Guild Wars 2

I would give anything for a true random dungeon ( which I imagined fractals to be when it first came out).
Inside of it, anything would go.
Every dungeon/fractal path could be in there with every possible type of enemy with every possible endboss with every possible moveset.

Cofp1 lay-out with ghosts from AC ending with lupicus as the endboss with skills from the original lupi for the first 33%, getting the skills and mechanics from subject alpha for the next 33% and getting the skills from the molten shaman from molten fractal for the last 33%? It simply could happen.

Cliffside fractal lay-out with icebrood enemies from HoTw ending with the fractals molten duo behaving like mai trin for the first 50%, then the one remaining switching to the skillset and mechanics of the ghost eater from AC P2? Could just happen to be the combination you’d run into.

You have randomness, you have a certain amount of challenge ( crapload of combinations, and you do not know what the boss is gonna do, adding a certain level of needing to adapt), while also having 90% of the content needed available.

Naturally, rewards would need to be worthwile for completing something like that, and better rewards for harder combinations ( a cofp1 lay-out/coe mobs/ SE P2boss ( mechanics blanc) would give less of a pay-out then an Arah p4-layout/dredge fractal mobs/lupicus boss with mai trin mechanics). Perhaps make rewards vary from 5-25g excluding drops?
Limit the dungeon to once per day per character/account or make the money reward daily if you feel like it would destroy the economy.

Not hard enough?
Do a run in challenge mode.
In challenge mode, al normal mobs can also have different skills ( nightmare court mobs having aetherblade skills? It really isn’t your day…), and naturally have increased health, damage…and sometimes spike in a certain stat. Some mobs might be 99% resistant to physical or condi damage, others might get breakbars you have to break before taking damage, you name it.

Still not hard enough?
Take partywide gambits.
Gambits like unable to switch skills and traits, taking double damage, perma cripple, condition removal has no effect, unable to reflect, no elite skills, etc ( certain fractal instabilities are a step in the right direction).
Take the randomness and make it as hard and challenging as YOU want it to be.
Naturally the amount of gold received upon completion would be more depending on the amount and type of gambit ( a gambit that locks you out of healing skills would net more gold then the one that applies a random chill for example).

You could make it even more demanding of the player by making it that a partywipe means failure and a partywide kick out of the instance.

Would it be annoying? Yes.
Hard? Yes.
Challenging? If done right yes ( no zerker stacking, better AI, promoting other gear types etc).
Fun? For those who like some randomness yes.
Rewarding? Sure thing, why not.

Is there anybody here who would play and might enjoy something like this?
Or is all of this just a random brainfart I had in the middle of the night?

Hmm. This would at least have the potential to give those, who want the challenge, the opportunity to get fun and excitement around every corner.
I suspect, however, that all the speedrunners would deliberately avoid this, as they see the unpredictability as a bad thing.

Still, this Idea has great potential. The technical issue would be, that the connectors between each part of the map would have to fit perfectly. The easiest way to achieve this is with a grid pattern and a tileset. These don’t have to be two dimensional, mind you, but it would quickly become apparent, that your dungeon is created from a limited selection of premande environment tiles.
This has actually worked well in games like Neverwinter Nights, but I am not sure how the technology is holding up, or how applicable it is to the GW2 engine.

There is a lot of effort behind systems, that create dungeons from algorithms. The algorithm has to create a dungeon, that doesn’t allow map breaking, although I do suspect, that the algorithm could do at least that without issue, provided the tilesets have been made with identical connectors.

Then, the dungeon has to be filled with some bosses chosen from a random encounter list. Again, if you plan some boss arena rooms in the tileset, that can work.

After that, the corridors connecting the parts of your dungeon have to be filled with patrols. This is the fun part, where many random exciting things can happen. Too high patrol density and even the best players will wipe a few times.
Spawn several patrols into a boss arena? Spawn multiple patrols on top of each other?
Good times.

The final issue is, that actually implementing a working random dungeon system, even with just one tileset is a good amount of work. Arenanet has many very talented coders and artists, but a project like this may reqire a concentrated effort from large parts of the team. I can’t see this happen in the next few months.

Don’t let that discurage you from making intriguing suggestions like this, though. Random dungeon crawls have definite potential and even though they could very well be described as their own game within the game, I can see something like this working in the game. Maybe one day there will be randomly generated “Unstable Chaotic Fractals” in the game?

There’s aspects of this to like, but there’s problems. Primarily two.

• Swapping movesets/abilities between bosses and/or mobs.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

• Narrative

I think ANet, and plenty of players, would find chopping and changing everything, everywhere within the context of this random dungeon challenging for the lore and setting.

I’d go one step further than your proposition. Instead of randomising existing dungeons/fractals with mobs, bosses and mechanics from other dungeons/fractals, I’d be down for completely new randomised dungeons where the concept can be explored from its most fundamental levels.

All that said, even if ANet thinks it’s a great idea, I doubt that we’d ever see it in GW2.

I’ve considered this idea before, and I think it’d be great.

My favorite peeps in game design recently did a feature on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgbuWfGeG2o

It sounds like it’d be costly to produce, but with the right rewards attached, it could develop some highly replayable content.

Something more simple and what I’d rather see is a sort of PvE arena where you fight a random existing boss with like 5x hitpoints and double damage or something + one random environmental hazard. Could come up with a lore reason fairly easily.

No trash mobs, or rather, maybe two guards you take on right next to boss, but go in with a group, fight a boss, get your reward, be done in 5-10 minutes. No annoying skips. Just straight to the boss fight.

People would just reroll until they got an easy one like they do on fractals. Might be fun for an event but I don’t think it would function as a permanent fixture.

Just name it “Madman’s Maze” and you get “reason” to it be all weird and messed up x)

Idea is fine though, randomness can be fun and probably would be more pleasant place to go for those people, which hate usual routine skip, stack and spam tactics. :P

Coulter.2315:

People would just reroll until they got an easy one like they do on fractals. Might be fun for an event but I don’t think it would function as a permanent fixture.

How would they know to ‘reroll’ if everything is random? Rerolling would just give them another unknown random encounter.

If there’s a need to justify things for lore, I have one word for you: