Guild Wars 2

I have completed two separate story mode dungeons so far on my 71 Ranger, and wanted to provide some feedback from a long time MMO veteran.

A bit of background:

Who am I: I am a 10 year MMO veteran. I have played many, many games to cap, played through countless dungeons, raids, quests, etc.

What have I run (my level at runtime): Twilight Arbor (58) and Caudecus’s Manor (71), both in story mode.

On to the feedback:

Very difficult content has it’s place in an MMO. I loved reading the previous post on these boards from Colin Johanson (response to thread: Do NOT nerf please) stating Arena Net’s stance on Explorable Dungeon difficulty – and why they don’t want to tune it down at the moment.

For a great example of a very similar system, you can look at World of Warcrafts heroic raiding. For those that don’t know, its a scaled and adjusted version of the top tier fights, only completable by the best of the best. Systems like this and Explorable dungeons are excellent, as they provide challenges for the very best players in the game.

As a long time MMO veteran, I was happy initially to hear that dungeons had a difficulty scaling mechanism. That is, Story Mode vs Explorable mode. As someone who has made the shift to a busier life, I don’t classify myself as the ‘best of the best’ like I once did in MMO gaming. The main reason for this is I simply don’t have time to spend learning every last nuance of the game mechanics.

However, in my first two experiences with Story Mode dungeons, I have been quite let down. Now, I completed both, and some would say that in and of itself is the end of any argument I could be forming here, but I disagree.

As someone who has experience in many MMO settings, when I saw a tiered difficulty dungeon system I expected that the one labeled “Story” would be pick-up-group friendly, provide some great additional story content, and in general not be of a frustrating difficulty. Sadly, that has just not been my experience thus far.

Let’s take a look at some concrete examples.

The second boss in Story Mode TA, who summons nightmare spiderlings in mass quantity. Our group of rag-tag adventurers found no way to complete this other than running in cirlces and continually resurecting at the waypoint – causing repair bills, frustration, and a total disconnect from feeling like the hero I thought my character was.

Several pulls into CM, you are ambushed in a room that looks like a dining hall. I had been willingly sending in Cola, my big ol’ bear, as the initial puller to keep damage low at the start of fights. In this ambush, Cola went in, I popped Signet of Stone to negate all damage for 10 seconds on him, about half the mobs looked at me, and in roughly 1.5 seconds I was full to dead (not downed, but dead).

There are other examples of similiar issues I have encountered, but these two sum up my main concerns which are:

1) Most of the bosses are being beaten by mass-resurrecting at waypoints
2) Whoever draws aggro initially or at the wrong time, eats dirt.
3) I didn’t have fun.

The third is honestly the most important to me. And its always the hardest for a developer, I am sure, as it is subjective. But here are my thoughts on ‘fun’:

Because fun is subjective, developers need to provide multiple types of fun and difficulties. Arena net has that system in place, with story vs. explorable vs. multiple paths in explorable. This system, in my opinion, simply needs to be utilized a bit more by tuning down story mode to allow PuG’s less frustration and more fun.

I’ll wrap up by saying: so far in guild wars 2, almost everything I come across fits with the mentality “MMO’s should be fun”. Story Mode dungeons are the only feature thus far, where I have instead hit a wall of frustration simply so I can see the story and progress my characters relationships.

I just ran CM story on my second character, having run it once before on my first character a couple of weeks ago.

It was easy before, probably too easy, but now it seems that trash packs of mobs have AoE knockdown and fear (which they chain on you whilst trying to revive or do anything useful). It’s not harder now, it’s just frustrating and NOT FUN.

The last boss is still a joke. How about Anet add interesting mechanics such as knockdown and fears to the bosses rather that 5+ trash mobs you have no hope of avoiding all at once. Maybe the problem was this was a PuG I ran it with but surely that’s what level 40 story dungeons are designed for?

I didn’t go there for loot or anything, just for fun as it’s around my current level. Probably I’ll just skip dungeons from now on and just wvw when I need a break from events.

…it’s just frustrating and NOT FUN….

This is my main concern, and what I tried to demonstrate in my original post. Frustratingly difficult is fine – for explorable mode. But my hope is that Story mode is for those of us that want to blast through it, have a ball being awesome, and see the story. In general, have fun.

I dunno, maybe I’m old fashioned but PvE content should be like a dance, difficult to learn the steps but rewarding and fun when you have mastered them.

