Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 was billed, to me, as a game that was finally going to forgo the trinity; a game that embraced a new kind of cooperation with group crowd control effects, support, and damage with mobility heavily mixed in.

With that understood… I want to know exactly why all of the dungeons suddenly take that philosophy and not only throw it clear out the window, but smash it, obliterate it, and set it ablaze; along with half the house in the process going up in smoke. Yes… it’s that bad.

Dungeon mobs don’t behave in ways that encourage anything but tank and spank tactics. Boss mobs are near entirely immune to crowd control, rendering half of certain classes weapon sets and abilities completely and totally useless. Creatures throw off control effects and knockbacks regularly without any tell, thus nullifying the need for Stability at all. Damage amounts are off the wall, with large durations between auto attack and, once again, no tell; making it extremely difficult if not impossible to time blocks. All this together leads to an experience that encourages mindless tactics; stacking defense and damage, spamming abilities, and zerging to finish battles.

Why? Because there is nothing that these mobs do that at all encourages us to be careful and skilled with our abilities. There are no visual tells, no need for quick reflexes, and no reason whatsoever to spec for anything other than pure defensive or pure damage… because when someone finally gets to a mob that you can time your abilities right, and use visual information to help defeat the boss… said boss becomes immune to those abilities entirely.

It’s frustrating. Extremely frustrating. I have never seen a bigger disconnect from the primary design philosophy, and the way that these dungeons are designed. It’s like the combat designers put something together sans the notion of the “holy trinity”, and yet the dungeons themselves forgot about that entirely.

My friends and I managed to complete a dungeon or two without any trouble. We didn’t have anyone end up naked or broken beyond repair. However, we all noticed the same thing… the mobs behavior? The immunity to abilities? It’s a serious problem. I myself as a warrior who was building specifically to help crowd control and play slightly defensively found myself near useless during boss battles; unable to stop bosses from chasing my friends or time blocks due to the lack of visual information. What does this reduce me to? Someone who spams the “1” key to do a bit of damage, or swaps to the brainless rifle to range attack and add to the DPS pool.

… and isn’t that what you guys were trying to avoid when putting this game together? Isn’t that what the MMO Manifesto proudly proclaimed you were wanting to get rid of?

I’ve never been more frustrated with a dungeon experience in my over 10+ years of MMO gaming. This needs to be fixed. Dungeons are one of the primary reasons I play games like this; cooperative, five to six man group experiences, and that which i’ve run thus far has been nothing short of an extreme disappointment.

Make crowd control useful. Improve the visual cues for people that use active blocking (i’m not asking that you make it terribly easy, just give us SOMETHING). Make mobs behave in ways that challenge the playerbase to work together instead of making them just HIT hard and have BOATLOADS of HP. Do SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Because this is just… bad. It’s terribly bad. And it’s really taking away from a game that has a metric boatload of promise. As it is, I can’t really justify staying if this is what the majority of the dungeon experiences are going to be like.

I agree with this 100%. There is a huge disconnect between the way character skills are designed and the way the dungeons are designed. Many abilities have a very brief duration, which suggests that they require specific timing. In dungeons this is near impossible as the mobs do things with little to no warning. You can’t plan, you can’t use tactics. In fact, when you try to play smart and help others, that’s when you die! The most success I’ve had in dungeons, outside of helping downed allies, is when everyone is responsible for their own survival. And that’s no fun.

/sigh Can we just get these guys a rant sub-forum? Every time I open one of these threads I say to myself “Sweet lets have a talk, maybe I can point somethings out that will help.” Yet, a lot of the time, I just get “Dungeon mob killing me, change mechanics.” Perhaps, which mobs are doing this to you, or even just the dungeon these mobs in would lead to a lot more productive conversations and possibly changes. Such as “X mob in X zone is really annoying, anyone have any tips? Or is the mob just super annoyingly designed?”

Gies.3824:

/sigh Can we just get these guys a rant sub-forum? Every time I open one of these threads I say to myself “Sweet lets have a talk, maybe I can point somethings out that will help.” Yet, a lot of the time, I just get “Dungeon mob killing me, change mechanics.” Perhaps, which mobs are doing this to you, or even just the dungeon these mobs in would lead to a lot more productive conversations and possibly changes. Such as “X mob in X zone is really annoying, anyone have any tips? Or is the mob just super annoyingly designed?”

I did list possible changes, and we survived the dungeon without needing to repair at all. Nothing to do with “The mobs are just killing me.” No need for tips either… because we were… successful.

I’m commenting overall about the design of the dungeons themselves, and the disconnect that they have with the game’s seeming design philosophy.

This post is the epitome of players who don’t understand the game mechanics. lets begin with your 1st point…

1)Dungeon mobs AND bosses can be controlled with CC. In fact to be successful in dungeons you MUST CC. Bosses have this nifty mechanic where it has stacks or “charges” of stability and once those are gone you get a chance to land a CC and then it refreshes and you have to burn them off again. This is where group coordination comes in. So on your 1st point you are completely WRONG.

2) Every boss in this game has a tell for EVERY move they make. It is either the red circles OR its an animation. Most people are so intent on looking for red circles that they totally miss the animations. lets take subject Alpha for example. A lot of people die to the inline earth spike and whine that there no tell. There is infact a tell but most people miss it because of the huge amount of red circles he also uses. The tell is he raises his fist while turned to you and slams it into the ground. Just because YOU are missing tells doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. So on point 2 you are completely WRONG.

3) If you think all the bosses become tank and spank or that thats the only strategy that is effective then its no fricken wonder you are failing and are reduced to 1 button dps. Lets take Gigantus in Arah. A boss that most pugs can not pass. He sure in the hell isn’t tank and spank. In fact you need a wide range of utility skills to get past him without graveyard deaths. let me list a few. Warriors with rez banners. Rangers with search and rescue. Guardians with group stability to get members out of his bubble. and a few more that I am not gonna list and give away strats. So on point 3 you are again completely WRONG.

