Guild Wars 2

April 30th update. (source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1119-flame-frost-retribution-updates-guild-missions-wvw-abilities-new-gem-store-items/)

April 30th will introduce a slew of new content, including a new dungeon (complete with its own unique rewards)

In addition to the events that will be added throughout the world, there’s a new dungeon that players will be able to experience. Unlike the original set of dungeons, this dungeon has a single main path; however, the dungeon itself will change upon re-entry. Voice-over dialogue will alternate, enemy combinations will change, and even the location of the dungeon itself will vary. New mechanics and challenges will also make their way into the dungeon to provide a fresh new challenge for everyone.The developers also made note of a unique instance of the dungeon that contains new dialogue and cutscenes to provide closure for the entire Flame and Frost story arc.

So to close off flame and frost story content, we get a whole dungeon, with 1 path dealing with the dredge/ flame legion alliance specifically. New rewards for the dungeon, a seemingly different method of having players experience different dungeon paths, so they now are given a varying path each time, rather than choosing.

It does indeed sound quite awesome.
What I do wonder however is if this will be permanent or get removed when F&F is over?

Based on the guru-info there is nothing about it being removed, but Massively state that it is time-limited.

I guess now we know why there were no dungeon updates in the last patch.

cbabd.8053:

I guess now we know why there were no dungeon updates in the last patch.

It is not the dungeon-team working on this one though.

I doubt I will be able to solo it.

New dungeon, Awesome. New Skins that don’t require RNG, Awesome.

Wethospu.6437:

I doubt I will be able to solo it.

If Ghost Eater is anything to go by, I’d say the days of soloing dungeons might be in a decline. The article definitely made it sound like they are going to have lots of frustrating “you stand here and pull that level while I jump through this hoop at the same time as someone else jumps that shark” kind of content in the dungeon.

Shiren.9532:

Wethospu.6437:

I doubt I will be able to solo it.

If Ghost Eater is anything to go by, I’d say the days of soloing dungeons might be in a decline. The article definitely made it sound like they are going to have lots of frustrating “you stand here and pull that level while I jump through this hoop at the same time as someone else jumps that shark” kind of content in the dungeon.

I sure hope so. I want to see more of that in dungeons.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This was not built by the dungeon team, but instead by the living world team. William and I are currently working on other content in the game, which is why there weren’t any significant changes to the core dungeons this last patch.
We’ve been playing and giving feedback on the new dungeon though. It’s a different flavor from our normal dungeons, but still tasty they are trying some interesting things we will be keeping an eye on.

So since it was not built by the dungeon team will this new dungeon be a constant addition to the game or only last while the living story is still going on?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This was not built by the dungeon team, but instead by the living world team. William and I are currently working on other content in the game, which is why there weren’t any significant changes to the core dungeons this last patch.
We’ve been playing and giving feedback on the new dungeon though. It’s a different flavor from our normal dungeons, but still tasty they are trying some interesting things we will be keeping an eye on.

If you need any alpha testers, you got my account name ;-)

So after how many weeks will this get removed?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This was not built by the dungeon team, but instead by the living world team. William and I are currently working on other content in the game, which is why there weren’t any significant changes to the core dungeons this last patch.
We’ve been playing and giving feedback on the new dungeon though. It’s a different flavor from our normal dungeons, but still tasty they are trying some interesting things we will be keeping an eye on.

Thanks for the info!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This was not built by the dungeon team, but instead by the living world team. William and I are currently working on other content in the game, which is why there weren’t any significant changes to the core dungeons this last patch.
We’ve been playing and giving feedback on the new dungeon though. It’s a different flavor from our normal dungeons, but still tasty they are trying some interesting things we will be keeping an eye on.

