Guild Wars 2

With all the complaints people are putting up, I feel like it needs to be said that I found the dungeons quite enjoyable.

When I first played a dungeon, it was during one of the betas, and my brother and I both got to lvl 30 as fast as possible in order to get into AC. We got a PUG together, and with a good amount of difficulty we managed to clear it, despite often wiping on the fights. It was a fun experience, and everyone we played with agreed.

When I came into the full release, I shot up to high levels way faster than my friends, so I didn’t immediately go into the dungeon, but when the lowest level of us hit lvl 30 we all went in. Since my brother and I (necro and guardian) knew the dungeon from the beta, the pair of us had an easier time, but our friends (Warrior, theif and elementalist) had about as much trouble as we did the first time we played, but we cleared it fairly quickly, and we felt good about that accomplishment. A few levels later on our warrior who was the lowest level, we decided to attempt explorable mode. This didn’t go so well. We got pounded into the floor by an angry cave troll, got owned by traps, and just COULD NOT kill all thosekittengraveling burrows, and eventually we had to give up. But it was fun, and we are determined to try again when we’ve all got higher, and more skilled.

The rewards aren’t all that great, but do they really have to be? The gameplay itself is rewarding, and when you get your group together to attempt it all, it is quite fun.

For people complaining about difficulty; the dungeons are the elite content of this game, they are built to be difficult. The story modes are relatively easy (even our elementalist, with a bad connection and a barely functional keyboard could do it well enough to get through), and the explorable modes are entirely optional. If you want to just experience the story, then it honestly is not that tough to do so, just be careful, realize that charging that very large and powerful cave troll with a sword without doing anything to keep yourself alive will get you killed.

I enjoyed the content I have played, and I look forward to doing future dungeons. Thanks for the good content ArenaNet.

You played in the betas. You are not the average gamer.
You rushed to 30 to do AC. You are the “achiever-type”. You are not the average gamer.
You went into StoryMode with friends. Not a pug, as the average gamer might.
You had done AC before. New players come to AC StoryMode without any knowledge.

The StoryMode AC was ridiculously hard for a story-mode dungeon. And ridiculously hard for the first dungeon in a new game. It’s just not fun. It’s not good macro game-design.

bah. i loved the story mode. i was in a pug. im not an average gamer.
who cares.
if you dont like how hard the dungeons are… why are you doing them.
I think there is a solution here.

i did a few dungeons. thought about how i want to approach them. geared up for it.
set up my skills and then i was unable to get into the dungeon for a couple of days to try ’em out.
that was a bummer but i was jazzed to try it again.

the biggest issue with pugs is that the in game communication is not very good.
meaning i cant talk and play at the same time.
that makes the dungeons harder as they beg for teamwork.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

if you dont like how hard the dungeons are… why are you doing them.
I think there is a solution here.

Ah, so you are telling me to stop playing and go away ?

Nice solution.
Maybe you should tell more of ArenaNet’s customers to go away. I bet ArenaNet will love it if only players like yourself will buy the next expansionpack.

>You played in the betas. You are not the average gamer.
You rushed to 30 to do AC. You are the “achiever-type”. You are not the average gamer.
You went into StoryMode with friends. Not a pug, as the average gamer might.
You had done AC before. New players come to AC StoryMode without any knowledge.

This sounds like the ‘no true scotsman’ logical fallacy here. Because he isn’t the particular type of gamer you consider relevant; his thoughts, feelings and arguements are invalid.

I myself did AC storymode for the first time last night and enjoyed the experience. I didn’t play in the beta, have only today hit level 40 and did it with a PUG.

Nobody in the PUG had done it before though we’d all heard it was prettykittenhard. We were pretty shaky up till the first boss, lots of deaths, lots of wipes, lots of figuring things out. However, we kept positive, kept reminding each other that it was meant to be difficult and in the end persevered. As we progressed we got better, not only in our teamwork but in our own personal skills and drills (dodging, keeping ourselves alive, using our knockbacks etc, getting the rez in before killed etc).

It took us around two hours to complete and let me tell you, the sense of accomplishment felt good. It’s the first time in a long time for an mmo dungeon/instance when the PUG I’m in has hung around afterwards to chat and socialise, sharing war stories and comparing loot.

As far as dungeons in general goes, I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve played them all and the explorable modes too. For now: not bad, not bad at all.

Gryz.8376:

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

if you dont like how hard the dungeons are… why are you doing them.
I think there is a solution here.

Ah, so you are telling me to stop playing and go away ?

Nice solution.
Maybe you should tell more of ArenaNet’s customers to go away. I bet ArenaNet will love it if only players like yourself will buy the next expansionpack.

Precisely what I think as well. This type of approach is no solution to the glaring problems of anets dungeon design atm.

I love the dungeon difficulty but a lot of the explorable modes lack polish to make them fun. Waypoint zerging also kills some of the fun & challenge.

Keep dungeons hard but work on polishing explorable modes more pls!!!

I first did AC with guildies on teamspeak and it was fail.

Then 10 days later I ran it with a pug and we did it easily.

Experience matters, having a good leader matters.