Now the bosses and encounters I listed are not the only exceptions either.Yes there are a few tank and spanks but only a few. Frankly, all of the whiners on this board saying the encounters are too hard need to learn how to play. You don’t have a ton of videos to go watch like in WoW where all you have to do is copy what someone else has already figured out.

My static group has finished EVERY SINGLE explorable and they are all doable without a single death. In fact I have died only 1 time in the last week.

I feel like you might still be missing something, very rarely do I have bosses just running around doing whatever they want. I am blessed with having an amazing guardian and warrior friend, so I’ll just ask them to come kick out some of the things they do that work. That being said we are still able to blind/daze/weakness a few fights when they get out of control near a squishy. I do think that melee theifs are being punished by a lot of these encounters, but that could be reworked in the class.

Here let me give you a general tip on how to get thru any dungeon trash without a death. Bring a thief with a smoke field and have your ranged fire thru it. Frankly in my opinion, if you cant figure out these mechanics you dont need or deserve to run these dungeons.

Good post ruien, really it was. but did you HAVE to resort to the cliche’s like
“learn how to play” that’s never really recieved well by anyone, and usually breaks down any small chance that a impasse can be dealt with.

“Hey, I’d like you to reconsider your views on this topic you’ve made and your opinion, but at the same time I’m going to mildly insult you in a manner that’s a tad elitist, and aggravating to many who came to GW2 to get away from it and to top it all off I’ll end it with a boast and include a refusal to give away strategies, like they were candies that only the cool kids had”

Doesn’t sound great does it?

edit: lol

“I’ll also add, that you don’t deserve to run the content in the game you’ve bought, which will also add further tension and make me sound like both a troll, and a spoiled brat”

diplomacy died for many it seems

Yea I did. This post and its ignorance is why the devs will nerf dungeons so the dumb people can do them. That pisses me off. Whats worse is these dungeons are actually really really well designed by some of the best devs I have ever met. Its a shame their hard work is going to get changed because of these same ignorant people.

Ruien.9506:

Yea i did. This post and its ignorance is why the devs will nerf dungeons so the dumb people can do them. That pisses me off. Whats worse is these dungeons are actually really really well designed by some of the best devs i have met. its a shame their hard work is going to get changed because of these same ignorant people.

I understand, I do. But you have to understand, a lot of these players are coming from the most horribly designed simplistic messes, and are still trapped in horrid mentalities that are hard to break, heck even I was trapped in it til recently, and the one thing that WON’T break that mentality so they can appreciate the good aspects of the designs, is to belittle them and act like they’re scum who’s not fit to lick dog muck from your skayle filleting knife.

It doesn’t matter how RIGHT you are, or how true your sentiments are, if you can’t help them to a different opinion through rational logic and thinking which has to be unbiased etc and take into account everything, then it’s a subjective opinion difference, which people have all the time.

You might think it’s fine, but they might not and ultimately the proper thing to do is to help them appreciate the new by pointing out why the old sucked horse manure, and to rethink the new

It’s not too hard of a stretch to misinterpret your passion for the game, for elitism and being a bit of a tactless swine, when you use terms like “learn to play” etc like that, I personally think it’s a shame and a waste :S

if you’re going to belittle all the “mere mortals” for not being as good as you, don’t at the same time come out with “I don’t want to share tacts” lol that very sentiment alone goes against the idea of playing an mmo lol, you’re not at war with the other players, and if you’re competing with them all in your head, that’s a recipe for disappointment xD

I get what you mean. Its my opinion tho that these people can not be taught in the first place. They know that they are the where the money is and that if they whine loud enough, the devs will give in. These people are not interested in challenge or earning anything. If the devs just gave them the loots straight to their backpacks they all would be perfectly happy.

You cant teach people who dont want to learn.

Ruien.9506:

I get what you mean. Its my opinion tho that these people can not be taught in the first place. They know that they are the where the money is and that if they whine loud enough, the devs will give in. These people are not interested in challenge or earning anything. If the devs just gave them the loots straight to their backpacks they all would be perfectly happy.

You cant teach people who dont want to learn.

the self entitled generation of players, who want fast consumption, easy rewards etc. but never truly understand what makes a good game, they want to feel epic and uber, but within a few weeks they’ve abandoned their miniature god-avatarbearpig for a fresh new game to start over.

Yes I agree, these players or at least their mentality DOES cause unparalleled damage to a games challenge level, I’ve stated in another thread, the hour of twilight patch, was the biggest pile of horse manure I’d ever seen. But that is NOT a reason to be deathly paranoid about that happening here, as for “where the money is” that in itself is a bit of a false statement, they (a-net) don’t HAVE to appease them by nerfing content needlessly. They have their money, they have got fans and those who are adapting and beginning to like the challenges, all they HAVE to do is offer alternatives for the more casual player, something I felt the buff to the difficulty of cm story went against because it essentially frustrated them in the first few hurdles which was just bad conveyance and a bit of a huge leap from what can only be described as “hard to fail unless you’re asleep, alone or underlevelled” overworld events.
Big world bosses feel great, they’re not challenging in some senses, but they feel and look epic and thus they give that feeling of raiding to everyone. That big boss you’re a part of killing etc. So it respawns.. it does stay dead for a while after all and you can’t have a one off event like that :P so that for a casual player is a good thing, even if they have to wait to repeat them multiple times. But if you compare that sort of challenge with a few simple well called out mechanics and warnings etc, to even AC story mode and suddenly it’s a whole new ballgame

2-3 trash mobs that would melt in other mmo’s can wipe your group?? what sorcery is this!

so to them this is just a huge, HUGE difficulty ramp that feels kinda like a wall. It has to have better conveyance, and a gentler ramp up and then progress. There was nothing EVER wrong with some kind of progression system it gives you a clear path to at least take an educated guess as to where you can start dungeoning at any given time seen as once you’re 80 (not a difficult task tbh) you may have no idea how to dungeon effectively as a group member. and naturally assume that starting at the earliest available dungeon would be the one that has the least ramp up. Yet when they see how unforgiving it can be, they immediately think that the rest get harder to the point of insanity.

