Guild Wars 2

I keep hearing about how dungeons are being dropped as a development focus for Open World (presumably Living Story – seeing as how new maps are off the table as well) content.

Well, why not integrate existing dungeons into the Open World then, as a way to make them more accessible, and remove the problem of them being forgotten content?

What is a dungeon, really? It’s just an instance

You could remove the instancing part, and the cut-scenes (alternatively, you could have something similar to a Vista at key points in the open world dungeon, that play a video that brings people up to date on what’s happened here before).

All of these of course would be post-storymode.

It’s an easy fix to incorporating something you’ve abandoned into the world as a whole.

If you’re going to focus on Open World, then make everything Open World – don’t just abandon it.

If I could make a poll, I would.

I’m not so keen on having large groups of people not in my guild come trampling in on my dungeon runs. The dungeons are designed for five people, not fifty.

Though I wouldn’t mind if the dungeon -maps- were available open world, without all the nasty mobs. I want to RP in CM more! Though of course, that would entail dealing with everyone else who also wants to do that. WTB deeply detailed player housing with permissions so everyone in my guild can come hang out in my manor …

I understand some of your issues Donari – but ask yourself, is this preferable to Dungeon development being completely abandoned (as appears to be the case)?

I think that Open World Dungeons would be far more manageable for the dev team – in this scenario where they don’t plan to iterate further on them.

I rather they keep dungeons to five man instances. Open world events are such lag fest and it’s not so enjoyable at times when the mobs get dpsed down so fast that I couldn’t get a hit in, not to mention those who love spamming visual effects. Also it’ll make it just like another world event boss where we’d have to wait for the respawn timer.

I do not see Anet as being completely abandoning dungeons, it’s just not on the top list as of now. Honestly, I see it as more of an underpromise technique. It’s already a plus that this game needs no subs, so if I’m bored I know I could just drop it, play other games or read a book or something, and jump right back in when I feel like it.

Just because they’re focusing on open world, does not mean they have to make everything open world. Also how is making dungeons open world a way that it won’t be forgotten content? As an instance, at least we have the loop hole of saying ‘this occured in the past’ in a bubbled event, as oppose to it being brought up to speed to follow current events, thus they do not need to rethink or remake the maps/story/quest too hard.

I don’t see how an open world dungeon would work. You could just walk into it with a zurg, melt the boss in seconds. Also people would just use the quickest rout to the boss, and all other areas of the dungon would be abandond. There are open world dungons already they are called mini dungeons. The only one I know I’ve done, is the one I. Gandara fields. West of Vigil keep.

CeruleanRevolver nailed it.

BrotherBelial, there’s a very fun one in NE Diessa. It needs an event chain to open, starting at that fortress in the area. You escort some Charr to fight Flame Legion and once the Flame Legion is defeated the fire portal to the mini dungeon opens across a bridge to the NE of that little area.

Once inside there are puzzles to solve in order to advance, and some fairly hard fights made easier if you have others with you.

BrotherBelial.3094:

I don’t see how an open world dungeon would work. You could just walk into it with a zurg, melt the boss in seconds. Also people would just use the quickest rout to the boss, and all other areas of the dungon would be abandond. There are open world dungons already they are called mini dungeons. The only one I know I’ve done, is the one I. Gandara fields. West of Vigil keep.

I quote:
“I don’t see how an open world dungeon would work. You could just walk into it with a zurg, melt the boss in seconds. Also people would just use the quickest rout to the boss, and all other areas of the dungon would be abandond. "

You seem to be under the impression that dungeons work differently in their current implementation in the game. Yes, sometimes you do get a PUG run that actually wants to do the whole dungeon content, but the large majority just want to skip everything that isn’t blocking progress and get right to the end.

Oh, and they melt the boss in seconds anyway. The only way to get a real challenge out of dungeons right now is to do it with less than five people.

That said, I’m in favor of more instanced content, not less. The open world has just become too much of a lagfest for many players and things like world bosses really need to be moved into 10-25 man instances. They should require enough players to play how you want (less toxicity) but not too many to create lag.

