Guild Wars 2

So I just thought I’d throw in my two cents here about a concept relating to (from what I’ve seen) one of the hottest topics regarding the expansion; dungeons & instanced gameplay…. the community looks to be split in two on the matter, with seemingly more people on the side of bringing more open world gameplay with the expansion… however there are a lot of people coming from previous MMOs / the original Guild Wars (myself included) that would like to see more or drastically changed instanced modes return with HoT.

There are a sizeable amount of concerns around Dungeons and instances at the moment, main ones being the stale zerker meta / bugging / stacking & the fact that ANet doesn’t seem to want to carry on with the formula as it disagrees with their vision of challenging the usual conventions of an MMO; so what I thought of is this: Large dungeon-style instances with an unlimited player cap.. at first the idea might seem similar to what we already have with open world bosses (i.e. Silverwastes), though these already have their own handful of problems, e.g. auto-attackers , AFKers, limited contribution…the list goes on. But what if these ‘dynamic dungeons’ were designed around the idea that if you die inside them, you are kicked out & returned to the open world?

I haven’t done too much thinking on the idea, I just think it would be awesome if you started with a party of say 100… or whatever a map limit is, and your numbers are slowly whittled down by challenging encounters & difficult bosses… maybe even environmental hazards! It could create extremely tense situations where you & a few others are the last ones standing after withstanding all the area had to throw at you, & you risk losing a huge reward on a final boss if you don’t pull through: Of course it could be beginner friendly at the start so casual players could partake, but gradually get steeper & steeper in difficulty for the hardcore players (such as myself :p). Apart from weeding out auto-attackers if they’re not on their toes & AFKers if they don’t progress throughout the instance, I feel it would be a very unique experience, which of course would fulfill ANet’s idea of keeping away from the conventions of a traditional MMO.

It may be a dumb idea when you look into it, & it’s probably too late anyway at this stage considering the beta testing has already started… just thought it was a cool idea I’d share with you guys & see what you think. Thx for reading!

While I don’t see it coming into play in this environment. I enjoy the idea and it is interesting.

The problem is, over time players will learn the dungeon and all 100 players will survive. What then? Will the rewards and encounter scale upwards and be more difficult? Our current reward system is lacking carrot and stick, so it would have to be an increased chance at unique armor/weapon skin, or hard to find materials.

What do the players that die off do? The fun factor disappears for the losers in that encounter. I personally see that as a goal to overcome and get better at the next time around.

Should the dungeon have a retry time limit, for say once a week? We probably don’t want people redoing the dungeon right after they win/lose it right away. It would take away the meaning off loss in that sense.

This idea is very akin to the idea of the original Sword Art Online, where the whole community was trying to reach the 100th floor (or something) and there was perma death so all their people kept slowly dying off and getting weaker. I am intrigued by the challenge.

Thing is, if it’s a 100 ppl instance, then the survivors would be long since dead if not for the “losers” and auto-attackers who contributed to their continued survival by doing whatever it would’ve been they did. The way you presented it feels like recruiting your group for current dungeons then kicking them all out once you’re at (or, okay, near) the end chest.

2nd thing, you already have something along these lines, it’s called “Southsun Survival”.

Another lil hiccup is that the rewards for anything in this game are ranging from dumb to mildly frustrating (see the boxes for finishing some instance, SW/DT event chains, Teq and TT). As such, I don’t imagine there will be too many players willing to waste their time there so that a “lucky few” can get a Carved Bone Fork or something.

When I’ve read the thread I thought of “dynamic scaled” dungeons. Was thinking, what if the dungeons we have would scale their content to the number of people in the party?! Adding environmental challenges to full teams, to defeat the holy zerker (which is almost as bad as the “trinity”, since ppl swapped from tank/heal/dps to ele/guard/war, which not just pushes some classes away, it also just changes the trinity from 3 different professions to best 3 dps ones the game has to offer), add conditions pressure, tougher bosses, etc. And with party numbers decreasing, remove some trash mobs and lower the hp/dps output for the rest.

As for the rewards, I don’t know if – given the way things are – there’s any chance to actually make them an incentive for running any dungeon. As such, there are 2 problems with the way current dungeons are: 1) zerk/stacking them is fast and boring with a full team and 2) in few people, whatever dungeons are runable are pleasantly challenging but the rewards are appalling.

If there is one thing ANet backs away from, then it’s dungeons. They have no team dedicated to dungeons. They have no vision for dungeons.

I really like dedicated 5-person challenges. Dedicated 5-person challenged don’t have to mean dungeons.

The twisted Marionette event teleported people into custom arenas (with about 5 people a piece) and someone had to survive long enough, to deal enough raw damage, to make the mini-boss kersplode.

They weren’t my favorite bosses, but they did encapsulate the most engaging piece of dungeon specific content – the dungeon boss fight ^^

The thing about dungeon boss fights is that its one of the few places where mastery of your character design (and decent party co-operation) matter at the same time.

The Silverwastes had some awesome single player events where mastery of how you chose to play your character mattered greatly. The northern supply dolyak to indigo cave for instance. Due to tight passages and the specific mordrem spawns, I seldom see people solo-ing it – or doing it at all. So if you can get that Dolyak to indigo cave on your own consistently, you making a large contribution (by yourself!).

Similarly, world boss fights these days have very separate and specified roles. This covers “working together”.

If everything is going the way of dynamic world event chains, I’m really hoping that there will be events which need to be completed in a certain time frame (say 6-7 minutes) and only allow up 4-5 people to take part. Say a Charr chopper descends to requisition combatants to kill a tree top mordrem artillery plant. Up to four people can get a lift up to the tree-top artillery platform, those present have six minutes to kill the boss and if they die or get knocked off the platform, they cannot get back into that event. If the small squad manage to kill the plant they get a reward and move onto other (more general) events, if they fail however, the mordrem artillery destroys the chopper and bombard the players below for 10 minutes before another chopper arrives to lift people up to the mini-boss fight.

I want there to be sufficient reasons for me to assemble a 5 man team of veteran players to move around the map and tackle small challenging content unfit for the inexperienced or the zerg. If Anet comes up with any method to make me form such a crack team, I’ll be content.

Gear-checking 99 players would be a pain, though.

GW1 had a hard mode. This game caters to the masses, so they will never make anything face melt.
But Anet could institute a hard mode for bosses and instances.
Couldn’t they?

oxtred.7658:

Gear-checking 99 players would be a pain, though.

Well….the “idea” is there isn’t a gear check but a skill check, and any gear can pass.

That said I acknowledge that dps is king still, as it shortens fights reduces incoming damage/room for error.

Previous examples made by others in the post highly favor positioning and damage windows pushing phases, not necessarily dps races against timers.

Hopfully more mechanics based fights come into play which emphasize knowledge and skill versus dps, allowing for more build diversity. There will always be an “optimal” setup of course, but lessen the hard line if possible would be nice.

That said, I personally am not in favor of 100+ man dungeons. Too zergy and chaotic I feel. We get enough of the zerg ball effect in wvw. A 10-20 man dungeon would be maybe favorable to give the perception of raid type content for those who miss it’s presence.

I have tended to avoid large group content because I hate other’s failures hindering my performance, but I understand the attraction of teamwork success and the camaraderie it brings.

Seems like you’re saying, “Bring back Tower of Nightmares”