Only you and I are reading this Hell. The people these post are talking about are looking for a TL;DR and finding none have already moved on to the next post to whine in.

Dont mistake my disdain of stupidity for that of ignorance. Ignorant people are great gamers who just dont know any better but can and will learn. That isn’t the majority of the MMo crowd anymore tho. This has been proven in so many countless games since WoW’s release. The genre was stagnant until GW2 released. Reading some of the latest dev post tho tells me the whiners have won yet again and soon the lowest common denominator will get what they want.

BTW and addressing the part where I sound like an elitist. There are elitist in every section of humanity. Its ONLY those who can not achieve something that will make excuses to why they cant. As a good friend once told me, “Being called an elitist just means you achieved something the other person could not”.

I reread your latest post and the section about the world dragons. Lets take the ice dragon for example. How many people on your server are still dying by the dozens? On HoD 30+ people die and have to respawn on that dragon every time. Why? Mostly due to the dot. None of those people even think to look down and notice the blue ice they are standing on is the cause of the dot. Get off the ice and the dot fades away. I continuously see people run straight at the dragon over and over trying to get a whack in only to die and then speak in chat about how hard and unfair it is for melee. I just completed the dragon event on my alt 40 warrior without a single death or decap and I did it all in melee. Funny thing is, I am not the best player I have ever seen or met. Im just not stupid.

We need a different dungeon for people like ruien, they do not all need to have the same tuning. I agree with the op in that zerg encounters are problematic and the ability to use a viable non-trinity strategy besides everyone range kite or die-respawn-run back would make dungeons more of an interesting experience.
I’d actually rather not have to play with people who think I am stupid/ignorant because I want a game to live up to its potential (whatever that may be) – so if ruien’s ‘lowest common denominator’ ends up catered to and he leaves – perhaps that would not be the worst of outcomes.

are developers on vacation or sth? because we have been crying over and over again and they just dont seem to care anough

You’ve hit the nail on the head there. Unfortunately the forums are loaded with crying about ‘fixing the reward’. The real thing that needs fixing is the dungeon mechanics.

To be fair though.. the dungeon rewards do seem a quite low compared to Hearts. But I rather see the dungeon mechanics fixed than the reward. If the dungeons are actually engaging and fun, I would play them without caring about rewards.

Completely and utterly agree. Encounters seem like they were molded around the Tank + dedicated healer model. I always thought the idea of combat in GW2 was high damage high risk almost like Dark Souls/Demons Souls, meaning normal enemies can hurt you quite a bit, but you can as well. So one must play skillfully, and you can take no damage and destroy enemies.

Dungeon mobs seem to be the opposite of this idea. The HP pools are sooo inflated it takes 5 people minutes to kill a couple of trash enemies. Yet they still hit incredibly hard, almost 2 shotting you. Since they have so much HP you will get hit(because you run out of CC and Endurance), often, and you will go into downed state as well. And if you die on a boss encounter? Thats fine, just spawn back at a waypoint and throw yourself at the boss once more, slowly chipping at his health over and over again. Not only that, but some boss encounter have incredibly amateur or rudimentary mechanics, like the Relena Vassar encounter(throw boulders for the entire fight)

Why? Why such a drastic change between dungeon combat and combat outside dungeons?

Interestingly enough, one of the most well-designed (if not the best designed) dungeon is Crucible of Eternity – Experimental Teleporter.

The entire dungeon revolves around strong control. The Subject Alpha fights revolve around evading fatal (one-shot) attacks which are well telegraphed and promote good play. The puzzles (lazer room!) require your team to coordinate themselves to activate all the consoles at the same time.

The Subversion Rifle room is probably one of the most fun where you have to coordinate your group between clearing the brambles and subverting the explosive golems towards the boss. THAT is a shining example of interesting and fun boss mechanics.

I’ve done a few of the dungeons as PUGs and wandered through most with few or no deaths on the first try. Boss fights are obvious and utilise well overused mechanics.

It seems like it would be hard to feel elitist about doing something so banally easy, but some do – they need it to boost their self image, which is always low. Personally I like to play games to pass the time – I don’t use it as a means to derive my self worth.

I do agree with “Ruien” the OP has to learn how to play the game, I even agree that player moaning is irritating.

However I do agree with “Hellkaiser” a tiny bit of tact was not completely useless…

But what is very annoying is that there is no worthy tutorial as how to do it right. So I will point the finger, not to the bad player.

But to the DEV that do not necessarily explained it right to the “noob”…

So many assumptions made in this thread.

It always boils down to can pug’s do the content. If you made the mechanics too hard for pugs, then they will complain. If you make it easy enough for pugs, hardcore gets upset.

Finding the happy medium is near impossible. A better dev tactic would be to add more mechanics, but take away the instant kill shotskitten

I’ll admit I’m not a top tier player. I pug dungeons in games and this game is zero fun in pugs. Even if I know all the mechanics of a fight, I can’t always stay alive until my dead group members finally make it back to my location. As a thief, many times I have to just escape and regroup. I can’t take hits for kitten in this game.

Being insta killed or killed in 2 seconds sucks. I also have bosses who hit me for 1/2 my life with a KD and then with that atttack they applied a few DoTs. While on the ground from the one attack that hit me for 1/2 my life I lose remaining life practically…I might have a sliver of life left and the remnants of a few Dots….that aint a one shot but what is it? Its not fun. Especially for a character who invested in toughness and vitality.

Dungeons do have some flaws yes. Also, not everyone is a gaming god; casual players like me will have problems with dungeons. However, with a skilled group, they can be fairly easy, as I have experienced.

Also, Ruien, try being at least a little civil. There is no need to come on and berate and insult people for having a differing opinion. You claim people like the OP are ignorant? The irony is clearly lost on you. Calling people ignorant, whiners, telling people “you don’t need or deserve to run these dungeons” or attacking “mentality” makes you just as ignorant.

Geekcrux.1245:

So many assumptions made in this thread.

It always boils down to can pug’s do the content. If you made the mechanics too hard for pugs, then they will complain. If you make it easy enough for pugs, hardcore gets upset.

I agree with this statement.