What I don’t like is requiring five people to avoid failing a dungeon or fractal. It absolutely sucks when progress becomes blocked and you have to abort.

This sounds like a horrible terrible very bad no good idea. Also I don’t like it much. The benefit of instances is you can control the content that people get hit with, you can make a scripted path with interesting events and interactions. Making it open-world makes it so you have no idea who is there or how many. Suddenly these assets have to be always loaded in case people show up, whether one person stumbles by, or 100 people decide to go smash the place. No bad.

They should make more instanced events, just they don’t all need to be in caves. Implement “dungeons” out in the middle of towns. You can make a “dungeon” which is an instanced defense of Ebonhawke against insurgents for instance.

All of these of course searchable in the dungeon finder. Mini instances. Difficult but rewarding instances. Moar instances!

No, if anything I’d argue that this game needs more types of small group content. There are plenty of options for zerg-style play for those who enjoy it.

Rukh.9287:

This sounds like a horrible terrible very bad no good idea. Also I don’t like it much. The benefit of instances is you can control the content that people get hit with, you can make a scripted path with interesting events and interactions. Making it open-world makes it so you have no idea who is there or how many. Suddenly these assets have to be always loaded in case people show up, whether one person stumbles by, or 100 people decide to go smash the place. No bad.

They should make more instanced events, just they don’t all need to be in caves. Implement “dungeons” out in the middle of towns. You can make a “dungeon” which is an instanced defense of Ebonhawke against insurgents for instance.

All of these of course searchable in the dungeon finder. Mini instances. Difficult but rewarding instances. Moar instances!

Have you heard of Vindictus?

ipan.4356:

I understand some of your issues Donari – but ask yourself, is this preferable to Dungeon development being completely abandoned (as appears to be the case)?

I think that Open World Dungeons would be far more manageable for the dev team – in this scenario where they don’t plan to iterate further on them.

I rather dungeons are totally abandoned than it bleed through into other streams. The current dungeons are fine for what they are used for. (Mats, Tokens, Gold)

No. Please. I like my 5 man instances. If we make them open world, they’ll just become zerg fests.

Jahroots.6791:

No, if anything I’d argue that this game needs more types of small group content. There are plenty of options for zerg-style play for those who enjoy it.

So, in everyone’s mind, Open World = zerg fest.

I can definitely see the connection, but I was not under the assumption that this was always a given.

Seeing the number of dungeons in the game, I would assume that there would be people at any number of them at any given time – I actually don’t expect any of them to be constantly overrun by a zerg, though this is possible.

Wandering around the open world – I occasionally find zergs. But not as often as in WvWvW.

The feeling I’m getting from people, though, is that the primary reason they don’t like this idea is because they like small-party content, without the lag and general confusion that comes with a zerg.

Like Vindictus or Diablo 3.

Now, let’s just assume that ‘dungeon’ and ‘instanced content’ are one and the same (excluding Living World for now.

Anet has said that they plan on abandoning dungeons for the time being.

Dungeons, as they are, are in terrible shape. They’re not terribly fun, and are primarily used as a means of farming gold or tokens for dungeon skins. People repeat them, one dungeon after another chained together.

This isn’t fun content at all – at least not for me (and I know a lot of people don’t like it).

So, we have suggested many ways to try to improve upon this – including redesigning enemies, and even redesigning the dungeons themselves (make them larger, more varied, more interesting, etc.)

But Anet has made it fairly clear that they want nothing to do with dungeons (or ‘instanced content’) – in other words, they are certainly NOT going to add any MORE instanced content, if they don’t even want to work on what’s already there.

So, given this situation – do you think it would be better to open the dungeons that already exist to open world PvE, because at least then they fall under the category of Open World, which IS something Anet is working on, so they might at least receive some attention finally?

At least this way, they’re not rotting in the cellar, which is what I’m getting at.

Because as is, nothing’s happening to fix the issues in dungeons.

