Guild Wars 2

For me, 9 is my utmost limit. At that point I consider the dungeon failed (usually due to 1 person that doesn’t listen, or understand how agro works).

For an enjoyable experience, I’d like to have 3 (for my group’s first run together for that dungeon), that way the challenge is there, but it’s not just obscenely frustrating.

On repeated runs, where my team and I have completed that particular mode several times. 1 wipe would be acceptable to me.

0 wipes at a first run would be a good indicator that a dungeon is too easy.

I’m looking for numbers & opinions on “What is fun?,” not an argument.
Just trying to quantify “Fun” which is an entirely subjective topic.

Personally I find the wipes in this particular game demotivating in a way I’ve never experienced in any game before so even 1 is too many. Mainly because almost every mob feels like a mini-boss but the reward for surviving the fight is, “You survived. Here are four more just like that on. Go!”

My guildies and I attempted CM explore last night for the first time. For me it will probably be my last, at least for a while. It’s just unfun. We were on voice and everyone of us kept saying, “what the f was that? How did I die? Where did that come from? How many curseword hitpoints does this thing have, and why are there now 4 of them? Why can’t I run from the waypoint to the repair station without pulling four of them onto me?” etc. etc. etc.

And that’s been my experience with all of the story mode dungeons as well as the final step in the personal story in Arah.

The mobs zerg rush you and start smashing you like a bug while some kind of AoE goes off as you effectively throw cotton candy at them while hitting your dodge button as often as you possibly can.

There’s no time for strategy and the penalty for “ok, let’s try again” is just too high.

There’s not even a way to build an exploration strategy in this game. If you COULD single pull a mob to test it out, or escape once you engage, or even have a truly effective heal/rez skill that you could pop to buy your group time to escape (not just one person) then maybe things would be different. But the “challenge” in this game seems to come in three and a half basic flavors, or some combination thereof:

1) Lots of mobs at once
2) Lots (and lots and lots and freaking LOTS )of HP per mob
3) Lots and lots of damage to players in massive bursts, inescapable AoE etc.
3.5) Let’s make the screen shake, stun lock your character and/or have massive gouts of particle effects so you can’t possibly react to what’s happening, even if you happen to realize you’re supposed to.

And all too often it’s all of them at the same time.

Not fun.

I’m a reasonably good game player and highly experienced. 30 years worth in fact, so I’m far from a “badie” or “nub”. And this was with guildies with voice chat mind you, not a pug with nothing but text.

Dungeons need serious work in the fun and challenging departments in this game.

so tl;dr – they’re all “too many” at the moment.

I don’t know that there is a number for myself and my usual dungeon group. We keep trying different things if we encounter a rough patch, each time learning something new and refining our approach.

We don’t say (or for me, don’t think) “We’ve wiped X times, we should just give up.” Rather, it comes down to “Did we learn anything with that wipe? Do any of us have an idea that may help us out-think this encounter?” If the answer is year, we keep at it. If the answer is no, then we may throw ourselves at it again to hope something changes or we’ll just give up.

With this in mind, I’ve only “given up” once, and that was when I was running AC explorable Colossus path in my late thirties, in which the group I was running with had little cohesiveness. I think that my current steady dungeon group would have faired differently.

If I see no improvment whatsoever over the course of 3+ wipes… Good sign that the group is simply not going to beat the encounter.

When I entered any dung with some guildies, we learned after each wipe, and it went better each time.

You gotta figure the right tactics and it feels so great when it actually happens. Had one dungeon with inquest (don’t remember which one) which was totally insane because there were like 10 mobs with champion health and a bomb-throw-spam for each of them, however besides that I didn’t find anything unbeatable.

A dungeon path where we used to wipe 5 – 6 times now works fine without dieing.

I suggest ranters spend more time practicing & thinking than ranting, as even I think some dungeons might be too hard, I don’t want nerfs because I’m afraid of the challenge drop; I’d rather have things stay this way.

Rewards are great, in system, quality and number, don’t know what more you’d want.
Maybe a sort of dungeon finder would be nice, where you could queue for a dungeon team and meanwhile quest and continue until you find a party.

“Rewards are great, in system, quality and number, don’t know what more you’d want.”

What game are you playing?
&
What are you smoking?