Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about what bothers me in GW2 dungeon system and talking it over with my friends for the past few days.

The TL;DR are the bolded out points plus the last paragraph, which I think is pretty vital.

Bad: What you say =/= what you do
I am not even thinking about the interviews from 2 years ago where you enthusiastically announced that just a run or two through a dungeon would grant us a set piece. This change is extremely disappointing, but I know “some things have changed”.

But you are still saying your game is not about grind, while at the same time setting the dungeon rewards in such a way that one needs to run them 70+ times just for the armour set.

Your designers say “we want the armour from dungeon x to mean something, to show what you’ve been through”. I am sorry but doing a dungeon 5 or 50 times proves exactly the same thing skill wise, the latter only proves how much time you have on your hands (and how much you grinded) additionally. Why is this show-off necessary? I fail to understand, but in general I don’t understand why people feel the need to overcompensate.

If you feel that your players really need to show off how many times they’ve run a dungeon to “prove their skill”, I invite you to implement an “inspect” feature that would show a list of all dungeons and their paths with a counter of how many times they’ve run it. Maybe add a death counter too, and time spent, just so they can compare and gloat more… This is a serious proposition, btw. It would accomplish exactly what you apparently envisioned the dungeon sets to stand for.

Good: You strive to provide a challenge for more skilled and experienced players
Challenge is good. I think this is self-explanatory.

Bad: Your idea of a Hard Mode hasn’t changed for the past 6 years and is all about buffing all attributes by 100
I am sorry but it doesn’t impress. It’s boring, it’s artificial, it’s not really a challenge, just an unnecessary speed bump.

To be honest, I don’t even mind damage that much, damage forces us to play better (as long as it’s not a constant one-hit or unavoidable chains). But the hit points, they just make the whole thing boring. You know, like the opposite of fun.
Shave the hit points, guys. Please. No one needs this.

Bad: You don’t reward the effort enough. Frankly, you seem to be punishing for experiments and trying out new things
In-game currency is in short supply. But that is not something that will ever bother more hard-core players, they play so much they will always have it plenty. But the low drops, low rewards and high repair costs are really hurting those casuals who actually want to try it out. I hope you will view it as a constructive criticism

Bad: You put an anvil in the dungeon, a nice way of saying “we expect you to die a lot!”, but you don’t give a way to re-trait there, while it’s expected to adjust to your group “build”
Self-explanatory, I guess. However, I’d like to know: why???

Bad: You alienate a huge part of your player base
You want your dungeons challenging: I get that. What I don’t get is why you never actually introduce the idea of what is required to do a dungeon to more casual and less experienced players.

In your promotional materials, you only gloat about how fun they are. Don’t you think your customers want to try them out? You actually want them to stay out of there? Because this is the message you are sending.

You casually invite the casuals (no pun intended) to the Story Mode and they are thinking that’s the place for them to be. You know, Story Mode. In many cases, it’s not. They’re thrown from vanilla world of “Build? What’s a build? No I didn’t buy all my skills I will never use them. And all weapons apart from X suck.” to a place that actually requires you to think strategically.

You never, EVER require your new players or even give them incentive to learn more about the systems you have so painstakingly implemented in GW2. If you think you do, then trust me: you’re not doing that enough.

Back to the Story Mode as an introduction to dungeons, I see it as a huge missed opportunity. I strongly believe you should actually use it as an introduction of mechanics employed and necessary to succeed. Present the tools you’re using in exportable modes, but in more accessible ways (less lethal, more warning). Yes, your less experienced players should “learn to play”, the problem is, your vanilla PvE does not encourage that or give a place to actually do that. That’s a huge, unfortunate gap. Please fill it in

Thanks for reading.