Yes, pugs are what most pve content should be aimed at! why? Simple, pugs support community interaction (who knew!?) and that is what I, at least, play an mmo for. But don’t get me wrong pug content can still be difficult! Just not the way the devs think difficult is.

So far after running all paths in AC, a few in CoF, Arah, and CE. The trend seems to be, to make things difficult we’ll either add a truck load of health or dps to trash mobs, or swamp the players with so many mobs they die or become unmanageable, or simply give mobs one hit wonder moves. I fail to see how this in any way makes a dungeon difficult? What about all these game mechanics built into the game? Some mechanics I think could add to difficulty while making the game interesting are:
#NPC dodge rolling, I have yet to see one npc make this move and it’s built into the game!
#Boss diversity, Think along the lines of a single player game’s boss. They don’t just sit there and beat on you! One example can be the AC story boss, when he uses foefire instead of a normal aoe red ring the boss could float into the air and hit multiple areas with the fire. Players would have to focus on the fire and not the boss to survive.
#NPC Movement/Random Events, place those lovely mobs on patrol attack at the wrong time could put you in a out matched fight. Random events are a nice way to add excitement to the dungeons and still make them challeging. The Cave Troll boss crashing thought the wall in AC story was a very good example of this, it was random it never happened all the time and it could throw a group into chaos. (<- thats difficulty by the way)

I have more, In fact I could go on all day! But there is a char limit…

Ruien.9506:

BTW and addressing the part where I sound like an elitist. There are elitist in every section of humanity. Its ONLY those who can not achieve something that will make excuses to why they cant. As a good friend once told me, “Being called an elitist just means you achieved something the other person could not”.

Bullocks.

I used to work in an industry with much smarter people than the average gamer. My company was more successful and made more money than any gaming company. Simple programmers made loads of money (through stock options). The technology we made was more complex, and more world-changing than any gaming company did. And still, almost all the top people in my company were the friendliest people you could ever meet. They would never belittle someone who didn’t get it, or who wasn’t enlightened yet. There are different ways to approach life.

Our customers were smart, but at the same time also stupid. Or they did stupid things. Or ever worse, they wanted stupid things. In stead of ridiculing our customers, we had a different approach. We educated them. We taught them the philosophy on how to approach these problems. We did hand-holding. Was that bad ? No, those people were the people who paid our salaries. Education improves life for everyone. For us, for our customers, and for their customers too.
There is a different between “an elite player” and an elitist. Elitists are just jerks who are good at some minor thingy, but use that as the right to exclaim they are better than everyone else.

In-game education. This is one of the ways where ArenaNet fails. Fails miserably.
Nobody wants to read guides before they start to play. Nobody wants to make a detailed study of the descriptions of all of their abilities. Maybe some want to do that after they ran into a problem. But AC Story Mode is not just a problem for the average gamer. It is like a sledgehammer slamming on your face. I’ve spend countless hours on Elitists Jerks (duh!) or other forums, reading about my class, strategies, etc. But that was after I was playing for a while. Not while leveling my first character. A good game has this approach: “easy to learn, hard to master”. GW2 Story Modes require you to start with the “hard to master” at level 30 on your first character. Not good.

Let me talk about what needs to change in Story Mode first.
The Story Mode dungeons should be easy. That should be no problem, because you’re supposed to do them only once, or a few times at most. Imho 70-80% of gamers should be able to finish every SM dungeon. If it means the SM dungeons need to be nerfed to hell, so be it.
There should be an increasing difficulty. AC SM should be a walk in the park. Arah SM in the end could be a little harder. Because it is the lvl80 dungeon, people should have learned by now. People could try it a few times before succeeding.
Game mechanics should be taught while playing.
Game mechanics should be taught in a slowly increasing way. E.g. one by one, not all at the same time.
Then when a player has done all SM dungeons while leveling, he should have seen enough to know how to do the EM dungeons. Of course that doesn’t mean he will (or should) succeed in EM. He has to learn how to execute his strategies. He has learned which building blocks there are to come up with a strategy. But right now, it seems most players learned nothing, besides WP-zerging.
Oh, and WayPoint-zerging has to go. When WP-zerging is possible, then the developers need to take it into account when designing dungeons, and setting the difficulty-level. It might not be a problem anymore once you can do dungeons to perfection. But until then, WP-zerging is just a very bad game-element. I hope even you can see that.

See this YT-movie ? Just watching the first 30 seconds is enough. This is a game. Some people consider this fun. You need skills to beat this game. Some people can do it, others will need to raise their skill-level to beat it. But know what, to me that game doesn’t look like fun at all. And I bet that for 80-90% of the GW-players, that game doesn’t look like fun. And imho, dungeons in GW2 look too much like that game.

ArenaNet better comes up with a solution, or GW2’s reputation as a PvE-game will suffer.

Did no one actually read the original post and soak in what he said? He doesn’t think dungeons are hard. Mobs are not killing him. He’s not using the roles of tank, healer, damage.

He is saying the programming (which I also said) sucks in dungeons and completely negates everything the game promotes. It forces you down one path of skill sets.

People want to chose their own role and enter a dungeon and contribute. Not respec everytime they want to run a dungeon into a different holy trinity of Ranged Damage, ranged CC, ranged Support.

Someone mentioned stacks of stability. Where the hell is the interface that shows these stacks or even explains them. If this is a general thing that all bosses do, then shouldn’t it be stated. I mean other MMOs state that there is an aggro system and they place in their move descriptions ways to draw aggro. This game has stability stacking and doesn’t explain in any way at all. When I PvP, I don’t have to peel a layer of multiple stabilities before I can snare the player. In Open World, I don’t peel off stability stacks on veteran mobs.

I look at a bosses HP bar and I see:
Name
Health
Special Description
Debuffs and Buffs
If there is an icon for stability stacking how the hell would I know. Id have to hover the mouse over it to read the description, which means I am standing there dying form AE effects.

