(edited by Kurr.4179)
Unofficial Dungeon Suggestion Thread!
2) Ascalonian Catacombs
-Varied Suggestions for all paths by Armathendae
a) Path 1 – Hodgins
b) Path 2 – Detha
c) Path 3 – Tzark
-Decrease the length of the burrow event by making them spawn faster, making the event more difficult for newer players and less tedious for veteran players. Currently too easy.
3) Caudecus’s Manor
a) Path 1 – Asuran
-Decrease reliance on stealth up until first boss.
b) Path 2 – Seraph
c) Path 3 – Butler
4) Twilight Arbor
a) Path 1 – Leurent (Up)
b) Path 2 – Vevina (Forward)
c) Path 3 – Aetherpath
-Lower the damage holograms do when they explode on you a bit. Often times 3-4 people get downed by mass explosions and there’s no real way around it.
-Spawn more holograms during the final boss fight. It’s easy to miss the 1 hologram at a time and not very forgiving in unorganized groups.
-Give slightly more health to the oozes you need to protect as you drag them through enemies and fire. Again, unforgiving for new players and I see a lot of people give up there.
-Give a better indicator that ooze is following you during Slick and Sparky fight. This is an important part of the fight that new players often don’t understand or have trouble with.
5) Sorrow’s Embrace
a) Path 1 – Fergg
b) Path 2 – Rasolov
c) Path 3 – Koptev
(edited by Kurr.4179)
6) Citadel of Flame
a) Path 1 – Ferrah
-At the gate destruction part, the brazier closest to the tunnel you come in from sometimes does not activate properly when someone goes into it and requires the player to leave/enter it again.
b) Path 2 – Magg
c) Path 3 – Rhiannon
7) Honor of the Waves
-Make all 3 paths worth 2g. It’s a difficult dungeon that no one runs because it’s somewhat long and unrewarding for time put in. It also requires getting underwater gear.
a) Path 1 – Butcher
b) Path 2 – Plunderer
c) Path 3 – Zealot
8) Crucible of Eternity
a) Path 1 – Submarine
b) Path 2 – Teleporter
c) Path 3 – Front Door
9) The Ruined City of Arah
Arah feedback thread by IvanTheGrey
a) Path 1 – Jotun
b) Path 2 – Mursaat
c) Path 3 – Forgotten
d) Path 4 – Seer
10) Story Mode Dungeons
-Add option to skip cutscenes if possible.
I’m not going to add too many of my suggestions (at least for now) to try and keep it unbiased.
(edited by Kurr.4179)
I guess my idea with special objectives goes here. This is a general dungeon suggestion of course.
- Add daily bonus-objectives to paths/dungeons
- Three per day, an easy one, an intermediate one and a hard/challenging one
- May require a lot of objectives, but also gives you the possibility to toss around a ton of ideas and show players little secrets in dungeons they don’t yet know
- Example objectives may be “Finish the bonus event in Ascalonian Catacombs (the one where you turn off the lights)”, “Kill the Ooze King in Citadel of Flame p1”, “Don’t let Giganticus Lupicus eat any grubs”, “Finish the path without a team member dying completely”, “Finish the path with a kill rate of 75% or higher”
- Bonusrewards would be given out at the end of the path and give tokens, money, karma (and maybe loot), depending on the difficulty of the objective
- This may also give incentive to run paths multiple times a day, given the rewards justify it
- Possibility to also link a new achievement + title to it which requires to complete X special objectives, maybe even three achievements for each difficulty.
- Additionally, would go well with the suggested gambits for even more objectives.
Well my first suggestion would be to replace the old AOE Circles with the new ones.
The new ones are far superior to the old AOE circles. They don’t get lost in an effect storm, are very visible and they allow AOE attacks to be at any shape. And some heavy hitting attacks in the dungeons are some sort of AOE that could not be portrayed with the old AOE circles like cone attacks. With the new AOE telegraphs they could be made visible.
Two suggestions that I think would be really easy to implement:
- Reinstate Fyonna’s path.
- Rebalance gold rewards (and fractal drop rates). I started a thread on this because I figured that whatever numbers I came up with on my own wouldn’t be ideal, but I could just put the suggestion here if that’s better.
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.”
Pre-launch, Colin listed things that make MMOs bad. They are all now in GW2.
(edited by One Note Chord.5031)
Two suggestions that I think would be really easy to implement:
- Reinstate Fyonna’s path.
- Rebalance gold rewards (and fractal drop rates). I started a thread on this because I figured that whatever numbers I came up with on my own wouldn’t be ideal, but I could just put the suggestion here if that’s better.
I doubt Fyonna’s path will ever be reinstated, otherwise they wouldn’t have removed it originally, so I won’t be adding that to the main post. Rebalancing gold rewards is fine.
Yeah, that’s probably true. Well, I could imagine them thinking, “We don’t want to mess fragment the player base more, so we shouldn’t add any new dungeons!” But I hope they didn’t.
best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.”
Pre-launch, Colin listed things that make MMOs bad. They are all now in GW2.
Here’s my spontaneous list.
Add rewards for running story mode / playing with none lvl 80 players.
Many games have some sort of “mentoring” system which rewards helping lower level/less experienced people. I think a similar thing would help in the following areas:
Story mode
- Rewards new mentoring tokens*1
- Rewards might scale with the amount of players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
Explorable mode
- Rewards new mentoring tokens*1 if run with players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
- Rewards might scale with the amount of players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
*1 mentoring tokens could be used to buy unique cosmetic things. I wouldn’t mind if it’s some rock that acts as a mini, available in 50 different colors, a title, … So seriously not even a need for much work on these rewards. Just something unique to this content.
Things that aren’t considered dungeons (yet?)
I feel that the mindset regarding what makes a dungeon is rather limited. We have several things in this game which could reward in a similar way as dungeons do (tokens and cosmetic things bough with them. Again, I wouldn’t mind simple colored rock minis).
Jumping puzzles, mini dungeons
There are issues here (mesmer portals to the end,…), but also potential.
- Reward tokens after completion in the daily chest.
- New jumping puzzles as actual instanced/group oriented dungeons/fractals. In my eyes there isn’t necessarily need for fighting to have a cool group play experience.
- Token amount based on length, difficulty.
I’m sure the community wouldn’t mind to help evaluate the difference in difficulty/length of current puzzles used to determine the amount of tokens received.
If it takes ArenanNet less time to create jumping puzzles compared to normal dungeons this would be quite amazing.
General explorable mode gold reward
The current gold rewards are quite a mess. To make rarely run paths more interesting, the following ideas might help.
- Reward limited in a range of 1 to 4 gold per path (range might need tweaking).
- Rewards determined by the popularity*2 of a path
- Add more prestigious rewards. Again not necessarily complicated. Add a little to the existing skins (color, effect, whatever). Obtained by double the amount of tokens required for standard skins (amount might need tweaking).
*2 For the popularity, every path of every dungeon gets a percentage associated to the amount of completed runs over the past week/day compared to the total amount of dungeon runs in this period.
With 25 paths, if a path has been run 1/25 of the total amount of runs or more, he rewards the minimum amount. Less frequented = better reward.
EDIT: The run count mentioned in the path popularity section is meant gamewide, not based on the runs of a single account
(edited by Grax.9204)
Here’s my spontaneous list.
Add rewards for running story mode / playing with none lvl 80 players.
Many games have some sort of “mentoring” system which rewards helping lower level/less experienced people. I think a similar thing would help in the following areas:Story mode
- Rewards new mentoring tokens*
- Rewards might scale with the amount of players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
Explorable mode
- Rewards new mentoring tokens* if run with players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
- Rewards might scale with the amount of players below lvl 80 / people that haven’t yet completed it.
*mentoring tokens could be used to buy unique cosmetic things. I wouldn’t mind if it’s some rock that acts as a mini, available in 50 different colors, a title, … So seriously not even a need for much work on these rewards. Just something unique to this content.
Things that aren’t considered dungeons (yet?)
I feel that the mindset regarding what makes a dungeon is rather limited. We have several things in this game which could reward in a similar way as dungeons do (tokens and cosmetic things bough with them. Again, I wouldn’t mind simple colored rock minis).Jumping puzzles, mini dungeons
There are issues here (mesmer portals to the end,…), but also potential.
- Reward tokens after completion in the daily chest.
- New jumping puzzles as actual instanced/group oriented dungeons/fractals. In my eyes there isn’t necessarily need for fighting to have a cool group play experience.
- Token amount based on length, difficulty.
I’m sure the community wouldn’t mind to help evaluate the difference in difficulty/length of current puzzles used to determine the amount of tokens received.
