So where do we start this topic hmm?
What is going to be the future of dungeons? I mean, end game PvE for me now on a daily basis is:
1/2/3 CoE
1 CoF
DR Break
1/2/3 AC
2 CoF
All this is for a skin. Why these dungeons you ask? CoE is the place to go to give you your best shot at getting charged cores/lodes. CoF 1 because it takes 6-7 mins and gives you a nice amount of money for the time it takes. AC for the same reason, with an omnom you can easily get 4 gold for clearing all 3 paths. CoF 2 because again, its a cakewalk and really doesn’t take long.
So after getting a decent amount of money, maybe 1 or 2 cores (don’t get me started on the loot tables for that ), its now time to exchange my tokens for rares to salvage for ectos.
Again, all of this is for a skin, a really nice skin I might add. I really don’t mind the time put in, but the variety, these dungeons ARE A GRIND. No question about it. I’d like to question if any Anet devs have put in their time to farm a legendary.
Back on topic now, what can we expect to come in the next few months dungeon wise? It’s a shame to say this but from the lack of anything in the pipeline, a lot of quite avid players I know are beginning to think, I have my legendary, there is really nothing left that to just farm gold.
Are we going to see any additions to the fractals? Imho I really hope not, yes it was nice to test some new mechanics but it was the flavour of the month and got old pretty quickly.
I think what we need desperately are some REAL SOLID RAID DUNGEONS. Now don’t get hung up on the word raid, I am happy with 5 man, it works, it’s not too complicated but as I see it, from the recent interviews and live streams the reason they wont go above 5 man is because of UI clutter? Then I beg the question of the new daily UI addition. Either that or in 10 man just force it into the streamlines raid frames.
I feel that in the last patch, the “dungeon polish and improvements” were a shambles and really very disappointing. There are still a lot of bugs that need to be addressed (Bjarl for instance is a horribly buggy encounter) and it remains to be seen that reducing alphas HP can be classed as real dungeon polish.
We need specific level 80 instances that are not easy, and reward rares and exotics. I for one am sick of getting blues from a chest. WTF is with that. I can get blues from the mobs in Queensdale. Get rid of the path 1/2/3 stuff and give us a true explorable dungeon. One that actually takes time to master rather than a cakewalk. One with adequate loot tables. One which has events like the troll in AC. Put some T6 nodes in there too for kittens sake. Right now dungeons are lackluster compared to the stuff you experience in WoW. Don’t get me wrong. On release they were good, but now they are stale and we really need some fresh content rather than “world events” that are walking up and down a map clicking on a broken sign.
We need dungeons with lore and a back story. Not just a kind of made up story that ties in with the lore. AC for example, what drove the priory there? what is the significance of the characters? why focus on gravelings when you could have made some really cool tie ins with the foe fire and searing.
I think the Charr fractal showed a lot of promise for a starting point of a larger open explorable dungeon. Imagine something along the lines of stratholme in WoW only in ascalon. Let us take on Bonfazz. Let us defend Rin from the charr.
Granted that is all in the past. Now that the story is over and we have “pressed 2 to zhaitan” we need the story to now progress in dungeons aswell as open world encounters.
My question to Anet is a blunt one. Please stop keeping us in the dark with false hopes and let us know what we can expect to see or what the next dungeon is based upon. It’s disappointing to say that I really don’t think there is much juice left in the content we have.