Guild Wars 2

We’re less than a week away from the August 6th kitten up to dungeons, and many of us can’t spam dungeons fast enough before they’re taken away forever. I’m not talking just about Citadel of Flame, even though I do enjoy COF speed runs, but I’m also talking about any other dungeon that people do repeatedly.

Let’s review the stated reason for the upcoming change:

Moving forward, the full reward for individual dungeon paths will be on a one-day timer, making it more lucrative to run multiple paths than repeating a single path.

I’m wondering how many people asked for this? I know I certainly didn’t. I have done, for the past month, all three paths of Crucible of Eternity twice a day — on my warrior and my mesmer. I do this for three reasons:
1) I run it with guild groups so we gain influence and strengthen the ties in our community; and
2) I want charged cores and lodestones, which drop from the chests
3) I want the reward for completing the path — the 60 tokens and the 26 silver

I do the same thing with Citadel of Flame. When my guild was formed, it was about twenty-five of us who were veterans of large guilds (500 members) who were tired of 75% of our respective guilds being inactive. Obviously the new guild we formed wouldn’t have all of the missions unlocked, nor all of the bonuses and benefits available (like 24-hr MF boost, etc.). Citadel of Flame presented us with a means to quickly gain influence by doing run after run after run, even well past the point that diminished returns made the entire affair far less lucrative for the individuals running it.

I, like many, do not understand why earnest and sincere efforts like this must suffer because ArenaNet feels the need to control our every move in the game. I am feeling more and more frustrated by the obstructiveness posed by Big Brother in telling me how to play. Like many of you, I come from a generation of tabletop RPGs, where the best game masters were the ones who rewarded player choice rather than coercing them along a specific path. If I want to do nothing but one single dungeon all day, what right does ArenaNet have to tell me otherwise? I certainly didn’t consent to be constrained by such capriciousness when I agreed to the EULA. What’s next, I can’t power level my character in event chains?

It seems to me that ArenaNet wants the entire game to be one single heterogeneous grind stone; I don’t like to play that way, and I think this change to dungeons represents the largest obstacle to player choice to date.

With these matters understood, I will now make my suggestions for how to promote greater participation in other dungeons.

Sorrow’s Embrace
1) Path 2 is triple the length of the other paths and is filled with nothing but trash mobs.
2) The weapons are simply recoloured tier 1 Asura weapons, for which you can get the skins themselves for coppers on the trading post.
3) Path 1’s fight with the three golems pretty much requires, by the mechanics of the encounter, two guardians in the party to maintain constant projectile reflection. No dungeon should ever need to have any single class in the party composition for success, let alone two.

Twilight Arbor
1) Waypoints are few and far between.
2) The stats on the armour pieces (Magi, Rabid, and Rampager) are more easily gained elsewhere, like Ascalon Catacombs, Crucible of Eternity, and temple events in Orr.
3) The exotic trinket recipes have too low a drop rate to be so thoroughly overshadowed by ascended items.
4) Just try getting a pug group capable of forward/up. Just try it.

(1 of 2)

(2 of 2)

Ascalon Catacombs
1) I run elementalist for path 1 of this dungeon and even with ice bow I have been in many well-coordinated parties where the room with the skelks and burrows seems like it will never succeed. Also, this goes back to my point in Sorrow’s Embrace where no dungeon should ever, ever require a specific class in the party to have a successful run.
2) Further to the point of the burrows, the issue of not being able to hit the burrows with melee attacks (which 99% of the time “miss”) remains unresolved and is an enormous obstacle to success. This fact alone leads me to have labelled this dungeon as “incomplete”.
3) Lieutenant Kohler has half again as much health as he has any right to. It is beyond the point of “tedious” to even bother fighting him, and I’m more than happy to lose out on the reward chest to simply save myself the headache. He should be a bonus event like the troll, officially optional.

Arah
1) Path 4. Just, path 4.
2) Length. Not just in regards to p4, but all the paths are relatively long compared to other dungeons. When I go into a dungeon I want it to take up to about half an hour maximum so that I can still do other things like dailies.
3) Giganticus Lupicus is kitten near impossible with the average pug group, and I’ve seen too many parties wipe there multiple times after having already come the full length of a path from any other dungeon. He needs to have a third less health and far less manoeuvrability if he is to not be the final boss. Or just make him optional. I’d especially like him to be optional because he has a nasty habit of getting stuck in a wall and resetting.
4) It is the only dungeon that doesn’t drop lodestones from the chests. If I get a rare, it’s a kittening pile of putrid essence. The chests should at least give tier 6 dusts or something to make it worth my effort to run them.

This list of issues is by no means exhaustive. There are plenty of glitches that occur less frequently as to require mentioning, but problems certainly abound. I haven’t addressed HoTW (where I’ve solo’d the final underwater boss before on my guardian after my party went down at 75% health), nor COE (where I’ve solo’d Subject Alpha on my mesmer (producing as many clones as I could to take the crystal for me) after my party went down at 20% health), nor COF (where I still can’t hit the elemental core at the end of p2 with melee weapons on my warrior), because honestly these dungeons have far fewer (and less frustrating) issues than the ones I’ve spoken about. However, I welcome any and all commentary on these from other people who want to be involved in this discussion.

Wow… now I see what farming cof did to the players, this is how a cof farmer sees other dungeons ?

Yeah this was the game state like 3-4 months after launch

Quam.7218:

Wow… now I see what farming cof did to the players, this is how a cof farmer sees other dungeons ?

Yeah this was the game state like 3-4 months after launch

I don’t consider myself a COF farmer. COF farmers run it for several hours at a time. I can stomach only 3 or 4 runs before I need to take a break. Usually that break is from COF for the rest of the night. COF farmers also demand that people ping gear and kitten when they enter the party, which is a level of elitism that makes me sick. My usual COF groups includes a ranger and a guardian, and we can do the dungeon just as quickly as any 4 war/1 mes party.

My contentions with the other dungeons are because I don’t have as much fun playing them, for the reasons that I have stated. If you feel that it is snobbery to dislike dungeons because they are not fun, then I have no purpose for your opinions.

What exactly is elitist about pinging gear?

Is it because someone wants to make sure their people are geared, not even just well, but appropriately? Why would I want a mesmer with healing power gear in my group? Or an engineer in 74 blues? Is pinging skills also elitist? Would you prefer two Warriors bring the same utility banner. What if you saw a Guardian with Hammer of Wisdom, Contemplation of Purity, and Bane Signet… running a condition build, and cherry on top, they told you they were running shout traits? Would it be elitist to kick them? Or is something elitist just because you don’t agree with it? Because it seems to me that your take on the issue is highlighting you as an elitist, but on the other side of the road. “Gear checks are bad! Don’t be elitist! Nerf dugeons so I can do them without trying! Play like ME!”