I’d rather open them up – because then the rewards are more accessible, and they fall under the purview of what Anet has said they are working on.

DeathPanel.8362:

ipan.4356:

I understand some of your issues Donari – but ask yourself, is this preferable to Dungeon development being completely abandoned (as appears to be the case)?

I think that Open World Dungeons would be far more manageable for the dev team – in this scenario where they don’t plan to iterate further on them.

I rather dungeons are totally abandoned than it bleed through into other streams. The current dungeons are fine for what they are used for. (Mats, Tokens, Gold)

So you’re ok with dungeons remaining nothing more than a place to farm?

Eq1 and probably Eq2 more effectively had/has open world dungeons and it works fine. It’s more of camping bosses in certain areas of the dungeon while being respectful of others doing the same. If you could add a few of these to each of the zone it could be spread out enough to not be over crowded. It has been done before so it can be done again easily.

I never played Everquest, Ultima Online and so on, back in the day. But from what I’ve heard, in the beginning everything was open world, and it caused a lot of problems. Instances were created and utilized for a reason, and while it’s not a perfect system, it’s better than a free-for all. Anet may be experimenting with a step backwards by tweaking old ideas about open world content, but that doesn’t mean they should disregard everything that their counterparts at other games have learned over the last twelve years or so.

Morsus.5106:

No. Please. I like my 5 man instances. If we make them open world, they’ll just become zerg fests.

That’s possible – about as possible as any particular event or champ becomes a zerg fest now.

Which is to say it happens, but all the time I’ve wandered around Tyria, I’ve found that many zones actually resemble the ‘5 man content’ you say you want.

Not always, and of course, it’s not absolutely enforceable – there’s no way to actually stop more people from showing up.

But I walk around all parts of Tyria, and I can say that there is often only a few people in any given zone at any given time.

Meaning, that these Open World Dungeons wouldn’t necessarily be a zerg fest – it’s not guaranteed – though sometimes that would happen.

I just don’t see how it’s really any different from any other open world event that people like to farm.

I suppose you are lamenting the loss of any instanced content – I am guessing you don’t like open world, and what you actually prefer to play is a limited multi-player game, like Diablo 3 or Vindictus – but you want it in GW2.

I understand. I like that kind of gameplay too.

But these dungeons aren’t getting any love from Anet – so this seems like the next best solution.

tolunart.2095:

I never played Everquest, Ultima Online and so on, back in the day. But from what I’ve heard, in the beginning everything was open world, and it caused a lot of problems. Instances were created and utilized for a reason, and while it’s not a perfect system, it’s better than a free-for all. Anet may be experimenting with a step backwards by tweaking old ideas about open world content, but that doesn’t mean they should disregard everything that their counterparts at other games have learned over the last twelve years or so.

It’s trading one set of problems for a different set.

I liked open world dungeons a lot.

The two issues I saw in them were:

Trains. People would aggro monsters, and then run – sometimes simply out of inattention, and sometimes maliciously – and those trains would catch everyone else off guard.

This was often hilarious – as people running down corridors would yell, ‘Train!’ as they passed, to warn people what was coming.

The solution to trains is to design enemies to be a little smarter. By controlling how far they’ll follow someone, or what areas of the dungeon they are even capable of accessing. Basically, you make it so trains simply don’t happen (enemies break off after a certain distance and return to their post).

The other issue is respawn timers and zerging everything to death.

This is an overall problem in encounter design, and already is an issue with current dungeon design, even in a closed 5 man instance.

People already gun down dungeon bosses in a few minutes.

My point being: this state of things is already the case, so it’s not like making them open would change anything.

Dungeons, and their bosses, are seriously not challenging.

The answer to this is also encounter design – change how enemies behave and what they can do.

Next, make the actual dungeons larger – increase the size by 5-10 times. Make them vast complexes that stretch into the mountainside and under the ground.

Multiple levels and stories with many different entrances from different directions.

Several different “bosses” in different sections of the dungeon.

