated into dungeons.

People want some sort of Skyrim-esque dungeon with multiple places to explore, let’s say you do, and those first few runs will feel like the first times you ever ran the already existing dungeons. You find the noteworthy loot, learn the spawn/s, learn which mobs do and don’t need to die, until eventually after so many runs you’re just bullrushing through it as fast as you can, nabbing the loot that gives a reasonable time to reward ratio and abrakadabra we’re back at square one.
I’ve done very little Arah, and that place feels like a kittening labyrinth. I’ve no idea where to go or what I’m doing, and that makes it interesting. But eventually I’ll learn it and it will just become another ‘slash n dash’ bullrush like every other dungeon, there’s nothing you can do about it. These paths are meant to be run over and over, so trying to implement any sort of ‘explorer’ feel to it just isn’t going to work.

I think you’re looking for something that never will, nor ever was meant to be part of the ‘dungeon experience’.

I do not agree. If to add more script scenes – it will variety impressions. Add variability and randomness factor, such as the random events in different places. Give the option to select – for example: go to the boss for more reward or not (but precisely to go or not, and not to skip or kill). Or search for some kind of treasure, which randomly appears somewhere. Balance packs and loot from them, to give real reason to kill them. And you newer get bored going through dungeons. Players will get bored only with decor. This must be achieved

Dolan.3071:

Any maze given enough reruns is going to feel like a “long boring corridor”.
I genuinely don’t understand you Mad Queen. You want an underground maze? Go do Jumping Puzzles without using guides, you’d receive just as much reward for your time as if such a system were incorporated into dungeons.

You honestly don’t think the dungeons would be greatly improved if they weren’t so linear? I think you genuinely don’t understand level design.

Any maze given enough reruns is going to feel like a People want some sort of Skyrim-esque dungeon with multiple places to explore, let’s say you do, and those first few runs will feel like the first times you ever ran the already existing dungeons. You find the noteworthy loot, learn the spawn/s, learn which mobs do and don’t need to die, until eventually after so many runs you’re just bullrushing through it as fast as you can, nabbing the loot that gives a reasonable time to reward ratio and abrakadabra we’re back at square one.

That is a valid argument, and a problem with all dungeon content. But still, the dungeons that are less linear are still more interesting than the ones that are not. Discouraging this bullrushing behavior is a design challenge that Anet should try to tackle, but it seems they didn’t even try.

Dolan.3071:

I’ve done very little Arah, and that place feels like a kittening labyrinth. I’ve no idea where to go or what I’m doing, and that makes it interesting. But eventually I’ll learn it and it will just become another ‘slash n dash’ bullrush like every other dungeon, there’s nothing you can do about it.

I think any game designer that would agree with that last sentence is a bad game designer.

“There’s nothing you can do about it”

No, I disagree. There are countless things you can do about it. But it requires more thought to be put into the dungeon.

Dolan.3071:

These paths are meant to be run over and over, so trying to implement any sort of ‘explorer’ feel to it just isn’t going to work.

You lack imagination. The only thing you need is a way to encourage the players to explore. Exploring must be rewarding, and dungeons would have to contain some randomization so that they aren’t exactly the same every time you do them.

I think you’re looking for something that never will, nor ever was meant to be part of the ‘dungeon experience’.

You have clearly never done one of the dungeons in D&D Online. You’d be shocked just how different and more fun a dungeon crawling experience can be. Secret doors and tunnels that are randomized, devious traps, and randomized treasures. Swimming sections, underwater trap-filled gauntlets, jumping sections, puzzles, randomized boss encounters, randomly closed off sections and locked doors, levers and switches, ladders and height differences….. there are a ton of things that GW2 already supports, but hasn’t used to make dungeons more interesting.

W/o starting a huge wall of text about the issues of DG, meta, bugs, unumaginative mechanics, dull bosses and overall rushed feeling of DGs…. and stcking to latest patch:

Here is a more realistic list I’ve posted in another thread.

This list is based on decent dungeon experience and knowledge of actual difficulty/time required.

What Bright said.

Just revert the token change on top of that, and you have a decent update: 1 one time daily big reward, to push ppl to do multiple paths, and a small reward char bound (plus the tokens thing) to get ppl running a path again. Atm it just ruins grouping.

1) Dungeon rewards need to be character bound not account bound. That is the number one problem for me! All my alts are now useless, as I do dungeons every day. Once I have done AC, if someone wants to go after I did, I do not want to go with them as I have no reward for doing it.

2) The current rewards are a step in the correct direction, however they need to be scaled properly. A path that takes 30 minutes, should not be worth the same as COF p1.

3) Dungeons should be the hardest content but the most rewarding. Currently only some dungeons are hard, and none are as rewarding as farming.

4) Champ loot, connected to number 3. Out in the PvE world there are unlimited champs, so why do dungeons if you can get the same reward with out the effort? A solution would be to up the chance of items from the champs bags in dungeons. Fewer champs that are harder to kill, should give better rewards in my opinion.

5) Pets, AI and Minions. They are all useless in some dungeons as they die in seconds. It limits some builds and that is a bad situation. Why take a MM or Phantasm build into COE, the boss does AOE and kills them every 5 seconds. Making them very bad builds to do that dungeon with. That was just a example, but I think these things need to be sorted out.

6) Skipping. Most dungeons need to be revamped. Either incentivise me to kill everything or force me too, however rewarding players for their time is the best way to stop skipping.

7) Newer dungeons! I love the ones we have, but the game is a year old and the only new dungeon was the Fractals.

8) One shot killing. Two things really, make it easier to see them coming or stop them altogether. There is no skill in being one shotted by something you could not see coming. A example of this is cliffside, where the boss with the hammer just randomly jumps at you. At higher levels he just one shots most, reinforcing the DPS first idea.

9) Why do anything but DPS? Defiance! Please let other types of players have more of a role in dungeons. Currently DPS is the best way to play, and that is disheartening.

All of these are just my opinions and I still love dungeons, however a year after the game has come out and most of these have not been addressed.

DOW Mageski.2097:

1) Dungeon rewards need to be character bound not account bound. That is the number one problem for me! All my alts are now useless, as I do dungeons every day. Once I have done AC, if someone wants to go after I did, I do not want to go with them as I have no reward for doing it.

I still think there should be DR on the gold reward though. Either cut it in half, diminish by 25% each repeat, or stuff like that. It wouldn’t negatively affect me, on the contrary, I’d make hella money if they didn’t do that, but I personally think inflation has gone far enough already.

DOW Mageski.2097:

2) The current rewards are a step in the correct direction, however they need to be scaled properly. A path that takes 30 minutes, should not be worth the same as COF p1.

See, the thing with this is, how long a path takes is very dependent on your team. The only path that takes 30 minutes is Arah p4 really, and every single other dungeon path can be easily done in <15 minutes (disregarding SE p2). If you base your reward system on how well PUGs can clear dungeons, the only people you’ll be helping is the SC people. Again, I won’t complain about it, it’s just something you have to take into account.

CoF p1, SE p1 (and maybe AC p1) should be less than one gold though. 50s-75s is already too much for those paths imo, especially since you can do all of them in <6-7 minutes without breaking a sweat.

DOW Mageski.2097:

4) Champ loot, connected to number 3. Out in the PvE world there are unlimited champs, so why do dungeons if you can get the same reward with out the effort? A solution would be to up the chance of items from the champs bags in dungeons. Fewer champs that are harder to kill, should give better rewards in my opinion.

Yeah, this ain’t happening, I can tell you that. If the champ rewards for some champs are better in dungeons, people would just non-stop farm that champ for the higher chance for good loot. Like they used to farm the champ at the start of TA for Onyx Lodestones for example.

DOW Mageski.2097:

5) Pets, AI and Minions. They are all useless in some dungeons as they die in seconds. It limits some builds and that is a bad situation. Why take a MM or Phantasm build into COE, the boss does AOE and kills them every 5 seconds. Making them very bad builds to do that dungeon with. That was just a example, but I think these things need to be sorted out.

Certain builds work in dungeon, certain don’t. MM and pets work really well in open-world PvE, but suck in dungeons. Some specific dungeon setups work really well in dungeons but not in others or in general PvE, it’s the way of the game.

DOW Mageski.2097:

8) One shot killing. Two things really, make it easier to see them coming or stop them altogether. There is no skill in being one shotted by something you could not see coming. A example of this is cliffside, where the boss with the hammer just randomly jumps at you. At higher levels he just one shots most, reinforcing the DPS first idea.

That jump smash attack can easily be dodged if you have good reflexes. This is basically a big L2P issue.

DOW Mageski.2097:

9) Why do anything but DPS? Defiance! Please let other types of players have more of a role in dungeons. Currently DPS is the best way to play, and that is disheartening.

As I’ve pointed out before, there will always be a most efficient way of clearing dungeons, and there will always be people complaining about it.

It’s not that I mind a little more coordination and complexity in GW2 combat, the thing is that a lot of people are already whining about bosses being too hard, and needing team coordination, which isn’t fair (lol). Imagine that boss encounters get more difficult, needing more coordination to complete, PUGs simply wouldn’t be able to do it, and we’ll have a new TAFU-esque stream of b*tch threads.