Guild Wars 2

Thematic Elements

Boss Mechanics
•Multiple phases. Phases should add or change abilities, such as with Lupicus.
•Dynamic movement. Abilities that cause the boss to charge, retreat, or sidestep instead of standing still and attacking.
•Duo bosses. Simple mechanics on each boss that are easy to learn can be made difficult to fight when you need to watch more than 1 boss.
•Environmental hazards. Environmental hazards should punish the players if ignored, but shouldn’t turn the fight into a slogfest.

Non-Boss Mechanics
•Flanking. Monsters that elect to back up or circle around players instead of walking forward into them.

Gameplay/Flow
•Gradual increasing difficulty. Newer dungeons that are lower level can have easier mechanics to learn. Newer dungeons that are high level should have more intricate mechanics. Within the dungeons themselves, introducing mechanics by themselves gives players a chance to learn them before fighting a boss that uses many previously introduced mechanics in tandem.
•Non-linear dungeons. AC story presented 3 bosses at the same time, and you could choose which boss to fight in which order, or even split up to fight the bosses.

•Persistent chat logs. Keep chat messages even after leaving party and changing zones.
•Block listed players cannot join the party. Ideally, any LFG message would be filtered so they can’t even see it.
•Increasing requirement to Votekick to “Majority Rules.” When in a party of 3, 2 people can kick the 3rd. When in a party of 4 or 5, it requires 3 people to kick another member.

Rsvd.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

I’ll leave it up to you all as to organizing your feedback threads (whether it’s updates/fixes to existing dungeons or a thread to brainstorm about new content). Whatever you all decide to do as a group, I’ll provide that feedback to the dev team.

Preface
Hi all. I contemplated deeply about whether to make a thread that would be a “brainstorm about new content”. There are a lot of dungeon forumers who feel that given that given the most recent announcements as well as ANet’s past inactions that creating a suggestion thread as this might be pointless, perhaps a waste of time.

There’s a saying, though, that “time wasted in enjoyment is not time wasted.” I simply ask that if you choose to participate in this thread, engage in it simply to enjoy talking about what could make a dungeon great, and not to worry about what ANet will or will not do with this thread.

That said, the purpose of this thread is to collect ideas and boil them down to a bullet point list of what specific elements could potentially be added into a future dungeon to make it great. Additionally, I will be putting subsections with bullet point lists of elements people feel detract from a dungeon run.

Thematic Elements
This section deals with storyline, characters, and motivations. How might you go about integrating a dungeon into the world of Tyria? What makes a character likeable, and what makes a character annoying? (I’m looking at you, Varra.) Why does this dungeon exist?

Boss Mechanics
What makes a boss fight engaging? Are there elements that an “average” person can learn easily, but master only with great practice? What makes boss fights suck, and how would you avoid that pitfall?

Non-Boss Mechanics
This section includes “trash” mobs. If you were adding trash mobs into a dungeon, why would you put them there? Are they loot piñatas? Are they elite guards that bar entry to the next boss unless you’ve practiced skipping them?

I’m also including non-combat puzzles in here. I considered giving non-combat puzzles their own section, but I think a lot of responses that would go in that section would be “don’t put those in dungeons.”

Gameplay/Flow
What gameplay mechanics would you want to see in a dungeon? What elements improve the flow of the dungeon?

I think there are some popular changes for grouping:

Don’t automatically close an instance when the party leader leaves.
Party chat should remain in the chat window after leaving a group.
Blocked players should not be able to join your groups through the LFG system.

An update that would require less effort but would improve gameplay is perhaps upgrading the mechanics of NPCs and reducing their ridicolously high health pool?

Do you have suggestions how to improve the NPC mechanics?

Boss and non-boss mechanics

Mob behavior / AI and subtle movements (mobs who can backstep/sidestep as well as maintain his zone (reach and step-in range). When done right this can alleviate stack and nuke approach to most things. The AI can provide dynamic approach to encounters rather than a procedure.