People keep trying to support this trash system yet more and more of the player base is coming here giving dungeons a negative review. The system is jacked up! From rewards, to enemy stats, to programming. It is all jacked up, and something needs to be fixed and brought in line with the REST OF THE GAME. These dungeons feel like they were ripped straight from another game and reskinned to look like GW2.

So far in my opinion about PvE bosses…..

Stay out of melee range + ranged nuke = profit.

No need for tactics, no need for defence. All you need is ranged nuke and run around like creasy. If you should die, just zerg back in and join the fight.

There are no tactics to PvE combat in this game. Well, up to Lvl 60 that is.
So far the PvE in this game is so a faceslap experiance that it hurts. All you need is a ranged zerg to nuke. No one needs to be told anything, all you need is nuke the target.

There are no synery between mobs eiter in this game. Thatn is something I really had hoped for. Mobs behave and react different depending on what other mobs that are in the vinsinity.
The instance is just made up of mobs with huge HP pool and 1 shot abilities. That is the difficaulty of this games PvE, the amount of 1 shot mobs in the group.
1 mob with high HP and a 1 shot ability, low difficaulty.
3 mobs with high HP and a 1 shot ability, hard difficaulty.

The problem is that fanboys think that we who “whines” about this only needs to L2P or GTFO. They have no intend of understanding what we really want.

We want hard instances that requires good tactical cooperation, not good zerg ability or good ranged ability where the one who has the agro just runs like creasy while the rest of the group nukes.
We want it harder, tactical vice. Not by just increasing a mobs HP. Increasing a mobs HP does not increase the difficaulty, it just increase the time sink.

mountain to climb in term of replying and hopefully helping steer this to a happy medium.

first up, ruien.

IF, they are not reading this stuff then if they’re complaining about an rpg game at it’s core and that this is too much to read that’s at odds with itself and contradictory, you don’t play an rpg if you don’t like reading and numbers…

As for your definition of a “great” gamer, I somewhat disagree, a great gamer puts themselves through the learning process so they can then help others through said process easier, and doesn’t belittle those that haven’t “figured it out” yet.

A good gamer does things, a GREAT gamer teaches how to do them.
A good gamer is successful at what he does, a GREAT gamer doesn’t gloat about that.
A good gamer follows an example of conduct, a GREAT gamer sets the bar for it

And so forth

Being a GREAT gamer, doesn’t have to mean that you give others the impression that your an “elitist jerk” who’s goal always seems to be to shut the door behind you in game progression to prolong their feeling of being better than everyone else longer in content that eventually any old monkey can get carried to, so your super secret no girls allowed awesome chocolate covered club house can still be relevant until the next expansion. It’s a load of rubbish xD

Like I said, I understand where the anger, disdain and frustration is coming from I truly honestly do, but you’re only ever going to be a good gamer, and a bit mean spirited if you argue the way you do, you catch more flied with honey than with vinegar.

Now I view this difference as simple.

They just changed the difficulty of the SECOND dungeon in the game and ramped it up massively, add to this a horrible lack of conveyance when it comes to “instagib” monster mechanics and it’s a recipe for early frustration. Naturally players are subconsciously expecting conveyance, we just look for it without even realising it, but it never comes it’s just bam you got shot by a sniper shot which has a tiny 2 second animation and now you’re semi helpless.
That’s bad, but what’s worse is immediately we assume
“holy poop, this is just the SECOND dungeon, what sort of fiendish devices and encounters have these sadistic devs in store for us later!”

And thus they feel intimidated. This has weight, I agree with it in part but that is no reason to not look into the WHY as I just did, as opposed to just the what happens next and will it ruin the game.

@gryz:

I have the BIGGEST mangamercrush on you right now, that was a FANTASTIC post, if players with issues with this game didn’t read it then that’s their loss entirely.

mushehimesama on god mode, is INSANE from what I can tell it’s basically got
3-4 constants though:

1:the bosses patterns are ALWAYS the same but change at damage marker thresholds.

2: your hit box is TINY, seriously the sheer amount of times that you think he’s gonna take a hit and doesn’t is insane

3: this is GOD mode, he clearly chose this difficulty and all the patterns “SHOULD” be stuff he’s seen and learned to deal with before, even trivialise with precision and practiced movement. In fact a lot of those patterns are “all show no go” you seen the nigh impossible storm ball that explodes right? looks impossible, but if he flies into it he can actually go through it before it’s considered dangerous and takes no damage in the middle.

4: it’s an arcade game, it’s designed to suck coins outta you and punish EVERY, little mistake, it has a HORRIBLE control system which only allegedly works well on fighting games and not precision movement games, but it also has several advantages tuning wise, he moves slower and more precise while firing, but fast as the wind when not, so if you mistakenly keep firing thinking throwing damage non stop is the key to winning, then you’ve already lost. That in itself is a cruel and unusual way to offer conveyance, but it’s effective and you have to keep saying to yourself

“this is GOD mode”

“is GOD mode”

“GOD”

“mode”

Which brings me to,

@urrelles:
I do think they didn’t deliver that, BUT I think it’s cos it’s a bad idea in general.
As I’ve stated before, the actual end assumption I can make about enemy high hp is that it’s to discourage nothing but stacked DPS, let’s look at WoW, again sadly (sorry) and how the LFD systems works, tanks have a 1 minute wait tops, healers sometimes more or less depending, and dps are sometimes waiting upwards of 15 minutes for a dungeon run.

So given this natural fact that the “majority” players avoid the roles in groups that don’t involve shooting big numbers at the squishy bad guys, that involve thought beyond shootin numbers at the squishy bad guys, or keeping everyone alive while they shoot big numbers at the squishy bad guys, when we take AWAY the roles such as tank and healer, we don’t “remove” the need for healing totally, we don’t remove the need for “tanking” per say in some form at least. We simply shift this responsibility to EVERYONE.

Thus one player with support stuff, or tank stuff won’t be able to suddenly face tank the entire instance, but 5 players coordinating their support skills etc will flow better and remove the need for a dedicated healer or tank through debuffs, healing decursing and all via combo fields and specific traits and skills.