It seems to me that you complain about elitism stopping… something, but then at the very next turn insist dungeons don’t take so long, which is counter-productive. No dungeon will take you more than 25 minutes per path (barring Arah P4) if you organize your groups.

So what is it? Organized and efficient (fun) elitism, or headless chickens improperly geared and without tactics or strategy just because it gives you good feelies, at the expense of your hairline?

Wow, someone finally steps up for me and answers the “gear check = elitist” comment before I have to.

The way I see it, if your gear is good you should feel no shame or annoyance at being asked to ping. If it irritates you then your gear must be bad.

Young Somalia.1706:

What exactly is elitist about pinging gear?

Is it because someone wants to make sure their people are geared, not even just well, but appropriately? Why would I want a mesmer with healing power gear in my group? Or an engineer in 74 blues? Is pinging skills also elitist? Would you prefer two Warriors bring the same utility banner. What if you saw a Guardian with Hammer of Wisdom, Contemplation of Purity, and Bane Signet… running a condition build, and cherry on top, they told you they were running shout traits? Would it be elitist to kick them? Or is something elitist just because you don’t agree with it? Because it seems to me that your take on the issue is highlighting you as an elitist, but on the other side of the road. “Gear checks are bad! Don’t be elitist! Nerf dugeons so I can do them without trying! Play like ME!”

It seems to me that you complain about elitism stopping… something, but then at the very next turn insist dungeons don’t take so long, which is counter-productive. No dungeon will take you more than 25 minutes per path (barring Arah P4) if you organize your groups.

So what is it? Organized and efficient (fun) elitism, or headless chickens improperly geared and without tactics or strategy just because it gives you good feelies, at the expense of your hairline?

colesy.8490:

Wow, someone finally steps up for me and answers the “gear check = elitist” comment before I have to.

The way I see it, if your gear is good you should feel no shame or annoyance at being asked to ping. If it irritates you then your gear must be bad.

Pinging gear is elitist because groups that demand it, in my experience, will kick if you don’t have full ascended trinkets and armour with either ruby orbs or scholar runes. While I have appropriate gear and have never been kicked on that basis, the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics.

I’m not saying that I won’t want my party members to be properly equipped and traited so the group has synergy, I’m saying that the fanaticalness associated with such groups is unwholesome and the one thing I’d be happy to lose with the upcoming changes.

Also, I realize you may have been confused by the title of the thread reading “Let’s Discuss Dungeons”, but I’ll point out that the intention of the thread was to discuss dungeons, not whether pinging gear is elitist.

No, if a group just asks for gear pings they want exo zerker gear w/ruby orbs and ruby jewels on trinkets. They only want ascended if they specifically ask for it, hell I’ve ran in PUGs where everything I have is exo/ascended and I have a rare guild backpiece and they don’t even care, probably because backpieces take quite a bit of effort/tedium to get.

And gear has an enormous effect on your ability to contribute, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics”.

I have thousands of ideas for dungeons that would be, in my opinion (and my opinion is that punching sandbags is unentertaining), entertaining. But I doubt any would be implemented just like some things we asked in beta are being implemented almost a year after release (token wallet).

They are nerfing farming for gold and just introducing more RNG for the ingredients necessary for a legendary.

Pay attention to the fact that they said a rare chance at t6 items. It takes 250 of each, well over 450+ ectos, then the 600g+ precursors, then 100 of a lodestone type.

You are looking at like 300-400 runs of paths of a dungeon just to have enough lodestones t6 mats if you don’t use gold to acquire them.

Legendaries have always been more efficient to buy with gold (and therefore boosting anet’s gem sales for those who want to convert rl money to gold without risk of ban), and these RNG chances to champion rewards will do nothing to make playing the actual game reward you with a legendary more efficiently than just farming the gold instead.

Noobs will deem this a godsend, but those who don’t want to play TP to gain legendaries or expensive items in reasonable time frames will be screwed by this change as it will directly impact their money-making opportunities outside playing virtual trader.

colesy.8490:

No, if a group just asks for gear pings they want exo zerker gear w/ruby orbs and ruby jewels on trinkets. They only want ascended if they specifically ask for it, hell I’ve ran in PUGs where everything I have is exo/ascended and I have a rare guild backpiece and they don’t even care, probably because backpieces take quite a bit of effort/tedium to get.

And gear has an enormous effect on your ability to contribute, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics”.

To put it in smaller words, the difference between ascended trinkets and exotic trinkets is very very small over the course of a short battle. Groups that get their kittens in a knot over exotic trinkets can burn in a fire.

This is still off-topic. If you don’t have something constructive to add on the subject, please refrain from posting.

colesy.8490:

No, if a group just asks for gear pings they want exo zerker gear w/ruby orbs and ruby jewels on trinkets. They only want ascended if they specifically ask for it, hell I’ve ran in PUGs where everything I have is exo/ascended and I have a rare guild backpiece and they don’t even care, probably because backpieces take quite a bit of effort/tedium to get.

And gear has an enormous effect on your ability to contribute, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics”.

I think what was meant was the gear type they are specifically looking for is marginal over a good or better set of full exotics given the person’s class and build. When everything else is equal.

And I think the elitist group of people who ask for gear pings just give the average players who ask for gear pings a bad name. A case of the extremist segment of a population creating a bad impression. And bad impressions tend to be ones we remember more.

Provost.6210:

colesy.8490:

No, if a group just asks for gear pings they want exo zerker gear w/ruby orbs and ruby jewels on trinkets. They only want ascended if they specifically ask for it, hell I’ve ran in PUGs where everything I have is exo/ascended and I have a rare guild backpiece and they don’t even care, probably because backpieces take quite a bit of effort/tedium to get.

And gear has an enormous effect on your ability to contribute, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics”.

To put it in smaller words, the difference between ascended trinkets and exotic trinkets is very very small over the course of a short battle. Groups that get their kittens in a knot over exotic trinkets can burn in a fire.

This is still off-topic. If you don’t have something constructive to add on the subject, please refrain from posting.

Yes, and I’m saying that not many groups ask for ascended.

Asking for exotic trinkets however is perfectly reasonable since they’re easy to obtain.

