I guess this thread will get better feedback in this forum section.
First of all, this is not a suggestion to increase or decrease the difficulty of dungeons. So any elitists or speedrun farmers feel free to leave now.
I’ll start off by saying I love dungeons. They are well created, and offer fun and challenging group content balanced for a 5-man party. There is not much wrong with the actual gameplay. What I have problems with is the process before and after the dungeons. This is finding groups is difficult, and the reward system being unrewarding and giving little incentive to continue to play dungeons (or their different paths).
Group Finder
Current situation: The only way to effectively find a party is by using /map chat. This clutters /map chat with unnecessary LFG messages. The spam filter doesn’t help making life easier for those who have trouble finding people to play with as it starts filtering out entire sentences after a few times.
What we “need”: (I don’t like using the word “need”, “want” might be a better word choice) is a more effective way to find groups.
Solution: The solution is pretty obvious. Have a tool similar to the one that we had in the original Guild Wars. Let us choose what we search a group for, let us write a line for more details for what we are looking for and that’s it. It doesn’t have to be anything mega fancy, just something good enough to find people to play with without constantly having to advertise LFG in /map chat.
Rewards
One of the most hated things in the current dungeon set-up is the way tokens are handled, and there is not one universal solution to this problem. I’ve come up with several different ideas, that might help feel the dungeons more rewarding. As well as giving players more incentives to running more than 1 path for each dungeon.
Before that, let’s first see what’s currently going on…
Current situation: Exotic dungeon rewards cost tons of tokens, that take tens upon tens of runs to obtain. Tokens are soulbound, so it is not possible to run the same dungeon on different classes for a little variety, and there is little incentive to take the other (longer and more difficult) paths.
Now I’ve thought up some different ideas on how to improve the current situation.
Idea 1: The obvious one. Lower token cost of exotic dungeon rewards. Not necessarily the best single solution, but it would be a step into the right direction.
Idea 2: Another obvious one. Make dungeon tokens some sort of account-wide currency (much like how Gems are handled). This way players bored of running the same instance with one and the same class over again have more freedom with profession choice.
Idea 3: Daily dungeon path bounties. Have at each dungeon one path give a bunch of bonus tokens (2x or 3x bonus tokens for finishing the path once per day only). This will give players more incentive to run a different path every day, without penalising those who don’t want to.
Idea 4: Being similar to Idea 3, but have a weekly dungeon achievement. Like select 2 different dungeons every week, and have those give players bonus tokens for completing all 3 paths in both or either selected dungeon. This would players give more incentive to try out dungeons they might otherwise not be tempted to do.
Idea 5: Reward players for doing all 3 paths. Not just once, but every time a player finished all 3 paths in a dungeon, give a bunch of bonus tokens as reward. This will give players more incentive to run all 3 paths in a dungeon instead of farming the same path over again. Of course without penalising those who do only farm the same path over again.
Idea 6: Mentor bonus. When a group brings a player new to that dungeon instance with them, everyone in the party will receive bonus tokens. +20 or +30 bonus tokens for a completed run only (stacks; the more new players in a party, the more bonus tokens are received). The newbie status counts account-wide, so no mentor bonus is given if a player has already done that same dungeon on a different character. This would give players more incentive to bring along new players on their dungeon runs, instead of shunning them because they might slow down your run.
Idea 7: Story-mode bonus. Once a day give players a +20 token bonus for completing the story-mode instance in a dungeon. Maybe even give a normal +5 token reward for every completed story-mode run. This would give players more incentive to go back to story-mode to maybe help out a new player.
(continued in next post)