I hope the other things you’ve been working on aren’t more “fun” improvements to dungeons and world PvE mobs. So far, you’ve proven the existence of “anti-fun” as a real property and your pursuit of it has been disconcerting! (It’s probably not a good sign to have some fans breath a sigh of relief to learn that the new dungeon was not created by the Dungeon Team…) ;P

Robert Hrouda.1327:

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

Sorry for off-topic but I might have finally this question answered since you’re content designer. Are you going to organize any scavanger hunt in next two months? People are waiting for it and I think everyone would like to get at least piece of information.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This was not built by the dungeon team, but instead by the living world team. William and I are currently working on other content in the game, which is why there weren’t any significant changes to the core dungeons this last patch.
We’ve been playing and giving feedback on the new dungeon though. It’s a different flavor from our normal dungeons, but still tasty they are trying some interesting things we will be keeping an eye on.

By other content i hope you meant phase 2 on dungeons, or has that been forgotten already? Because good lord, some dungeons seriously need some polish like hotw sponge underwater bosses and dredge infinite waves fractals. Talking about fractals, i hope you also lift the 50 hard cap.

Dungeons been kinda forgotten in the last patchs, i wish you could share anything new that might be coming.

TheOne.6123:

Sorry for off-topic but I might have finally this question answered since you’re content designer. Are you going to organize any scavanger hunt in next two months? People are waiting for it and I think everyone would like to get at least piece of information.

Even if they were, they can’t breathe a word about it. It would drastically affect the precursor market with a single confirmation.

Kamahl.3621:

It would drastically affect the precursor market with a single confirmation.

Actually, noone would mind drops in prices beside people that are rich or trying to be rich by selling them.

I like the idea of it being a random path each time.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Fiontar.4695:

I hope the other things you’ve been working on aren’t more “fun” improvements to dungeons and world PvE mobs. So far, you’ve proven the existence of “anti-fun” as a real property and your pursuit of it has been disconcerting! (It’s probably not a good sign to have some fans breath a sigh of relief to learn that the new dungeon was not created by the Dungeon Team…) ;P

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

The problem is that you took the lowest level dungeon and made it a nightmare for people new to dungeons. Supposedly this was to make dungeons “more fun”, but it had the opposite effect for many. Do some people find higher difficulty dungeons fun? Of course they do, but that’s why most game developers add an expert mode to their dungeons, rather than forcing the heightened difficulty on everyone.

We also heard how steps were being taken to make world encounters “more fun”. Well, the changes to the Krait vets and champs is not fun, at all. It has actually created the sad situation were people are just completely bypassing events where these new mechanics are evident.

The thing I find most odd about the strategy on dungeon development in this game is that the game completely lends itself to scalable difficulty levels for dungeons. The mechanisms for all sorts of scaling are in place. It makes the decision to redesign dungeons to be even tougher by default, rather than adding Expert Mode, even more perplexing.

To be honest, even difficulty levels for dungeons doesn’t take the obvious potential of the game far enough. Due to the way loot is distributed in the game, with each character having their own loot rolls, rather than sharing a group loot pool, there really isn’t any reason why Dungeons shouldn’t be designed to scale for smaller groups than five people. In other games, someone able to solo or duo a dungeon meant for five people would allow that person or duo to walk away with a dis-ordinate amount of loot. In GW2, that isn’t an issue. (This makes tuning of dungeons to prevent solo/duo action, at any cost, very confusing, since these people aren’t able to earn more loot than they would doing the dungeon with a group and will almost certainly spend a lot more time completing said dungeon than they would have in a competent group).

To sum up, a. please stop working on making world encounters “more fun”, if the Krait changes are an example of what you have in mind and b. it would be better to see you guys spend time on broadening the appeal of dungeons by allowing difficulty tiers and scaling for less than 5 people, rather than obsessing over finding ways to prevent people from finding ways to enjoy dungeons that you didn’t intend, but are otherwise harmless.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Fiontar.4695:

I hope the other things you’ve been working on aren’t more “fun” improvements to dungeons and world PvE mobs. So far, you’ve proven the existence of “anti-fun” as a real property and your pursuit of it has been disconcerting! (It’s probably not a good sign to have some fans breath a sigh of relief to learn that the new dungeon was not created by the Dungeon Team…) ;P