Gear check is a routine because hundreds or thousands of new players are coming to dungeons with no clue what to do and what to wear (and they don’t even bother to ask – they just enter room and try to mimic others because they’ve got no clue what to do). All they have to do is ask, but no, therefore gearchecks. There is a reason why everyone want to see ruby orbs or scholar runes instead of “put_here_random_useless_rune_you_think_its_good_for_dungeon”. Bannercheck is just so warriors aren’t overlaping themselves with 3xBanner of Discipline, etc. Truth is infact there are some kittened players who ask for x thousands of achievement points, ascended trinkets (what for? nobody knows, maybe they still have nightmares involving agony condition… or that few power points are going to slow down their farm by 0.04s) or dancing lambada while doing surgery but there’s only fraction of them. In my LFG I allways specify it’s going to be speedrun and all classes with DPS builds are welcomed, unless I’m posting for someone else – people enter and we play. If someone is doing some mistakes I’m simply telling them what they should do so dungeon runs easier, faster and smoother. Tons of Mesmers for example have no slightest clue why Mesmer is wanted in CoF. They think people care about rolling balls thingy (which is child easy to pass for anyone who’s not first-timer), not about Push enemies to the wall, TimeWarp, Feedback, Signet of Inspiration, Portal on Acolytes to minimize time being under fire involved and being chainstunned. If people refuse to listen to kind (keyword) advices then well, I have no hesitation kicking them. There’s nothing wrong “wasting” a bit of time and getting potentialy valuable player in the future. But then you meet people who want their 9 legendaries and they’ve daily norms to farm in order to reach it in reasonable amount of time. If someone wants to run for 5h straight – why do you even care if you’re not interested in such pace? Or if someone doesn’t want to farm dungeon – why does he care if someone actualy wants and/or likes? People have strange manner to ask to change someones game experience instead of asking to fix their own to be actualy rewarding since WoW.

Average players who ask for pings? Gearcheck as routine?
I have never since beta pinged my gear nor have been asked to ping my gear. Hate to tell this to you guys, but average people just don’t fixate on this kind of stuff. In fact they don’t fixate on much of anything. At all.

@OP
I think it goes without saying dungeons are in need of a revision, but that’s really got nothing to do with restructuring the rewards system. The risk/reward dynamic was being horribly undermined, and that needed to be fixed. Harder content should reward you more and easier content should reward you less, or you start to lose a sense of value for your effort.

If it makes you feel any better, supposedly dungeons are on the docket to be revised through Living Story updates. We just don’t know when.

colesy.8490:

Provost.6210:

colesy.8490:

No, if a group just asks for gear pings they want exo zerker gear w/ruby orbs and ruby jewels on trinkets. They only want ascended if they specifically ask for it, hell I’ve ran in PUGs where everything I have is exo/ascended and I have a rare guild backpiece and they don’t even care, probably because backpieces take quite a bit of effort/tedium to get.

And gear has an enormous effect on your ability to contribute, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the effects of the gear is marginal over full exotics”.

To put it in smaller words, the difference between ascended trinkets and exotic trinkets is very very small over the course of a short battle. Groups that get their kittens in a knot over exotic trinkets can burn in a fire.

This is still off-topic. If you don’t have something constructive to add on the subject, please refrain from posting.

Yes, and I’m saying that not many groups ask for ascended.

Asking for exotic trinkets however is perfectly reasonable since they’re easy to obtain.

Except that stupid backpiece….

I have 4 ascended fractal capacitors from all my fractal leveling, but I will never farm for more ever again.

And I won’t spend 70g+ to craft one on the mystic forge ;<

The 5 gold cost backpiece should be exotic, not require 5 guild commendations ;(

I got all classes at 80, getting every single one of them full ascended is a tad crazy.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Average players who ask for pings?
I have never since beta pinged my gear nor have been asked to ping my gear.

Well, for farm runs you do.

Don’t want some kitten joining a farm run with pvt or condi gear.

In fact, a toon in full rare berserker pulls out more damage than going exotic knights or pvt.

Frankly, I am a bit annoyed at CoF1. For one, everyone running CoF1 makes it hard to get groups for other dungeons. For two, everyone now builds and plays like they are in CoF1, which ends up in zerker warriors charging ahead, getting killed, then blaming the lack of a mesmer for it.

I give up. Vox Hollow is the only one thus far to have addressed the actual topic of this discussion (hint: its in the topic name). I’m not going to waste my time reading an argument I was not putting forward and ignoring the matter I was raising concern over.

I’m loving these CoF farming posts.
Seriously this patch doesn’t stop you from mindlessly running CoF1 over and over again, only now you will get rewards that respect the amount of effort you put in.
Does that not sound fair? Or are you stuck in the frame of mind that you should be the wealthiest player in the game by doing the easiest path again and again?
The game should never have reached this point, this patch is insanely overdue.
The fact that you can’t even do AC or SE without certain professions to carry you proves what CoF1 has done to player skill.
You don’t need Reflect Projectiles to deal with the Golems in SE, and you don’t need an Ice Bow for AC, whilst they do make it easier it isn’t necessary.
Do everyone a favour and just uninstall after patch if it bothers you so much, you obviously have nothing to add to the dungeon community.

Sorrow’s Embrace
P1: As Dolan has said projectile reflection is not really necessary. If you can´t do it without it there are other classes who have access to it too.
Mesmer with Feedback, Temporal Curtain and thieves with Smoke Screen.
P2: It is longer yes but that also means that the reward will be higher. There are also several champions which will give you additional loot.

Ascalon Catacombs
P1: I have done it several times without an ele in the group. One player guards Hodgins and the others destroy the burrows. As a warrior with gs or lb I never had any problems with hitting the burrows.
Kohler is already a bonus event. He can be skipped without problems.

Arah
Length: If you don´t have the time do another dungeon.
Giganticus Lupicus is fine in my opinion.
Path 4 is long but otherwise it isn´t so difficult.

Provost.6210:

Quam.7218:

Wow… now I see what farming cof did to the players, this is how a cof farmer sees other dungeons ?

Yeah this was the game state like 3-4 months after launch

I don’t consider myself a COF farmer. COF farmers run it for several hours at a time. I can stomach only 3 or 4 runs before I need to take a break. Usually that break is from COF for the rest of the night. COF farmers also demand that people ping gear and kitten when they enter the party, which is a level of elitism that makes me sick. My usual COF groups includes a ranger and a guardian, and we can do the dungeon just as quickly as any 4 war/1 mes party.

Oh, sorry for the “farmer” thing than, yet Your pov for dungeons are not actual. I run pug mostly. 98% of all my runs are with pugs.

But the problems of dungeons You are pointing don’t exist if You run a pug with knowledge how to do them, an everyday pug. In fact EVERY dungeon in this game is hard if peaple don’t know how to do them. Take 4 ppl with You to CoF or CoE that are “fresh” runners with a little experience and see what happens, same goes for every dungeon in the game.

Sorrow’s Embrance
Part 1 golems ? Easy as hell fight. Just learn “where” to fight them.
Part 3 also a fast part if done correctly.
Path 2… meh yeah insane amount of trash.

Twilight Arbor
Rabid gear is good for WvW, but ppl run it it’s becouse of the looks.
FW/UP done with a pug. After 2x wipe on last boss one of the members told the rest “what” do dodge, thankfully all pug player had brains – killed after 3rd try, it beacame easy as hell.