If it takes ArenanNet less time to create jumping puzzles compared to normal dungeons this would be quite amazing.General explorable mode gold reward
The current gold rewards are quite a mess. To make rarely run paths more interesting, the following ideas might help.
- Reward limited in a range of 1 to 4 gold per path (range might need tweaking).
- Rewards determined by the popularity of a path
- Add more prestigious rewards. Again not necessarily complicated. Add a little to the existing skins (color, effect, whatever). Obtained by double the amount of tokens required for standard skins (amount might need tweaking).
For the popularity, every path of every dungeon gets a percentage associated to the amount of completed runs over the past week/day compared to the total amount of dungeon runs in this period.
With 25 paths, if a path has been run 1/25 of the total amount of runs or more, he rewards the minimum amount. Less frequented = better reward.
I’m not going to add your post to the main one for 4 reasons.
1) I vehemently disagree that “mentor tokens” are needed. You get downscaled to proper level already so you aren’t a level 80 completing content for a level 35. I also think it adds an unnecessary system to dungeons. Several dungeons require level 80 for explorable mode already as well which would not work with this system.
2) The gold reward thing has already been included by another poster. I also don’t think we need a more complicated system based on how long you haven’t completed a path to get rewards.
3) Adding new unique rewards to old dungeons is too little too late. They already have their own unique weapons and armors and if new rewards were added to them, it would just be because it’s new and shiny. Players already know the dungeons by heart and it wouldn’t be prestigious to get them.
4) This thread is about the 8 current dungeons. Other aspects of the game may be fun, but they aren’t the focus of this thread.
Of course, your post is there if the devs agree with your ideas.
1) I vehemently disagree that “mentor tokens” are needed.
The idea comes from the whole “lvl 80 only” background. It would also kind of address the replayability of story mode
3) Adding new unique rewards to old dungeons is too little too late
That’s personal opinion. I’m not sure if this will be helpful in moderating your list.
(edited by Grax.9204)
1) I vehemently disagree that “mentor tokens” are needed.
The idea comes from the whole “lvl 80 only” background. It would also kind of address the replayability of story mode
3) Adding new unique rewards to old dungeons is too little too late
That’s personal opinion. I’m not sure if this will be helpful in moderating your list.
I will add the part about story dungeons (forgot when I was making my post). And I do have to pick and choose what will go in the top post but the entire thread will obviously stay here. In the top post I don’t really want to add anything I feel is too far fetched. They aren’t going to entirely revamp the dungeons and reward systems is something I can say with a good amount of certainty.
Well considering this got stickied, I hope you’ll keep it updated.
Sorrow’s Embrace Path 3
- Make the event where we have to destroy the minecart different, currently it is really simple and all you have to do is AFK underneath the ledge to not get hit by any mobs and range it.
General:
- make hard hitting bosses switch aggro, after they down a player (tazza/shaemus, trash at shaemus cmp1)
- change aoe circles into the new kind (maybe change the aoe of bosses to be different sizes and shapes like the new ones in dry top) AND (this i find more important) make the time of the aoe circle appearing and the time when you need to dodge mean the same. It is really disconcerting to come from wurm where you need to instadoge a circle, back to subject alpha/tazza or (when he was there) wiggins. It does take away a lot of clarity, when every aoe indication tells you a different thing, without telling you.
Ascalonian Catacombs
- Trigger for the text line “Hello Gast…” needs to be fixed as every party member getting close to the event radius triggers it.
a) Path 1 – Hodgins
- Fix a Bug with using FGS Whirl or Warrior GS Whirl to whirl through closed door(into the big chamber) during burrow event
- sometimes asuras get stuck on terrain during that event too.
b) Path 2 – Detha
- I can still reliably bug Detha. Using a far stacking spot and letting her die.
- Dethas behaviour while repairing the traps is a bit weird. Either make her repair a trap to full. OR let her repair to 50% and then swap, if you want this behaviour you need to update her position after she dies/gets moved away from trap.
c) Path 3 – Tzark
-Decrease the length of the burrow event by making them spawn faster, making the event more difficult for newer players and less tedious for veteran players. Currently too easy.
3) Caudecus’s Manor
a) Path 1 – Asuran
- Decrease the reliance on stealth at the first boss. At the beginning to clear away the trash mobs stealth is almost mandatory for squishies, because the trash will focus only 1 player and insta down him. <- really annoying ^^
- Frosts leashing is weired, though it has gotten better.
b) Path 2 – Seraph
c) Path 3 – Butler
- make Shaemus switch targets after he downs a player.
5) Sorrow’s Embrace
a) Path 1 – Fergg
- Tazza can be annoying for the person focused with her autoattacks. Because shaking aggro is difficult, and there is only so much he/she can do.
b) Path 2 – Rasolov
c) Path 3 – Koptev
- Molradovich: Hearing “NONONONONO” a thousand times does not make it better. The trigger for the speech needs to be fixed.
(edited by Armathendae.8326)
Well considering this got stickied, I hope you’ll keep it updated.
Sorrow’s Embrace Path 3
- Make the event where we have to destroy the minecart different, currently it is really simple and all you have to do is AFK underneath the ledge to not get hit by any mobs and range it.
My idea: Halve the HP and make it affected by conditions, as weird as that may be. That would make it go down fast enough imo.
Ascalonian Catacombs:
P1 – Make burrows afflicted by conditions, fix Necro Staff 1 and Lich Form 1 to reliably hit the burrow, make Staff marks activate on burrows.
P3 – Make burrows afflicted by conditions, fix Necro Staff 1 and Lich Form 1 to reliably hit burrows, make Staff marks activate on burrows.
Sorrow’s Embrace:
P3 – Reduce HP of the minecart, make it affected by conditions.
Can’t remember much more off the top of my head..
AC p3
Simply, make the next burrows spawn as soon as one burrow has been destroyed. Turn this into a non timegated event. As soon as the last burrow has been destroyed, the event is finished.
(edited by xallever.1874)
Ascalonian Catacombs:
P1 – Make burrows afflicted by conditions, fix Necro Staff 1 and Lich Form 1 to reliably hit the burrow, make Staff marks activate on burrows.
P3 – Make burrows afflicted by conditions, fix Necro Staff 1 and Lich Form 1 to reliably hit burrows, make Staff marks activate on burrows.
Sorrow’s Embrace:
P3 – Reduce HP of the minecart, make it affected by conditions.
Can’t remember much more off the top of my head..
Burrows and the dredge car can’t be hit by marks or conditions because they are objects. It is the same reason you can’t crit them. I doubt that will be change.
SE p3
Please get rid of the talking scene on the 2nd last boss or make them reliably aggro on you as soon as you’re there.
Burrows and the dredge car can’t be hit by marks or conditions because they are objects. It is the same reason you can’t crit them. I doubt that will be change.
Don’t care, it’s unneccessary. Adds nothing to the game. No counter play involved. Conditions are weak against objects, strong against what exactly? Only the newly introduced husks, and those aren’t in dungeons.
I would give structures very high armor (75%-90% damage reduction vs. current situation) but make them crittable and vulnerable to condition damage while lowering their health a bit. This would give pretty nice niche role for condition users without needing encounter reworks.
I’m not going to keep this thread updated but feel free to post your ideas since it’s stickied and I can’t delete it. Spending a little bit of time reading the posts by the veterans here just… no thanks. I’ll go have fun instead.of staying in this very negative place.
Locked Dungeons, COE/COF
With the megaservers it’s very common to do the unlock events, then do a path, then zone out and have to do the events again… it’s incredibly annoying, can we please stop having them lock.
Perhaps related to dungeons in a way:
•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.
I disagree with the Aetherpath suggestion… it’s 80lvl high-end pve dungeon path, I don’t want it to become easier. More holograms in Clockheart fight? Are you serious? This is end-boss, it’s supposed to be hard, If you fail to kill hologram at boss, another one spawns elsewhere. If you fail to do this at all, you can still interrupt his power attack, even if he has shield on >.>
If aether is going to be changed, I would only make the cinematics skippable.
I don’t know if this is a stupid idea or not, but each day a different path could have a special daily bonus event.
For instance one day SE path 1 could have it. There would be a daily achievement “Destroy the Mordremoth tendril with Ferg”. In the dungeon, after you’ve destroyed the golems, suddenly BOOM, up comes a tendril for you and the party to destroy. Defeat it and get your daily reward. Make it a rare like the world bosses and you’ll get lots of people wanting to do it.
The best part is that it’s part of LS, so there’s a chance of them dedicating resources to it.
Quality of life: Add universal slaying potion.
I disagree with the Aetherpath suggestion… it’s 80lvl high-end pve dungeon path, I don’t want it to become easier. More holograms in Clockheart fight? Are you serious? This is end-boss, it’s supposed to be hard, If you fail to kill hologram at boss, another one spawns elsewhere. If you fail to do this at all, you can still interrupt his power attack, even if he has shield on >.>
If aether is going to be changed, I would only make the cinematics skippable.
You’re free to disagree and make your own suggestions. Personally I know how to do aetherpath and while my groups usually end up dying a couple of times and it’s mostly because we usually do it once then not again for months. If we did it daily it would be a breeze of course.
But, it’s also extremely difficult with PUGs. The first time I tried it was with a random PUG when it came out. We failed horribly at the oozes for a long time, and then could not complete the first boss. It’s unforgiving for unorganized groups. I don’t even want to know how the final boss would go with such a group.
I actually like the puzzles and all. The holograms you could disagree if you feel it’s to encourage non-zerker gear… but honestly with the amount of explosions it’s either perfect dodging or you’re dead.
For the last boss, even in organized groups it can be a bit of a pain to get the hologram on spot ( a mesmer helps a lot, scorpion wire can help too usually) and again I don’t want to see how this goes in a complete PUG unless a decent player carries the group.
This path would get played a lot more if it was accessible to more people IMO.
Not everything needs to be completed without much hassle by everyone. Either spend the time to learn the path, watch videos or let it be.
There are enough easy paths which can be learned in almost no time (usually a run or two is enough), so why not have some paths where you actually get your kitten handed to you? The game doesn’t even kick you out no matter how hard you fail and since april, you can retrait on the go, so you have enough possibilities to tackle those bosses. If people can’t be kitten d to put some time into content to learn it, it’s their fault. They can stick with the easy dungeon paths, that’s fine.
What would help in that regard may be adding a difficulty behind each selectable path/dungeon upon choosing/entering. I.e. when getting the popup to open cof it says “difficulty: easy to medium” “est. playtime: short-medium” and when you speak with the NPC to pick the path, it tells you what applies for what path (p1 easy-short, p3 medium-medium for example). This way, everyone knows what they’re in for.
Well my first suggestion would be to replace the old AOE Circles with the new ones.
The new ones are far superior to the old AOE circles. They don’t get lost in an effect storm, are very visible and they allow AOE attacks to be at any shape. And some heavy hitting attacks in the dungeons are some sort of AOE that could not be portrayed with the old AOE circles like cone attacks. With the new AOE telegraphs they could be made visible.
I have to second this one.
IMO one of the fights that has the biggest need for the new AoE circles is Subject Alpha in CoE story mode, with the twin circle AoE he does in two of the paths, where you actually want to stand in the middle circle, because the AoE is in the outer circle… except for the one time where you actually want to leave the center circle, all of which you are suppose to tell by some blue mist/ice effect, which if everyone is stacking (which is pretty much a given in a Subject Alpha fight) is pretty much impossible to see, which is largely why everyone just stacks in on one spot and dodges after 2 seconds when the circles show up.
Turning it into a solid ring if it’s one way (which I know can be done, because the boss of the second LS story mission of the latest chapter has it) and a small solid circle would make it so much easier to tell which one it is, and maybe promote the idea of positioning yourself properly instead of everyone dodging in sync.
With the introduction of new dungeon “ownership” system, a few problems are expected to be encountered. As it has been already mentioned by many players, it is now possible that players, who haven’t contributed to progress in the dungeon at all, to completely steal the instance and others’ effort to (for example) sell it.
I’d like to suggest a different system, which will hopefully help to fight this kind of griefing.
At the very moment first person enters a dungeon and instance gets created, all current members of his party are saved and locked as an “original party”. Of course it doesn’t have to be full party, even a single player is enough. Then, when someone is kicked out, the dungeon asks itself a question. Is atleast one person from the original party still in here? If not and no member of the party that originally entered the dungeon is still there, the instance gets destroyed.
This will protect the dungeons from being stolen and sold by people, who have not completed them (=been there from the beginning). There is still some danger for casual runs – if there are two griefers already from the beginning and kick others at the end, they will be able to sell it/give it to their friends. I see no solution to this unfortunately, just make sure you don’t open dungeon with people you don’t trust.