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

Am I reading into your statements correctly then when I say there are very little changes to dungeons and fractals in this update, including no improvement to their reward structure?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

In the case that AC was made harder, that’s a matter of opinion. Having personally reduced numbers like HP and damage, and modifying the skills used to not do more devastating things, I know for certain that it is numerically easier than it was before, and more forgiving to mistakes.
However we increased team based difficulty. We designed things to require players to coordinate and work together more than before, since that is our original goal: To create challenging content build for 5 coordinated players. This is why we’re not allowing it to scale like the rest of the game does. It’s set and built for 5, so it doesn’t need scaling.

I got a bad vibe from everyone about AC post patch, and recently tried both path 1 and 3. While the dungeon has changed (final bosses), many parts leading up seemed easier.

Nerf to scavengers along with decreased HP pools was definitely noticeable. I don’t think new AC is nearly as challenging as many make it out to be, it’s just the notion that players have to change up their old ways..

I actually prefer new AC to the old one. The bosses don’t have a boringly massive amount of health, and the new mechanics are more fun than spamming skills while occasionally dodging.

AC is in a better state than before. The only difference is that it’s less friendly towards PUGs, because in general, unfortunately, PUGs are dumb. They expect to be able to whiz through content with no concern for communication, teamwork or really any cognitive involvement.

The only reason AC has now dropped in popularity so much is because it’s now not so much of a bland faceroll with boring mechanics that don’t really require much input or reaction. It’s now less numerically demanding, but slightly more cognitively demanding, and this is apparently the end of the world to some people.

I prefer the new AC, and now I know why.

Reducing frivolous hp and increasing teamwork is my favourite kind of gameplay. Looking forward to this treatment on all dungeons. (hopefully more bosses with phases?)

Still I’d love for it to scale up so guilds have more options =p

The new AC mechanics are a definite improvement. Anything that rewards coordination/team play – and discourages simply zerging content – makes for a more fun dungeon experience. There is plenty for solo players to do in the game. When you enter a dungeon, the design and gameplay should be about the strength of the group rather than the strength of individual players who queue up. A group that works together should go smoother than one where players dont even say hi to one another in chat.

I realize this is anti-PUG, but I think it is needed. Most explorable dungeons should require communication and actual strategies/tactics to complete (maybe keeping one path semi PUG-friendly in each dungeon to meet broader needs).

I can’t wait to see what they do with the rest of the dungeons.

Auesis.7301:

AC is in a better state than before. The only difference is that it’s less friendly towards PUGs, because in general, unfortunately, PUGs are dumb. They expect to be able to whiz through content with no concern for communication, teamwork or really any cognitive involvement.

The only reason AC has now dropped in popularity so much is because it’s now not so much of a bland faceroll with boring mechanics that don’t really require much input or reaction. It’s now less numerically demanding, but slightly more cognitively demanding, and this is apparently the end of the world to some people.

So in your opinion it’s in a better state now that less players play it? So by the same token the game would, as a whole be better if less people played it?

I contend that popularity is a rather confident gauge of “state” concerning mmos.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

I enjoy dungeons at large, but the major things I don’t like include:

• Massive HP sinks from bosses that are genuinely unthreatening (including FotM Svanir boss, HotW bosses, and tons more across dungeons)
• Poor rewards for most dungeons, incentivizing players to spam CoF 1 for efficiency rather than spread out and do other content in the game
• Trash being trash. Everything should have significantly less life, significantly better loot than it currently does in later parts of a path (to prevent early part farming), and be significantly more threatening. This would up the fun-factor ten fold.

And some other stuff. New AC is cool, but I never do it because there’s no good reason to. The rewards are bleh, CoF is better, AC has no lodestones or anything, has only one good armor set stat combo, and is otherwise just not worth it. I ran it a few times just to learn it and steamroll it, and yeah, haven’t run it again since.

