Guild Wars 2

I speculate no new dungeons

They didn’t mention any specific group encounters, instead they hinted at new “group challenges” multiple times. Whether that means dungeons, fractals, something we don’t have yet and/or dynamic events, no one knows. Therefore I wouldn’t give up hope just yet.

Well they mentioned the manifesto, first and foremost. I think that this is a sign anything they said would have to be taken with the same mindset as the manifesto had to be understood, that is: it’s just words.

Yerp, I think when Anet says group content they mean something like Wurm or Teq. Looks like no new dungeons or instanced raids.

it doesn’t look promising, the best thing to do is to not get your hopes up

They did emphasize really challenging group content a lot. But yeah that could easily be stuff like Tequatl, Marionette, Wurm and Vinewrath.

Although they also mentioned in the interview that they wanted to address the concerns of players that were very vocal about what would make them keep playing or come back to the game. And the instanced group content community definitely fits in that category. So fingers crossed.

Maybe we will get something which isnt completely open world. Something new maybe? Or maybe just the option to have private maps so we can treat world bosses as organised guild raids. At the very least we should hope for new fractals. I doubt they will ever fully abandon fractals because it provides a good portal for unrelated stories and extra lore.

Spoj The Second.7680:

They did emphasize really challenging group content a lot. But yeah that could easily be stuff like Tequatl, Marionette, Wurm and Vinewrath.

Although they also mentioned in the interview that they wanted to address the concerns of players that were very vocal about what would make them keep playing or come back to the game. And the instanced group content community definitely fits in that category. So fingers crossed.

Maybe we will get something which isnt completely open world. Something new maybe? Or maybe just the option to have private maps so we can treat world bosses as organised guild raids. At the very least we should hope for new fractals. I doubt they will ever fully abandon fractals because it provides a good portal for unrelated stories and extra lore.

I’d be very down for new fractals. There’s only 2 things that really ever kept me from liking them all that much. The RNG nature, where you favorite ones you might not see but 1/10 runs. And how many of the bosses are very small and easily lost in the effects, hard to dodge the big hitters when you can’t see the tell.

Most likely new fractals will come between the end of LW (now) and the expansion. But then fractals are usually off the table, so I could be right.

They didn’t mention dungeons or raids. With all the other stuff they hyped up, I’m thinking if they were adding any they’d have said so then. I’m betting none as well.

Well they didnt go into detail on a lot of things. Including “challenging group content”. So really its anyones guess. There are a lot of things im looking forward to and it seems they are trying to address many things that people have been complaining about. So im not going to get all negative now.

They already said no more dungeons. So not surprising there’s no announcements.

Could be raids or fractals though. Gah this expansion has turned me hopeful again.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Well they didnt go into detail on a lot of things. Including “challenging group content”. So really its anyones guess. There are a lot of things im looking forward to and it seems they are trying to address many things that people have been complaining about. So im not going to get all negative now.

Like Greatswords for Necros?

xD

I already crafted one as you already know. ;d

This looks like an instanced content but there’s no indication about the exact number of participants.

rotten.9753:

This looks like an instanced content but there’s no indication about the exact number of participants.

Well.. they said they were doing more Story instances so…

I’m not excited. I’m just indifferent. When first saw trailer was like yeh this is cool! new things! omg!

Now though, now I will wait and if good things come, then they come. If not, oh well.

It doesnt really make sense that they wouldnt have dungeons since it seems these areas they are making are mainly lvl 80 so endgame content, and whereas like a year ago casuals may not have been doing dungeons, it seems like everyone is getting on them dungeon trains, casual or hardcore. Seems like it’d be necessary to keep ppl playing

inb4canach’slair

Spoj The Second.7680:

xD

I already crafted one as you already know. ;d

And then it turns out to be a condi weapon

ArthurDent.9538:

Spoj The Second.7680:

xD

I already crafted one as you already know. ;d

And then it turns out to be a condi weapon

Thankfully that looks unlikely.

http://youtu.be/JIsgotF-AXw

No condi and then chill on final hit for auto attack.

Lord Kuru.3685:

They already said no more dungeons. So not surprising there’s no announcements.

They didn’t say no new dungeons ever, they said it wasn’t something there were adding soon. Anything that would have been part of the expansion they would have said absolutely nothing about as per their policy we all love. So far it looks like just about everything there was a CDI about they are adding. We have almost no information about specifics yet.

Didn’t they say something to the effect of “We will be outlining every major feature of the expansion before the presentation is over!”?

Even if they do end up adding something, feels great knowing your content isn’t important enough to be considered a major feature.

They said new challenging group content as a major feature. But they didnt specify what that includes. Im with the people saying it would be pretty stupid not to include some kind of instanced group endgame content in an expansion. And we had the raid CDI a while back. So i honestly believe we will get something that isnt completely open world.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Lord Kuru.3685:

They already said no more dungeons. So not surprising there’s no announcements.

