Guild Wars 2

PS: Sorry for the wonky english, I’m from Brazil and never did any english classes. All my knowledge came from gaming

Hi fellow dungeon crawlers!

I’ve just done every single path and got my title. Since now I know almost everything there is to know about dungeons, I would like to give some feedback about my journey and hear what you all think about it. I am sure most of these words have already been said in this forum, but if then it will at least serve to reinforce our points.

First of all, I love the scenario of every single dungeon. It’s nice to come back to a place and discover all its mysteries, helping people according to their plans and such. I definitely think it’s the right way to lead the whole system, and it’s way better than just repeating the same content with a higher difficulty.

That said, after our path is chosen there is very little dynamism in the system, and for me this is the biggest downside of it. We choose a path and know exactly wich foes we will face, where they will be, and how they will try to stop us, and it just need to end. In my opinion, Story Mode is where a cohesive, guided narrative should be – while exploring, things must be wild. How can it be achieved? Some ideas:

1) Don’t let us know what we will face

This is what explore means, period. We can’t explore something if we already know everything about it, so don’t let us. Make random mobs attack us at random times along the way – that troll in Ascalon Catacombs is awesome, and there definitely should be more things like it along the way. Don’t just put a pull patrolling the corridor in every situation, but let randomly generated groups trully ambush us.. You know, that’s totally what gravelings, spiders and brigand would do.

Also, don’t specify wich bosses we will find in each path. We can have epic moments, but they can come in a variety of manners – that giant Moria-like hall in Ascalon Catacombs is awesome to house a big boss fight, but also appropriated for a massive graveling burrow spawn with an epic escape to that giant door at the end, you know? Like “I feel something bad is about to happen, guys. But I don’t have any clue what is it”. In a related note, Alpha could also become some sort of Nemesis, attacking us along the way in random places and making us flee or weaken him until the very right moment to finish him off..

2) Give us more options along the way.

I love how we can “mix” paths in Twilight Arbor, and I think we should do it not just more often but better. You should totally let us decide how we will approach some obstacles on the go! There is a big foe in our way, are we going to face it or walk around it in the shadows? Are we activating cannons and traps or use brute force to deal with that horde of minions? Are we going to steal the key to that door, or blast it using powder kegs? Our party could split up in some moments, maybe?

Also, these decisions should matter. That big foe may come back and get us in a harder situation, and that blast from the door could draw attention of the bad kitten janitor. Some NPC or even temporary player sacrifices along the way would also be awesome and give us something to care about. Give us some more Bills and Tybalts!

3) Let us use that geography

Some dungeons are so big and good looking that I wish we could explore them at once, so let us do that instead of finishing a path and starting other from scratch. Don’t make predefined paths, but rather let us chose wich way to go at that intersection. We are exploring, after all.

More importantly, like a truly exploration, reward those who go further. Make we feel rewarded to reach that room in the middle of the dungeon and come back home with nice treasure, but let us go further to confront even more dangerous situations in the promise of better spoils. Feel free to increase content difficulty the more we stick our noses into what we shouldn’t; Make us wake up the Balrog while we search for that Orichalcum..

.. and let us find it, literally. Why don’t you put some (rich?) crafting nodes inside dungeons? What about letting us find salvageable items in the dirty ground and loot corpses while we explore these places? What about meaning POIs, and even Vistas? Give a meaning to all those empty corners. It would blend wonderfuly with the whole “don’t let us know what we will face” thing.

Last words

You have proven more than capable of doing something like that before. Some Personal Story moments are really touching, and the Dynamic Event system is so awesome and powerful, being able to interact with players on the go. But more important than anything, you have talented people who can make amazing content possible. Thank you so much for what you have given us so far.. But also give us MOAR!

Amen to this. Though it will never happen, simply because it is impossible to code all those descisions into the game. There will always be some sort of predefined paths/ objectives.

Humposaurus.5764:

Amen to this. Though it will never happen, simply because it is impossible to code all those descisions into the game. There will always be some sort of predefined paths/ objectives.

Having predefined objectives is fine but that doesn’t mean you must also have predefined paths. We don’t even have to look far for examples. Eye of the North dungeons all had predefined goals with the keys and locks but there were often more than one path to each objective.

To the Op, I just wanted to state I’m amazed how well you can read/write English from just playing games. Impressed.