At the moment PvE feels like I’m playing PvP, except the AI isn’t good enough to use proper strategy so it has to resort to spamming the same annoying mechanic over and over.

Does anyone know if ANet has released a stance on Story Mode dungeons?

To elaborate, I would just want to know who they intend the audience of Story Mode to be in order to more accurately decide if my opinions are justified or not.

I have to agree with the original post.
Today, i went in for the first time to a dungeon after the patch that “Implemented a system to reduce speed farming”, or whatever.
So here i have two new guildmates at lvl 45, who want to do some dungeons, it was late, so i said, hey, lats do CM, since its faster than AC.
So we went, first thing i notice is that 3s into the first boss, 3 of the team is downed. I scratch that to the inexperience of 2/5 of the team, and to the fact that i’m the only melee in the team.
We move on, on that dinning hall, full wipe. I NEVER died in CM before today, ever. OK, i thought, this is a bit tougher, which is kinda nice.
So moving on, with impossible groups of 8 mobs + champion, and apparently every other mob can knock you out like a billiard ball (and yes, thats how i felt in some fights , which was like knock, knock, knock, dead).
We finish the instance, i mean its hard, but not really impossible.
So we finish… What was my reward 1 silver 30 copper.
So yes, not only did arena net make dungeons stupidly hard, there is NO reward to repeating a story mode.
There goes the “you can go back to low levels and help out your friends and still get rewarded”.
I hope this bout of miss-management passes, i’ll attribute it to bad snacks on the dinning hall back at headquarters.
But Arena net needs to get their game up. I’m getting tired of being frustrated by what by all standards should be a great game.

Its just frustrating and not fun is exactly what GW2 dungeons are right now.

If you want ppl to get better – then you have to give them content that they enjoy doing. Like the OP – Im a player that has played MMOs for a very long time. PPL seem to forget that once even WOW had 1-2 hour long hard dungeons that were scaled for 10 ppl but 5 man group could do it and got better rewards because of it. But to prevent ppl from enjoying dungeons based on difficulty…. No developer in their right mind does that. And it has nothing to do with any buisness model. Its just stupid beyond belive.

I’m in exactly same situation as OP, but I can’t pitch in to this issue much anymore without starting to sound like zealot …if I don’t already do.

Preaching to the quire.

Seriously story mode needs to be PUGable and at the moment it is not. => Content to be ingnored.

I don’t think the problem is how hard(1) the dungeons are, but the learning curve.
There is NOTHING in GW2 PvE that can prepare a casual or less experienced players for what dungeons require. You hardly need to team up, cross-profession combos happen or not but it never matters, you don’t really need to dodge or change weapons or change skills.

And then BAM, casual player is thrown into a Dungeon and simply doesn’t understand what is happening.
This is an extremely silly design from ANets part. Yes, challenge(1) is good, but you can’t simply say “dungeons are for experienced players”, but never give less experienced players a chance to actually LEARN those things.

• hard vs challenge:* on a side note, the dungeons may be hard, but for all the wrong reasons and are not challenging. Buffing HP and damage of every mob as a main mechanincs of making hard content is not fun, not impressive and not challenging. Simply a boring speed bump that does not impress.

@ Cherrie:
I don’t think its the challange, but its the reward for that challange.
I mean things were hard, in the situation i mentioned earlier th 2 guys we took were new to dungeons, and since we were used to CM being easy peasy we took it with a bit of a “Leeroy Jenkins” mindset. We had several wipes, specially in the two situations where there’s a champion with serial knock-backs, plus a ton of adds with the same skills. I mean there’s no dodging that. But once i added Hallowed Ground to my bar, we made it out somewhat better.
GW2 makes you adapt and strategize, and i think that is great.
Problem is, after all that trouble, and 3x 5 silver repair bills, all i got at the end was 1 silver. So reward vs effort ratio is like negative 10.
It never was that rewarding, i mean getting 25-30 tokens per run with the cheapest dungeon items costing 120, it meant that just for a dungeons set we’d have to go 72 runs. Yes in the long run its not that much, but those tokens are pretty much the only reward from doing dungeons. And with the new harder, less rewarding mechanics, the game is losing end-game alternatives.
I haven’t gone to explore runs after the patch, so idk about those, though, but if those are fiasco too, then my end-game is getting reduced to either PVP (be it spvp or wvw) and farm craft materials to make my exotics, and finish low lvl areas, where i feel like i’m power leveling everyone i’m playing around with (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it feels kinda nice being that “overpowered” xp).