With the introduction of new dungeon “ownership” system, a few problems are expected to be encountered. As it has been already mentioned by many players, it is now possible that players, who haven’t contributed to progress in the dungeon at all, to completely steal the instance and others’ effort to (for example) sell it.
I’d like to suggest a different system, which will hopefully help to fight this kind of griefing.At the very moment first person enters a dungeon and instance gets created, all current members of his party are saved and locked as an “original party”. Of course it doesn’t have to be full party, even a single player is enough. Then, when someone is kicked out, the dungeon asks itself a question. Is atleast one person from the original party still in here? If not and no member of the party that originally entered the dungeon is still there, the instance gets destroyed.
This will protect the dungeons from being stolen and sold by people, who have not completed them (=been there from the beginning). There is still some danger for casual runs – if there are two griefers already from the beginning and kick others at the end, they will be able to sell it/give it to their friends. I see no solution to this unfortunately, just make sure you don’t open dungeon with people you don’t trust.
I think I saw a dev post mentioning that the game already keeps logs of players joining/leaving/booting groups, and that there is already plans to make it visible to players as LFG messages so people will be able to report those who join groups only to boot everyone at the end and sell it/invite friends.
Might not help in prevention, but at least when it happens you’ll be able to file a report immediately and not be stuck trying to remember the exact spelling of the name of the guy who hijacked your run.
General dungeon suggestion:
Update the AI. The Living Story AI is excellent, while the current dungeon AI is mind numbingly simple. The PvP in this game is the best I’ve seen in any online game, and the Living Story AI makes PvE fights seem like PvP. Bringing that to explorable dungeons would give veterans a challenge without being frustrating i.e a blast.
Some few points from a filthy casual
- Balance combo-fields. Currently, nearly only fire-combos seem viable within the fight, and smoke is used for stealth as a skip-preparation. This goes as far that some otherwise usefull skills aren´t used simply because they have a combo-field other than fire. However, when doing this try not to nerf fire-fields, as that would make combos as a whole weaker, but rather try to buff other combos/make them more useful. No, I have no idea how to do that more precisely
- Most experienced dungeoneers have probably long forgotten this, but: Make it visible at the dungeon-master-achievement-page which paths are already done, which are yet to do.
- Fix walls, in a way that mobs can´t stay inside walls (which makes their animations hard to spot), can´t hit or be hit through walls, and can´t be aggroed through walls.
- Make several further dungeon-master achievement-like achievements in a way that there´s one for each class and one (with a title) when you´ve run every path with every class.
- Loot and reward should be given per run and divided onto the group-members in a way that every member of a 5-player group gets a fifth of the total, every member of a 3-player-group gets a third.
- When you´ve made a bigger step in mob-design (like lately with the Mordrems), consider putting it in a dungeon. In my humble opinion the latest outcry for new dungeon-content stems not totally much from the lack of something new, but also because players simply got their hopes high when seeing those new mobs, as that meant a new dungeon might have been different from the older ones and thus create a new phase of trying to optimise tactics.
- Projectiles should be reflectable. If something isn´t reflectable, don´t call it a projectile, don´t make it look like a projectile. Maybe you´ll want to add a differentiation, like rockets or missiles or grenades or whatever, just make it predictable for the player by the outlook of an attack wether something is reflectable, blockable or unblockable.
- At least in the low-level-dungeons, give the players an indication wether a passage is meant to be skipped or not. Just a little bit more clear text in the upper right of the screen.
- All cut-scenes should be skippable. Always.
- Don´t throw players out of the dungeon and/or back to the beginning on short disconnects. Give them at least 30 seconds to come back in exactly where they stood.
- If all the players are at one place, that is also the place where the npc should be, unless he has some task to do somewhere.
DAMAGE-SUPPORT-CONTROL
—-PVE ONLY-—
Hello, here are some few idea that I think would make dungeons better as an experience and not just a quick money grab. I love going into a dungeon but it’s saddening how we ended up, with one stat to do it all , getting in corners and such. Now I don’t bash/rage at people doing that, I know that it is the most effective way to do it , and there the problem stems I believe. Guildwars 2 combat system is amazing , it offers so much flexibility yet we’re still stuck in one build to rule it all and it is a waste. I tried to keep the suggestions to what already is in Gw2 ,and to be PVE only, I realize some of the changes would be awful in PVP or WvW , so again PVE ONLY.