This helps spread players out a lot more, as different groups of people would be doing different areas for different rewards (or just for fun).

@ipan I don’t prefer to play Diablo or Vindictus, I like Guild Wars 2 the way it is. I like open world mixed with group content. The thing about dungeons, is that it’s actually pretty popular. With the introduction of megaservers they would actually be over crowded. I played a mini-dungeon the other day and there were about 10 of us. If we doubled party size in the current dungeons, it would ruin them. IMO, this “next best solution” would ruin this kind of content.

I dunno about this.

I mean the thread. It seems like another time where you put forth your opinion and it must be correct, it must be the best answer, and anyone else has obviously bad ideas.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to turn Dungeons into fully-open things. For one, the limitation of five players is what allows specific setpieces or challenges to even be possible inside the dungeon. It’s not possible to create a spot in the dungeon where open-world isn’t going to make it a bucket of cheese with a side of tortilla chips . . . without making it like it’s practically a dungeon’s current functionality anyway.

Open-world dungeons have been done before. Someone brought up EverQuest . . . where it was NOT fine. They did instanced dungeons later – that was also NOT fine.

Why was it not fine open-world? Because farming existed in those games. People who just camped at the boss respawns and would kill them until everyone got what they needed. Or at side-rooms where things which dropped nice items were, and kill til they got what they wanted. As awesome as my time was doing Old Sebilis or Estate of Unrest, there was an incredible focus on loot and earnings.

If Dungeons were turned into Open-World events they’d wind up like the World Boss Grand Tour – dozens of people picking a time to drop on them at once and complete en masse. And if you do what you can to limit that . . . you might as well just go back to the original plan of dungeons and just rework the challenges instead.

(Also, UO’s dungeons were mostly a joke. There was rarely reasons to go delving in most of them.)

You’re welcome to your opinion. Personally, I believe that altering dungeons from five-man-instance to open zerg would require more work than Anet is willing to devote to them for no obvious benefit and is much more likely to create new problems.

Hannelore.8153:

BrotherBelial.3094:

I don’t see how an open world dungeon would work. You could just walk into it with a zurg, melt the boss in seconds. Also people would just use the quickest rout to the boss, and all other areas of the dungon would be abandond. There are open world dungons already they are called mini dungeons. The only one I know I’ve done, is the one I. Gandara fields. West of Vigil keep.

I quote:
“I don’t see how an open world dungeon would work. You could just walk into it with a zurg, melt the boss in seconds. Also people would just use the quickest rout to the boss, and all other areas of the dungon would be abandond. "

You seem to be under the impression that dungeons work differently in their current implementation in the game. Yes, sometimes you do get a PUG run that actually wants to do the whole dungeon content, but the large majority just want to skip everything that isn’t blocking progress and get right to the end.

Oh, and they melt the boss in seconds anyway. The only way to get a real challenge out of dungeons right now is to do it with less than five people.

That said, I’m in favor of more instanced content, not less. The open world has just become too much of a lagfest for many players and things like world bosses really need to be moved into 10-25 man instances. They should require enough players to play how you want (less toxicity) but not too many to create lag.

What I don’t like is requiring five people to avoid failing a dungeon or fractal. It absolutely sucks when progress becomes blocked and you have to abort.

You and I clearly play with diffent people. When I do a dungon(with Friends), we kill everything in our way. but then I’m use to doing places Like FoW/UW/DoA where you can get things of value from the mobs. If anything Anet needs to add Dungon tokens to the loot of mobs in dungons. That would make them more fun, and people would play them as they where intended to be played, rather than speed clear to farm the gold, and tokens.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I dunno about this.

I mean the thread. It seems like another time where you put forth your opinion and it must be correct, it must be the best answer, and anyone else has obviously bad ideas.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to turn Dungeons into fully-open things. For one, the limitation of five players is what allows specific setpieces or challenges to even be possible inside the dungeon. It’s not possible to create a spot in the dungeon where open-world isn’t going to make it a bucket of cheese with a side of tortilla chips . . . without making it like it’s practically a dungeon’s current functionality anyway.