Also the need for flanking enemies and positioning (if bots can detect terrain I’m sure you guys can do it better); put them beside cover and a little spread and you could see a fresh take on combat.

Less gimmicks, more mobs who know how to fight (does not mean 1 shot difficulty – encounters can be casual but still enjoyable). It’s about time we have mobs and bosses that does not have primitive AI (see enemy>run straight and spam all skills). On replay value a lot of it can come from bosses and encounters when done properly, I can name a few games that only has bosses and does it well.

Gameplay/flow

I think adding puzzles into the dungeons like they did with Aether was a step in the right direction, they just went a little overboard with some of them. Adding them to the existing ones could add some variation and make them feel more than skip to next boss, skip to next boss.

Dynamic events in dungeons
You guys talked about this during development as a way to keep them feeling somewhat fresh, and I think this idea needs to be revisited. Make them random so we can get some variation.

Boss and non-boss mechanics

You guys have learned a lot since launch, the new behaviors we see with bosses in Dry Top are a great example of things dungeon bosses should do. Give them movement skills that they use no matter if you’re melee range or not, make them move. The Colocal Queen has some great mechanics to her.

Stooperdale.3560:

Don’t automatically close an instance when the party leader leaves.
Party chat should remain in the chat window after leaving a group.
Blocked players should not be able to join your groups through the LFG system.

Party chat and blocked players I totally agree with. I think the party instance owner issue is a lot deeper and way more entangled than we suspect and not so easily resolved.

koen.4729:

An update that would require less effort but would improve gameplay is perhaps upgrading the mechanics of NPCs and reducing their ridicolously high health pool?

Any ideas on specific mechanics that could be upgrades?

Dramen Maidria.1034:

You guys have learned a lot since launch, the new behaviors we see with bosses in Dry Top are a great example of things dungeon bosses should do

Give. Retal. To. Everything. !.

frifox.5283:

Dramen Maidria.1034:

You guys have learned a lot since launch, the new behaviors we see with bosses in Dry Top are a great example of things dungeon bosses should do

Give. Retal. To. Everything. !.

Didn’t See one Boss at Dry Top with retal.

Bread.7516:

The AI can provide dynamic approach to encounters rather than a procedure.

Would you suggest linking movement to some form of RNG if it isn’t procedural?

Bread.7516:

Also the need for flanking enemies and positioning (if bots can detect terrain I’m sure you guys can do it better); put them beside cover and a little spread and you could see a fresh take on combat.

I think there’s a challenge aspect to programming mobs to incentivize flanking. It certainly exists in game. (High lvl mossman incentivizes you to flank while you melee him.) Do you have any specific mechanics that would be part of a mob mechanic that would encourage flanking?

Bread.7516:

Less gimmicks, more mobs who know how to fight (does not mean 1 shot difficulty – encounters can be casual but still enjoyable). It’s about time we have mobs and bosses that does not have primitive AI (see enemy>run straight and spam all skills). On replay value a lot of it can come from bosses and encounters when done properly, I can name a few games that only has bosses and does it well.

I think “gimmicks” can be a very general turn. You could say that the Molten Berserker’s Shockwave is a gimmick, and the Firestorm’s AoE fire circles are also gimmicks, but when you put them together, they add a dimension of difficulty that each one alone couldn’t do.

I think maybe you’re looking for something that has extreme depth of combat, yes? “Easy to learn, hard to master.” Recognizing the shockwave is easy, but being able to dodge the shockwave while worrying about the firestorm makes it more challenging.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Gameplay/flow

I think adding puzzles into the dungeons like they did with Aether was a step in the right direction, they just went a little overboard with some of them. Adding them to the existing ones could add some variation and make them feel more than skip to next boss, skip to next boss.

Cool, okay so non-combat puzzles aren’t totally off the table. What elements of the puzzles in aetherpath do you think ANet got right, and which ones do you think were more annoying and not worthwhile to have in dungeons?

