Guild Wars 2

Sorta like a team survival mode for Gauntlet. Random boss spawns into a room, kill it, get points, harder boss spawns in immediately, kill that, get more points, until you wipe. Bosses come in fast enough that you can’t just FGS everything and you don’t know who you’re up against until he’s in, so no trait swaps for specific bosses, meaning you are encouraged to do more balanced builds for sustained DPS (still full zerk though, sorry PHIWs). Maybe even some ranged-only bosses so everyone has to pack a ranged weapon, because we really don’t get enough opportunities to use those.

Also an NPC that calls out who did the least DPS in each fight so we know who was the most useless, because that’d be funny and so is pug rage.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Bosses come in fast enough that you can’t just FGS everything

umm doesnt bosses coming in fast encourage using some of the fastest techniques to kill them so you arent overwhelmed?

One of my major grievances about dungeons is that I tend to find the pacing all sorts of disjointed. So I think a gauntlet’s simple linear escalation of tension is a great idea. As long as you don’t have bosses that are ‘speedbumps’, I think it would play out really nicely.

That said, Locked builds is way too tempting an opportunity to blow on limited relevancy character building. That could be far more deeper and coordinated experience, if the game took the time to get encounter design to the level character building was starting to fully develop.

I’ve been thinking of a gauntlet-like thing for a while. With the introduction of megaservers would be even cooler since you could just place the content currently anavailable on demand for organised groups/solo players here.

Will probably write it all down in notepad sometime and let it rot somewhere in GD.

DonQuack.9025:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Bosses come in fast enough that you can’t just FGS everything

umm doesnt bosses coming in fast encourage using some of the fastest techniques to kill them so you arent overwhelmed?

I meant that if you were to FGS one boss, the next boss would show up within the next 10-15 seconds so your FGS would still be on CD, rather than “just FGS every boss and it’ll be recharged by the time we get to the next one.” At most you’d be able to FGS 2-3 bosses then you’d be out of FGS for the next 3-4 fights. And that’s assuming all the bosses would even be FGSable in the first place.

or just disable fgs from the dungeon

or just remove it from the game

i like the second one

maha.7902:

or just disable fgs from the dungeon

or just remove it from the game

i like the second one

I like the idea of making skill4 require a target and LoS (no going around a corner to target something there and then use it in the corner to create the fields).

Then you’d still have a useable conjure weapon, but not useable in a way that trivializes content. Perhaps increase the damage on the strike at the target on skill4 while we’re at it though to keep it as a powerful elite skill.

And the OP, sounds like a survival mode situation, I love the idea and I’ve seen it work well in other games so of course I’d love to see one here..

5 eles and chain fgs. :P

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Sorta like a team survival mode for Gauntlet. Random boss spawns into a room, kill it, get points, harder boss spawns in immediately, kill that, get more points, until you wipe. Bosses come in fast enough that you can’t just FGS everything and you don’t know who you’re up against until he’s in, so no trait swaps for specific bosses, meaning you are encouraged to do more balanced builds for sustained DPS (still full zerk though, sorry PHIWs). Maybe even some ranged-only bosses so everyone has to pack a ranged weapon, because we really don’t get enough opportunities to use those.

Also an NPC that calls out who did the least DPS in each fight so we know who was the most useless, because that’d be funny and so is pug rage.

Boss rush? sign me up. Though not a fan of forced ranged only;
could add flying bosses that fly up from time to time.

Also, please add well designed bosses first.

Forced ranged would help push up build variety a fair bit since you’d want to take classes with decent range options and self-buffing options instead of just the best melee DPS in a stack. Of course the range-only bosses would have to be significantly weaker in terms of overall health but it could be made to work.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Forced ranged would help push up build variety a fair bit since you’d want to take classes with decent range options and self-buffing options instead of just the best melee DPS in a stack. Of course the range-only bosses would have to be significantly weaker in terms of overall health but it could be made to work.

Yeah but I think a battle that’s 100% forced to range would screw people entering the arena with 2 melee weapon sets especially unknowingly.

