Guild Wars 2

There is a lot of room for improvement in specific dungeons and specific encounters, but I thought I would first address several underlying issues that affect all dungeons and dungeon design in, I believe, an adverse manner.

1) Splitting dungeon runs into story and explorable was a mistake. Trying to find dungeon story groups is very difficult (lack of group finder does not help). Story modes are long, difficult, and completely unrewarding. You get one helm with terrible stats and and the same ugly texture shared across all dungeons the first time you do it, and really nothing at all the second and subsequent times. There is no motivation whatsover for someone who has done story mode to go back and do it a second time. Meanwhile, people who want to do exploration mode cannot because they have to do story mode first, but cannot find any story mode groups: they are limited to pairing up with other people at the exact same stage of progression they are – maybe 1% of the player base? People who have already done story mode and help their friends with story mode need to be rewarded appropriately.

2) Allowing people to graveyard rush down bosses is not very good – if players are failing at an encounter they need to know they are failing and they need to know why they are failing. The way people can keep rushing back from waypoints keeps them knowing they are doing it wrong. It replaces trying to study and learn the encounter with frenzied rushing back from the way point. It makes it seem like an intended mechanic – and they repair bills that pile up make them hate the dungeon. Additionally, the dungeons are absolutely rife with bugs and glitches, which makes players hate the dungeon even more. I go through entire story mode dungeons without seeing a single cinematic, because it’s bugged.

3) ALL DUNGEONS HATE MELEE PLAYERS. I haven’t yet seen an encounter where I would rather melee the boss than used ranged. I’ve lost track of how many encounters trying to melee will get you absolutely smashed and so you are reduced to using ranged. I understand that almost all classes have strong ranged options – however I am a guardian, which has the weakest ranged options in the game. I don’t particularly enjoy them. Speaking of ranged, it seems almost all bosses in a dungeon can be beaten by the same mechanic: every boss in CoF is pretty easy if you just keep running around the boss in circles firing with ranged weapons. This is not a particularly engaging mechanic. Likewise, all bosses in AC are easy if you just throw boulders at everything. Again, not particularly fun or interesting.

4) The number of runs necessary combined with the different paths means everyone will always run the most optimal path a million times. When you have to run the dungeon such an ungodly amount of times to get your armor set (more grind than in WOW, which is a feat) you don’t have time to waste doing the other paths. You will do the optimal path the 70 times or whatever it takes to get your set. This is a shame and wastes all the effort the developers and artists put into those parts of the dungeon. Plus you don’t get any tokens for helping out friends do their story mode. I don’t mind the tokens being dungeon specific: if you let the tokens be accrued in any dungeon, the playerbase would quickly just figure out the most optimal path in the most optimal dungeon and run that one forever.

5) Difficulty in dungeons is very spotty – there is no sense of progressing from easier to more difficult. It is such a regular occurence that the first two bosses or some of the early trash is by far the most difficult part of the dungeon that I have to wonder if it is a deliberate design mechanic. I can see a reason for it: putting a high initial bar keeps people from wasting their time. If the hardest fight is first and they can’t beat it, well, come back with better gear or a better group. It prevents the situation where a party gets to the last boss and cannot beat it.

But it sure seems backwards from what many players expect and only reinforces the idea that the dungeons are a random mess of encounters with random one shot deaths for players that are to be overcome with charging back from the grave yard.

Let’s take one example: CoF. The first boss is murderous, the second is pretty obnoxious, the others are fairly straightforward, and the final boss is a piece of cake.

And the first boss (godfordged greatsword) is murderous primarily because of poor dungeon design. You need to be able to see both greatswords AND the boss himself in order to get out of the way of the weapons. Even at level 80, if you don’t move out of the way, you are dead. So you need to dodge perpendicular to their path of travel. However, you cannot pull the camera out far enough to see everything you need to and the godforged greatswords have the same color palette as the floors and walls, as well as having pretty skinny models. This makes tracking the greatswords almost impossible, and players are constantly surprised by one charging through them at high speed and basically one shotting them.

I’m fine with dungeons being difficult, and as of right now i’ve completed them all in Story mode besides crucible. As for explorable modes i’ve done magg obviously, tried the superweapon which was uh, completely impossible for my team. I’ve also done every path in sorrows embrace (it didnt count the destroyer of worlds path for some reason, so im apparently about to slog through that again)

I have to say this on the subject, imo to balance out the tokens there should be a bonus for finishing all the explorable paths, a repeatable bonus.

For example, in Guild wars 1, when you did the domain of anguish, you could pick the starting zone of 4. Then you could chain them together if you wanted. If you did all 4 in a row, the reward kept increasing (first chest gave 1 gem, next gave 2, next gave 3 and so on)

Something similar could be done for dungeons. Make it so that if you complete every explorable path you get a large bonus of tokens, maybe 100+ of them. (this bonus could be earned multiple times) With luck this will De-incentivise running one path over and over, because while it’s easier, it may no longer be the fastest token reward. It will also help cut down on the overall grind for those players who actually wish to challenge themselves and tackle all the explorable paths.

I know my friend was thoroughly disappointing with sorrows embrace rewards, having finished all 3 paths, only to realize we had 90 of the 1380 tokens needed for a full armor set we were kind of discouraged.

Which is not to say the dungeons arent fun. We have had a pretty great time in sorrows embrace, and I actually recommend it to players as one of the better put together dungeons (from a difficulty to fun ratio. It’s still a little buggy in the starting area, but meh) just not such a great time that we’d want to repeat the process 15 or so more times to get an armor set.

All of this was pointed out in early alpha tests with press putting a lot of this information out and telling arena net personally. If they haven’t changed it since then, I don’t see it coming quickly. Also, there is still a reward to doing things the right way (small repair bills and less rage). The game is called GUILD wars and I feel as if the dungeons were meant to be done in groups of people who know each other and can work together. I’ve done the dungeons with friends and it runs much smoother and is an overall better experience (mentally, as well as doing things efficiently) where as PUGS generally fail or make a lot of hate. That same thing gets rid of your problem with finding group members, you can use your guild/friends and make it a much quicker and enjoyable experience.

PPson.7042:

All of this was pointed out in early alpha tests with press putting a lot of this information out and telling arena net personally. If they haven’t changed it since then, I don’t see it coming quickly. Also, there is still a reward to doing things the right way (small repair bills and less rage). The game is called GUILD wars and I feel as if the dungeons were meant to be done in groups of people who know each other and can work together. I’ve done the dungeons with friends and it runs much smoother and is an overall better experience (mentally, as well as doing things efficiently) where as PUGS generally fail or make a lot of hate. That same thing gets rid of your problem with finding group members, you can use your guild/friends and make it a much quicker and enjoyable experience.

The thing is, I did the dungeons with my guild, and it is pretty enjoyable to be on skype with them as we go through, laughing, cracking jokes, ETC. But it’s going to get draining doing it 60 more times. There’s only so many puns that can be made about the dredge names before they get stale ya know.

I agree with everything OP said. Many things wrong, plenty of ways to improve.