Dramen Maidria.1034:

You guys have learned a lot since launch, the new behaviors we see with bosses in Dry Top are a great example of things dungeon bosses should do. Give them movement skills that they use no matter if you’re melee range or not, make them move. The Colocal Queen has some great mechanics to her.

Okay, I think this is something that Bread touched upon in his post as well. Sounds good, you guys!

To be honest remaining dungeon difficulties/bosses should stay where they are. I know in this forum most of us are very experienced and knowledgeable with dungeon boss encounters but based on my experience with PUGS there are very few who understands how or why certain groups do certain thing. Basically SE p1 and p3, Cof P1 and P2 and AC p1~3 are very well known and embraced by most, but other paths are avoided or done for the sake of dungeon master title.
For TA up or forward path, majority of groups already fail to kill the first giant wurm due to lack of understanding/DPS. There were many times where I had to restart the whole dungeon in order to finally progress to path selection dialogue.
CM is avoided due to complicated map plus lack of desirable skins, HOTW is due to underwater combat, and COE and ARah because of high learning curbs.
I’m certainly not saying that all these dungeon paths are perfect, but since GW2 is a game catered to casuals, difficulty bar should remain where it is.
What we need is better reward/incentive to redo dungeons other than for golds, or new dungeons for new challenges. Since ANET does not have a dungeon team at the moment, focus on the reward side with new skins and fairer gold

TheFamster.7806:

To be honest remaining dungeon difficulties/bosses should stay where they are.

The purpose of this thread isn’t to discuss what we’d like to see in the current dungeons changed. The purpose of this thread is to brainstorm ideas for potential future developed dungeons.

TheFamster.7806:

What we need is better reward/incentive to redo dungeons other than for golds, or new dungeons for new challenges. Since ANET does not have a dungeon team at the moment, focus on the reward side with new skins and fairer gold

This might be something to bring up in the other dungeon suggestion threads, or even the original thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Very-disappointing-news-for-you-guys/page/6#post4328813

DigitalKirin.9714:

Bread.7516:

The AI can provide dynamic approach to encounters rather than a procedure.

Would you suggest linking movement to some form of RNG if it isn’t procedural?

When I said “procedural” I meant how we run dungeons – It feels like a procedure rather than fighting. A well developed AI would alleviate a side of this and it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. It also needs movement as a complement.

Also yes, some movements and decisions could involve a little RNG. Example would be like if boss is pinned to a wall it puts it in a defensive or cornered state and has an increased chance for some options such as AoE launch/simple sidestep/directional rush attack. With these examples if he opts for aoe launch players can dodge and punish while sidestep is purely defensive repsitioning, directional rush is a combination of both.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Bread.7516:

Also the need for flanking enemies and positioning (if bots can detect terrain I’m sure you guys can do it better); put them beside cover and a little spread and you could see a fresh take on combat.

I think there’s a challenge aspect to programming mobs to incentivize flanking. It certainly exists in game. (High lvl mossman incentivizes you to flank while you melee him.) Do you have any specific mechanics that would be part of a mob mechanic that would encourage flanking?

I think you misunderstood this one, I’m mainly focusing about the AI and mob behavior and not players. The goal is for players to react differently, and in-due time might have a macro strategy but the fighting itself would involve subtle individual decisions depending on mob patterns.

I mentioned bots and how they detect terrain because it can add an element of depth for mob AI and their decision on how or where to position themselves. Imagine if ranged mobs “accidentally” set up their positions where their flanks are covered to avoid getting hit with guardian GS5 all at the same time, the guard can think quick and find a sweet spot that captures them all or the party can split to avoid being aoe’d.

