Guild Wars 2

I don’t care if there are “pro-gamers” that just wait for these posts to come up so they can
brag about how awesome they are and how smoothly they can run through a dungeon.
GW2 dungeons are inconsistent, overpowered and simply badly made.

Here are just some points that come to mind:
- Sometimes there are waypoints in exp dungeons, sometimes there are none.
Even more rediculous: CM Path 3 offers a second waypoint that is just 5 sec away
from the first waypoint – completely useless
- Do you even know that most people finish the dungeons by SKIPPING parts of it?
- What about the rediculous amount of health on a boss mob? At some point it is just a boring 5min fight.
- What is wrong with the weird event to unlock CoF??! It’s locked all the time! I actually lose group members because they don’t care to wait for 30min for the kitten event to start. Then we finally get inside, have a run and decide to go again –
but the kitten dungeon shut down again while we were inside!!!
- Why is there no dungeon-LFG tool? There is not even a global chat?
How am I supposed to find another group member, if one leaves mid-way?!
- Did you notice that the Fractals and Event dungeons are stealing people from the “old”
dungeons? It can take forever to find a group for the specific dungeon you started to
collect tokens from. How are people supposed to gather enough for a set of armor,
if you can do a dungeon every second day? Why cant I buy tokens?
- What about the rediculous rooted enemies? There are numerous occassions in all of
GW2’s dungeons, where NPCs are simply rooted to the ground. You do realize that
by putting the Sanctuary dome above them, they are being perma-stunned?
- There is a sick overpowering of enemies in dungeons. What about the underwater
fights in HOTW path 2 and 3? Those Quaggans alone can whipe out an entire group.
Put them underwater and add another 2 Jellyfish and the fight becomes tougher,
than the actual boss fight.

Not all of us play in mega-guilds, not all of us have a group of people they regularly do
dungeons with. Some of us are actually dependent on other players agreeing to group
for just this once. So sometimes people don’t speak English so well, sometimes people
are just not as good a player as others and sometimes all these things come together.
Its a shame. I really enjoy the game. But I have never ever had this much trouble in a simple dungeon run, as I do in GW2.

What happened to dungeons being a place where a group of players could explore an area, enjoy group play and a little tactical challenge. GW2 has put in the token system and reduced dungeons to a chore one has to do, in order to get those tokens. By raising the strength of the enemies or installing unreasonably difficult traps they try to appear challenging – but they are not.

Man, when I read the opening paragraph I was expecting this to be another post complaining about SE P1 or something, but it actually has a tonne of viable and legitimate criticism on matters which have been confusing me for ages.

Anyway, I feel that the dungeons were just the products of a team inexperienced to the style of play that GW2 would create, or maybe a team in hurry to finish to a deadline. There is no way that you can predict how players will play the game at 80 – example, Defiant – a large majority of players have no idea what this is. Another example: skipping – dungeons are not played for the challenge, they are played to get the money and the tokens as fast as you can and then get out, resulting in what feels like a bad stealth game where the designers forgot to put in the stealth.. Anet has stated that they wish to rework the older, non-fractal dungeons – and I think this is a good thing considering how much more enjoyable and better designed fractals are than the classic dungeons.

Honestly when I started to explore AC Exp a bit more, and find rooms and even events (Has anyone else found the “defeat the ghosts” event in AC yet?) that are completely unused, I began to fantasize about how much better a more “dynamic” dungeon would be. Example: instead of walking into AC and seeing “SELECT ONE OF THESE THREE PATHS THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING GOOD DAY SIR”, you could actually talk to one of the three people and help them, and they would ask for advice on which way you want to go, and there would be side-events for extra loot and different events each time with jumping puzzles and minibosses incorporated into it. Imagine a dungeon being open-ended and a different experience each time you did it, instead of just 3 static paths that everyone knows how to do and farms for money. Dungeons right now need to be renamed to “exploitable” rather than “explorable”, because they are not that in the slightest.

Also the DPS sponge bosses have to go. I have no clue how the hell anyone thought these were fun. Increasing an easy boss’s health to one kittening million does not make it more difficult, and increasing a difficult boss’s health to similar levels does not make it more fun, just more tedious. Kholer is the perfect example of a boss, although perhaps too easy. More kholer pls.

Bad game design. Rushed bosses. Dungeons are boring.

I would like to add to this that it is extremely discouraging to me that there is only one way to beat some things. In a game like this, that should not be the case.

[edit] I meant some, not most, so I fixed it. :/

CoF : the event is triggered by talking to a NPC in a camp in the west of CoF. The chain takes around 30 minutes.

Rooted enemies : except in CM and wurms, I don’t recall rooted enemies.

The underwater fights can be difficult because some players never upgrade their underwater weapons or mask.

LunaticSerenade.7615:

I would like to add to this that it is extremely discouraging to me that there is only one way to beat most things. In a game like this, that should not be the case.

What do you mean by that ?

The first thing that comes to mind is Lupicus. It seems like there is exactly one way to beat him, and while it requires a fantastic (and not quite PUGable) amount of team work (and that’s pretty neat), it frustrates me that the only way I can beat it is with one method.

It just seems like there should be more than one way to do it.

I did path 3 every day for 10 days (now on holidays) and sometime path 1 and 2 but I don’t really understand what you mean by that.

The fist phase is always the same : stack on each other to have an easier time killing the grubs.
But phase 2 and 3 depends on how you want to do it. You can try to melee the boss or you can be ranged. The players who is targeted can choose to kite or to fight the boss head on.
There are easier and less risky ways and harder but faster ways.

RedStar.4218:

I did path 3 every day for 10 days (now on holidays) and sometime path 1 and 2 but I don’t really understand what you mean by that.