There’s a better way to do it is all i’m saying. Off the top of my head – maybe boss is tall and head is unreachable by normal means until you stagger his legs, but ranged can hit it – hitting the head can have beneficial effects. Something more than kite and shoot.

Conceptually I get where you’re going with this – dynamic fluid combat, not a procedure u have to follow. Though in hindsight maybe I’m asking too much from anet lol; they just like tweaking variables instead. I don’t think that concept can exist without properly designing bosses (I don’t believe there’s enough in-game) since enemies are pretty much half of the game (when talking about combat).

Using existing skills in game and a little scripting, there is a way to creatively introduce more interesting bosses.

maha.7902:

or just disable fgs from the dungeon

or just remove it from the game

i like the second one

And while at it, please take away all warrior blocks, the 8 second cooldown evade, reduce healing signet to 1/3 of its current, take away 8k of their base health and reduce their armor by 300. Why? Oh, now you’ve got an elementalist without fgs.

But lets not forget about guardians, you must surely agree they make content too easy. Remove protection, aegis and their stability from the game. And do something against purging flames too. Make it so that allies burn while in it.

And mesmers, of course. I mean, they’re fine, just take away any single reflection ability they have, of course including the removal of phantasmal warden.

And thieves, remove their shadowsteps and more importantly stealth. Also take away their perma blind, it trivialises content.

And engineers? Man, their blocks! Screw them.

Rangers are fine, necromancers too. Wouldn’t this be a perfect gw2 world? Everything’s on the state of an ele now, risk/reward wise.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

so no trait swaps for specific bosses, meaning you are encouraged to do more balanced builds for sustained DPS.

You want a different meta from the current dungeon meta, and you’ll most likely get it, but no more. Not more variety, and probably even less acceptance of “non-optimal” builds since people will feel forced to make an all-rounder team rather than a team of experts tinkered for the occasion.

To me, personally, the puzzle of “bringing the best (traits, utilities, equipment) for the occasion” is a large part of the enjoyment of group/instanced content. If I am forced into one set build to play a variety of encounters without the ability to adjust my build to each encounter, I most likely won’t enjoy this for long.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Maybe even some ranged-only bosses so everyone has to pack a ranged weapon, because we really don’t get enough opportunities to use those.

This rules out any build that works with weapon swap effects on six of eight classes, as well as any build that works with synergies between two weapon sets, since you are pretty much forced to take one set for melee bosses and the other one for ranged bosses. Coupled with the fact that you can’t swap traits/utilities/gear since (as I understood your suggestion) you’ll be in combat continuously, this feels like narrowing down the number of viable builds/classes drastically.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Also an NPC that calls out who did the least DPS in each fight so we know who was the most useless, because that’d be funny and so is pug rage.

No thank you. Personal damage only is never a good metric for ranking group contribution.

No one said anything about accepting non-optimal builds. The idea is to encourage better optimization across the board because there won’t be any more “this dungeon is all projectiles so we’ll just get a mesmer to spam reflects and stack DPS for the rest”.

The best thing to do to alleviate the “but I don’t want to be locked into a kittenty ranged weapon” complaint would probably be to give a 10-15 second preview of the boss before the fight. That way you’d have enough time to go “oh I need ranged/reflect/whatever” for this boss and swap it in, but not enough time to do a full trait respec or swap characters.

Yeah this game needs more variety I would play something like this even without much in the way of rewards, but new weapons/armors and titles would be great.

also just for fun maybe as the levels progress you’d have random skills locked out for that boss like one of your 3 utilities couldn’t be used or your heal or elite. There’d just be a red X over the skill, it could be sort of like a slot machine. Once the boss is dead your skills become available then the slots spin for each skill 6 through 10 when a new boss spawns. You either get instant skill refresh (cool down removed) nothing happens, or the skill is locked.

lastly I don’t mind the DPS shaming, sometimes I want to know where I stand as far as damage goes in the group anyway. Everyone should be ranked, then you could get competitive with trying to out DPS your friends.