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

AC is in a better state than before. The only difference is that it’s less friendly towards PUGs, because in general, unfortunately, PUGs are dumb. They expect to be able to whiz through content with no concern for communication, teamwork or really any cognitive involvement.

The only reason AC has now dropped in popularity so much is because it’s now not so much of a bland faceroll with boring mechanics that don’t really require much input or reaction. It’s now less numerically demanding, but slightly more cognitively demanding, and this is apparently the end of the world to some people.

So in your opinion it’s in a better state now that less players play it? So by the same token the game would, as a whole be better if less people played it?

I contend that popularity is a rather confident gauge of “state” concerning mmos.

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period. The “unfortunate” consequence of that is that you can’t faceroll it with no concern whatsoever. God forbid a 5-man dungeon, originally designed to be challenging end-game content, be slightly challenging. It’s also not very popular anymore because of the risk->reward ratio. There’s no lodestones, the armor stats are meh (you can get PTV from karma, HotW and SE as well), the skins themselves are terrible and you can’t get ectos from 30-token rares. If there were more incentive to run it, I would run it more, as would a lot of people. The dungeon is fine. The reward for running it needs changing, but that is it.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

If you guys have the ability to identify target audiences this well, then I think it’s your duty as a responsible individual/company to get the sadists that enjoy HotW some professional assistance.

I think the biggest problem with the changes to AC is that it remained easily doable/farmable for experienced level 80 groups, yet became much more difficult for inexperienced/low level players. Being that it is the first dungeon that new players run into, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The reason it was so frequently ran before wasn’t because good players could faceroll through it, but that less skilled players (such as pugs) could do it and groups that aren’t experienced with playing together (again, pugs) could be able to group and complete something of lower difficulty. It is now an abandoned dungeon because experienced players would rather run more challenging and rewarding dungeons, and inexperienced players can’t get through it. That overhaul should’ve been done to something like hotw since it’s such a high level dungeon and needs an overhaul. The goal when completely redoing a dungeon should be to get more people to play it, not to get people to stop playing it. Choosing one of the most populated pieces of content in this game was just a strange decision, especially when hotw, cm, and others are so seldom ran. I’m not sure how it can be said that AC is in a better state than before considering I almost never see any groups forming for it (including from friends/guild, gw2lfg and map chat), and I can’t even remember the last time someone on my friends list was in AC. When I have a friend that just starts playing, instead of forming up a group to take them on AC i just tell them to get to level 80 and we’ll do some cof. I no longer have any reason to run AC since it’s less rewarding than other dungeons and I can’t bring my newer friends in it. By the way, I’m not implying that it can’t be done by lower level players, I’m saying that inexperienced players, especially lower level ones have a much harder time doing it.

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

It’s not my fault that you failed to understand the initial explanation and put asinine statements in my mouth for me. I’m not repeating myself.

Auesis.7301:

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

It’s not my fault that you failed to understand the initial explanation and put asinine statements in my mouth for me. I’m not repeating myself.

You said……it’s in a better state and it’s only change is that it’s less pug friendly…..You then stated it is…b/c it is. If you consider your own statements asinine…well so be it. Pugs are a very significant portion of the population that has been alienated by the changes resulting in a less than popular instance, which…wait for it…….hardly makes for a “better state”.

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

It’s not my fault that you failed to understand the initial explanation and put asinine statements in my mouth for me. I’m not repeating myself.

You said……it’s in a better state and it’s only change is that it’s less pug friendly…..You then stated it is…b/c it is. If you consider your own statements asinine…well so be it. Pugs are a very significant portion of the population that has been alienated by the changes resulting in a less than popular instance, which…wait for it…….hardly makes for a “better state”.

Since you’re still not understanding:

It is in a better state because it is numerically easier (something that needs to be applied to all dungeons, because huge health pools and harder hits do not count as real difficulty, simply artificial inflations that give the illusion of difficulty), but cognitively more challenging than before (due to the need for teams to actually work together to complete various objectives, instead of silently pushing ahead as nothing more than faceless, expendable DPSers). This means that it is less of a DPS race and more of an actual end-game explorable dungeon that has mechanics besides health, damage and damage mitigation. It’s not anything special, but it’s progress from what it was before. It is now closer to what was intended (explorable dungeons were intended to be the creme de la creme, challenging end-game content that made your team properly co-ordinate to reach the end goal).