If it WAS possible, or highly viable to run through a dungeon as an all signet melee only pigeonholed warrior, then EVERYONE WOULD BLOODY DO IT!
IT IS viable though, to run that it’s just going to give you more of a headache than it’s worth, and it’s designed to do so to stop you all thinking only about yourselves.

For example, theres a small checklist you can tick off before you go for a dungeon especially a pug.

Do you have options in terms of weapons
Do you have the good sense to ask who’s using what support skills
Do you have the sense to advise others on how to avoid being a pain in thekitten to everyone else?
Do you understand high damage, low hp and high toughness is the recipe for aggro, pain and a horrible death with a enemy npc boot inserted into your rear?
Do you keyboard turn? it’s still NOT A GOOD THING
Do you keybind your utilities? they need to be activated fast, can you activate them in a moments notice? if not then keybind that mother up bro!!!!!

And, as to the point of stability which I brought up multiple times, if you’re rushing into each pull and not understanding your class, effects, skills and what effects they give then you’re lacking the patience and knowledge to slow down and learn the content. the first thing I do is read what my class does, and what things do in the tooltips, there’s a wiki fgs too :S

if your class doesn’t OFFER stability, via traits or class mechanics, then it’s not YOUR job to provide it. At the end of the day you need to in some ways assume or make sure your teammates are teammates and not dead weight tied around your neck

Um, I understand what you are saying Urrelles, but im going to use your post here to show you exactly what Ruien is mentioning about players not paying attention (you do it several times in your post alone).

There is a difference between “Hand Holding” and “Educating”. Lets go…

Urrelles.4018:

Did no one actually read the original post and soak in what he said? He doesn’t think dungeons are hard. Mobs are not killing him. He’s not using the roles of tank, healer, damage.

He is saying the programming (which I also said) sucks in dungeons and completely negates everything the game promotes. It forces you down one path of skill sets.

People want to chose their own role and enter a dungeon and contribute. Not respec everytime they want to run a dungeon into a different holy trinity of Ranged Damage, ranged CC, ranged Support.

If you want to use all ranged, go at it. You do want to work best on what works for you and your group. But I can 100% melee EM dungeons right now, and as long as I pay attention, slot the skills for the particular fight, and learn when to back up, I havent had any issue.

You dont need to respec traits, nor do you have to bring all ranged, but you do have to pay attention to your skills, what they do, and be prepared for fights. Example: AC EM. Spider Queen needs 1-2 condition removals, followed by stun breaks / stability for the trash pull with the 2 Scavangers, followed by aegis / protection for Kholer.. Learn to use those skills. I love ANet for this, as they dont let me waste all but 3 of my skills.

Another Example: Hell, Wall of Reflection is one amazing ability… that really has no use out in the normal PvE world, but is freakin amazing for CM EM!

Someone mentioned stacks of stability. Where the hell is the interface that shows these stacks or even explains them.

Let me stop you right here. This is #1 on your “player does not pay attention” issue.

I found out by the stability effect bosses have. How??? It plainly has it listed under his name, on one of the boss flags (next to the silver one). Highlight it, and it tells you what it is, and what it does. Not only that, it tells you in plain english that you need to remove the stacks (which you can also see) to allow him to be CCed.

If this is a general thing that all bosses do, then shouldn’t it be stated.

See above. Just because your not paying attention is not the devs fault

I mean other MMOs state that there is an aggro system and they place in their move descriptions ways to draw aggro. This game has stability stacking and doesn’t explain in any way at all. When I PvP, I don’t have to peel a layer of multiple stabilities before I can snare the player. In Open World, I don’t peel off stability stacks on veteran mobs.

Players, and normal mobs are no bosses

I look at a bosses HP bar and I see:
Name
Health
Special Description
Debuffs and Buffs
If there is an icon for stability stacking how the hell would I know. Id have to hover the mouse over it to read the description, which means I am standing there dying form AE effects.

Doesnt take long to hover and read it. And I dont mean to make you look like a fool, but again, you can see it plainly

People keep trying to support this trash system yet more and more of the player base is coming here giving dungeons a negative review. The system is jacked up! From rewards, to enemy stats, to programming. It is all jacked up, and something needs to be fixed and brought in line with the REST OF THE GAME. These dungeons feel like they were ripped straight from another game and reskinned to look like GW2.

Can you give a more descriptive example of what you mean by jacked up? About enemy programing? (The enemies in this game are like a PvP group… they will switch and focus fire players. They are smart about it)

I think the only thing I can partially agree on is that, yes, I would like to see chests spawn at minimum green or yellow items (with like a 10% chance of getting an exotic maybe) to up the rewards just a tiny bit (I dont think blues or whites should be in EM dungeon chests)

But everything else is all blind rage, like most of these players.

Anet provided you with the tools to figure out stuff on your own, but not mommy you and hand-hold you through everything.

Makes me wonder why you all would have functioned in the old gaming days. Imagine have someone hand hold you through explaining Mario, or X-man 2, or Doom (not easy mode Doom), or Quake (imagine them giving you an ingame tutorial on how to rocket jump), or EQ1, etc..

OP and the last 3 posts (not counting Ruien) hit it right on the head. The game does NOTHING to teach you the mechanics it needs you to use. If anything it shows you the opposite in the overworld. Levels 1-30 its perfectly valid to just stand there and spam a DPS rotation. This is why people think dungeons are hard. Hell, I tell newbies to go to the pvp starter area to learn all the basics of everything because there is no “tutorial” or way for you to learn things as they are needed.

Heres my guess at how to fix it. I made this all up in about 10 minutes so its probably terrible but the idea should be the same.

Levels 1-10:
Standing still and DPSing is fine. This ok, players are new and may not understand how to handle this kind of game. Hearts and events should implement a required, yet simple, mechanic to pass. Like how to use combo fields or reviving. Helping downed NPCs or making mobs that can be one shotted when hit with a combo would be a good example.

Level 11-20
Standing still to DPS is discouraged. Mobs start to hit a little hard and use abilities that are hard hitting, not deadly, but VERY easy to predict. Mobs should also have 1 – 2 abilities that they use. These abilities should encourage simple play strategies. Hearts and events should teach the dodge mechanic and CC. The appearance of Veteran mobs are more common and rewarding to kill.