Open-world dungeons have been done before. Someone brought up EverQuest . . . where it was NOT fine. They did instanced dungeons later – that was also NOT fine.

Why was it not fine open-world? Because farming existed in those games. People who just camped at the boss respawns and would kill them until everyone got what they needed. Or at side-rooms where things which dropped nice items were, and kill til they got what they wanted. As awesome as my time was doing Old Sebilis or Estate of Unrest, there was an incredible focus on loot and earnings.

If Dungeons were turned into Open-World events they’d wind up like the World Boss Grand Tour – dozens of people picking a time to drop on them at once and complete en masse. And if you do what you can to limit that . . . you might as well just go back to the original plan of dungeons and just rework the challenges instead.

(Also, UO’s dungeons were mostly a joke. There was rarely reasons to go delving in most of them.)

What if every zone had 5 dungeons, and every dungeon had 7 bosses (and was like 5 times larger)?

I believe that the issues you bring up – boss camping, etc. are a result of dungeons being way too small, and there being far too few of them.

1) When each zone has many dungeons, people spread out between them.
2) When the dungeons are very large, and have multiple ‘bosses’ – say 5+ – then even those people who are at the same dungeon are far more spread out within it.

No please. ESO did this, and it is the only reason I didn’t switch already.

Having mobs of people running through the dungeon ahead of you, behind you, aggroing everything, walking into boss fights where the boss is at 2% health, killing a boss that respawns in 20s…. shudders

No thanks.

If anything, two versions of each to be available. Five man and open world. Nothing is lost, so to speak.

dlonie.6547:

No please. ESO did this, and it is the only reason I didn’t switch already.

Having mobs of people running through the dungeon ahead of you, behind you, aggroing everything, walking into boss fights where the boss is at 2% health, killing a boss that respawns in 20s…. shudders

No thanks.

I’ve addressed this.

The problem is created by too many people clumped together, zerging the content.

By making the dungeons 5x larger (with multiple entrances from different directions), and adding 2-3 times as many bosses, you naturally spread people out with little effort.

I’d like to see Dungeons done like A-Net did Missions in GW. Make each story-mode path of a Dungeon part of the Personal Story/Living Story. If this were to happen then you would see more people doing dungeons I think. I know I never even touched a dungeon with my main until Arah.

They could also revamp one path per dungeon to be an 8-12 man path, maybe even 1 8-man and 1 12-man path. I know this would take a lot of work on the devs part but it is also an idea for new dungeons going forward.

This is the GW2 playerbase we’re talking about:

If they can zerg it, they will.

Go try to do some actual, engaging PvP in EotM and see how well that works out for you. Huge PvP map, lots to do, many possibilities for large tactical fights. What happens there? Karma train. Alt leveling express. Dragonite grind.

If they put a string of bosses in open world that give any kind of decent reward, the zerg will come and negate any/all difficulty that the boss may have. We have world bosses, as well as various champs/vets scattered throughout the maps. Your plan would just turn dungeons into more of the same.

Not trying to come off as rude, I just really can’t see how this would improve anything. We want new dungeons because we want more challenging instanced group content — A safe-haven from the zergs, if you will.

In eq2 they have both open and instances dungeons. Actually they started instances dungeon in eq1. They both work fine. You don’t have to worry about trains because mobs would leash back after a point. You would have to worry about camp stealing and DR though. I would be very excited if they were to open up some of these in GW2. The more options in pve the better IMO.

ipan.4356:

By making the dungeons 5x larger (with multiple entrances from different directions), and adding 2-3 times as many bosses, you naturally spread people out with little effort.

I thought you just said that ANet wasn’t going to be doing a whole lot of work on dungeons? 5x larger sounds like a lot of work, and it won’t solve anything. A guild could just say “Hey everyone, doing Dungeon #3 tonight on reset” and get 10-20 people who are going to zerg it all.