It is not in a better state “because” of lower amounts of runners, which is what you seem to think I’m saying. That is nothing more than a side-effect and is heavily influenced by moronic forum-goers with big mouths that complain the dungeon is impossible because they cannot act in the same way they did before (DPSDPSDPSDPSDPSDPS -> collect reward). The slightest hint of challenge and requirement for a 5-man team to actually act as a team made a few louder members of the community mouth off about it and drive away potential dungeon runners who might have given it a go and found it was actually a better team experience, but they never bother because they unfortunately listened to the drones that cannot stand that everything isn’t delivered to them personally on a silver platter. Most, if not all of this “alienation” is caused by hyberbole of the highest order.

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

It’s not my fault that you failed to understand the initial explanation and put asinine statements in my mouth for me. I’m not repeating myself.

You said……it’s in a better state and it’s only change is that it’s less pug friendly…..You then stated it is…b/c it is. If you consider your own statements asinine…well so be it. Pugs are a very significant portion of the population that has been alienated by the changes resulting in a less than popular instance, which…wait for it…….hardly makes for a “better state”.

By this logic making a super easy dungeon with no mechanics which takes 3 minutes to complete would be the best dungeon developed yet since it’s super PuG friendly.

IMO AC is in a far better state now than it was before; bosses have more unique mechanics (with a decrease in health to make less tedious) along with more ability variety in trash. The focus of dungeons to provide content that is less about bosses with large health pools and more about dungeons where you need to pay at least some attention and have coordination seems far better (which actually makes AC about the same length time-wise if not shorter then in was before). Simply because less people run it doesn’t mean that it is worse designed in terms of a dungeon. Though it is worse designed in terms of risk/reward because CoF farming provides mind-numbingly easy content with great rewards (which is why I’m glad Rob and his team are revamping dungeons to make the fights more unique).

Just bring the poison damage from Spider Queen and hatching and you will start to see people going back there. The rest are fine save the bugs.

I’ve use to do a few Ac runs as required for Legendary gear and had minimal success.
I know most people can prob do this blindfolded while eating a sandwich watching the maury povich Show while texting sports scores to friends. The rest of us average less then talented (myself included ) spent many frustrated hours working thur the scavengers , poison boss spider fields, kohlor grappling drag an kill method , an end bosses that make melee rather rediclous . For a level 40-45 dungeon.. can’t help but feel miserable of dealing with any of your dungeons.
Thats just my honest opinon coming from my Honest frustration of dealing with it .
Don’t get me wrong , not begging for easy mode .. but for a starter dungeon ..It sure feels like the gloves came off an the brass knuckles came out right from the start of the fight. The rest of the dungeons in falling order of story were just a plain kick to the nuts. The new ac run just made the dungeon even more rediclous and instead of joy have just killed any intrest of continued dungeon runs. Thank you for that .

Auesis.7301:

Since you’re still not understanding:

It is in a better state because it is numerically easier (something that needs to be applied to all dungeons, because huge health pools and harder hits do not count as real difficulty, simply artificial inflations that give the illusion of difficulty), but cognitively more challenging than before (due to the need for teams to actually work together to complete various objectives, instead of silently pushing ahead as nothing more than faceless, expendable DPSers). This means that it is less of a DPS race and more of an actual end-game explorable dungeon that has mechanics besides health, damage and damage mitigation. It’s not anything special, but it’s progress from what it was before. It is now closer to what was intended (explorable dungeons were intended to be the creme de la creme, challenging end-game content that made your team properly co-ordinate to reach the end goal).