I’m not saying rewards are not a problem, I agree 100% that dungeon rewards are beyond silly, but it’s only a part of a generally failed design of dungeon system (lack of real challenge, artificial difficulty and unnecessary discouragement of less experienced players from trying it out or from acquiring the skills required to beat this part of content).

cherrie.8907:

I’m not saying rewards are not a problem, I agree 100% that dungeon rewards are beyond silly, but it’s only a part of a generally failed design of dungeon system (lack of real challenge, artificial difficulty and unnecessary discouragement of less experienced players from trying it out or from acquiring the skills required to beat this part of content).

Where in the hell did this term “Artificial difficulty” come from? Are you talking about isntagibs? Because those are avoidable and very obviously so. Large HP pools? Because those are overcome with dps numbers. Are you talking about seemingly “overly difficult” trash mobs, every pull in a real dungeon should be strategic, not an aoe smashface zergfest as most of the new mmo generation is used to. Please Mr. expert, explain to me with your professional knowledge of game design what is considered non -artificial difficulty? Because I fail to see your logic. To me it looks as though you are calling it that simply because you don’t know how to beat it, but, you are failing to see that once you know how to beat it and play as a team, it isn’t difficult at all, and in fact was meant to teach you through trial and error. I know that this concept trial and error may be a new way of learning things for some, as most nowadays are used to the Dora the Explorer form of teaching where your hand is held at all tiems and you are not forced to do any of the footwork yoruself. Unnecessary discouragement? You mean people who are not too bright thinking that if they keep trying the exact same thing over and over and over again without changing anything (considered diagnosably insane btw) are going to become discouraged? That cannot be helped.

First, story modes:
Tried AC dungeon, it was OK, quite fast, not rewarding loot.
Tried CM old version, super fun, fast, good loot, good money, good xp!
Tried TA, didn´t finish it because of insane wiping before second boss and I don´t have money for repairs to throw away.
Tried SE, 3 hours run, frustrating, white or blue rewards while I get rare-gold items from mobs over the world, those golems in Kudu fight… second golem took us 40min of gameplay and white drop from him!!! Blue, useless light armor piece for me as a guardian. Really rewarding…

I am not interested in wasting time for nothing. Dungeons are NOT fun, it´s waste of time, not rewarding, frustrating. I´ll keep playing PvE, events, etc.

Where in the hell did this term “Artificial difficulty” come from? Are you talking about isntagibs? Because those are avoidable and very obviously so. Large HP pools? Because those are overcome with dps numbers. Are you talking about seemingly “overly difficult” trash mobs, every pull in a real dungeon should be strategic, not an aoe smashface zergfest as most of the new mmo generation is used to. Please Mr. expert, explain to me with your professional knowledge of game design what is considered non -artificial difficulty? Because I fail to see your logic. To me it looks as though you are calling it that simply because you don’t know how to beat it, but, you are failing to see that once you know how to beat it and play as a team, it isn’t difficult at all, and in fact was meant to teach you through trial and error. I know that this concept trial and error may be a new way of learning things for some, as most nowadays are used to the Dora the Explorer form of teaching where your hand is held at all tiems and you are not forced to do any of the footwork yoruself. Unnecessary discouragement? You mean people who are not too bright thinking that if they keep trying the exact same thing over and over and over again without changing anything (considered diagnosably insane btw) are going to become discouraged? That cannot be helped.

Firstly, and off topic, I’d appreciate if you don’t call people insane, insult their intelligence, etc. Let’s keep it clean…

Secondly, and on topic, each point you’ve made in the quoted post is an opinion, just as ours are opinions. You seem to enjoy difficult, trial and error content. That is A-OK! If you read through my original post, you’ll see I am in full support of tiered difficulties.

But some of us, and I hope a majority, either don’t enjoy the gameplay style you’ve mentioned or don’t have time for it (or both). I do want to smash the keyboard and come up with modest rewards. Why? Because its a video game – this isn’t my job, my marriage, my mortgage – I want to have fun.

Most of us in this thread have stuck on the theme of Fun vs. Frustrating. If dungeons aren’t frustrating for you – great! Then state your opinion. But Do it without harassing other members on these boards.

Also, I would ask – why do you take issue with story mode being made easier and explorable mode being left difficult for folks like you?

