Guild Wars 2

Simply put, make Story Mode have a Hard Mode.

Not dps sponges but hard mode with meaningful encounters. Where Adelbern is a threat, or Zhaitan has the fight that he deserved rather than a glitchy camera with fireworks, meaningful encounters that are mechanically challenging and engaging while pulling people more towards the main storyline.

Make Story Mode have a new Hard Mode system in which a new ‘tier’ of skins can be earned via tokens, incidentally another way to recycle old legacy armors like Templar? Might be too much fan service though in regards to legacy armor and weps.

For the love of God don’t switch to fractals at the cost of dungeons as they are WAY more interesting story wise and are not as mind numbing and repetitive as fractals. They also avoid the gear treadmill cus obtaining more agony resist is a gear treadmill whether you like it or not.

The dungeons were one of the main selling points (same as the world encounters) and only ended up like they are now due to no TLC (same as world encounters). So don’t leave them in the dust (like world encounters) and be creative rather than lazy.

Sorry but say goodbye to dungeons. RIP

Once players get their DungeonMaster’s title and tokens for gear or legendary s how many players actually go back? A dedicated few speed runners and farmers I’m guessing.

Pyriel.4370:

Simply put, make Story Mode have a Hard Mode.

Not dps sponges but hard mode with meaningful encounters. Where Adelbern is a threat, or Zhaitan has the fight that he deserved rather than a glitchy camera with fireworks, meaningful encounters that are mechanically challenging and engaging while pulling people more towards the main storyline.

Make Story Mode have a new Hard Mode system in which a new ‘tier’ of skins can be earned via tokens, incidentally another way to recycle old legacy armors like Templar? Might be too much fan service though in regards to legacy armor and weps.

For the love of God don’t switch to fractals at the cost of dungeons as they are WAY more interesting story wise and are not as mind numbing and repetitive as fractals. They also avoid the gear treadmill cus obtaining more agony resist is a gear treadmill whether you like it or not.

The dungeons were one of the main selling points (same as the world encounters) and only ended up like they are now due to no TLC (same as world encounters). So don’t leave them in the dust (like world encounters) and be creative rather than lazy.

I have to say, dungeons are my least favorite part of PvE as they are now, I really enjoy fractals, (though a bit time consuming to do 4 at once, so the change to make them 1 at a time is very welcome in my book,)… I’d rather do fractals all the time over dungeons as they are now, the effort/time put in, to the value output just isn’t anywhere near as high as even pvp for some cases.

I’m pretty sure they want to kill dungeons, not save them.

Are raids glorified dungeons?

Serious question

nekretaal.6485:

Are raids glorified dungeons?

Serious question

Pretty much

Reddit to the rescue
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3oi069/a_plea_against_a_dungeon_reward_nerf/

Their announcement was garbage. It did nothing but raise questions.

- Will tokens be increased?
- Will they tone down difficulty to shorten the dungeons? Dungeons are not short.
- Is this just a straight nerf to encourage dungeon players, an elitist group, to mingle with the hoi polloi on map rewards? Raids they will do, but maps?
- How will they increase dungeons feeling rewarding while decreasing liquid rewards?

This is a bad move. The arguement for dungeons has always been that they are already not rewarding enough. And never “I want more gold from dungeons” but always “the rewards are mostly an indistinguishable loot piñata from dungeon to dungeon.”

I would argue that pvp dungeon tracks with 4 weapons and an armor per dungeon track that the pvp dungeon travks are more reward skins and token wise than the actual dungeon.

And if they reduce “liquid rewards” without increasing distinguishable rewards like dungeon skins and tokens, then as a community, especially the dungeon runners whether they shift to raids or fractals or not, has a right to be mad.

Edit: another question:
- What specifically will raids do to replace dungeon rewards?
- What system of rewards will raids have that is comparable to dungeons?
- And lastly, though I understand secrecy here, new skins? Will there be any by launch? Will we wear the same skins we already have forever?

I think you are missing my original point.