Please, no, never. Megaserver has already screwed the opportunity to properly fight some bosses and reduced interesting world events like Temple/champs to afk fights.

BrotherBelial.3094:

When I do a dungon(with Friends), we kill everything in our way.

Can.. Can we be friends? Stacking touch me in bad place.

dlonie.6547:

This is the GW2 playerbase we’re talking about:

If they can zerg it, they will.

Go try to do some actual, engaging PvP in EotM and see how well that works out for you. Huge PvP map, lots to do, many possibilities for large tactical fights. What happens there? Karma train. Alt leveling express. Dragonite grind.

If they put a string of bosses in open world that give any kind of decent reward, the zerg will come and negate any/all difficulty that the boss may have. We have world bosses, as well as various champs/vets scattered throughout the maps. Your plan would just turn dungeons into more of the same.

Not trying to come off as rude, I just really can’t see how this would improve anything. We want new dungeons because we want more challenging instanced group content — A safe-haven from the zergs, if you will.

This.

They’ll go:

“Hey, we’re doing CoE tonight and we’re using the NE entrance by X POI. We’re going in the usual order of bosses to ensure maximum rewards for everyone.”

And well, what happened the last time a map had a train that went from one boss to the next? I seem to recall numerous threads about ending that train…

ipan.4356:

What if every zone had 5 dungeons, and every dungeon had 7 bosses (and was like 5 times larger)?

What if instead of having 5 dungeons per zone, there were 70? When they implement this, they can do it in a world that’s around 8-11 times larger than the current map of Tyria. There wouldn’t be crowding then, even though there were 46 new (completely balanced and very interesting) classes roaming across this huge landscape that had no load times.

Also, crafting should be more like Minecraft and we should have player-run political organizations like Eve. This will all look awesome in my Oculus, especially the new zones that they should add every month (for FREE, of course! MANIFESTO!!!).

@ipan, i understand what you mean about this, and your other thread about seamless world, but it’s just not feasible. The game world would have to be built from the ground up. It’s just not going to happen. It would be like taking GW1 right now and trying to turn it into GW2. It would literally take years to do something like that, and that’s only if they focused on doing that and neglecting everything else. This thread is pretty much a moot point.

nexxe.7081:

@ipan, i understand what you mean about this, and your other thread about seamless world, but it’s just not feasible. The game world would have to be built from the ground up. It’s just not going to happen. It would be like taking GW1 right now and trying to turn it into GW2. It would literally take years to do something like that, and that’s only if they focused on doing that and neglecting everything else. This thread is pretty much a moot point.

Yeah, I have no expectation that anything like this will ever be implemented in this game.

To be honest, I don’t really have any faith in MMO developers any more – I’ve been burned out by them for a long time.

Kind of hoping CIG (Star Citizen) can turn that around, but we’ll see.

ipan.4356:

What if every zone had 5 dungeons, and every dungeon had 7 bosses (and was like 5 times larger)?

It doesn’t matter. There are enough players, especially with megaservers, to actively camp the whole darn thing or to just zerg all of it on a loop. Open World is not the answer.

I believe that the issues you bring up – boss camping, etc. are a result of dungeons being way too small, and there being far too few of them.

I’m sorry, and this may come off as condescending but . . . did you play Everquest? Do you know how big some of those dungeon areas could get? There was one dungeon with double digits in the number of campable spots you could claim, and it was actually really freaking big. (Old Sebilis) And that’s not even the only dungeon which was possible to camp at the period you could – there were (-counts-) nineteen other dungeons in the game.

The number and size of dungeons isn’t an actual issue. It’s the problem of allowing them open access and expecting people to behave in a certain anticipated way (doing them like dungeons now) and no other way.

And your further points fall apart too.

1) When each zone has many dungeons, people spread out between them.

No, what happens is they pick the ones which are the best to camp/zerg/farm and take those.

2) When the dungeons are very large, and have multiple ‘bosses’ – say 5+ – then even those people who are at the same dungeon are far more spread out within it.