Draaq Cz.9642:

First, story modes:
Tried AC dungeon, it was OK, quite fast, not rewarding loot.
Tried CM old version, super fun, fast, good loot, good money, good xp!
Tried TA, didn´t finish it because of insane wiping before second boss and I don´t have money for repairs to throw away.
Tried SE, 3 hours run, frustrating, white or blue rewards while I get rare-gold items from mobs over the world, those golems in Kudu fight… second golem took us 40min of gameplay and white drop from him!!! Blue, useless light armor piece for me as a guardian. Really rewarding…

I am not interested in wasting time for nothing. Dungeons are NOT fun, it´s waste of time, not rewarding, frustrating. I´ll keep playing PvE, events, etc.

My feelings exactly Draaq – though with slightly less emphasis on gear in my opinion. I would do the story mode dungeons for no reward – if I could do them with a lot less dying and a lot more FUN.

All these bosses have a tactic to them. The idea is to figure out how to do it. The spider boss for instance, the spiders are snarable and stunable. With swiftness you can easily kite them and down the boss. Hell when I did TA I practicly solod it without dying, (I think I died once actually) and it was a pug group.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

All these bosses have a tactic to them. The idea is to figure out how to do it. The spider boss for instance, the spiders are snarable and stunable. With swiftness you can easily kite them and down the boss. Hell when I did TA I practicly solod it without dying, (I think I died once actually) and it was a pug group.

I am not doubting that they have tactics that could be used by very skilled or coordinated groups / players. The main point of my original post is to say, in short, that coordinated group play or advanced tactics should be reserved for Explorable mode.

Let those of us that want to blast through something and see the story, receive minor rewards, etc. have story mode.

Several posters, yourself included, have replied but no one has yet to address my main point and give some sort of counter argument. Who would it hurt if story mode was made easier, and explorable mode kept difficult for the ‘hard-core’ folks?

I think it could only help to tune down story mode. Many casual players, who make up the majority not the minority, enjoyed being able to find a pickup group to run through a story mode dungeon. Its nice to be able to run through something like that, but not have to get wiped out repeatedly. Also, it really isn’t fun when your the lowest level in a pickup group (50+) and you still manage to pull most of the aggro. This means as it is currently tuned, I have to attack and then run my butt off, and return to igniting once the other team members have gotten enough aggro that I won’t get one shotted by all of the trash mobs.

I run mostly blues and greens with a couple of rates. At level 40-60 most people arent going to waste the amount of gold required to outfit them selfs in all rares at level.

You want to suffer, get frustrated, ect by the “challenge”? Great, do it in explore mode, let’s make story mode a bit more possible for pickup groups, especially for those of us with really busy real lives. ( Full Time College student with a part time job six days a week )

Posted from my iPhone, please let’s not pick on the typos and focus on the discussion.

I believe Voxnor has hit the nail on the head with this post. I am not the “Hardcore” gamer I once was and have a full time job working for a Police Department. I do not have time to put a pug together and teach them all the pulls while wiping on every pull.

AC for example, I believe it is way to hard in story mode for it being the first instance anyone runs into. Because of AC I have put the game on the shelf for a little while and started to play other games. If I cannot pug a regular 5 man instance in story mode, were story mode is supposed to be the easiest mode. Then maybe this game is not for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this game is really good in other areas but it is lacking in the “Fun” area for causal gamers like myself. I love to do instances but do not have the time to do a 2 hour grind.

Story modes don’t have to be ridiculously hard AND give poor rewards. I thought they were supposed to be ‘introductory’ in nature? What part of ‘omg 8 mobs just instagibbed me’ is introductory? And sub 1s rewards for completion to boot… I understand you don’t want them to be ‘farmed’, but this is removing many people’s desire to do them at all.

I do agree about the ‘unfun’ in some cases. For example: the stupid blossom things in TA.
They are not hard. They are annoying, frustrating, and pointless…. but not hard. And definitely detract from the ‘fun’ of the instance. It would be fine if they only spawned once, you killed them, learned to look for them, lesson learned. But NO, the stupid things respawn at random times, often during fights, for no apparent reason, and kill you when otherwise you would have been quite fine, with no warning. This combined with thekitten lack of waypoints in the instance is NOT FUN. It’s annoying; not hard, just really, really poorly designed.