Dungeon design ( explorable)
• No more paths , all mobs and bosses in the dungeon already , rewards based on % of things killed and key bosses akin to paths
• Requiring lvl 80
• Randomized trash mobs (spawn location and diversity, keeping in theme with the dungeon, we have RNG everywhere, why not have where it matters)
• Better loot on the trash mobs ( tokens tradable at a npc)
• Randomized events and secret rooms ( eg : troll in ac opens a passage to a troll nest that guards a chest )
• Having some event chains (deliver some story elements, eg: a stranded priory team in AC that has to be escorted back to the camp, an undercover seraph as a bandit boss and having to collect some kind of poison to feign his death so he can be extracted without suspicions, collecting bomb parts form golems in CoE for a big bomb that shuts down a power node, etc)
• Length : A full clear run should take 1-3 maybe 4 hours for dungeons like arah Some DR on loot for repeating the dungeon.
• Rewards
- Gold reward distributed amongst the mobs, bosses, events, secret chests
- A special acc bound item dropped only by the trash mobs ,specific to the dungeon ,tradable on an npc(eg: ascalonian artifacts for AC , inquest design plans for , orrian artifacts etc.), these tokens can be used to buy exotic trinkets with matching stats, t6 mats and cores, one type of core/t6 per dungeon. , and players would go to a diff dungeons for diff mats) (maybe a new collection with drops from trash mobs)
- More dungeon tokens overall 300-500 for full completion
- More karma (3-10 k per full run) ,granted by killing bosses doing events etc
- Bosses have a small chance of dropping weapon and armor boxes akin to the pvp-ones
Why: Dungeons should be a fun and somewhat challenging group content with fun the key work, right now dungeons are boring, yes , boring stack here, skip these , stack there , all done, from what I’ve seen the real challenge in some dungeons are skipping the trash mobs instead of bosses, I feel it should be the other way around. That said dungeons are already mainly done with lvl 80 players so this change won’t affect anyone that much.
By removing the paths, the dungeon can be done in smaller chunks catering both “hardcore” and “casual” players , resets when all players leave the dungeon and I use those terms loosely, I’ve seen too many people saying that casual=idiots /noobs /whatever , and not what they really are, players that do not invest a lot of time into a game. People like a challenge and being rewarded for beating it, what is doesn’t cater is entitled players. Also removing the rigidness of a path makes players want to explore more, which they should do in an explorable mode, ( I don’t think there are many people that know of Baelfire’s coffin in CoF, or the ghostly planks in AC). A-net put a lot of effort in creating the dungeon aspect, I’ve looked at Arah map, it’s huge, it has immense potential to explore , to get lost in it for hours to see what’s on the next corner even if we have to plough through trash mobs just to see it. Speaking of trash mobs, again the effort put into making them was huge but they are more rewarding if skipped than killed , which I find saddening , and some groups are a pain to deal with, way harder than the bosses themselves, just look at the TA knights, or Arah , parties usually wipe there and not at the bosses, rescaling them and making them worthwhile would actually make them a target instead of just hoops to jump through , to that respect I suggest introducing the new type of currency, the trinkets make sense since we have weapons and armors but no trinkets( and by trinkets I mean amulets, rings , earring) . Tier 6 and cores, this would give us players direct and visible means to gather some of the materials for our items, one type of each core/T6 per dungeons so we have a reason to go to certain dungeons beside “it’s the biggest gold/h”. Why cores and not lodestones? To make Miyani happy (so we can spend some of our gold that we get in the dungeon).
Mobs
• Have auto-attack chain that makes sense (eg a giant having 2 fast autos and one big charged one) , melee mobs cleave (faster attacks) ( some damage adjustments)
• Some having down state
• Better AI
– having reactive dodges and block ( trying to leave the aoe*(dodge out maybe) )
– trying to flank players (some of them eg inquest assassins)
– Following on an arc in when losing los instead of the shortest path
– Ranged trying to keep their distance and can attack while moving
• Having class similarities
• Having more aoe
• Healing themselves and allies ( some of them ,poison makes much more sense in pve)
• If it’s a projectile, it’s reflectable, end of story!
• Some calling for help
• Having cast timers
• Hard hitting abilities having visible tells
Bosses
• Defiant hard cap replaced with a soft one, every consecutive cc adds a stack and a timer each hard cc reducing the duration of the next by 25% – 50% and adding another stack and increasing the duration of the timer, when 100% is achieved the boss gets immunity to cc for the duration left on the timer. So player can interrupt key abilities without stunlocking them.