With your example of players flanking a boss, I can think of a few things that can provide incentive to this but not one single mechanic. It;s more of an approach on how to design bosses to make it less RTS-like and more action-like. It deals with decision making which also ties into basic fighting movements. I don;t want to get into it right now since it;s going to be long.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Bread.7516:

Less gimmicks, more mobs who know how to fight (does not mean 1 shot difficulty – encounters can be casual but still enjoyable). It’s about time we have mobs and bosses that does not have primitive AI (see enemy>run straight and spam all skills). On replay value a lot of it can come from bosses and encounters when done properly, I can name a few games that only has bosses and does it well.

I think “gimmicks” can be a very general turn. You could say that the Molten Berserker’s Shockwave is a gimmick, and the Firestorm’s AoE fire circles are also gimmicks, but when you put them together, they add a dimension of difficulty that each one alone couldn’t do.

I think maybe you’re looking for something that has extreme depth of combat, yes? “Easy to learn, hard to master.” Recognizing the shockwave is easy, but being able to dodge the shockwave while worrying about the firestorm makes it more challenging.

I used the term gimmick very loosely. An example of it could be the clockheart in aetherpath and the hologram + electric floors; sometimes it’s fine i guess but it shouldn’t be the focus at all. Worst gimmick is breachmaker LS boss, that was just terrible.

Berserker and firestorm is ok in my book except berserker’s animation is terrible and not indicative of the range on where his fists land, he looks like a child flailing his arms with a phantom range; not very intuitive.

You’re right with the “easy to learn, hard to master” but I don’t think it needs extreme depth in combat, maybe extreme in comparison to what we have now. One element I keep coming back to is zoning (like in fighting games/good action games). A basic element is maintaining your step-in reach and knowing when to throw a few jabs or when it is worth throwing a heavy attack. The amateur will be very cautious and sometimes the window to attack is short that he cannot capitalize on it maybe due to slow reaction or bad positioning (too far), the skilled player or experienced will punish all the misses the boss makes and step out just in time to avoid the next incoming attack (basically a counter and backstep, or sidestep then launch another attack).

As abstract as this is I hope I made sense. To make it more concrete I would need to spend a lot of time and provide something similar to a draft.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Gameplay/flow

I think adding puzzles into the dungeons like they did with Aether was a step in the right direction, they just went a little overboard with some of them. Adding them to the existing ones could add some variation and make them feel more than skip to next boss, skip to next boss.

Cool, okay so non-combat puzzles aren’t totally off the table. What elements of the puzzles in aetherpath do you think ANet got right, and which ones do you think were more annoying and not worthwhile to have in dungeons?

While this may be opening a can of worms I think that a small discussion of what was right and wrong with the Aether path is worthwhile. I think Colsey said it best so I’ll just quote him

The reason it flopped is because it strictly requires co-ordination, simple as.

Get a group of five random fools together and expecting them to co-ordinate without voice communications, a willingness to even communicate via party chat and the internet being devoid of video guides and there being no “common knowledge” pug strategies is basically impossible.

It’s what explorables were originally meant to be – something an organised group will clear but if you lack that, well you won’t clear it. The problem is the rewards for it don’t justify the challenge – and the fact that it takes like half an hour to complete for 2g, tokens and 0.000000000001% chance to get a skin is also why people don’t bother.

Think of it like Arah p4, except with a bunch of unskippable cutscenes. It’s like a black hole for pug tactics so nobody bothers with it, there’s barely any footage of it, and what footage there is is stuff performed by high-end guilds doing things you’ll never get in a pug.

What I want to focus on is this is what we were told dungeons would be during development. They just went a bit overboard with some things.

The ooze part is actually a great idea, but the spawning mobs being ranged attackers is what pushes the difficulty level too far for a lot of people, and more importantly creates an emphasis on the need for reflects to complete the puzzle. Make the mobs melee and you actually have the perfect level of difficulty: requires coordination but does not create a reliance on mechanics not every class can bring.

Slick and Sparki is a great boss fight, there are mechanics involved where you can’t just stack to win, there are active mechanics to the fight that requires everyone to pay attention. We need to see things like this more often.

Hologram generators meant you actually had to pay attention to where you fought, and potential need for kiting or pulling skills.