Thanks, Horrorscope!

I wonder how much this compliment would be compromissed if you knew how much I’ve played in my life, lol.

This is amazing Yulan! I agree on every point!

I wish that one day I’ll be able to speak Portuguese like you can english shown here! Real motivation you’ve given me.

have to agree with you man, we need alot more random attacks.
1 idea that I would like to add is a random floor plan. Make it more maze like so its forces people to think a bit and possible extend or shorten their run depending on how their luck holds out. mix in a few notable patrol mobs to dodge or fight and some hidden ambushes mobs to keep us on our toes along with random traps like trap doors, spiked ceiling, darts, hell even a indiana jones boulder run with switches and you’ll have your self a dungeon that will be hard to get bored in.

Nice to see more people agree with these points, it’s totally what I find lacking in current dungeons!

Yes, more variety in traps would be awesome too. In fact, I would risk and say that everything that isn’t just “beat mobs to the ground” would be welcome in the dungeon system.

Kakeru.2873:

I wish that one day I’ll be able to speak Portuguese like you can english shown here! Real motivation you’ve given me.

Hey Kakeru, do you know Live Mocha? I’ve heard it’s awesome to teach you other languages and teach yours as well, give it a try!

i like the random spown idea. spiders coming down from sealing are really exciting thing. if they would only not come down at certain locations. or for example having the champion howler in corridor with traps in AC walk at the end of traps where the chains for disabling the traps are would be a nice change. simple things like that:)

I like this idea as well, though I wonder how players whose intent is to speed through dungeons will react.

give them a reason to kill things along the way then there will less reason to skip.

As for adding some randomness to the dungeon, i guess a simple workaround would be something along the lines of the troll event in AC. It’s random, there is more than 1 spawn location, using that as an example so when the party enters a dungeon it goes through all the possible mob spawns and randomises mob type and location somewhat. dunno if it’s as simple as that to code w/o rebuilding the way dungeons work from scratch but its what i was thinking after reading this post which by the way was well written and i hope some changes are something like what i read above.

Rainzar.6905:

give them a reason to kill things along the way then there will less reason to skip.

As for adding some randomness to the dungeon, i guess a simple workaround would be something along the lines of the troll event in AC.

Yes, pretty much what I think about it. People rush to the end because that’s where their goal is, but what if the whole process was as rewarding as the end? Improving the experience and the rewards you get before getting there would fix all the speed runs.

Also, that troll was the big “why not?” for me to create this topic. If the team and engine can do that, they can do everything that I wrote.

The mixture of randomized content and rewarded extra exploration would be excellent. Dungeon delving that felt like an actual venture into the unknown would be a great experience.

Reading over your list of ideas (which are excellent, by the by), I can’t help but wonder if dungeons would shine with a Free Roaming mode, a method where you could go anywhere in the dungeon and do anything. Randomized and difficult content would appear throughout the dungeon, and players could keep exploring until they felt satisfied with what they had uncovered or felt like they could no longer progress through the difficulty.

Rainzar.6905:

give them a reason to kill things along the way then there will less reason to skip.

As for adding some randomness to the dungeon, i guess a simple workaround would be something along the lines of the troll event in AC. It’s random, there is more than 1 spawn location, using that as an example so when the party enters a dungeon it goes through all the possible mob spawns and randomises mob type and location somewhat. dunno if it’s as simple as that to code w/o rebuilding the way dungeons work from scratch but its what i was thinking after reading this post which by the way was well written and i hope some changes are something like what i read above.

doesn’t even have to be a rebuild. make a new dungeon that had a randomly floor plan, traps and mobs. Make it so the goal is the center with a few other rooms scattered around with random bosses, and at the center a random end boss from any of the other dungeons. Depending on what bosses you find will determine what tokens you walk away with each time.

I know many will throw me to the gravelings for saying this, but a more Diablo-like dungeon experience is what I am asking for. Despite its problems and limitations, they knew how to make people come back to the same places and experience new things.

And for sure that’s what ANET want for the exploration outside dungeons, making us see new DEs each time we go back to a specific map. It’s an awesome idea, and I really ask for something like that for dungeons too even though it has been envisioned otherwise. The DE system can provide an experience way beyond the randomly generated doors and mob spawns.

To be frank, that’s what I though dungeons would be when I was still reading about the game, way before the game launch.