AC is actually fun. I like most of the fights. I’ll even argue that the ranger boss guy is a bit too easy. Last boss is perfect in difficulty. Twins are overtuned (mechanic is fine, their damage is not). The necro chick is too easy if you have people that know how condition removal works and have 2 guardians with 2 stabilities each. Trash probably doesn’t need to be as annoying as it is, but it’s not overly hard.

I haven’t done CM since the change but everything after the golem was probably too easy. I don’t think trash should be the hardest part of an instance. Bosses should have unique mechanics and challenges, not just be meatier versions of trash.

I think the last boss of every instance should be the most challenging, and have increased chances of dropping something good, even if you’ve already done the instance.

I agree with everything Voxnor.1657 has said.

Krodunk.5928:

I agree with everything Voxnor.1657 has said.

Thanks Krodunk, glad to hear it. I am just trying to make sure this side of the coin is heard.

I worry sometimes that most players who would agree with me and you, are not the kind of player who frequents forums or attempts to provide feedback on development direction.

I agree with what Voxnar has said as well. As to people farming them, they have introduced the anti-farm mechanic for dungeons, that shouldn’t even be an issue. I am all for Story mode being easier and letting hardcore mode be for Explorable.

Yep I gotta add my vote in favour of Voxnar’s statements above. Spot on wrt Story Mode.

I wonder if ArenaNet will ever comment..?

For all the reasons listed here, difficulty, not fun, too costly, etc., I do not plan to run dungeons at all now. I really wanted to when I first bought the game. I run with a great bunch of “casual” players most of the time in other games and static groups for raids. We have a blast in those even if I am not the best in the group…I still have fun and actually do learn from those experiences.

However, I really am not inclined to even try in GW2. Judging from all the posts and all the experiences from the group I run with, who have basically decided it is not fun nor profitable to do dungeons in GW2…so my vote is “not at this time.”

Leper.7853:

Yep I gotta add my vote in favour of Voxnar’s statements above. Spot on wrt Story Mode.

I wonder if ArenaNet will ever comment..?

I wont’ lie and say I wasn’t hoping for an ANet response with their official stance on Story Mode difficulty (perhaps similar to the one they posted about explorable difficulty and their stance on that).

But – rest assured – I imagine this type of feedback does make it to the write people even if we don’t see official responses saying as much.

I think in a few month they will tune the story mode down, because new players would then not find groups anymore to do them, since they are not worth is anyway, but then almost everyone who was interested in them have played them and is not willing to go back to that kitty.

The bottom line is that dungeons are, for the majority of players, NOT FUN in their current form, and what’s more, not rewarding enough to make the 3 hour long kamikaze waypoint boss banzais worth it.

I don’t understand the philopshy behind creating content that only a few selective hardcore players will enjoy. Here’s how I see it: tons of hard work went into creating the artwork, the story lines, the boss mechanics, etc. for each dungeon, so why not let the casual crowd complete it too?

With that in mind, I agree with the OP’s stance that Story Mode should be tuned down to make it more accesible to PUBs. And yes, I understand that dungeons are supposed to be difficult here, but that doesn’t mean they have to be exclusive. ANet has wisely created a tiered system with Explorable Mode, which can be left as is for those looking for cool loot, a unique challenge, and in-game bragging rights.

I’m not asking for a loot pinatta stuffed with purple epics for everyone and pokemon pets to collect like a certain other MMO. All I want is to experience the content, play the game, and have fun while doing so. After completing AC yesterday with a bank-breaking repair bill (two words: the lovers), I myself will not bother with any more in Guild Wars 2, despite the fact that I generally enjoy 5-man group content.

Please fix the dungeons, because right now I feel they are broken.

I agree with this thread completely. Iv pretty much stopped trying to give dungeons a chance and have settled on them just not being fun. Not only are they not fun, but they aren’t even worth it to do even if they were fun so Id STILL complain even if the annoyance factor was reduce to zero.

Have never failed to complete a story mode dungeon with pick up groups.

This is not a typical MMO. You can not sit there standing still feeling all god like and powerful while everything dies around you. If this is the experience you are looking for – you will never find it in this game.

You must dodge. You most think critically.

Take for example the lovers fight. Oh look there are boulders everywhere. Oh look you are warned that you need to keep them apart. Oh look… I’m the only one in most groups to bother with trying to separate them. The fight is EZ peazy once you do that.

Alex.9432:

Have never failed to complete a story mode dungeon with pick up groups.

This is not a typical MMO. You can not sit there standing still feeling all god like and powerful while everything dies around you. If this is the experience you are looking for – you will never find it in this game.