Level 21-30
Standing still will bring you close to dying. Mobs might kill a glass cannon scholar in 4-5 hits. Mobs use about 3 skills on average, one of which should be important to know when dealing with them. Hearts and events should teach you advanced mechanics and concepts such as target priorities and positioning. The appearance of Champion mobs are more common and are very rewarding to kill.

Level 31-40
The game will no longer hold your hand in terms of mechanics. Mobs are relatively easy to kill though somewhat punishing.

And it just gets harder and harder from there. I dont expect Orr to be some hellhole abandon-all-hope ye who enter area. It should be so that intelligent, skillful and even risky plays make you go a long long way. But really, even Orr is vastly different from dungeons. As it is, the game’s overworld holds your hand from level 1-50 ish then things start to get a little difficult maybe then OH CRAP ORR.

Ruien.9506:

I give up. This thread is a shining example of “you cant patch stupid”.

I know EXACTLY what you mean.

Let them kitten and moan, they will either give up and then learn to play, or they will keep bashing their heads on the wall.

You try to educate them (I read your reply to the OP), but they refuse to learn. They still dont think its them, but that its the “game”

I just get frustrated because this is the state of gamers nowadays =(. Its sad

What’s with all the “Lrn2play stupid noob.” If any of you actually read OP’s post, he was actually capable of completing the dungeon, without dying too. All he suggest is altering the mechanic to be more fluid and to maximize every classes’ skill set.

Ruien.9506:

I give up. This thread is a shining example of “you cant patch stupid”.

These dungeons are only engaging to the mentally challenged which actually says a lot about you if you find them any more than kite and kill. These dungeons are incredibly simple and easy. There is nothing at all challenging or remotely difficult about any of the dungeons. If you find them hard you seriously need to re-evalute your status as a gamer.

OP’s argument was that they are not difficult at all and boring and lack depth in terms of gameplay mechanics.

Pretty much.

Every boss encounter seems to come down to picking either a guardian or warrior for melee with them, or for everyone else ranged attacks.

The most successful tactic for dealing with a champion enemy in this game is pick a long ranged weapon, get just close enough to use it, and then set auto-attack while you leave your computer to do something else for 10-15 minutes.

That’s not fun, that’s tedious and boring. Where are enemies that are challenging in more ways than just having one hit kills and ludicrous amounts of HP?

While I definitely get everyone’s point to the OP that omgwthusucknoobl2p, that first of all is the most ignorant approach to responding to anyone’s post on the forum ever. Be constructive or don’t post at all. Your negativity helps no one so go away.

I play a thief and really really want to play as melee in dungeons. This is absolutely unfeasible in most situations. So many boss encounters have extremely strong anti-melee abilities that it just makes it not worth even trying to play the way I want to. So I then end up resorting to a ranged tactic that I find completely boring and mundane. I do not claim to be a gaming pro but I am definitely skilled, intelligent and proficient with my timing and abilities. After 25 years of gaming there are very few things I am unwilling or incapable of adapting to. I don’t want any overhaul of the bosses but the designers definitely need to consider making them melee friendly so that we can all actually play the way we want to play our classes and still find a tactic that works for the group that can be successful. As far as the bosses being immune to certain effects listening to both sides of the argument I would like to suggest something in the middle. While keeping the tough design in mind for bosses make a little compromise on the side of allowing more builds to be effective instead of being neutralized down to their auto attack. There’s many ways to keep a boss challenging other than making it immune to a bunch of attacks frustrating the players instead of making them come up with creative solutions.

Games for only the elite of elite die and will continue to do so. Keep the game challenging but accessible to the majority not the extremely loud 1% forum trolls that live on here all day. Most of the player base is too busy trying to enjoy the game to read/write/reply to post on the forums.

My 2 cents whether you agree or not.

Ruien.9506:

When does my mentality get a game?

You sir, have clearly not tried playing Dark Souls, which I would suggest, as it sounds right up your alley. I promise you wont have to deal with all the lesser mortals scumming up your gaming environment there.

Ruien.9506:

Yea I did. This post and its ignorance is why the devs will nerf dungeons so the dumb people can do them. That pisses me off. Whats worse is these dungeons are actually really really well designed by some of the best devs I have ever met. Its a shame their hard work is going to get changed because of these same ignorant people.

First of all where do you come up with right to call people dumb cause they dont wanna do these boring grind fest dungeons? Can you understand one simple thing that most ppl finds them not hard but boring and not challenging in the right way?

Your saying they are very well designed, are you serious? Did u play any other MMO ?

Dungeon and dungeon boss mehanic in GW2 is still in 90s where only way to make boss different and harder then regular mobs is to give them x 1000 HP and x 2000 dmg.

Check out dungeons in LOTR/SW/AO which is 12 year old and then talk again about these boring grind fests called end game pvm content/dungeons.

Oh boy, I couldn’t agree more.

In addition – how about some more complex mechanics in general?

Nocturnus.6031:

(…) Because this is just… bad. It’s terribly bad. And it’s really taking away from a game that has a metric boatload of promise. As it is, I can’t really justify staying if this is what the majority of the dungeon experiences are going to be like.

Your entire post was written as if I did it myself. After a few dungeon runs I came to exact same conclusions.

The whole game becomes boring around level 40 add to that broken, tedious, not funny dungeons and suddenly the only thing that is so-so in GW2 is PvP…

To think I hopes for so much…

+1 +beer +whatever you want that does not get in conflict with my sexuality ;P

thank you for posting. personally, i’ve only tried the first dungeon. i was around lvl 50, with 2 people in the 40s and 2 others just above 30. it being a lvl 30 dungeon made me think we’d be fine. i was wrong. i died at least 10 times, and we didn’t even get to the end. it was very disappointing.