Ascalon Catacombs
1. Sometimes we don’t do it at first attempt but never failed hard. Mostly 2-3 max aaand done.
2. First time hearing that… did it with Mesmer, Thief, Guardian, Warrior, Necro all melee weapons nothing ever missed.
3. Kholer is a 1 min fight… 2min at max :|

Arah
2. That’s the idea of “the last hardest dungeon” that it punishes bad groups. If it does not suit You don’t play it. Do other dungeons if You have limited time. Adapt.
3. Are we playing the same game ? I farmed the Arah set with my thief. Did 1-3 paths (depending on how well the pug was) in 4h of my total play time and still had time to do my dailis and other crap completed the set in 1 week. 0 times failed, 3 times all melee even! With a pug :O

So I don’t know with whom You play dungeons, I pug them constantly and they are not hard if everyone in the pug know how to.

Provost.6210:

My contentions with the other dungeons are because I don’t have as much fun playing them, for the reasons that I have stated. If you feel that it is snobbery to dislike dungeons because they are not fun, then I have no purpose for your opinions.

If you cannot play an instrument or do a specific sport You give up becouse it’s not fun and tell everyone “they should do this sport more easy becouse it’s too hard to do it and it’s not fun”.

That’s how dungeons are, the fun comes when all know how to play it.

Provost.6210:

Sorrow’s Embrace
1) Path 2 is triple the length of the other paths and is filled with nothing but trash mobs.
3) Path 1’s fight with the three golems pretty much requires, by the mechanics of the encounter, two guardians in the party to maintain constant projectile reflection. No dungeon should ever need to have any single class in the party composition for success, let alone two.

Twilight Arbor
1) Waypoints are few and far between.
(1 of 2)

Actually for SE, p2 has 4 champions that give no chest (well 1 chest when you are done with all of them) and have high health. And the dredge takes forever to walk. Those things alone take quite some time.

As for p1, I think it’s doable with just one guardian because he can have access to 4 reflects. But stability is nice to have too.
Also, a mesmer, elementalist, thief or even engineer can bring a reflect.

And didn’t they add more WP for TA ? I despise that dungeon, but the last time I did it, there were a lot of WP.

Provost.6210:

Quam.7218:

Wow… now I see what farming cof did to the players, this is how a cof farmer sees other dungeons ?

Yeah this was the game state like 3-4 months after launch

I don’t consider myself a COF farmer. COF farmers run it for several hours at a time. I can stomach only 3 or 4 runs before I need to take a break. …..

Am I the only one who stopped here for a good laugh?

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that… you are a COF farmer…

Back to topic… where are the patch notes?

I can’t understand the fuzz with the changes… didn’t they make it that you can only run each path once a day long time ago? What’s changing now?

Dungeons are great, fun, reward is bad; but I wouldn’t know how to fix it myself without breaking other things so… stopping farmers for repeating the same over and over again its good enough; probably add an increased 20%-35% gold reward for a full run next to it.

Dolan.3071:

I’m loving these CoF farming posts.

I’m loving everyone’s apparent inability to read.

Seriously this patch doesn’t stop you from mindlessly running CoF1 over and over again

If I move three times in a year and ask you and your friends to help, giving you each a pack of beer the first time, and each one beer the second time, what is the likelihood that you are going to bother coming around the third time?

Dolan.3071:

only now you will get rewards that respect the amount of effort you put in.
Does that not sound fair?

If the rewards respected the amount of effort I put in, I would receive the exact same amount of money every time I did the path. Whether the first or the fifty-first.

Dolan.3071:

Or are you stuck in the frame of mind that you should be the wealthiest player in the game by doing the easiest path again and again?

I can do that too, you know.
“Or are you stuck in the frame of mind that you should be able to skim a few points of someone’s post and immediately draw incontrovertible conclusions that are so far off the mark they need the Coast Guard and satellite GPS to find their way back?”
Making straw-man arguments are disrespectful and an intellectual fallacy.

Dolan.3071:

The fact that you can’t even do AC or SE without certain professions to carry you proves what CoF1 has done to player skill.

Again, you don’t seem to have read the part where I say that I am the one to carry the team.

Dolan.3071:

You don’t need Reflect Projectiles to deal with the Golems in SE, and you don’t need an Ice Bow for AC, whilst they do make it easier it isn’t necessary.

Find me a video of a group doing the golem fight in SE without reflect projectiles where they don’t suffer stupid amounts of armour damage.

Dolan.3071:

Do everyone a favour and just uninstall after patch if it bothers you so much, you obviously have nothing to add to the dungeon community.

Do me a favour and never party with me, I get the sense that you’re the kind of person who rides the success of others in the party and claims all the credit.

Turamarth.3248:

Sorrow’s Embrace
P1: As Dolan has said projectile reflection is not really necessary. If you can´t do it without it there are other classes who have access to it too.
Mesmer with Feedback, Temporal Curtain and thieves with Smoke Screen.

So your solution is to trade the guardians for mesmers and thieves. I think my point about how dungeons should never need particular classes still stands. If I have two rangers, an elementalist, a warrior, and a guardian in the party that’s four people who can’t contribute a necessary mechanic (though the rangers and elementalists can support themselves briefly with whirling defence and magnetic shield, but that doesn’t help the party). This isn’t Fractals of the Mist, which is designed to require the most coordinated parties at higher levels (which people elect to go up to, rather than being the base level of the dungeon), this is a regular dungeon that people do to enjoy the game.

Turamarth.3248:

P2: It is longer yes but that also means that the reward will be higher. There are also several champions which will give you additional loot.

I am not at all objecting to a “bonus” being given to completing new dungeon paths each day. If I do COE’s 3 paths, COF 1 and 2, and AC 1 and 3 all in one day and get a bonus for each of them, that’s heavy incentive for me to not just play COF1 for several hours. But eliminating any rewards from running the currently decent dungeon paths multiple times is ANet telling me how to play, which I don’t like.

Turamarth.3248:

Ascalon Catacombs
P1: I have done it several times without an ele in the group. One player guards Hodgins and the others destroy the burrows. As a warrior with gs or lb I never had any problems with hitting the burrows.

Then there’s obviously an issue with my game. If I run right up to the burrow and hundred blades on a warrior, I’ll get a hundred misses. Even if I use skill 1 with the ice bow on my ele it has a nasty tendency to miss, too.

Turamarth.3248:

Arah
Length: If you don´t have the time do another dungeon.

How about, if I want decent rewards for my effort I’ll do another dungeon? My point is that this dungeon is needlessly long.

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(2 of 2)

Mesket.5728:

Am I the only one who stopped here for a good laugh?

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that… you are a COF farmer…

What the kitten is wrong with you, can’t you read? I don’t even do COF every day. kitten off with your bullkitten conclusions.

Mesket.5728:

Back to topic… where are the patch notes?

Patch hasn’t yet been released, the notes will follow. In the mean time the developers have released certain information, which I quoted in the very first post.