I was talking about making dungeons interesting content again rather than tweaking them for farming.

Since they want to kill dungeons and it’s already ridiculously hard to get people to run story mode, it would be nice if they’d make the story dungeons soloable the way Zhaitan is now.

As indicated by ANet they want to focus more on fractals and raids versus dungeons. Which in all but name are the same thing. If you think about it makes sense since they are not locked down with tieing the events directly into the storyline and have more flexibility in what they choose to create.

Now add in mistlock instabilities that change the working environment and you are left with something more fluid and interesting since the level of challenge changes and there is less “stack here for 10 seconds and 111111, stack there and guardians reflect in 5 seconds, now move 2 steps to the right..”.

Aka have to admit I appreciate the focus being moved to fractals over dungeons. In general they have different feel and the combat seems to be more interesting in one over the other though I can’t out my finger on the why of it.

I think there should be soloable daily dungeons that still give some tokens.

They need to improve Dungeons, not kill them off.

1. First, get rid of the kill boss 1,2,3 and get your reward mode.

2. Add randomness, random hidden rooms, random bosses, random traps, random mobile trash mobs. Make dungeons fun, design dungeons with 50/60 doors with only a random 20-25 available for each instance when you run it!

3. Random bosses that do more than just stand in the same place each time.

It’s sad Anet can’t design content with some level of randomness!

Most posters are not seeing the main problem with dungeons. The problem is that the dungeons were developed by people who no longer work at ANet. The new developers who work on group content (fractals and raids) would require a very large time investment to be able to maintain, nevermind improve dungeons. It is much simpler for the new devs to simply work on new content or upgrade content that they themselves have created. At this point dungeons are like windows ’95. It might still work, but noone in MS probably has any clue as to how. So why encourage people to use it?

Thus, ANet is slowly moving players away from content they no longer have developers familiar with. To do so, they decrease monetary rewards (let’s face it, most people run the dungeons for the gold). This will accomplish two things – reduce the amount of money coming into the economy and move players to playing new, supported content.

[ So why encourage people to use it? ]

simple, if the force everyone to do raid content, then raid content will have to be nerf to a level that EVERYONE can play it, do you want that? I don’kittens stupid, its kittened, it will end up KILLING RAID.

Only way to save them is make HC mode of them that give good loot,current dungeons are made and balanced for low lvls so think there is no saving them without some HC feature.

Roundabout.1752:

Once players get their DungeonMaster’s title and tokens for gear or legendary s how many players actually go back? A dedicated few speed runners and farmers I’m guessing.

And with upcoming changes…

Only those who actually enjoy dungeons. Which will be… few.

@OP TOPIC:

IMO, a “hard mode” is not the way to save dungeons. Here is my opinion of how to save dungeons:

1. Add story mode dungeons to the Personal Story ala how Arah was originally, while also making them solo like Arah is now. In other words make them support 1-5 players, required to beat as part of the PS (between various chapters etc.), but allow them being playable at any point. Ensure Arah is like this too.
2. Change the Masterwork/Rare Trinkets random drops to level 80 exotics. Remove the backpiece drops.
3. Add exotic backpiece to armor vendor, giving it a unique model. Add a Mystic Forge recipe to upgrade it (same model) into ascended and another into Infused state (again same model) – use same recipes as the Fractal backpiece ones (fewer steps naturally).
4. Add in an exotic weapon set akin to the Aetherpath’s Aetherized Nightmare weapons.
5. Change the exotic trinket recipes to be recipes for Ascended trinkets that allow one-time stat selection.

Do this and their reduction of monetary gain from dungeon running will no longer be a major issue. With rare skins to collect even for veterans, there’d be reason to go do the dungeons for a long time.