They didn’t say no new dungeons ever, they said it wasn’t something there were adding soon.

No. That’s not what they said. “No plans for any new dungeons” is more accurate.

As for all the hopeful talk of raids: I believe that was referring to open world “raids” like the marionette.

People also repeatedly asked for private maps for open world content. And for raids which arent zerg fests. So hopefully they took that on board. :P

champ.7021:

It doesnt really make sense that they wouldnt have dungeons since it seems these areas they are making are mainly lvl 80 so endgame content, and whereas like a year ago casuals may not have been doing dungeons, it seems like everyone is getting on them dungeon trains, casual or hardcore. Seems like it’d be necessary to keep ppl playing

Actually they use the other model of endgame content. Instead of harder and more hardcore, it’s more meta-gaming: achievements and collections.

After wrapping up their segment about guild halls, Colin reiterated his talking points (region, progression, specialization, profession, wvw, pvp/guildteams, finally guild halls). No mention whatsoever about “group play”. Even if they mentioned “group play” as part of the features, it is in my mind no doubt that it points to open world bosses.

We’re not getting any more dungeons. Also, don’t forget, they were going to scrap this subforum. Did you think they were going to magically reopen it after the expansion released with our mythical new dungeons? yeaaaaaa…. We have no future in GW2, probably best to just enjoy what we have.

Hoping for raids? I’m guessing maaybe you’ll get instanced content versions of the openworld bosses. Have fun with that.

But they have built a group finder in-game, and they will likely expand fractals. So we can expect more, not much though.

Spoj The Second.7680:

They said new challenging group content as a major feature. But they didnt specify what that includes. Im with the people saying it would be pretty stupid not to include some kind of instanced group endgame content in an expansion. And we had the raid CDI a while back. So i honestly believe we will get something that isnt completely open world.

Spoj has joined me on the vessel of hope. I tried not to let hope creep into my heart, but it has and I am officially an optimist. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

The entire announcement was a 10/10 for me until i realized “wait they never said anything about raids/dungeons.” Usually I would think raids would be a major feature that is worth a mentioning. I just dont know…………

I’m with Tom on this one.

They tried twice to delete the dungeon/fractal subforum. The last one very recently.

Does deleting the subforum makes sense if they were going to introduce new dungeons or raid content? It doesnt make sense.

They said challenging group content. Group content can easily be World Bosses. Challenging? Well, that’s the exact word they used to describe Living Story achievements.

They deleted the BL subforum but they didnt get rid of the TP. I think they just wanted all PvE in general. I wouldnt read into it too much.

Even if we got something I doubt it’s going to be anything fancy because they don’t know/care what we want.

We must our self create our own content. Hopefully new GWSCR site will spark some speedrunning especially if solo category gets in.

Another idea is to resurrect the “Ascension challenge” topic with slight modifications. Instead of a competition with one active challenge there could be a list of interesting solo/group challenges for anyone to try at any time. For example Spider Queen solo with man mode is quite interesting, at least on Warrior.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9340/page/1

A few mentions of ‘challenging group content’. Whatever that might be, it’ll be tied in with the masteries.

I’m genuinely expecting some hardcore difficult instanced content. It might not be called a dungeon, and it might not be called a fractal, and it might not be called a raid, but I think it will be there.

I don’t know how many players it’ll support, but they emphasized “extremely difficult” a lot and said that the scale for what they were working on is far harder than anything we’ve seen thus far, and that this might truly be deserving of being called the “ultimate challenge”.

That has me in pretty high hopes for the expansion, honestly.

My thoughts are we are going to see instanced boss challenges (aka raids but dont use the r-word around the casuals) that will very skill gated but less difficult as masteries increase. This will mean for the hardcore we will have intense bosses can have real challenge (and real reward) for killing before most people can, and later as people acquire masteries they will go on farm within the general community. But once the framework is there they could easily introduce new encounters on the same system.

" We release content all the time, but honestly, most of it is not very, very difficult challenges for groups. And when you think about it, I think you’ll realize that’s because it’s hard for us to be able to release content that’s so difficult that most players can’t solve it right away. That’s actually a lot of the genesis of Heart of Thorns: being able to put in these endgame character progression systems so that we can release content in the jungle that requires you to have played all of the jungle to build up the abilities you need to solve that content. If you haven’t played the jungle and you haven’t built up your character, you’re not going to beat that content. We’ve been developing content, but we haven’t been saying that it’s the ultimate group challenge. I think that’s something Guild Wars 2 needs and hasn’t had. Heart of Thorns is laying the groundwork so we really can bring ultimate challenges to the game."

Taken from a recent interview with O’Brien.