It is not in a better state “because” of lower amounts of runners, which is what you seem to think I’m saying. That is nothing more than a side-effect and is heavily influenced by moronic forum-goers with big mouths that complain the dungeon is impossible because they cannot act in the same way they did before (DPSDPSDPSDPSDPSDPS -> collect reward). The slightest hint of challenge and requirement for a 5-man team to actually act as a team made a few louder members of the community mouth off about it and drive away potential dungeon runners who might have given it a go and found it was actually a better team experience, but they never bother because they unfortunately listened to the drones that cannot stand that everything isn’t delivered to them personally on a silver platter. Most, if not all of this “alienation” is caused by hyberbole of the highest order.

This is much better…..ty. I don’t exactly agree but it is a better stance than your original post that caught my attention:

AC is in a better state than before. The only difference is that it’s less friendly towards PUGs, because in general, unfortunately, PUGs are dumb. They expect to be able to whiz through content with no concern for communication, teamwork or really any cognitive involvement.

The only reason AC has now dropped in popularity so much is because it’s now not so much of a bland faceroll with boring mechanics that don’t really require much input or reaction. It’s now less numerically demanding, but slightly more cognitively demanding, and this is apparently the end of the world to some people.

That being as direct as it was, was kinda hard to misunderstand…unless ofc it was not what you meant and/or it was not conveyed well.

While the points of bland and boring…yes I concur that is an issue. Unfortunately that is rather subjective. What may be bland and boring to the seasoned player may not be the same for the new or casual player. Difficulty falls into the same realm. Some players find difficult content fun, while others do not. Thus it’s not exactly tactile to state subjective things as facts and we should focus on more objective measures.

What are some of the objective measures that we have access to? Well one would be activity based on population. It just so happens that this game’s population is dominated by the more casual player base. Thus the casual-esque population is one we should strongly consider in whether or not something is of benefit or of good.

GoldenTruth.2853:

By this logic making a super easy dungeon with no mechanics which takes 3 minutes to complete would be the best dungeon developed yet since it’s super PuG friendly.

IMO AC is in a far better state now than it was before; bosses have more unique mechanics (with a decrease in health to make less tedious) along with more ability variety in trash. The focus of dungeons to provide content that is less about bosses with large health pools and more about dungeons where you need to pay at least some attention and have coordination seems far better (which actually makes AC about the same length time-wise if not shorter then in was before). Simply because less people run it doesn’t mean that it is worse designed in terms of a dungeon. Though it is worse designed in terms of risk/reward because CoF farming provides mind-numbingly easy content with great rewards (which is why I’m glad Rob and his team are revamping dungeons to make the fights more unique).

I wouldn’t say that pugs activity would be the only factor to consider, but definitely one too consider among others. For the elongated reasoning see above.

Auesis.7301:

Most, if not all of this “alienation” is caused by hyberbole of the highest order.

I don’t even have words to describe that.

I think the debate on dungeon difficult needs to be clearer on certain things. Something which challenges communication might only be hard for a PuG. For a guild group with voice coms (or pre-set roles) this kind of content is usually trivial. To me, that’s not challenging content. Without the guild group it might be a challenge, but with the guild group it’s easier than the alternatives (so people claiming it requires more skill, experience or it’s simply more challenging really should be saying it requires communication which makes the encounter easier than most other content). The end result is PuGs get pushed out and guild groups yawn through it. Having voice coms or an organised group doesn’t make you more skilled or elite than others, they are tools (like a crutch) which enable you to tackle content more easily.

I see a lot of people talking about improvements in AC but very few people giving examples of those improvements. One of the most commonly referenced improvements was the increased need for communication in the group. That is a weak statement – how was communication made more important? People aren’t giving examples of this. The only thing I see from AC which has this is the Ghost Eater fight. Everything else is usually easier (lower health pools on bosses, less punishing screams etc).

As far as Robert’s comments on making bosses numerically easier, I don’t think the spider queen and her minions fall into that category. The minions hit like a truck and they are stupidly durable now (before they were easy to swat but still powerful, it felt nice killing them, now they are DPS sponges in large numbers). The spider queen herself might have less health, but her AoE poison fields are very punishing. They hit much harder than before and now they stay around longer. If the queen uses them at her feet, good luck meleeing her (or having your pet be useful for that time).