• Same AI changes as the mobs
Why: Mobs right now are dumb as a rock, they don’t react to anything the player does to them, they will flock together in the biggest/ hardest hitting aoe in the game without a second though, this make them boring in my opinion, having them dodge/avoid attacks , grouping and helping each other would make a much more interesting encounter for the party, would keep everyone on their toes, and feel more rewarding when defeating a group of them. Having them run to other groups for help or trying to get some of the downed ones could make control builds much more useful ,the auto-attack chain makes the flow of the battle much more natural and it opens confusion up as a viable pve condition ( how many ppl have watched as their confusion stacks gradually die without doing a single tick of damage)
Player
• Damaging condition stack independently ( poison healing reduction only once) ( with condition bullets and some trait/skill changes eg: epidemic spreads only necromancer’s conditions)
• Conditions have 2x, 3x base duration
• Healing power scales better (2x, 3x)
• Boons radius increased (240 is a joke )
Why: Condition builds suffer greatly in dungeons, a full condition build has damage potential but it’s held back but other players skills that apply conditions as a second effect (eg: elementalist churning earth), also they take a while to ramp up so a bigger duration would help achieve that faster, also it helps hybrid builds, I think these changes will bring condition builds more in line with power ones. Conditions can still use the current interface , just increase the cap to 125 stacks bleeding/confusion/torment and when someone in your party place the condition you just see the shield icon, when you place it, it gains stacks, same can be done with the duration stacking ones, just add the white edge to the ones you put.
Healing power is an underpowered stat in pve , you have to sacrifice a lot to gain a little more healing , increasing the scaling without touching the base healing would make healing power a viable stat choice, and no it won’t make dedicated healers, there are still cooldowns to keep that in check, as for boon(and some healing) radii some are so small(240) it’s not even worth mentioning if you aren’t stacked ,eg: elementalists healing ripple, it seems good on paper but if you’re further than 240 from any player it cuts it’s healing to 20%.
TL;DR: no more paths, smarter mobs, better rewards, more viable stat combos
Story Mode Dungeons
– Make them soloable
– Have NPCs teach you the layout
– Unlock explorable account wide
why – With the emphasis on the NPE, I feel this is a great fit right now. I have been playing since launch and have done exactly one story mode dungeon. That was Arah and that was for personal story completion. I’ve done several dungeons (not all), and all others on explorable.
If it was rebalanced for a single player, then the lore and layout of the dungeon can be explored by each person at their own pace. The NPC can make conversation about the dungeon and what you can expect, hints and help with puzzles, etc. I have run several dungeons and relied on others or the internet to know what to expect beforehand so I am not ‘that guy’. I never felt I got to enjoy a dungeon as a new experience and get that sense of discovery.
When I first started playing, I had a few friends in a small guild and it was very hard to get a full group on to do a run. Yeah, I know – get a better guild, lfg, etc. That’s great, but it’s a little intimidating to some people, or too much effort or whatever. I am essentially a solo player who sometimes likes to run around with friends. Point is, I play the way I like and always thought getting a story group together was not really worth it at the time and then I forgot about it and moved on. Once I hit 80, it seemed everyone wanting a group expected you to know what to do, so once again, I deferred and didn’t run dungeons. I missed a large chunk of the leveling experience and personal story because it was locked behind a wall.
I know this is a large change, but I so very much wish that this is how it was implemented from the beginning. I never understood the decision to gate the last step of the personal story – a solo experience – behind a 5-man gate. And don’t get me started on unlocking it for each alt.
Content Marketing Lead
To those who have participated: thanks with sticking with this process so far. I know that we lost a few folks along the way, but I understand why.
As I mentioned here, I will be locking these threads and will be putting them together to send over to the devleopers for feedback.
Ideally, I will be highlighting one post per thread—one which succinctly compiles all the feedback. This is what I will be looking for. If I don’t find that, I will do my best to capture the feedback from each thread overall.
Here is what is stickied:
- Reward rebalance suggestions
- General suggestions
- Fractals of the Mists
- Arah
- Twilight Arbor
- Crucible of Eternity
- Ascalonian Catacombs
Thank you, all.
Twitter: @ArenaNet, @GuildWars2
In-Game Name: Cm Regina Buenaobra