The security room is overboard, it can be an exceedingly frustrating puzzle that just feels difficult for difficult’s sake.

I thought the clockheart boss was well done for the most part, you had to pay attention to the environment, and you had to actively work to keep his shield down. It also was punishing to mindless berskerkers which is good for the game overall.

Bread.7516:

When I said “procedural” I meant how we run dungeons – It feels like a procedure rather than fighting. A well developed AI would alleviate a side of this and it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. It also needs movement as a complement.

Ah, I see. You’re right, I was under the impression that you were discussing how monsters have predictable attacks.

Bread.7516:

Also yes, some movements and decisions could involve a little RNG. Example would be like if boss is pinned to a wall it puts it in a defensive or cornered state and has an increased chance for some options such as AoE launch/simple sidestep/directional rush attack. With these examples if he opts for aoe launch players can dodge and punish while sidestep is purely defensive repsitioning, directional rush is a combination of both.

This sounds good.

Bread.7516:

I think you misunderstood this one, I’m mainly focusing about the AI and mob behavior and not players. The goal is for players to react differently, and in-due time might have a macro strategy but the fighting itself would involve subtle individual decisions depending on mob patterns.

Okay, so monsters in the dungeon should work on flanking the players, if I am reading correctly.

Bread.7516:

I used the term gimmick very loosely. An example of it could be the clockheart in aetherpath and the hologram + electric floors; sometimes it’s fine i guess but it shouldn’t be the focus at all. Worst gimmick is breachmaker LS boss, that was just terrible.

Berserker and firestorm is ok in my book except berserker’s animation is terrible and not indicative of the range on where his fists land, he looks like a child flailing his arms with a phantom range; not very intuitive.

You’re right with the “easy to learn, hard to master” but I don’t think it needs extreme depth in combat, maybe extreme in comparison to what we have now. One element I keep coming back to is zoning (like in fighting games/good action games). A basic element is maintaining your step-in reach and knowing when to throw a few jabs or when it is worth throwing a heavy attack. The amateur will be very cautious and sometimes the window to attack is short that he cannot capitalize on it maybe due to slow reaction or bad positioning (too far), the skilled player or experienced will punish all the misses the boss makes and step out just in time to avoid the next incoming attack (basically a counter and backstep, or sidestep then launch another attack).

As abstract as this is I hope I made sense. To make it more concrete I would need to spend a lot of time and provide something similar to a draft.

It does make sense. The consideration for me is how to effectively turn it into bullet points, haha.

maha.7902:

The reason it flopped is because it strictly requires co-ordination, simple as.

Get a group of five random fools together and expecting them to co-ordinate without voice communications, a willingness to even communicate via party chat and the internet being devoid of video guides and there being no “common knowledge” pug strategies is basically impossible.
It’s what explorables were originally meant to be – something an organised group will clear but if you lack that, well you won’t clear it. The problem is the rewards for it don’t justify the challenge – and the fact that it takes like half an hour to complete for 2g, tokens and 0.000000000001% chance to get a skin is also why people don’t bother.

Think of it like Arah p4, except with a bunch of unskippable cutscenes. It’s like a black hole for pug tactics so nobody bothers with it, there’s barely any footage of it, and what footage there is is stuff performed by high-end guilds doing things you’ll never get in a pug.

Yeah, I saw this too, Dramen, and I agree with this as well. Part of the reward aspect is considering how it compares to the other dungeons. You could spend 1 hour doing Aetherpath, or you could spend 1 hour doing 4 other instances.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Slick and Sparki is a great boss fight, there are mechanics involved where you can’t just stack to win, there are active mechanics to the fight that requires everyone to pay attention. We need to see things like this more often.

I think seeing duo bosses tends to multiply the difficulty compared to if you had to deal with a single boss on their own. Consider the “duo” bosses we currently have: Sparki/Slick, Mai Trin, Molten Duo, Hunter/Crusher.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

The security room is overboard, it can be an exceedingly frustrating puzzle that just feels difficult for difficult’s sake.

