Guild Wars 2

There’s been a lot of “discussions” on these boards about the negative qualities of dungeons and some have even included positive feedback. I thought I’d create this thread to have a central thread where the Dev’s could gather what we as players would like to see implemented in dungeons. Maybe not the current ones, but future dungeons.

As I mentioned in the “A fresh pair of eyes” thread by Atraides, here is my wish list.

1. Boss fights that require environmental hazards to help take down. This could include pillars, drop away floors, cannons, explosives and maybe even boss minions that are redirected towards the boss to disable his innate resistances. (think the boss in Twilight Arbor where you have to hit him with 4 essences to get rid of his Determined buff).

2. Maybe add sections in the dungeon that if you kill a boss in a certain way (see pillars above) the floor gives way and you are dropped into another area with additional chances at treasure chests or boss fights. These would have to be carefully designed to be no less rewarding than other boss fights or maybe have a chance to randomly show up in the dungeon. (similar to the Ogre boss that can randomly spawn in Ascalonian Catacombs. which by the way scared the kittens out of me the first time it happened. I loved it

3. This is the biggest one. Design boss encounters with our full array of abilities in mind. What I mean is most bosses are completely immune to CC abilities (fear, stun, snare etc) 100% of the time. Either give us the opportunity to stun them occasionally as part of the encounter. Maybe we have to wait till he charges up his super move or time it where just before a situation happens we hit him with everything we got. As it stands we have no hope of slowing them down or preventing the boss from focusing a party member to death. There are no taunts in this game (which is fine since we don’t want a dedicated tank etc) but even if you apply all your healing effects, or protection buffs or blinds, the boss will still focus that one player down and then its a run back for him.

So please post your constructive ideas here and lets keep it POSITIVE.

I want clear signals from boss monsters when they attack, so everyone has the opportunity to block it. They should do massive damage when not dodged/blocked. Auto attack from the boss monsters should be toned down a bit. So people will have to choose carefully when to dodge. Right now any attack does a lot of damage and you really can’t dodge/block them all.

Remove the invulnerability moments from monsters. That necromancer in CM Explorer mode really spams it. It just makes the fight last longer, but in a really boring way.

The most fun I’ve had in a dungeon is Sorrow’s Embrace. The end boss has a very simple mechanic that requires people to constantly shift their position. This may not seem like a big deal, but it improved the experience by a lot.

Heh Deherch, I loved that fight. I loved that you had to pay attention, kill the molten worms then pick up the boulders and launch those at the boss for HUGE damage. Then you had to move out of LOS from his lava beam and then you had to get out from behind the walls or you got lava dropped on you. That was a fun fight overall.

1. More co-ordination things.
Examples: 1st and 3rd path of CoF. The torch lighting segments require your party to time things properly. It’s a nice way to force a group to co-ordinate, without just making the dungeon obscenely hard

2. bosses where the environment is your strategy
examples: Destroyer of worlds in SE is probably the biggest I can think of for this. There are lots of things nearby that you can climb all over, and then jump down from, in order to avoid the bosses attacks and the aggro from the adds.

3. bosses where we have to use the environment in some fashion
examples: Taskmaster in SE Slavery where you have to get him crushed. And the icebrood guy in CoE sub where you have to make him crash into the pillars. It’s a fun thing to do.

4. More mechanics from bosses in general
too many bosses are just dodge and spank. While I can understand that not every boss can be a unique and special snowflake, I still feel a little disappointed when the only strategy for a boss is “Dodge his normal attacks and hit him for 10 minutes” even something like Tazza where her only mechanic is “dont stand in her giant red circles” feels more interesting than something like say the first boss in HoTW plunderer (the giant icebrood dog thing) where all he does is freeze people near him. Making the fight literally walk in circles auto’ing him down.

Mobs and bosses dropping tokens, as promised. This is what i want.

Well It seems like a Huge mechanic in the game is dodging which is just fine, however it interrupt our abilities. So in CM story mode, when you fight around the drunken Norn, in a narrow corridor, with 10 Theifs knocking you down and then heart seeking you, its a bit rough to dodge around. Now the door guard before that area is completely dodgeable. It seems like you dodge for survival and maybe get a hit out 10%ish of the time(in the case of those that are glass cannon types) I would like to see a nice balance between dodging and damage. So that way people who are spec’d out more so in damage/precision than toughness/healing can actually have a chance to make it through the Dungeon.

Make crystal shield able to send back Giganticus Lupicus green attacks back to the source, this would be a cool update of that battle.

I don’t know exactly what I want. I expected Guild Wars 2 to wow me, because they have been wowing me with all the other elements and features of their game.

What I do know is that the dungeons that can be found in Guild Wars 2 are very uninspired. The layouts are very traditional, with the exception of some event-like mechanics, and the bosses are straightforward and unimpressive. It sounds like I am simplifying dungeons for the sake of my argument, and, I believe, in some ways, I am, but I just don’t love Guild Wars 2 dungeons as much as I do the dungeons in WoW or Vindictus or Borderlands 2 or Dragon Nest.

Borderlands 2 has interesting loot going for it, as well as lively characters and funny dialogue.

WoW has loot going for it as well, as well as consistency. People might argue that it is really easy, and others might argue that you can give yourself the option of challenge. That’s besides the point. The main strength of WoW, I find, is its consistency. Dungeons get harder and harder. Raids slowly increase in difficulty. You feel like you are progressing.

Even if you dislike WoW, I feel Guild Wars 2 would benefit from having consistency. You can make this game as hard as you want, but it should be consistent.

Vindictus is a challenging game, and it is somewhat grindy. But I didn’t mind the grind, because the boss fights were interesting. Most of the boss fights feel unique, and everyone might die a lot of times, but you feel accomplished for beating bosses. And some bosses take a good amount of time to beat. The rewards in Vindictus are based on how lucky you are, so you literally get nothing a lot of the time. But it doesn’t matter, because the boss fights are truly interesting—at least to me, anyway.

People don’t mind difficult if bosses are interesting, like in Vindictus. Dark Souls also has difficult bosses, but people are okay with it due to the bosses being interesting first and difficult second. These games aren’t interesting and the bosses aren’t interesting due to the difficulty. They are interesting, and they are also difficult.

In Guild Wars 2, some of the boss fights are interesting, but most of them are straightforward. What makes them annoying is that they are straightforward and the bosses have a lot of health and take a while to kill. Bosses having a lot of health and taking a while to kill only serves to agitate players even further, because this boring fight will last for a while.

So, I don’t know what I want exactly to love Guild Wars 2 dungeons, but I do know what I enjoyed in other games. I don’t want Guild Wars 2 to simply take from other games, because I am not playing those other games for a reason. Well, I’m not playing them at the moment. Well, not Vindictus anyway. I want Guild Wars 2 to realize what makes other games fun and spin it in a new way and destroy the other games.

:)

I just know use large pool of mobs and boss health to prolong the dungeon run is not fun. If Anet want us to get rid of speed run, they should add more contents like more events/boss fight instead of increasing the pool of hp of mobs/boss so that no matter what we do, we need 5-10 min to kill that thing. Also making random mobs drop tokens is also a good way to encourage us to kill more mobs instead of run pass it.

More fights like lupicus/giant grub but different. He’s the only boss that really stands out where others are kinda just whack this guy for 5-10 minutes.