Mesket.5728:

I can’t understand the fuzz with the changes… didn’t they make it that you can only run each path once a day long time ago? What’s changing now?

What they had before was perfect. Your first run you get 26 silver and 60 tokens. Your second run you got less. Your third run (and all subsequent runs unless you do another too quickly) will get you a standard small amount. These diminishing returns were sufficiently dissuasive to players like me from running it for hours and hours for wealth. The only time I would ever push more runs was, as I said, when I was doing it for guild influence.

Mesket.5728:

Dungeons are great, fun, reward is bad; but I wouldn’t know how to fix it myself without breaking other things so… stopping farmers for repeating the same over and over again its good enough; probably add an increased 20%-35% gold reward for a full run next to it.

Add an increased 20%-35% gold reward to what? The 1-3 gold they’re currently talking about?

Quam.7218:

Sorrow’s Embrance
Part 1 golems ? Easy as hell fight. Just learn “where” to fight them.
Part 3 also a fast part if done correctly.
Path 2… meh yeah insane amount of trash.

So you are also of the opinion that path 3 especially requires an enormous overhaul, such that the current (pre-upcoming patch) rewards are not sufficient to the effort you put in.

Quam.7218:

Twilight Arbor
Rabid gear is good for WvW, but ppl run it it’s becouse of the looks.
FW/UP done with a pug. After 2x wipe on last boss one of the members told the rest “what” do dodge, thankfully all pug player had brains – killed after 3rd try, it beacame easy as hell.

I can’t understand why someone would find the TA armour aesthetically appealing, but whatever. As for your success in F/U I congratulate you. I have successfully done it with guild parties on more than one occasion, but the dungeon itself has far too many frustrating elements (not even challenging, just frustrating) that I have no intention of running it.

Quam.7218:

Ascalon Catacombs
2. First time hearing that… did it with Mesmer, Thief, Guardian, Warrior, Necro all melee weapons nothing ever missed.

I will definitely be speaking to ArenaNet about this.

Quam.7218:

Arah
2. That’s the idea of “the last hardest dungeon” that it punishes bad groups. If it does not suit You don’t play it. Do other dungeons if You have limited time. Adapt.

Again, it’s not the length, it’s the needless length that boggles my mind.

Quam.7218:

If you cannot play an instrument or do a specific sport You give up becouse it’s not fun and tell everyone “they should do this sport more easy becouse it’s too hard to do it and it’s not fun”.

That’s how dungeons are, the fun comes when all know how to play it.

I’ll concede that you make a point in mentioning “specific sports”. I enjoy active and exciting sports like judo, whereas sports like baseball bore me to tears. However, if baseball had three innings instead of nine, and if the tedium were punctuated with something far more interesting than simply hitting a ball with a stick, I would be more interested in it. In the same way, Arah is far too long for its rewards and to have to complete all of its paths for the Dungeon Master title is excessive.

You run 3 or 4 runs to cof 1 you are farming it thus being a cof farmer, deal with it. I’m not saying you are a bad person or a bad player but at some extend you are indeed a cof farmer. Even if you cut it off a day or two. Don’t be mad at it. It’s not your fault, the game should be balanced reward-wise at all aspects of it and not have this places with big spikes of income. Its the reward unbalance that is pushing players to farm the same spot over and over.

@ Provost
I will see if I can provide you with a video of SE 1.
Have you ever done CM?

Mesket.5728:

Its the reward unbalance that is pushing players to farm the same spot over and over.

Well new changes incoming are not changing that instead changing income-as-you-please to daily-limited-income you can get from this particular activity (running Dungeons). So if you are capable and want to earn more gold/day and you’re interested in Dungeon running this change will hurt your playstyle. Calling him farmer for entering CoF 3-4 times (which yields like what, 2g?) is nowhere being farmer. How will you call then person who’s running CoF for daily 50g? (and it’s not overexaggeration, 50-60g is what CoF farmers are getting right now). Adjusting rewards for dungeon paths is brilliant idea. Making them daily isn’t.

Marrond.1385:

Mesket.5728:

Its the reward unbalance that is pushing players to farm the same spot over and over.

Well new changes incoming are not changing that instead changing income-as-you-please to daily-limited-income you can get from this particular activity (running Dungeons). So if you are capable and want to earn more gold/day and you’re interested in Dungeon running this change will hurt your playstyle. Calling him farmer for entering CoF 3-4 times (which yields like what, 2g?) is nowhere being farmer. How will you call then person who’s running CoF for daily 50g? (and it’s not overexaggeration, 50-60g is what CoF farmers are getting right now). Adjusting rewards for dungeon paths is brilliant idea. Making them daily isn’t.

At last, someone else who thinks the method of these changes is an unnecessary inconvenience.

I have brought this up numerous times, how ArenaNet doesn’t see how when large groups of people fixate on particular skills, builds, farming areas, etc. it is an indication that other areas need to be improved, not that the object of the fixation needs to be nerfed. Give the bonus reward (1-3 gold) on top of the current rewards for every new path that is completed that day, and you should easily get a large portion of the “CoF farmers” branching out. Are they still going to farm CoF? To an extent, but why is that a problem? Why is ArenaNet so against players running dungeons they want to run?

Marrond.1385:

So if you are capable and want to earn more gold/day and you’re interested in Dungeon running this change will hurt your playstyle.

If you are capable and interested in running dungeons, doing a daily run through several dungeons will make more money than it would have previously, and probably similar money to CoF. This is a buff to anyone who runs different dungeons.

For most people who like dungeons, running multiple different dungeons is more interesting than spamming CoF p1. This change will make the more interesting activity more profitable than the less interesting activity – I think that’s a good thing.

DelOnasi.6051:

If you are capable and interested in running dungeons, doing a daily run through several dungeons will make more money than it would have previously, and probably similar money to CoF. This is a buff to anyone who runs different dungeons.

For most people who like dungeons, running multiple different dungeons is more interesting than spamming CoF p1. This change will make the more interesting activity more profitable than the less interesting activity – I think that’s a good thing.

I would gladly run dungeons if they were borring less (inverted intentionaly, stupid political correctness everywhere…) (with CoF I can atleast watch anime ^^) but please don’t tell me I will earn more with the change. I’m doing now 50g/day and I started whole thing week ago. Only thing that bothers me is “daily”. Because of that I will earn less for more effort and it will be harder to actualy find decent party unless you’re doing it with friends that log in and log out at the same time everyday. And practilcaly all dungeons are in need of serious and complete rework – unless you still want to run them with ease with your full zerker team of guardian, mesmer/thief and warriors punching sandbags.

Just keep in mind before you call me braindead mindless CoF farmer – I will gladly do other Dungeons but in the current game state even Fractals are more interesting in design (which is obvious since they’ve addressed many issues with Dungeons there) and execution. Now not only I will spent more time running every path punching sandbag bosses that require only DPS check, but also I will get rewarded less. And I found CoFing pretty fun just for the sole reason I could turn off my brain and gain income doing something more productive than actual playing. I’m more interested in WvW and PvP than in PvE but only PvE gives you chance to get decent skins. (kitten flippers, Ghastly shield skin already popped up 100g in price since yesterday -_-).