The fist phase is always the same : stack on each other to have an easier time killing the grubs.
But phase 2 and 3 depends on how you want to do it. You can try to melee the boss or you can be ranged. The players who is targeted can choose to kite or to fight the boss head on.
There are easier and less risky ways and harder but faster ways.

And even on phase one you could all go melee and dodge the grubs.

RedStar.4218:

CoF : the event is triggered by talking to a NPC in a camp in the west of CoF. The chain takes around 30 minutes.

Wrong. The event is triggered whenever Raisin feels like going.

Nonlinear.9823:

RedStar.4218:

CoF : the event is triggered by talking to a NPC in a camp in the west of CoF. The chain takes around 30 minutes.

Wrong. The event is triggered whenever Raisin feels like going.

I’m fairly certain that I already triggered the chain myself. But until I do it again, I won’t be 100% certain on this.

Some valid points and some venting there. As for the CoF event I dont think it takes as long as 30 minutes. What I do is use gw2lfg because I can group with people from other servers so if the gate is contested on the server I’m on there may be a chance that it could be open on one of the other group members servers.

Myself I dont mind the dungeons being a grind for tokens. Its guaranteed gear vs. random boss item drops. And I dont mind some dungeon mechanics being simple. At least you can get the gear. I think about some mmo’s and how hard it was to get gear and the big investment of time it took to do that content. Many times gear was just completely unobtainable if you couldn’t play 3 dedicated hours an evening 3-4 nites a week.

Agreed some aspects of dungeons could be make more interesting with not too much work I guess. But I do have some really fun groups and I ’ve had some really bad ones. Some PUG groups take 1 1/2hrs to complete a dungeon path that normally takes 30 minutes. But I do like that dungeons dont often keep you in them for much more than an hour.

My worst experience by far was Arah, Path Four. Five hours spent, just to meet the brick wall that is Simin. Five. Hours.

For about 9 tokens that I got from bags.

Not happy that day.

(Second worst might be CM story mode, which is the only story mode dungeon I didn’t enjoy. Mostly my experience of GW2 dungeons has been very positive— it’s just these two examples that cause me grief).

Here are the following complaints I have about TA.

The very first boss(nightmare vine) needs to be completely fixed. Their wurm spit attack hits way too much space way too quickly. The only viable way to do this boss is to bug it so that he doesn’t attack.

The mesmer boss in the forward up path, teleports WAY too often and and her chaos storm is too quick and that also does too much damage.

The Up path, the first spider boss is spit attack that spits in front of him has no visual queue and pretty much 1 shots immediately. Very stupid move.

The last boss for each of the path are always easier to do bugged since the f/u path is just completely overwhelming with all those spiders.

This dungeon needs to be reworked for fun in mind.

I think some people are just too use to the EZMOAD WoW dungeons that you can just AFK fight your way through. it’s no wonder Fractals are so appealing. It’s basically a WoW jumping puzzle.

Writetyper.1985:

Honestly when I started to explore AC Exp a bit more, and find rooms and even events (Has anyone else found the “defeat the ghosts” event in AC yet?) that are completely unused, I began to fantasize about how much better a more “dynamic” dungeon would be. Example: instead of walking into AC and seeing “SELECT ONE OF THESE THREE PATHS THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING GOOD DAY SIR”, you could actually talk to one of the three people and help them, and they would ask for advice on which way you want to go, and there would be side-events for extra loot and different events each time with jumping puzzles and minibosses incorporated into it. Imagine a dungeon being open-ended and a different experience each time you did it, instead of just 3 static paths that everyone knows how to do and farms for money.

Based on pre-launch blogs, I thought we were getting something closer to this than what we got. If it was rushed, hopefully over time they can be revamped. As it is, even the dungeons that are fun have their boring parts.

AdaM.6735:

Here are the following complaints I have about TA.

The Up path, the first spider boss is spit attack that spits in front of him has no visual queue and pretty much 1 shots immediately. Very stupid move.

She has a visual cue. Her mouth shines/blinks/sparkles (whatever you call it) before she attacks. She’ll alternate between spray and AoE.

Just because you don’t notice it, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a visual CUE.

I really don’t understand this type of posts, Trelonist said some good points but others my friend…

- Do you even know that most people finish the dungeons by SKIPPING parts of it?

Why is this a problem? People can’t speed run? I never skip parts because of drop and that 3mins more isn’t a problem.

- What about the rediculous amount of health on a boss mob? At some point it is just a boring 5min fight.

5 mins fighting a boss and you bored? Did you play Lineage II? Except of CoE boss healths are fine.

- What is wrong with the weird event to unlock CoF??! It’s locked all the time! I actually lose group members because they don’t care to wait for 30min for the kitten event to start. Then we finally get inside, have a run and decide to go again – but the kitten dungeon shut down again while we were inside!!!

You can start the event and it isn’t 30mins long…

- Why is there no dungeon-LFG tool? There is not even a global chat? How am I supposed to find another group member, if one leaves mid-way?!

Keep going PUG and find some friends so you can always go with 5 “good” people. One of the party members go outside the dungeon and search for one more…

Dungeons are mostly easy, 15-20 mins runs can’t be boring and you can do 1 path and then go to another dungeon so you can avoid that feeling. I know that some dungeons are so tedious but it’s good to have this long ones.
Bosses with low health? What game has that? What’s the point of low health bosses? Do you want a boss that can be 100b one-shooted by 5 warriors? Or just 1 min bosses?

To all dungeons cryers(no offense, plz), you have all the tools to make them easy. Same boss behaviours, evades, utility skills, eyes, hands, brain. You have to move and stay alert, you can’t just stand and shoot with your ranged weapon meanwhile an ubertank takes all the aggro.