I personally haven’t found the dungeons anywhere near as bad as is made out in this post, I also play as a warrior, my favourite weapon is a hammer, while some bosses are difficult to deal with, you can always apply weakness/vulnerability which is incredibly useful, and while the stuns dont last long and you cant knock back the bosses, I have noticed something useful: With the hammer knockback ability, while it doesnt knock back, it does interrupt, which goes a long way to helping control bosses.
There is plenty you can do, and the whole anti melee mechanics so far I have found to be avoidable once you learn what to look out for.

The only dungeons I have experienced before are in LOTRO and to be honest I found the whole ‘this is your role, mash these buttons in this order’ style to be incredibly boring. GW2 dungeons on the other hand make life interesting and I always feel like i’ve achieved a lot more after completing them in comparison to LOTRO. You have to adapt constantly to the style and most importantly MOVE, all the time. The number of people I have seen who just attempt to stand directly infront of the mob/boss and then die and complain that they can’t melee is unbelievable.

Then again all of this is just opinion, I enjoy them, maybe others don’t.

Then again i do agree entirely that you need to be able to see more attacks coming so you can actually do something about it in time. And some balance would be helpful.

Such horrible design. The dungeons are nothing but a chore.

Ok, fine: have explorable for the top percentage or whatever, but story mode should at least be possible without dying to cheap one shots or zergs.

OP is right, most dungeons r total and utter fail by design in this game. Less zerg, less one-shots, less particle effect, more visual and acoustic information on abilities boss performing or going to perform, more interesting abilities form mobs, which would encourage tactical approach, better rewards. Repair system needs to be tuned, it should be much cheaper.

I agree with the OP that the mechanics need to change to be more friendly to the class’s skill sets. And get rid of the stability altogether. Yes I know it’s there, I’ve told groups about the stacking buff. But it’s dumb. Use 5 totally useless CC’s so I can get rid of a buff that will only let me use one CC before the stack is back up? It’skitten What purpose does that serve on bosses?

Give me good mechanics and let me use my CC since we don’t have a freaking tank to tank for us. Make trash packs easier to deal with. Less mindless mass AoE everywhere so we don’t have to watch where we step the entire fight, maybe just a short AoE phase so it’s a more purposeful mechanic.

And make explorable accessible and fun for pugs. I consider myself a good gamer and I’ve had my hardcore days in the past, but I don’t have time anymore to find a static dungeon group. I want to be able to do explorables with any group I find so people need to be able to figure out how to play on their own. A tutorial would be nice but the bosses and mobs need less HP, need to hit for less (no one or two shot mechanics), no stability.

Make my skills actually useful and let us work as a team in a fun and unique way with well thought out mechanics. Right now dungeons are just not fun for the average gamer and they are supposed to be accessible and fun for everyone as it’s supposed to be a large part of any game. I’m not asking for it to be overly easy. I like GW2’s combat and I understand these are supposed to be more difficult. But they’re not designed well at all right now.

I hope they bring bag Easy and Hard mode for dungeons. That way casuals and hardcore can enjoy dungeons (obviously casual should have low rewards) at their proper level.

Nocturnus.6031:

Dungeon mobs don’t behave in ways that encourage anything but tank and spank tactics.

I’ve only done story modes up to Twilight’s Arbor though. I’m a guardian that focuses on control/support using my hammer for control and mace/shield when I’m taking/avoiding hits. From what I’ve seen there are a handful of boss mobs that could be “tanked”. Twilight’s Arbor is most recent from memory, so I’ll discuss that. The spider queen was straight forward and could be “tanked” (that is controlled) relatively easily. Her minions were easy to deal with for the other party members. Sariel of can’t be tanked, she randomly switches targets. She needs control or stability as she has one dangerous attack that can down people. The mutated armor fish can be tanked, but there is no need. It’s rather slow and unimpressive, and just needed to get an item to get to the real boss. Brangoire can’t be tanked and is the hardest boss in Twilight Arbor. He can’t be tanked, because you can’t stand still. If you stand still, you get downed. If someone tries to rescue you they get downed and you die. It’s a rather unforgiving encounter that requires players to move in concert around him to prevent the spiders from exploding on you. if players move of their own accord they can accidentally lead spiders into their allies, which is no fun. Condition removal can help with these mistakes. Cadeyrn isn’t really a tank and spank as there is really no need to do anything but attack him. He was largely unimpressive, but being turned into a kitty was fun. Finally, Faolain requires someone to kite/control the melee helpers, while others take care of the DPS helpers and burn down Faolain before she resses her helpers. It is not a tank and spank.

Boss mobs are near entirely immune to crowd control, rendering half of certain classes weapon sets and abilities completely and totally useless.

I have not encountered one boss that was completely immune to crowd control. Most, except the AC lovers, have resistance to it that you have to burn through. Obviously, having more crowd control will burn through the resistance quicker. Their resistance is shown on them when you target them, so you know when you can fire off the big control effects. Decide ahead of time who will fire off control at this time.

Creatures throw off control effects and knockbacks regularly without any tell, thus nullifying the need for Stability at all.

Which ones? Most I’ve encountered have a tell that is sometimes hard to see in spell effects, but they are not without a tell. The control effect I’ve seen that is difficult to see, but may have something I’m missing, is the fear from ACs necromancers and from the mobs/boss in Twilight’s arbor. Anyone know of a tell for these?

Damage amounts are off the wall, with large duration between auto attack and, once again, no tell; making it extremely difficult if not impossible to time blocks.

Again, which specific mobs. Perhaps someone can help you if you give specifics.

To Ruien (who typifies the “elitist jerk” stereotype so perfectly and ironically), and to all the others agreeing with his viewpoint on this and other threads, here’s what you’re all missing.

No modern MMO can survive or thrive if it locks casual players out of entire sections of content. It’s that simple. Want a current example? Look carefully at the financial woes of The Secret World, where casual players are completely brick-walled from participating in the end-game progression for purple (epic) crafted gear, in a game where gear stats are everything.

And before you say anything in rebuttal, consider the fact that dungeon tokens, many many many of them, are needed in this game not only for dungeon prestige armor skins, but also for legendary weapon crafting components. So if the casuals cannot do dungeons here, then they are effectively locked out of both of these types of “end game” goals/content.