I’m disguisted with playing market (and I’m farmer by heart, got intrested in MMO genre with Mu Online and got there max possible level on global server before exp events emmerged – to give you example there were no quest, only grinding mobs and from 380 to 381 it took average player about 2 weeks of constant playing in well optimized party) since it’s earning based solely on other players but with incoming changes I see less and less options for me to gain gold in reasonable amount of time that doesn’t require logging every day doing boring checklist.

I don’t get it, you make 50g/day and you’ve been doing so for weeks. Something costing around 100g shouldn’t even bother you.

(Unless you forgot an “a” as in “I started the whole thing a week ago”)

RedStar.4218:

I don’t get it, you make 50g/day and you’ve been doing so for weeks. Something costing around 100g shouldn’t even bother you.

(Unless you forgot an “a” as in “I started the whole thing a week ago”)

Ghastly was 300g yesterday, today it’s going to reach 400 (380 already). My not-yet-created Engineer wants it badly. He told me so. And I wanted riddiculously expensive cultural T3 armor for my Charr Warrior (because 99,99999% helmets in game are looking riddiculously bad on Charr, Anet definitely hates them considering how little to no effort they put in their gear) but I guess it won’t happen in atleast decade considering how slow outside of farming gold earning really is ^^ And before you ask – no I couldn’t log in during halloween and support couldn’t fix the issue. It fixed itself after the event so I guess it wasn’t on my side (since I haven’t change anything).

I’ve done my Warrior exactly 10 days ago since lvl1 if that’s what you’re asking, I apologize for my clumsy english. I’m maining Thief but he never really left WvW. I don’t have legendary, neither I want one (they’re so ugly really, all of them). Although I run with guy who is right now farming 7th Legendary there… just trying to make it before 6th or I will propably never get that shield skin (unless they’re going to overhaul WvW rewards to actualy give noticeable income instead of repair bills). Thanks god I’m right inbetween changing job so I can waste time grinding like prisoner in China in chase after pixels :]

Whoops sorry, I failed at reading…Thought you meant that it now cost more than 100g, but you meant that it went up by 100g >.>

But good luck on getting your shield. However, are you sure you want it on your engineer ? You’ll be using your kits most of the time, so you won’t see your shield while fighting :/

RedStar.4218:

But good luck on getting your shield. However, are you sure you want it on your engineer ? You’ll be using your kits most of the time, so you won’t see your shield while fighting :/

It really doesn’t fit many things. I’ve already painted it in my head (and PvP locker :P) – it’s going to be (nothing original) Little Asuran (yes I know, even smaller and less visible shield) Evil Genius with parts from medium Aetherized/Inquest/Cultural set and head, shoulders and gloves from achievement milestones – the dark ones. They look exceptionaly good on Asura (and cover his ugly face in case of male one :P). Originaly I wanted to get 2 Ghastly so I could use one in WvW and one in sPvP but that’s not going to happen because of incoming changes.

Hopefuly they will overhaul Dungeons before end of the year so I will be actualy able to enjoy some PvE content (I did all dungeons but I don’t find punching sandbags full of HP entertaining, especialy if there’s no timeworth reward, and I don’t feel like doing Arah without organized group will be something timeworth in terms of rewards – but it gets tricky even more because of daily mechanics… if I login later than my organized team is used to play and will already finish the dungeons – how I will complete them? Who exactly will put their time so I can get my daily reward? If it wasn’t daily it would be as easy as finding party for CoF p1 right now, but with daily mechanics in place I wouldn’t be so sure about it. Or other way approach to dailies – if I don’t have much time during the week but I can play like mad 20hours in Saturdays – I’m in disadvantage to ones who lack any real life duties. If it wasn’t daily player would get rewarded for effort put in game equaly to real time invested instead of putting sign under daily checklist every day)

I’d just like to note that I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the forums, so this is the first I’ve heard of “punching sandbags” as a metaphor for beating down bosses that have impractically high health pools, and I very much like it.

ArenaNet’s 3-step solution to “balancing” dungeons:
Is it too short? Add three times the health to the bosses.
Is it ignored? Add another waypoint or bonus event… or make all other dungeon paths as inconvenient as this one is to run so all-else being equal people will still ignore it because they will stick with what’s familiar.
Is it farmed too much? Completely re-do the first boss so that they abuse attack patterns more shamelessly than players (I’m looking at you, Ascalon Catacombs queen spider)… or change the entire reward system so it’s not worth doing any more.

I’m here just lately too. Didn’t bother to visit here too often as all people would do was crying over how thiefs are facerolling them in WvW if they’re outside of their warm zergs. And these “OP” Warriors instakilling their glass cannon Elementalist. I was never interested into Dungeons after I saw how terrible they are but since they’ve announced there infact will be overhaul to Dungeons I’ve asked myself – why not? Maybe this time someone won’t make the same mistakes over, and over, and over, AND OVER again?

As for punching sandbags – if you consider entertaining running with full zerk team (because it’s possible and time efficient) punching braindead, barely moving lying logs that occasionaly throw some ability that most likely will 1shoot you then I just don’t want to live in your world of entertainment. I don’t find increasing health pool as increasing difficulty efficient, nor fun in any shape or form. I’ve finished Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls without increasing soul level through the whole game – it was nice personal achievement in term of reward but nothing I would call entertaining in any shape or form (it wasn’t even challangeing, just required patience like trying to kill an elephant with a spoon), just like I don’t consider entertaining facerolling through enemies without any effort at all.

Now I will post some wall of text you will propably not agree with, just need to split it into parts so it actualy get posted -_-

Ok, warning, TL;DR wall of text. I promise there will be not a single word about CoF, farming tons of money in short period of time, and other bullkitten that I would like so I could achieve my personal goals (like mentioned above Ghastly shield). I would like to apologize for my english – it’s not my main language and I use it quite rarely outside of playing with pugs when my mates are offline. Suprisingly even my past job while requiring knowing english at exceptional level didn’t make me to use it even once for couple of years.

But back to the topic. Let’s discuss dungeons. In my opinion they need to be salvaged and recreated from scratch so I won’t say what could be added or changed in current ones, they’re mostly flat out bad and incredibly awful. Mostly in terms of mechanics and execution since story fits nicely in overal GW2 averageness in that regard, and however I wouldn’t mind better story additions I just lack any faith after looking at living content updates – there’s no hope, atleast not at the moment.