This, I feel, would be enough to “save” dungeons. However, if ArenaNet wanted to make “one final update to dungeons and never touch them again while having them remain a viable game mode” they could add the further Quality of Life and balance changes:

1. Rebalance all paths to be same difficulty as Aetherpath – made for level 80s, bosses with unique mechanics, can’t run past trash mobs, rooms with puzzles, etc.
2. Re-add TA’s original F/U path, as it was the best path aside from the boss (just rebalance boss per point 1). (Bonus for players: Create a new path for AC, CM, SE, CoF, CoE, and HotW so all dungeons have 4 paths.)
3. Re-add Fractals story mode, with above story mode changes.
4. Re-add Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, use the original dungeons as story modes (giving them same treatment as original dungeon story modes per above – if/when S1 is ever made permanent they would be given a story step but always accessible). Create 3-or-4 dungeon paths for an explorable mode, difficulty on par to Aetherpath, with their own weapons, armors, backpiece, trinkets, and unique-weapon drops (could even use old skins such as Fused weapons, Decorative Jetpack, and Fused Gauntlets for Molten Facility’s weapons/backpiece/armor).
5. Give every dungeon (the combination of all four paths+story) its own set of achievement akin to Aetherpath’s achievements, and expand Aetherpath’s achievements to fit all of TA (yes this could mean adding more requirements to the meta).

if the intent of anet is to literally make dungeons so unappealing that people will not do them, why not just remove them from the game entirely and be done with it?

all said, i do not think this is their intention.

Anet is not interested in saving the dungeons. They want you to move on to the new material. Other games incentivize new material by introducing more powerful gear. Anet won’t do this. So they have to deincentivize old material by nerfing the rewards instead.

From what I read of John Smith’s posts, the main objective in significantly nerfing dungeon rewards is to reduce the influx of new gold into the economy. Okay, I can understand the reasons for doing so from an economic perspective, and I can accept this, but their whole approach to intentionally create a “disincentive” to playing dungeons is NOT the way to go if they value their game content; if they want players to value the game content; if they want to create a gaming “community”; or, if they want to keep players around as the game ages.

The better solution would be to reduce the gold reward and offer players more loot via a simple mechanism that offers an increase in salvageable materials (more of x for killing x for example). I am not suggesting that they need to make dungeons on par with SW for materials but at least some gesture to make dungeons still worth playing as a option if only for mats would help demonstrate a commitment to creating a game that supports players to play how they want (while still make progress towards structured goals).

They’ve already explicitly stated that they have no interest in improving dungeons at all, so this is not going to happen.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

1. Rebalance all paths to be same difficulty as Aetherpath

Or for the same effect but with much less work they could simply do this :

Katta Castellum.3957:

if the intent of anet is to literally make dungeons so unappealing that people will not do them, why not just remove them from the game entirely and be done with it?

Lord Kuru.3685:

They’ve already explicitly stated that they have no interest in improving dungeons at all, so this is not going to happen.

Worst, they’ve already explicity stated that they want “to deincentivize dungeons” :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Economy-Questions-Repost/first#post5602939

Reduce gold reward is just the first (and easy) way… maybe they will increase dng tokens coming from pvp tracks in the future, for example…
Honestly, I want to play new content because it is better, not because old content is ruined…

Dungeons are Game Content, which should get picked up and get then slowly one by one redesigned and remimplemted via Feature Packs/Expansions.

Dungeons are a Gameplay Concept, which needs more depth.
The first thing that ANet should screw about Dungeons is this dumb Multi Path Design, which never ever fitted to the game from begin on, because it makes Dungeons look artificially look alot smaller, than they really are.

Instead of having Story and 3-4 explorable small Paths, shold provide Dungeons more to stay for a long time interesting and be more than just a Gold Grind Spot which is always the same.
The Dungeon Concept for GW2 needs to be completely reiterated.
There a multiple different types of Dungeons which should exist in GW2 and not just one stereotypical kind of Dungeon only – thats where Dungeons in GW2 lack their depth by design and where other Games are alot further than GW2.
Under the Category of a Dungeon should fall these types of Dungeons which should exist – no Dungeon should be the same:

• Solo Dungeons – A Solo Dungeon is that kind of Place, like the Dungeons in Zelda-Games, which you have to explore alone, where you need to learn new stuff, find things inside to progress in that Dungeons to be able to beat these Dungeons by defeating their special Bosses.
  Thats the kind of Dungeon, which should provide also STORY and which are Dungeons, that should be completely seperate own Dungeons from those, which need a Group to be successful

• Group Dungeons – A Group Dungeons is the kind of Dungeon that requires a full Group of 5 People to be successful. Dungeons, which are so design, that they encourage Teamwork, Split Up Jobs and other forms of Coordination and Communication to be together successful. Dungeons, that can have also multiple layers of levels and which should feel challenging due to enemies with good A.I, which can’t be stacking killed everywhere, which change their behaviours accordign to the situation and aggressively also try to get the upper hand by actually also finishing players, when they are downed – why should this be a player only mechanic… but it would be somethign enemies could be balanced around instead of giving them lots of dumb instant kill attacks only.
  Group Dungeons should vary in the Group Size. They should be playable between 3 to 10 Players

• Guild Dungeons – Special Dungeons, which should be only accessible as Guild and be playable with Guild Members, which aren#t always accessible, but whenever the Guild earned temporarely Access to them, as Guild Dungeons are for the Guild itself and the Guild Members that take part in them more rewarding, than the typical standard Group Dungeon, therefore is the access to them limited and not something, what you can do as Guild all the time around the clock.

• Dungeon Crawlers – these kind of Dungeons are special Farming/Challenge Dungeons, where the only purpose is it for the players to survive in them as long as possible and progress in them deeper and deeper, higher and higher to farm there for stuff, that could nowhere else to be found, while having also to overcome challenges, that nowhwere else are to be found.
  The special thing about Dungeon Crawlers is, they permanently are changing, everytime you enter them, they are different. Each time a completely new experience.
  Certain thigns will always be similar, but in the end will never be your previous run exactly like you current one or the one next after.
  Leave the Dungeon, reenter it and you will face a completely new generated Dungeon Structure with different enemies, different challenges and traps ecct that will makes it harder for you to progress in these places to reach the more and more valuable things to find in these Dungeons with a system similar to the Fractals, that you progress in Dungeon Levels so further you come, what will enable you on next enter to start right at that Dungeon Level.

• Fractals of the Mist – this is practicalyl the classical “Dreamspace Dungeon Concept”, where you can find absolutely evwerything, because the place isn’t bound to reality or time, what is a nice concept, because it gives developers the most freedom of creativity, because here they can literalyl confrotn us with absolutely everything, even the most craziest things one would never ever think about…
  Thats a concept , which I’d like to see gettting expanded with the BMP Concept from GW1, that we should have also some kind of heroic Fractals, where we don’t play as our characters, but replay some kind of story in the view of other story related Characters. Id so love to be able to replay the whole Story of Ghosts of Ascalon in a Heroic Fractal that lets us become able to replay the Book Chapter per Chapter, where every Group player can then take over the role of a NPC of their choice, or the game just decides by random ,who plays as whom of the Story Characters.
  —-

The other aspect that needs to get improved, despite just making Dungeons more depthful Game Content with more complexity and Gameplay Choices, while making the Story Parts completely soloabe redesigned Dungeons in Zelda-Style, are in general GW2’s general problem number 1!! – Rewards.

The Token System needs to get overhauled, the Reward Table needs to get expanded, so that Dungeons also get somethign, that you can earn only through playing Dungeons, that isn#t tied to just parts for makign Legendaries.. but rather some kind of special unique dungeon related Ascended Weapons and Armors with ubnique skins that you can earn only there and not with PvP reward tracks.