Unlikely. What you have instead is probably more like how WvW tends to have Eternal Battlegrounds have one side each get a zerg going and never the zergs shall meet, just run around taking easy pickings for the Event/Karma/Bags.

ipan.4356:

To be honest, I don’t really have any faith in MMO developers any more – I’ve been burned out by them for a long time.

Kind of hoping CIG (Star Citizen) can turn that around, but we’ll see.

Good luck with that. I’m not hearing optimistic things about it . . .

And no, not sarcasm. I won’t begrudge anyone finding their “perfect” MMO.

ipan.4356:

I keep hearing about how dungeons are being dropped as a development focus for Open World (presumably Living Story – seeing as how new maps are off the table as well) content.

Well, why not integrate existing dungeons into the Open World then, as a way to make them more accessible, and remove the problem of them being forgotten content?

What is a dungeon, really? It’s just an instance

You could remove the instancing part, and the cut-scenes (alternatively, you could have something similar to a Vista at key points in the open world dungeon, that play a video that brings people up to date on what’s happened here before).

All of these of course would be post-storymode.

It’s an easy fix to incorporating something you’ve abandoned into the world as a whole.

If you’re going to focus on Open World, then make everything Open World – don’t just abandon it.

If I could make a poll, I would.

It’s an instance where you have relative control on most factors in your party where you get rewarded better according to how you perform. It maybe faceroll right now but it is 100x less faceroll than open world pve or the need to organize 100’s of players and have your success depend whether or not the zerg of players can follow simple instructions.

I’d rather have dungeons die a slow horrible death of no development than to dumb it down more to tagging to get credit or be forced to depend on alot of more people for success in clearing the content..

Izaya.2906:

ipan.4356:

I keep hearing about how dungeons are being dropped as a development focus for Open World (presumably Living Story – seeing as how new maps are off the table as well) content.

Well, why not integrate existing dungeons into the Open World then, as a way to make them more accessible, and remove the problem of them being forgotten content?

What is a dungeon, really? It’s just an instance

You could remove the instancing part, and the cut-scenes (alternatively, you could have something similar to a Vista at key points in the open world dungeon, that play a video that brings people up to date on what’s happened here before).

All of these of course would be post-storymode.

It’s an easy fix to incorporating something you’ve abandoned into the world as a whole.

If you’re going to focus on Open World, then make everything Open World – don’t just abandon it.

If I could make a poll, I would.

It’s an instance where you have relative control on most factors in your party where you get rewarded better according to how you perform. It maybe faceroll right now but it is 100x less faceroll than open world pve or the need to organize 100’s of players and have your success depend whether or not the zerg of players can follow simple instructions.

I’d rather have dungeons die a slow horrible death of no development than to dumb it down more to tagging to get credit or be forced to depend on alot of more people for success in clearing the content..

Question: If you’d rather “have dungeons die a slow horrible death” – then why do you actually care if they became open world or not?

Look – I’ve played both open world dungeons, and instanced in a number of different games (from anarchy online to WoW to warhammer online) and I am a fan of both.

I have nothing against instances.

But, according to what I’ve heard about development – dungeons are getting NO love.

None. Zero. Nothing whatsoever.

So, thinking over this, I came up with the idea that they could at least be made open world, which is a hail mary to at least make the content available and accessible to everyone (even though you’d still probably need at least a small group, unless you’re good at soloing champs and legends).

Yes, there is the possibility of zergs trivializing the content – but isn’t it already trivial? I mean, when was the last time you actually found a dungeon challenging? People sell themselves as dungeon tour guides on the LFG tool. Isn’t it obvious? Dungeons are just tours. They are just there for you to farm money and tokens – if you need them, and there are other ways to get money.

So I’m not sure I even understand the desire to defend dungeons as they are – they’re largely terrible.

At least when they become open world, they are now part of the game that the dev’s said they are still working on – the Open World.

And, at least they are a little easier for all players to access (what’s going to happen when almost everyone abandons dungeons – because they know that the dev’s have abandoned them??? No one will be able to do dungeons anymore, because it will be impossible to find a group).