Some of you may ask – “Why would Anet need to dump dungeons and redo them? They only need minor fixes. What’s wrong with them in comparisment to other MMOs?”. The issue is – why exactly anyone who enjoys PvE content would want to buy Guild Wars 2 for the sole reason of running dungeons over really any other title out there? What unique mechanics does Guild Wars 2 incorporate into the gameplay that make it’s interesting over others, especialy since it’s claiming to redefine MMO genre? Dodges? It was already done (and it was done better, although this “better” only worked out for PvE since PvP ended up being dance of dodges untill someone made a mistake) before. Diffrent paths to choose from? It’s nice idea with extremaly poor execution. Rewards? Any MMO out there, including dirty grinding P2W Asian titles with wicked rng system rewards you better.

Why not take diffrent approach? Why not make MMO even more dynamic and interactive than standing still pressing few buttons repeatedly (all dungeons can be steamrolled by zerker squad dishing out damage, ocassionaly dodging and it has been proven by best and even average players once they’ve learned particular dungeon) punching braindead sandbag with tons of HP. Dodge in the current game mechanics is just simple invulnerability frames on skill with cooldown. It doesn’t matter whether you roll through wall of flame or huge rock is just falling on top of you. I don’t expect them changing that anytime before GW3, especialy with their pace at improving the game as it is (only I feel like GW1 received lots of love during same period of time after release in comparisment?) so let’s focus on things related strictly to dungeons and their mechanics. Take a look at Fractals. Anet improved much since game relase and Fractals adress alot of issues with dungeon designs however it’s still far from being perfect. There is a lot of nice ideas there that could greately improve Dungeons which suffer from poor execution. I really liked ideas with Hammer at Cliffside or Ice Elemental boss in Dredges fractal (but not Dredges obviously ) and some other stuff.

I have some propositions but some of them are most likely not possible or hard to do due to clumsy engine. I will list them anyway. Afterall they’ve done Survival game and while it’s far from being perfect in many regards I would allow you to cut both of my hands if they ever released something similar. I wouldn’t have my hands today, so allways worth trying.

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1) If you want add trashmobs into dungeon do it for a reason. If they drop no loot why would anyone ever want to waste time to deal with them, especialy when combat is dull and flat out unentertaining? If you make them mandatory to kill to advance and it will take tons of time, incorporating throwing mindless meat under your blade – who will exactly bother with such Dungeon to begin with especially with current and announced rewards? You aren’t blind but your thought process is pretty shortsighted to say the least.

2) Improve bosses – get rid of cheap throwing tons of HP in our faces, cheap invulnerability mechanics and other stuff that’s not hard but simply annoying. I’ve wrote it in another thread but I will repeat here. I’m huge fan of Monster Hunter, Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Vindictus (after certain lvl that is since 1-40 is straight out simply boring). Why not make huge wyvern/spider/dino/whatever enemy that would has few stages of the fight that would encourage to use variety of abilities and mixing classes well into dungeons (I know some of you may say dungeon shouldn’t require any particular class, I just don’t agree – variety is what makes game intresting and diffrent class setup should give you diffrent playstyle of certain dungeon due to available skills – it shouldn’t work like it’s now so you can take 3 warriors, 2 guardians or guardian and mesmer/thief to steamroll through content). As for stages let’s take huge wyvern as example. Let it, as every other boss doable with straight out punching it in the face, but make it so using enviroment promotes you for actualy using it (underwater fractal and shock cages). Now put here and there some balistas/harpoons/whatever. Make people to gather ammo from all over the arena while being randomly strafed from air by said wyvern. When they gather ammo, one or two players depending on map design should use balistas when other players are lurring boss into seeked spot. Make balista shooting mechanics requiring some skill, aim and timing – like trebuchet for example. Balista shoots should temporarily bring down the wyvern. Then give some timeframe in which players can damage/break wyvern’s wings so it will stay on the ground permanently – if they lack dmg they should be able to repeat sequence and artificial wings endurance shouldn’t regen over that time. Give it some fire breath attack, rush across the area spitting fireballs here and there (not allways under the player – it’s cheap – make it hard to predict where exactly fireballs hit), give it some devastating (but not one-shooting) hard to dodge (but possible – good players should be rewarded for the sole fact they’re good at the game) tail sweeping attack. Give said Wyvern more than one hitbox (it would actualy work better if GW2 wasn’t good old 2000 year style target based game but still doable with decent results) so players could cut off said tail. Make it bonus objective that will net you biggest reward at the end. Add more parts that can be broke during fighting the boss. For example let’s take Wyvern scales – damaging scales in some point should give permanent vulnerability and to broke said scales should be obtained by performing various actions. Make it so only certain type of weapon can break it or make it environmental (however I insist on weapon – and qualify weapons as cutting, smashing and ranged to keep simplicity, and pierced for underwater combat unless you’re going to add spears to regular play which I would die for! I love spears and poleaxes!). Making breakables weapon-type dependent would make people to utilize diffrent builds not only cookie-cutter ones. Same goes for Wyvern tail and maybe claws. Also breaking mentioned scales should yield 20% chance for bonus loot. Make it so breaking all breakable parts of said boss unlock 1% of chance to drop some extremaly valuable and desired item – not necessarily precursor, but maybe some rare ingredients that are hard to come by and not required in stacks of 1000 (Mjolnir and 350 Charged Lodestones anyone?), something that would otherwise (…)

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(…) require 200 skillpoints or so. Really there’s so much place to work with that the possibilites are literaly endless and aren’t streetching current game mechanics too much – I believe everything of mentioned things is possible to achieve with current mechanics after few little tweaks. Give us reasons to do various things instead of throwing braindead sandbag at the end of the dungeon that few warriors would melt. Make it so diffrent actions yield diffrent results. It’s all about variety. Make dynamic events occur during dungeon run. You’ve done it for open world, why not for dungeons? You can make it even based on statistics of people’s actions in said dungeon so every run is diffrent every day! Also keep in mind such mechanics would get rid of speedruning permanently so your dungeons wouldn’t be as farmable as they’re now so you could adjust rewards for average player’s needs instead of adjusting it in a way they’re not profitable to rerun them or run them at all. As it is now, there’s absolutely no point why anyone would ever leave their MMO of choice and pay you for Guild Wars 2 in terms of PvE encounters. None. Not a single one. You can make nice PvP game but you’ve got much worse since GW1… I understand the reason for PvP though. You don’t have to do all dungeons like this at the same time – you can overhaul each dungeon every month to make it easier time/work wise for you. There are tons of diffrent mechanics to be looked into it. Some of the guild missions have nice ideas, same goes from fractals. This shows you’re capable of inventing something not totaly boring and generic. I can give you out for free tons of ideas you can look through and choose from along with design ideas – all I ask to stop this dungeon nonsense that’s arround since very first MMO – we’re in 2013 already and that is half way through it. Ok and maybe some rare skins since I like shiny stuff. I don’t care about money, I’m gamer by heart.