I’d also like to point out the changes to these mechanics passed on over to story mode. Spider mobs at the beginning when opening crypts will be very tanky and easily wipe a group doing their first every story mode dungeon. The changes to the troll also altered his story mode counterpart. One bad thing about this is his loot is garbage in story mode (a pittance of silver and no token bag) which is ridiculous seeing as he is basically the same difficulty as explorable mode.

I’m looking forward to this next patch to see what direction dungeons are going in (assuming there is dungeon content in the patch aside from the new one). If it’s more stuff like Ghost Eater I might end up preferring the new dungeon content over the old stuff, even if it is temporary. It will be interesting to see a different team’s take on five man instanced content.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

What someone defines as fun is often different from what another person calls fun. I’m sorry our dungeon work has not appealed to you and others, but there is an audience for what we do. My hope is that in the future, we can build something that appeals to you and other folks currently not on board with our dungeon content, while still staying true to the people who have enjoyed our content thus far. Bridging that gap is not an easy process, but I am confident that such things are not impossible feats

I enjoy dungeons at large, but the major things I don’t like include:

• Massive HP sinks from bosses that are genuinely unthreatening (including FotM Svanir boss, HotW bosses, and tons more across dungeons)
• Poor rewards for most dungeons, incentivizing players to spam CoF 1 for efficiency rather than spread out and do other content in the game
• Trash being trash. Everything should have significantly less life, significantly better loot than it currently does in later parts of a path (to prevent early part farming), and be significantly more threatening. This would up the fun-factor ten fold.

And some other stuff. New AC is cool, but I never do it because there’s no good reason to. The rewards are bleh, CoF is better, AC has no lodestones or anything, has only one good armor set stat combo, and is otherwise just not worth it. I ran it a few times just to learn it and steamroll it, and yeah, haven’t run it again since.

Having some of the ugliest armor sets doesn’t help either! That is obviously subjective. As for the new AC … most of it seems okay but none of the people I play wants to do it anymore. Not that we were all the crazy about doing dungeons to begin with. The “problem” is with the bosses. None of us are fans of the whole “mwahaha all your skills and traits are now completely useless!” bit for Ghost Eater and after 7 years of GW1 we are a bit burned out on ‘dealing with stupid NPCs’ for Colossus Romblus. Dealing with dumb NPCs for crucial mechanics is never fun(for me). Speaking of not fun, you can add “red circles everywhere!!!” to that list along with “we’ve removed chained knockdowns from one place but added them to other places because that is always fun right?”.

One of the greatest regrets in GW1 is that we never got to PERSONALLY murder Prince Rurik. The bit that is in the game doesn’t really count.

Auesis.7301:

Essence Snow.3194:

Auesis.7301:

No, it’s in a better state because it is in a better state, period.

Very convincing stance there………..

It’s not my fault that you failed to understand the initial explanation and put asinine statements in my mouth for me. I’m not repeating myself.

Actually, the ‘asinine’ statement was that something is better even though fewer people are enjoying it and many have stopped playing it as a result.

It may be ‘better’ for the elitists, it seems it’s worse for everyone else.

@Robert

I agree that challenges in dungeons isn’t a negative attribute, but isn’t it a bit toxic at the very first dungeon that new players have access to? I think I have only once done a low-leveled dungeon (CM) with a group composed of more first timers than veterans and let me tell you, that was the utmost brutality possible for a group of noobs. It took us easily 1-2 hours on story with the only worthwhile reward being the cut-scene at the end. Now the time it took wasn’t much of an issue, but it seemed to create a lot of group tension and solved by throwing our bodies at the enemies many times until we succeeded. This was before the disabled re-spawn option in fights though.