Dungeosn lack the convincing good reward table, because once youve unlocked all the skinns, theres absolutely nothign anymore, besides at the moment the gold to earn, what incentivizes you to play the dungeons further.
Yes, new ascended weapon and armor skinsn would be no perfect solution, but at least one, that would buy Anet alot of time until they can come up with somethign better, while players are for a long time busy to unlock all the new skins, while the Dungeons will stay for a long time populated enough by this, without that every will with HoT flee over to Fractals and Raids, because Dungeosn basically became just a useless waste of time for most people then…

I hopejust, that once HoT has been released, that ANet will set then finally alot more significantly focus on some of the over the years most neglected gameplay systems and finally starts on giving them the deserved attention that they should get to improve these feature finally to the same quality like some other aspects of the game have..

and that are

• Dungeons
• WvW
• Underwater Content

where one can hope only, that if not now, these thigns get more looked on then on the next expansion or feature pack more. But I think Hot for now will msake finally first a big step for WvW finally after over a year and more of pure ignorance, while focusing themself mostly only onto Living World, Addon Work in the backgrounds secretly and the Gemstore

Why does anyone expect them to invest more time on this when they are releasing content in a few days that people have to actually pay for, it’s pretty clear what they want us all focused on at full price release day and missing out on profit or farms if we don’t buy the expansion is just adding another type of player and incentive to the “must pre-purchase or must buy at release” crowd.

Business is business.

I had every intention of holding off on buying HoT at release, due to concerns and topics best left in other threads, and pick it up in a few months once the dust has settled and I actually know what I’m paying for.

To add this is the first time I’ve ever felt this way and I’ve purchased every other GW release from Prophecies and up to this date at release, usually collectors editions, so I’m not just a potential HoT customer. I have a long-standing customer relationship and history with the game and company.

This adds a whole new incentive for me though as I can’t stand Snooze Waste farming and I’m not a huge fan of fractals when compared to dungeons. I may actually buy the game sooner than anticipated if Dungeons become even more of a ghost town with decreased reward and Raids becoming the new repeatable cash cow. While I in no way agree with such decisions the intent here seems all too clear from a business sense.

If new content is the most profitable content in an MMORPG, it sells itself.

I’m mostly gutted for the new players more than the farmers. Nobody will want to bother with this content in any regard in a month or so and it’s such a cool aspect of the game that a lot of new players may miss out on.

This thread is pointless because ANet all but said they are done with them. If it wasn’t a source of tokens and story lore they would take it behind the barn and put it down.

The best suggestion I’ve heard was to translate the dungeon paths into fractals and keep the story mode in PvE only.

Behellagh.1468:

This thread is pointless because ANet all but said they are done with them. If it wasn’t a source of tokens and story lore they would take it behind the barn and put it down.

The best suggestion I’ve heard was to translate the dungeon paths into fractals and keep the story mode in PvE only.

The problem with integrating them into fractals though is that fractals are random. If I want to run a certain fractal but not bother with certain fractals due to them having certain mechanics then tough luck, and it makes fractals less attractive than dungeons where you know what you’re getting.

Except I thought that one of the changes that is coming out with HoT is the ability to pick the one you want to run.

If I was the designer and put together some interesting encounters in the dungeon. But what players want is to skip the encounters as quick as possible to get gold in the shortest time. How can I get motivation to keep developing contents for dungeon?

Dev are humans who need appreciation and have fun. When heart was broken, it would be too late to do anything to change people mind.

I suspect the main reason behind the shift away from dungeon development is how seriously ANet toward the development of narrative. Each dungeon itself need a backstory behind it. Besides bosses mechanic it also involves a lot of resources to develop including script writing and voice acting. When they remove those story elements in dungeon design, that is what we get in current raids and fractals.

Right now I’m not sure dungeons can be salvaged. Ascalon Catacombs was heavily reworked in the past, and it still has the same problems.

Dungeons were designed under a set of naive assumptions by the devs: That Aesthetic pieces had no influence on the fight, and that players would stack and pound with maximum DPS. It seems like every week there is a new exploit that arises from dungeons, whether it is getting an enemy hooked on some corner, or bypassing content by glitching terrain. And after all that, the fight doesn’t last long, anyway.

To rework dungeons, they would basically have to be redesigned from scratch. Every enemy, every boss, every path, every room. When given the workload required to do this, it is more efficient to just leave dungeons where they are, and make new content.

So for those that prefer dungeons over fractals, why?