4) Dungeon designs. Give us choice for picking dungeon style. Each path should yield drasticaly diffrent content. And go farther than that. You actualy made Fractals so single fractal can end in two diffrent ways (Mossman and big tree guy, Ice Elemental and something else I didn’t see, etc.). Why not implement such mechanics into Dungeons and do it even better? Why not make 3 points of the Dungeon that would change dynamicaly according to dynamic events that players were able to acomplish or not during the dungeon? Let’s take CoF p1 – after Slaver there’s bridge and there’s bonus event for defending one guy. Why not make so it actualy matters if you help him or not? Both in terms of reward and actual dungeon outcome? In current design it’s meaningless. I’m suprised you didn’t even try to explore this ocean of endless possibilities to make game entertaining, fun and rewarding. It looks like you’ve done dungeons during crunch before release… 0 love, 0 attention.

5) Leave cutscenes incorporating talking NPCs for Story mode. Leave them in explorable mode for 1st timers or give option to autoskip them. If you really want people to rerun your dungeons don’t throw at them meaningless content that’s getting old exactly after 1st run. One would ask if pressing skip is too much for me. It’s not for first, let’s say 100 times. After that it’s getting exceptionaly annoying and it’s type of annoyance that throws you away from the keyboard.

6) Rewards. Rewards for dungeons can be random, but not so random as they’re now. Right now you can get literaly ANYTHING from runing dungeon. Give some guaranteed coin drops (and stop fighting farmers – you can’t fight them and you will never be able to, because people will farm anything – and (…)

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(…) if there isn’t anything worth to farm game usualy doesn’t reward regular players too at all for normal playing), and some limited loot table with better drop chances. It’s nice that you can drop precursor from defeating spider in Queensdale but it’s not rewarding in any shape or form. It’s wildest form of RNG that could ever exist where it’s getting actualy more sense to play real life lottery than invest time in your game to get artificial pixels. Every single enemy inside of dungeon should give players incentive to actualy fight it instead of skipping it. If players skip your dungeon or you have to force them to not skip it then it’s bad dungeon design and you should go back to serving french fries with cola instead of designing mentioned dungeons. Arena.net is owning since few months title of Casino.net and it’s well earned.

7) Daily. Do I have to describe it? I know you want it. Remove daily mechanics from dungeons main rewards. You can make daily as ADDITIONAL reward, not base one. With new system you will be rewarded for runing every dungeon path every single day. No incentive to rerun dungeons or to even run repeatedly dungeons you like. Because it’s just not rewarding after 1st run. Adjust rewards outside of daily mechanics. Keep daily as bonus reward to give incentive to play every dungeon instead of sitting in one. Current changes are riddiculously bad in so many ways I’m genuinely amazed to see someone agree with it. But on the other hand most of them are not happy because of changes for them, but because certain group of people wouldn’t be able to farm.

Just some thought. Got like 10x more text in my mind but it’s getting early right now and I have tons of fake-life (remember, there’s no real life, there’s only AFK) quests to do today that may potentialy expand into long and exhausting dynamic event chain. Or not and I will be grinding CoF to reach my shortsighted desires.

edit addition:
8) Please… PLEASE. Remove NPC interaction inside Dungeon or completely rework their AI and pathfinding. In every possible dungeon you have wait for them to say something totally irrevelant and they just run arround randomly pulling aggro until it’s dead. It only creates a mess. Make NPC non-existent during combat sequences, make them right when they’re supposed to be. Unless you’re pushing NPC as “defend target on the road” goal… which is flat out boring by the way and makes instance unnecessarily long for the sole fact NPC will travel with approx speed of 3 steps per hour.

TL;DR Dungeons are not entertaining nor well designed. They don’t require tweaks, they need to be dumped and created from scratch, this time creatively. Some of the Fractals and Guild missions are still giving hope for better future. Question is if Anet is willing to make these changes.

Finally, some substance to the conversation. Thank you, Marrond.

I find myself in agreement with a lot of what you say. Currently the dungeons are repetitive with no end goal aside from earning wealth. The changes ArenaNet is making to them will simply extend time between repetitions without offering substantial incentives. They are thinking too small, as you have very clearly demonstrated.

I think that my concerns regarding the dungeons in their current forms may be a more practical discussion for the problems they are likely to consider when updating, but would that your suggestions on how to re-do them from the ground up be heard… that would be something.

I also think that dungeons should have a pervasive effect on the PvE world. Right now it’s too much the opposite; you have to complete an event chain to unlock COE, COF, Arah, etc. But it’s so difficult to get people to actually do the events, they would rather employ their guesting privileges. I think the following changes should be incorporated into situations subject to such contentions:
1) If you are entering the dungeon from your home server, or joining one that was opened from someone’s home server, you should get a 50% magic find bonus.
2) Additional bonus events that spawn champions, which with the upcoming patch will also drop chests, should occur when the dungeons are uncontested. These events, if not completed, should lead to the dungeon becoming contested again. In this way even those people who are still looking for groups or have already run the dungeon can stay in the area for a time and continue to contribute.
3) While the dungeon is uncontested, players in the surrounding PVE area (ex. Mt. Maelstrom for COE) should have tangible bonuses such as gathering boosts and increased karma gain.
4) Special merchant vendors should be available in the vicinity of the uncontested dungeons that offer exotic trinkets not available from the merchants in Fort Marriner in Lion’s Arch.

Dungeons should also be associated with one of the three Orders of Tyria (ex. COF with the Vigil, COE with the Priory), and it should be merchants from these orders who appear at the uncontested dungeons. Guilds should be able to build 24-hr bonuses (like the karma or magic find bonus) that result in it gaining additional influence from all events (not just dungeons) associated with the particular order.
For example: if a guild has a lot of members who do Crucible of Eternity, they should be able to build a “pact” or “contract” with the Durmand Priory that, for 24 hrs, grants bonus influence to the guild for all events completed in CoE and in the associated event chains that result in it being contested.

The farmer’s tears… They are… DELICIOUS.

Dolan.3071:

The farmer’s tears… They are… DELICIOUS.

I see no tears here however there clearly is an idiot who definitely wants to add something valuable to the topic but lack any working brain cell in order to do so. Not delicious at all.

edit:
I’m genuinely amazed it wasn’t censored. Let it stay there then.

OMNOMNOM

I don’t care about the changes. I never run the same dungeon path more than once a day anyway. This pretty much only hurts farmers (I guess?), not people who do dungeons because they enjoy the content itself.

They want it to get slower to get legendaries/expensive skins because in the end it benefits them from the gem shop. If you think there aren’t people converting RL to gems for gold then you are a fool.

The entire point about f2p/b2p games is to make the really attractive vanity items (what people play RPG’s for) extremely tedious to get so there are enough people willing to throw money away to make the inconvenience vanish.

And that’s why sub MMO’s are better. When they pull greedy, grindy crap, they lose subs so their design mistakes are punished.