In any case, my point is that the lower level dungeons are kind of crazy considering players that have no prior experience in dungeons (especially the lower ones) experience a negative stimuli in playing them early on as they literally have no training in the field of teamwork. This will most likely act as a repellent to anyone who wanted to have a positive experience in a dungeon. It is also assumed that this will cause players to work together, but I am sure if we did a study using groups of 5 players who haven’t done a dungeon before and see how they react to getting whooped, I feel that the reactions would be nothing like that, although I would like to think they would work together to overcome the obstacles, that is just not the reaction of all 5 people in a group at any given time. So the teamwork mentality could develop, however it would be a chain comprised of several crude links that could break at any moment.

I do think we need a simple dungeon to introduce players to the way of dungeons, and since AC is the first, it is the expected contender. Now if such a thing was to occur, it would only be fair to make the 80 gear accessible in other ways. The only reason any sane individual would put up with that beating nowadays is merely due to the perceived value of the anesthetics provided.

Nova.8021:

In any case, my point is that the lower level dungeons are kind of crazy considering players that have no prior experience in dungeons (especially the lower ones) experience a negative stimuli in playing them early on as they literally have no training in the field of teamwork. This will most likely act as a repellent to anyone who wanted to have a positive experience in a dungeon. It is also assumed that this will cause players to work together, but I am sure if we did a study using groups of 5 players who haven’t done a dungeon before and see how they react to getting whooped, I feel that the reactions would be nothing like that, although I would like to think they would work together to overcome the obstacles, that is just not the reaction of all 5 people in a group at any given time. So the teamwork mentality could develop, however it would be a chain comprised of several crude links that could break at any moment.

Some start dungeons are quite difficult for new players. I play on skype with my friends, and even on some story modes we got steam rolled at the start. I think the trouble is not always the mechanics in the dungeons or the fact that the dungeons are really hard. It is more of a learn to play, and how did I learn to play. What I mean is that it took us some time to figure out how to do some easy parts in dungeons. When we went in the first time in caudecus explorable we had not idea how to handle the barrels and there placement to explode the gate. The mobs just overzerged us and we got killed. Over time, after getting equipped and after watching videos we managed to do this part while only being 4 (we cheesed this part…not the best thing but we had not idea how to do it). Only recently did we manage to do it without cheesing it, we missed our first cheese attempt and then decided to do it the “standard” way.

I think the actual dungeons could get some hand holding in some parts. Not a complete and easy way, but a simple dialog from an NPC suggesting a strategy, or good spells to take.
“The bandits will probably remove the explosives as soon as they are planted, you may want to prevent them from doing by having someone guard the explosives or you could also set up some devices at strategic locations as decoys”
“These nasty little critters will immobilize you in a web and then bite you to poison you to death.”

I think the new dungeon may bring in some nice stuff in this sense. If they built it in the reverse order (from boss to mobs) in order to teach us how to fight the boss is a great idea. If it works out nicely why not apply it to other existing/new dungeons !

just would like to know if the new dungeon is hard or no

Would like to know if there are any prerequisites to enter this dungeon

The only issue I seem to have with AC 1 is defending Hodgins while taking out the burrows. That section generally makes or breaks the run. Unless we’ve been doing it wrong the whole time (which I wouldn’t complain about), we’ve got one person who usually can’t keep the gravelings busy enough for the other 4 to take care of the burrows. (essentially the same technique used before patch, its just become lots harder).

The rest of AC 1 and all of AC 3 are easy enough (or maybe better yet, straightforward enough) to finish. I particularly enjoy each of the new boss mechanics myself. The Spider Queen poison is deadly, but usually avoidable enough.

I find it kind of funny how some (all?) of the people defending the current difficulty are saying “Hey, it’s perfect for an end game dungeon!” when the dungeon is clearly not an end game dungeon. It’s playable and enjoyable at end game, yes, but it’s designed for level 35 characters as the first introduction to explorable dungeons. While it has been proven that, statistically, level 35 characters and down scaled level 80 characters are not particularly different in terms of strength that doesn’t at all take into account differences in actual experience.