Right, I think this is one thing that we as players don’t want to see in dungeons, which would be a puzzle that would be difficult just for difficulty’s sake.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

I thought the clockheart boss was well done for the most part, you had to pay attention to the environment, and you had to actively work to keep his shield down. It also was punishing to mindless berskerkers which is good for the game overall.

Bosses with environmental hazards seem to be pretty well done as well… though some can also be annoying in a bad way.

Both versions of the Shaman in fractals, for example, are both good and bad in regards to environmental hazards. The first version of the shaman is annoying in a bad way, in my opinion because of the falling rocks. They won’t kill you, but they’ll knock you down and drag out the fight. The Legendary Shaman has the lava pits in the island as well as the hot foot effect to worry about. I think both of these are decent environmental effects because they’ll punish you if you disregard them without slowing the pace of the fight down.

There is a lot of frustration when doing dungeons, so that’s why the majority of people generally don’t do them, and this is the major problem.

The problems start early on when you hit lvl 30. New players go inside a dungeon not knowing anything about their classes or skills, because there isn’t a coherent introduction on how to play a role. Not only this, but the new trait system makes it even worse, when players are missing their traits.

The problem continues even at 80, when players want to gear up. All these different stats are thrown at them and they don’t know which ones are to be used. You will be surprised how many players have mixed stats on different gear pieces.

To be honest, they need to introduce specific roles instead of some vague concept of roles that are based on stats, such as Beserker, Carrion, etc.

A grouping of these stats into specific roles would be ideal.
If you take a look at the wiki, it already does this, but it should be presented in game.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

In that chart, there’s Major attributes, such as Power, Precision, Toughness, etc. These Major attributes could be grouped up into roles, where the name could be inside the tooltip that is on gear and weapons.

The 4 Power attributes could be DPS.
The 3 Healing attributes could be Support-Healer.
The Boon & Condition Duration attributes could be Support, or whatever.
It doesn’t have to be these names (DPS and Support). I’m just using them as examples.

This would be a great first step in getting players to understand the different roles in GW2. After this, Anet could start tweaking the A.I. to react to these different roles. They would also need to re-work the rewards system, which is another reason most people don’t do them.

Some of you will think that this will set up some kind of “trinity” or meta-game, but at this point, it doesn’t really matter when everyone is using 1 role anyway, and that’s Beserker, which is actually more limited than trinity MMOs.

The other problems that lead to frustration are 1-hit death mechanics from bosses. That’s a terrible way to introduce players to your dungeons, when they haven’t even learned how to play through them and learn the boss mechanics. That kind of stuff should be reserved for certain explorable dungeons and fractals only.

Some of you will brag that it’s easy for you, but a gradual system in difficulty pleases everyone.

More problems with the Party System.
The intentions of waiting at waypoints to zone in, was probably good, but it doesn’t work. I’ve seen many players leave the group because they didn’t have any waypoints in the zone where the dungeon was located. A quick fix would be to have every waypoint at the dungeons unlocked, once they receive the mail to go there. Those waypoints should never be contested either.

The problem of Vote To Kick needs to be addressed also. There is no reason why 2 players can kick someone. It should always be the majority needed.

The problem of the Dungeon Starter needs to be addressed too. The group leader should always have priority of starting the dungeon. They are the ones who formed the group, so it should be their story instance, unless they are given an ability to pass leadership to someone else. It works in Personal Story, but not here, which is odd.

The final, and most important, is the way groups are disbanded. No group members should ever be kicked out because the Dungeon Starter leaves early, robbing everyone of their achievements and loot. It works in WvW, but not here, which is also odd. When players get kicked out of WvW or disconnected, everyone is still grouped.

All these suggestions have been discussed ad nauseum since release, which is kind of surprising that Anet doesn’t know about them, and asks the community to start discussions about them. Do they even have a list? Even if the priority is low, there should be a list. I just can’t believe it if they didn’t.