Is it the random draw bit or something else. With HoT they had talked about removing the whole having to run a 4 set fractal and allowing you to choose which ones you are doing so….it will be kind of like choosing which dungeon path.

Is it having to build up the AR then? Building up the AR is the same as re-running a dungeon path multiple times.

I can see the Ascended gear but also see a lot of Ascended drops in jewelry, armor and weapon as well. So if you start with the jewelry you can save some on the armor and weapon sets as you go depending on your MF and drop rates.

So what is it for you?

I think I would have felt a little better if they simply said they were lowering gold rewards from dungeons, and left out the bit about using it to herd us into the new content. Baaaaaaa.

Although I already do dungeons less lately, I am helping others get dungeon master or dungeoneer, and I’ll always be looking to help out new players with dungeons when I’m bored. Dungeons aren’t dead for me until they are removed completely!

I wonder how many players participate in dungeons regularly (A) and how that compares to the number of players/spectators take part in spvp tournys (B).

If A>B, then that extra 350k could of probably paid to fix dungeons for a long time.

Beldin.5498:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

1. Rebalance all paths to be same difficulty as Aetherpath

Or for the same effect but with much less work they could simply do this :

Katta Castellum.3957:

if the intent of anet is to literally make dungeons so unappealing that people will not do them, why not just remove them from the game entirely and be done with it?

Plenty of people do Aetherpath. It’s not hard at all. It got bad rep because it isn’t a simple “run through all trash mobs, spam 1 to kill bosses, collect gold in under 10 minutes” like every other dungeon run. People had to actually think and work towards the goals for once in any dungeon.

Ah, wait, it wasn’t the first time… first time was TA’s F/U path… which got removed due to hate from playerbase.

Guess they’ll have to remove HoT after the next month of all the complaints of too difficult content that can’t be ran past and bosses just spammed 1!

rhapsody.3615:

I think I would have felt a little better if they simply said they were lowering gold rewards from dungeons, and left out the bit about using it to herd us into the new content. Baaaaaaa.

Although I already do dungeons less lately, I am helping others get dungeon master or dungeoneer, and I’ll always be looking to help out new players with dungeons when I’m bored. Dungeons aren’t dead for me until they are removed completely!

That’s what John said.

While dungeons will remain cool experiences that’ll reward players with unique items, their liquid rewards will be reduced and other content will become more rewarding.

Reduced, not eliminated.

Doug Whisper.2465:

If I was the designer and put together some interesting encounters in the dungeon. But what players want is to skip the encounters as quick as possible to get gold in the shortest time. How can I get motivation to keep developing contents for dungeon?

Dev are humans who need appreciation and have fun. When heart was broken, it would be too late to do anything to change people mind.

I suspect the main reason behind the shift away from dungeon development is how seriously ANet toward the development of narrative. Each dungeon itself need a backstory behind it. Besides bosses mechanic it also involves a lot of resources to develop including script writing and voice acting. When they remove those story elements in dungeon design, that is what we get in current raids and fractals.

It’s just dungeons can be hard if you aren’t familiar but if you are you could keep running them. Sometimes they aren’t even fair. Sure it isn’t hard to make a hard dungeon, the hard part comes into play with making things both challenging and fair. It’s why sPvP is the fairest game mode. Sure some may complain about overpowered specs and classes but what’s stopping someone from rolling them? You can roll a condition guardian or dagger/dagger ele, you can’t roll a teagariff or dredge. PvE has the potential to be far more challenging but unfortunately a lot is for the wrong reasons. Players are limited by their camera, mouse, and keybindings. A program never has to worry about hitting the wrong key and consistently follows a formula. It won’t have camera issues.

Let the bosses have an advantage over the players, but a fair one that doesn’t totally invalidate crowd control builds or environments where players are totally locked out if they fall down.

I wish they had one-man instanced dungeons. But they don’t. Dungeons are going away.

Once I get Dungeoneer and hobby dungeon explorer, I will say goodbye to dungeons forever.