You must dodge. You most think critically.

“I did it without having any issues, so I can only assume that everyone that’s having trouble is bad and doing it wrong.”

Nice attitude.

Efaicia.3672:

cherrie.8907:

I’m not saying rewards are not a problem, I agree 100% that dungeon rewards are beyond silly, but it’s only a part of a generally failed design of dungeon system (lack of real challenge, artificial difficulty and unnecessary discouragement of less experienced players from trying it out or from acquiring the skills required to beat this part of content).

Where in the hell did this term “Artificial difficulty” come from? Are you talking about isntagibs? Because those are avoidable and very obviously so. Large HP pools? Because those are overcome with dps numbers. Are you talking about seemingly “overly difficult” trash mobs, every pull in a real dungeon should be strategic, not an aoe smashface zergfest as most of the new mmo generation is used to. Please Mr. expert, explain to me with your professional knowledge of game design what is considered non -artificial difficulty? Because I fail to see your logic. To me it looks as though you are calling it that simply because you don’t know how to beat it, but, you are failing to see that once you know how to beat it and play as a team, it isn’t difficult at all, and in fact was meant to teach you through trial and error. I know that this concept trial and error may be a new way of learning things for some, as most nowadays are used to the Dora the Explorer form of teaching where your hand is held at all tiems and you are not forced to do any of the footwork yoruself. Unnecessary discouragement? You mean people who are not too bright thinking that if they keep trying the exact same thing over and over and over again without changing anything (considered diagnosably insane btw) are going to become discouraged? That cannot be helped.

I get your viewpoint, and truly I can understand your frustration at the complaining. Even I hastily condemned the system at first but, I still think that they could introduce things a little better each time instead of the “expensive” trial and error that’s all, I’m not asking they tune things WAY WAY down to the point of tedium, but instead introduce things properly instead of just letting you get instagibbed by them, THATS ALL.

Despite the frustration, would it be too much of me to ask you, that you try and encourage people to see things your way by perhaps gently guiding them to some rational compromises, instead of giving out to them?

The biggest error I see is people thinking that their time in other mmo’s makes them veterans which can instantly pick up GW2 and annihilate dungeons, when sadly your pet is NOT a tank, your thief is NOT useless in terms of team tactics, your guardian is NOT a healer (as such) and your warriors are not tanks or dps and could even be ranged.

sirrell.6712:

I dunno, maybe I’m old fashioned but PvE content should be like a dance, difficult to learn the steps but rewarding and fun when you have mastered them.

At the moment PvE feels like I’m playing PvP, except the AI isn’t good enough to use proper strategy so it has to resort to spamming the same annoying mechanic over and over.

This 100 times over. PVE is a laughable joke in this game, it is either a zerg fest or a 5 man party that hits a boss till that boss dies. No tactics what so ever.

Efaicia.3672:

cherrie.8907:

I’m not saying rewards are not a problem, I agree 100% that dungeon rewards are beyond silly, but it’s only a part of a generally failed design of dungeon system (lack of real challenge, artificial difficulty and unnecessary discouragement of less experienced players from trying it out or from acquiring the skills required to beat this part of content).

Where in the hell did this term “Artificial difficulty” come from? Are you talking about isntagibs? Because those are avoidable and very obviously so. Large HP pools? Because those are overcome with dps numbers. Are you talking about seemingly “overly difficult” trash mobs, every pull in a real dungeon should be strategic, not an aoe smashface zergfest as most of the new mmo generation is used to. Please Mr. expert, explain to me with your professional knowledge of game design what is considered non -artificial difficulty? Because I fail to see your logic. To me it looks as though you are calling it that simply because you don’t know how to beat it, but, you are failing to see that once you know how to beat it and play as a team, it isn’t difficult at all, and in fact was meant to teach you through trial and error. I know that this concept trial and error may be a new way of learning things for some, as most nowadays are used to the Dora the Explorer form of teaching where your hand is held at all tiems and you are not forced to do any of the footwork yoruself. Unnecessary discouragement? You mean people who are not too bright thinking that if they keep trying the exact same thing over and over and over again without changing anything (considered diagnosably insane btw) are going to become discouraged? That cannot be helped.

I’ts not a crime to have a different opinion you know. Also It’s pretty much general consensus that the story mode dungeons are pretty bad all things considered. At least for PuG groups.