DigitalKirin.9714:

TheFamster.7806:

To be honest remaining dungeon difficulties/bosses should stay where they are.

The purpose of this thread isn’t to discuss what we’d like to see in the current dungeons changed. The purpose of this thread is to brainstorm ideas for potential future developed dungeons.

Yes, but wouldn’t that system still be the same for future ones, unless they wanted to scrap the old one? This is why i find this development discussion somewhat odd, since we don’t even know what we’re supposed to be discussing.

Are we supposed to discuss A.I., Roles, Party System, Rewards, etc.? All those are tied to the dungeons we have now. Don’t get me wrong, i understand what you mean, that this discussion isn’t about A.I. & their difficulty, in those particular dungeons, but they will still be related to future dungeons if any changes are made to a global A.I. revamp.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Okay, so monsters in the dungeon should work on flanking the players, if I am reading correctly.

Yep, pretty much.

DigitalKirin.9714:

It does make sense. The consideration for me is how to effectively turn it into bullet points, haha.

lol good luck with that, I had a bit of trouble organizing my thoughts as I posted.

Make story mode completion account bound.

nexxe.7081:

but a gradual system in difficulty pleases everyone.

I’m quoting this bit first because I completely understand and agree with this sentiment. From a Game Design point of view, this is a fundamental attribute to teaching a person how to play. I will add this as a bullet point.

However, the focus of this thread is to brainstorm ideas for future dungeon development. (Whether or not ANet heeds the advice we produce here.) If you wish to suggest that ANet adjusts the difficulty of AC, there is the suggestion thread for AC:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Ascalonian-Catacombs/first#post4328789

nexxe.7081:

There is a lot of frustration when doing dungeons, so that’s why the majority of people generally don’t do them, and this is the major problem.
[Snipped for message body length.]
The other problems that lead to frustration are 1-hit death mechanics from bosses. That’s a terrible way to introduce players to your dungeons, when they haven’t even learned how to play through them and learn the boss mechanics. That kind of stuff should be reserved for certain explorable dungeons and fractals only.

Most of this is out of the scope of the thread topic, which is to produce suggestions on how to make better dungeons in the future. While you have many salient points, for sake of keeping on topic, I simply can’t add bullet points.

However, I think the issue of 1 hit death mechanics is something that can be discussed. You say, “That kind of stuff should be reserved for certain explorable dungeons and fractals only.”

In which situations do you guys all think 1 hit death mechanics are acceptable? From some of the previous threads I’ve read, I’ve heard things like, “You see the attack coming, and you know it’s your fault if you got hit by it.” Do you feel like 1 shot mechanics should be like Rabsovich’s ground attack? (Big red rectangle, big wind up, slow moving attack?) Or are you okay with things like Lupi’s uppercut? (No area indicator, but a biiig wind up.) Or are you okay with Lvl 50 Mossman’s stealth axe throw? (Invisible til it’s too late, and you just have to learn when he’s most likely to throw it.)

nexxe.7081:

More problems with the Party System.
The intentions of waiting at waypoints to zone in, was probably good, but it doesn’t work. [snip]

Interesting. Though I’m not currently sure with the LS going on which waypoints are contested because of Mordremoth, usually the Waypoints at the entrance to every zone will never be contested. This means that so long as a player has taken the time to Run to the zone and actually zone in, they have a waypoint in the zone.

nexxe.7081:

The problem of Vote To Kick needs to be addressed also. There is no reason why 2 players can kick someone.[snip]

I think a lot of people would like to have majority vote. Personally I feel like it only shuffles problems and complaints around and isn’t an actual solution, however, I think people will want this as a bullet point, so I’ll add it. If others want to chime in on this issue (as well as all others) please feel free to do so.

nexxe.7081:

The problem of the Dungeon Starter needs to be addressed too. The group leader should always have priority of starting the dungeon. [snip]

This should be a non-issue. If you want to start a dungeon and be leader, enter the dungeon first, then post an LFG.

nexxe.7081:

The final, and most important, is the way groups are disbanded. No group members should ever be kicked out because the Dungeon Starter leaves early, robbing everyone of their achievements and loot. It works in WvW, but not here, which is also odd. When players get kicked out of WvW or disconnected, everyone is still grouped.

