Guild Wars 2

Dungeon NPCs are bad, do not follow, attack anything, go out of their way to attack things, and bug out a lot. Worrrkkk oonnn ittttttt.

This concise and un-detailed post will most likely be ridiculed by the community but it’s true.

The silver lining here is that you don’t have to babysit them, completely failing and being required to restart the dungeon if they die (which they will).

I think they’re supposed to be mostly useless by design, so that they don’t “do the work for you”. The living world NPCs are a bit better in this regard, in that they actually have interesting abilities to use and help rez you if you get downed. I believe we’ll probably see some better NPC design in HoT.

As far as dungeons go, those have more or less been abandoned for the time being… maybe they’ll get some updates in the distant future, but for now it’s just gonna be what it is.

Well NPC’s in general are good. I really should have specified my title because it sounds different then what I am really trying to portray and that’s that NPCs in dungeons need help.

they dont help…they need to be redone entirely. When you have an AI like magg who sits there, even when you are the only one in the dungeon, and then takes forever to start walking..or you have AIs like hodgins that attack everything.. yea id say they need to be redone..

They dont care about dungeons anymore, soon they will be a thing of the past.

I do get what you are saying, OP.

(Don’t worry this is all going to circle back around to dungeon NPCs)
Before GW2 was released I thought the DE system was GENIUS! And guess what. I still do. Gone were the days of trying to located every NPC hiding around a camp who has an exclamation point over their head. With DEs, not only do you go and participate in a fight that you SEE happening, you learn about its story just be being there. No reading (skipping) a wall of text to find out what is actually happening and why you are actually helping.

The developers got the memo. Many of us weren’t reading that stuff anyway, so they found a way around it. On top of that, a superior gameplay mechanic was born.

Why did this mindset stop at dungeons? To me it doesn’t make sense how the story and characters are presented in explorable mode dungeons. I have the dungeoneer title, and I still don’t really know the ins and outs of the story for explorable paths.

I know why I’m there. I’m there because I want gold and tokens and I find dungeons fun. We can even refine that a little bit and say I know I’ve gone into AC to kill one (or all) of three legendary gravelings and the NPC I choose at the beginning determines who’s plan I’m going with. I still do NOT know why we want to kill them though. I think it’s probably explained in the cutscene, and I’ve skipped that every time.

Why do I have to skip it every time? Why does the cutscene exist? The rewards are built for dozens upon dozens of runs, yet the story is designed for one run. We’re constantly being bogged down by a mechanic that’s pretty much intended to be watched once.

How does that tie to the NPCs being annoying? Well we’re supposed to help Detha plant some traps. We hardly even care who Detha is. She’s that cat lady who bugs and bricks P2 and she also thinks Tzark’s plan is stupid and won’t work. Everything she said to us in a cutscene, we skipped.

However that brings up the actual good part about dungeon story telling:
“I’m gonna crush you into this bridge!”
“I’ve got the perfect tool for this situation!”
“People just wander in here and get attacked!”
“Do they pay her by the word?”
“Control it! Control it!”
“Go ahead. I hear they’re delicious.”
“You know, Vallog doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who NEEDS a butler.”
“Watch me push a button! Oo! Maybe I’ll flip a lever!”

Those are the parts we actually comprehend. Now get rid of the slow walking between those lines and you’ve got a better storytelling system that is more conducive to repeatable content. There are times where an NPC gives you an exposition dump before opening a gate, well that can be made better too. Open the gate first, THEN give the exposition dump.

Now HoT is adding the feature where our own characters can talk while in action. This would be PERFECT for explorable dungeons. Lets hope they go in at some point and clean up the explorable storytelling using that feature instead. Imagine no more cutscenes. If they could speed up the slow NPC setup parts too, that would be AWESOME.