This confirms the “challenging group content” is in the jungle aka open-world, and that part of the “challenge” will just be because the players have to make progress within the mastery system to unlock certain stuff.

^ A dungeon could also be ‘in the jungle’. It’s still not confirmed to be open world only.

The way he phrases that worries me. " If you haven’t played the jungle and you haven’t built up your character, you’re not going to beat that content." Sounds like good ol’ gear treadmill type thing.

That’s what’s so great about GW2 is that for the most part you can jump right into whatever you want. This sounds like i’m going to have to do a ton of map completion on all my characters to get them to where I can play the actual fun content.

We’ll see how it goes, but if it’s “difficult” because I need some trinketX because the mechanics just say so… it’ll be quite disappointing.

I’m imagining the mastery thing like the WvW masteries…. we’re gonna get +10% dmg vs Mordremoth’s minions and -10% dmg taken from Mordremoth’s minions for example

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I’m imagining the mastery thing like the WvW masteries…. we’re gonna get +10% dmg vs Mordremoth’s minions and -10% dmg taken from Mordremoth’s minions for example

That’d be fine, it’d actually be pretty nice as it’d be harder for those that didn’t get it but not impossible at all.

What I’m thinking it sounds more like is that they have say those gliders. In some mission you need to use them, if you never got the mastery unlocked on them you don’t get to use say the gun or whatever… making you actually HAVE to have the mastery.

Maybe I’m wrong but it simply sounds like that from what he said.

Jerus.4350:

The way he phrases that worries me. " If you haven’t played the jungle and you haven’t built up your character, you’re not going to beat that content." Sounds like good ol’ gear treadmill type thing.

That’s what’s so great about GW2 is that for the most part you can jump right into whatever you want. This sounds like i’m going to have to do a ton of map completion on all my characters to get them to where I can play the actual fun content.

We’ll see how it goes, but if it’s “difficult” because I need some trinketX because the mechanics just say so… it’ll be quite disappointing.

The way i took it was that going through the jungle teaches you how to deal with various new mechanics. So you are prepared for the complex encounters with a mix of all the previous stuff you went through. Kind of like how they did the hidden arcana LS instance where they taught you the different puzzles one by one and then put them all together. But then again i might just be being overly optimistic.

Bit even that doesnt guarantee future fights will be very reflex based with much larger skill pools on enemies. Which is a sure fire way to retain difficulty even when the player has the sufficient knowledge for the encounter.

Btw some masteries are combat based. Taken from the HoT page:

“We’re reimagining progression with our new Mastery system. Explore new training opportunities for your character beyond level 80 and master abilities like hang gliding in the jungle, tearing the bark off of heavily armored Mordrem, or building new collections that earn precursors to a legendary weapon.”

These kind of things are the stuff i expect to be needed to complete difficult encounters. And they may just be things to make it easier. We may be able to work around them via other more difficult methods. So we could end up making things more challenging for ourselves by not using these.

Or a combination of wvw mastery and agony resist. Playing in the jungle earns you points that you can then put into your mastery of choice. Without certain amount of points into “Mordremoth Resist” mastery you will not be able to complete the content. That’s what it’s looking to become to me…

Spoj The Second.7680:

tearing the bark off of heavily armored Mordrem,

See Spoj? That’s exactly what we’re saying… Just a fancy way to hide a gear/tier check. Probably content where the mob takes very little damage if you don’t have that mastery that pierces his armor.

It’s artificial gating like Agony.

Well yeah but its not forced behind grind (what they have claimed). And some of it may be optional. As in it only makes it easier. Even if its some gating. Its still better than agony. Also seems a lot of the mastery points are awarded through challenging content. So thats something we should be happy about. It means only average players should be able to progress to some areas.

If you aren’t a party of 5, you’re not going to beat that dungeon.

relax~

Wethospu.6437:

We must our self create our own content. Hopefully new GWSCR site will spark some speedrunning especially if solo category gets in.

Another idea is to resurrect the “Ascension challenge” topic with slight modifications. Instead of a competition with one active challenge there could be a list of interesting solo/group challenges for anyone to try at any time. For example Spider Queen solo with man mode is quite interesting, at least on Warrior.

And you just resurrected my soul! Yes! Let’s do this

On the one hand, I’m not optimistic because a new dungeon would have been as huge as a new WvW/PvP map for a lot of players.
On the other hand, they clearly don’t care about PvE other than the story that much, so maybe in their eyes it is just not a major feature. Or it is self evident that with a new set of maps comes a new dungeon. Or they weren’t ready to announce it yet. Or they’re saving the best as a surprise. How nice would that be?
New dragon fight could be new Arah-style dungeon (I sincerely hope so but won’t get my hopes up too much) but it could also be another world boss… Only more details can tell!