I’ve thought long and hard about this issue, and again, as above, we’d simply be shuffling problems around instead of solving them.

Consider this: You and a friend decide to start running CM. You enter the instance, post your LFG, select the Asura path, and you stealth clear all the bombs. Nobody’s joined you yet, so you tackle the next boss. Three people join, and just as you’re typing “hello” you suddenly see the Queensdale loading screen. Your friend pops up next to you in Queensdale as well. And those three mysterious people just took your CM run that you’d half completed.

nexxe.7081:

All these suggestions have been discussed ad nauseum since release, which is kind of surprising that Anet doesn’t know about them[snip]

I don’t think it’s an issue of ANet not knowing about them. Do they have a list? Not a clue. I’d think yes, but I’m not an employee by any means. I don’t think they’ll ever tell us or show us any “list”.

nexxe.7081:

DigitalKirin.9714:

TheFamster.7806:

To be honest remaining dungeon difficulties/bosses should stay where they are.

The purpose of this thread isn’t to discuss what we’d like to see in the current dungeons changed. The purpose of this thread is to brainstorm ideas for potential future developed dungeons.

Yes, but wouldn’t that system still be the same for future ones, unless they wanted to scrap the old one? This is why i find this development discussion somewhat odd, since we don’t even know what we’re supposed to be discussing.

Are we supposed to discuss A.I., Roles, Party System, Rewards, etc.? All those are tied to the dungeons we have now. Don’t get me wrong, i understand what you mean, that this discussion isn’t about A.I. & their difficulty, in those particular dungeons, but they will still be related to future dungeons if any changes are made to a global A.I. revamp.

The purpose of the thread is to discuss what we think makes dungeons really great – in this manner, ANet can try to produce dungeons in the future with these attributes so that we’ll find dungeons more enjoyable.

We are supposed to discuss elements that are directly tied to the dungeons. If you were given an SDK and could build a dungeon, what would you put in it? How would you script bosses?

It is very important to discuss current dungeons and what they have that’s good and what they have that sucks. But if you are saying, “They need to fix Kholer because of xyz” then I’m going to redirect you to the AC thread.

If you say, “Kholer sucks because I can’t read when his spin is gonna happen” then we can discuss what makes tells good and bad, and I can make an appropriate bullet point.

Despite i think they won t develop any new dungeon.

They just can use fractal guidelines witthout using boring puzzles nobody likes.
What is important is:

1) don’t inibite players skills like reflection and block… people play to use the skill they have and not to spam 1111111.

2) AI…don t have bosses blindlessly charge toward players

3) mechanics should let good players compensate for unexperienced ones.
Having mechanics requiring 5 players to play flawlessly will result only in an unpuggable dungeon… and most players use LFG.

4) no more DPS checks really.

5) boon strip/steal.

6) less oneshots…expecially less light profession oneshots like lupicus… the difference between an elementalist and a warrior against lupicus is like the difference between playing arah and AC. (but i guess this is the usual balancing fault).

7) new dungeon armor+ weapon… for once.

8) ignore the fact few player can finish a dungeon in 5 minutes.
Try to understand if you are designing a game for the 0,1% or for the 99,9%.

9) design something that isn t based around gimmick mechanics.
It tends to be frustrating until a youtube video comes out, and then easy and boring.
(this is the main dungeon design flaw in this game).

Nice suggestions!
I’m looking forward to seeing that day when i finish a dungeon saying “fantastic team, GG” instead of “thank you unknown ordinary guy for being around, see you next time”