I’m not saying that making them open is absolutely the most ideal way to handle it – I’m saying that given the circumstances, it might be the only way to save them at all.

If you’re not sure it’s ideal and you’re just going “we have to try something” then why not take that sentiment back to the drawing board and come up with something better instead of forcing something you’re not 100% behind out of a desire to do “something”.

See, that sort of thing? That’s what gets us into problems later on where we then have to fix a fix to try getting to the root of a problem in the first place.

So, start from the bottom. What’s the biggest problem which needs to be addressed in dungeons?

Here’s a hint . . . it’s not the five-man instance design.

GW2 needs more instances and less open world, not the other way around. There isn’t enough challenging content, and open world does not do challenging content very well. GW1 had an excellent level of challenge and content that kept you playing. The content was memorable, varied and it kept you coming back. The problem that GW2 is having, is that it is all about grinding for loot now. GW1 didn’t have this problem because all loot affected appearance ONLY and thus was optional. This meant players could play the content that they wanted to play, not the content that gave the best loot. The world boss addiction and CoF p1 and p2 speed clears have nothing to do with gameplay quality, its all about the stupid loot.

Existing dungeons wouldn’t work in the open world. Everything in them is balanced for a team. People think they’re too easy now. Imagine how easy they’d be with ten people.

There are also people who love to solo dungeons and that would become almost impossible. You’d be taking away their end game.

I would really like to see it happen but the major problem here is zerging, the devs need ways to spread the players.
Few ideas I have on top of my head:

• Balancing the encounters with mechanics requiring a number of people attention.

• Do not make the monsters scale in number or limit it to a cap, this seems cruel but if a boss is designed to be killed by 5 players but is being rushed by a 50 man zerg the tagging system will only let about 10 persons get credit which will discourage the behavior.

• Make encounters scale mechanically instead of just increasing the stats of the enemies making their mechanics mater even with a higher number of players, bigger groups will need to organize or will scatter.

• Do not let players rally from killing adds.

• No waypoints in the dungeon area, maybe even an entrance cost?(would need some balance)

• Diverse reward, if a each boss/encounter has a chance to give some unique item skins upon success, players will naturally play the content giving them the reward they are looking for.

• It should be a large scale change making one dungeon open world will drive all players toward it, but making 6 open world dungeons at the same time will help spread the player base.

my 2 cents.

2 reasons why I picked up GW2:

1) mobile combat

2) 5-man content

Megaserver is bad enough, erasing all feel of server community outside of WvW.

Destroy dungeons and erase that last sense of community at a guild level….

… who does that serve? That’s a serious question, because there are already outdoor bosses, and EotM has turned into a PvE karma train.

goldenwing.8473:

2 reasons why I picked up GW2:

1) mobile combat

2) 5-man content

Megaserver is bad enough, erasing all feel of server community outside of WvW.

Destroy dungeons and erase that last sense of community at a guild level….

… who does that serve? That’s a serious question, because there are already outdoor bosses, and EotM has turned into a PvE karma train.

Not to mention mini-dungeons which are all open world.

No.

15charsofkthxbai

ipan.4356:

DeathPanel.8362:

ipan.4356:

I understand some of your issues Donari – but ask yourself, is this preferable to Dungeon development being completely abandoned (as appears to be the case)?

I think that Open World Dungeons would be far more manageable for the dev team – in this scenario where they don’t plan to iterate further on them.

I rather dungeons are totally abandoned than it bleed through into other streams. The current dungeons are fine for what they are used for. (Mats, Tokens, Gold)

So you’re ok with dungeons remaining nothing more than a place to farm?

Yes. FYI that’s what they are for in every single MMO game in history. What more are you expecting exactly?

It doesn’t matter how flashy or “fun” they make a dungeon. After running it a lot of times anyone would get bored.

ANET resources are better spent improving areas of the game that has far more replayability like WvW or PvP.