Guild Wars 2

As we haven’t had any significant dungeon update in the recent patches, I’ve decided to give A-net my suggestion of how would I had designed the Dungeon content given the existing game mechanics.

Step 1:
Make each dungeon represent a difficulty setting.
Story Dungeon = Easy
Dungeon 1 (path 1) = Normal
Dungeon 2 (path 2) = Hard
Dungeon 3 (path 3) = Raid
Dungeon 4 (path 4) = Occasional Super hard Raid for S&M players/guilds who complain about the game being easy and is not intended by the devs to be completed for at least a few months.

Step2:
Put an unofficial block in the access of each tier of dungeons.
Accessing a hard dungeon should suggest that participating players are having built specific stat combinations and wear at least full exotic gear, gatherable from completing lower tier dungeons among other sources.
Accessing a raid should suggest that participating players have gathered specific “special stats” from completing hard dungeons and require at least ascended gear.
These requirements will discurage but not prohibit players from participating in a higher tier dungeon before their time.
More details in the following steps

Step3:
Make each of the harder dungeons represent a desired build by the players, and don’t make certain bosses in them require different builds.
There should NOT be a dps dungeon of hard difficulty as players them selfs will always try to bend the rules of the dungeon and have a couple of party member with DPS builds to end it a few minutes faster.

• Example 1: A certain path of a dungeon having enemies/bosses with very high toughness who like to go out of reach after every few seconds.
  This dungeon is suggested for condition builds, and Parties with Condition builds should be able to complete it in minutes.
• Example 2: A certain path of a dungeon requiring players to split into groups of 2 or 1, and have each one face enemies who have high damage but low defense. Alternatively have enemies who do massive amounts of aoe damage around them for ever percentage of health milestone lost, thus punishing players who drain their health fast and have low defense.
  This dungeon is suggested for survivability builds, and Parties with Survivability builds should be able to complete it in minutes.

Step 4:
Raids should require a certain type of agony similar to the fractals.
Completing the Hard tier of a dungeon should give you access to an ascended version of the dungeon’s gear, that can be infused with a certain type of Agony resistance.
For example:
Ghostly Agony for AC raid content.
Twisted Agony for CM raid content.
Toxic Agony for TA raid content.
Blinding Agony for SE raid content.
Flaming Agony for CoF raid content.
Freezing Agony for HotW raid content.
Arcane Agony for CoE raid content.
Deadly Agony for Arah raid content.
Most of the “Special agony” and ascended gear you get from hard tier dungeons will be Account Bound, but certain items (trinkets for example) will be able to be transfered to other players on the friend list, but not being sold on the TP. The reason for that, is so it would be easier for players to invite friends who are newer and didn’t have the time yet to gather the required raid gear.

Step 5:
Existing multipath dungeons should be considered a single dungeon of Normal difficulty. The twist is that this dungeon’s path will change randomly with each playthrough. Bosses, Paths, mechanics and scenarios should be randomly selected upon starting the dungeon (and stick to each character so he can’t re-roll to a different path for 15 minutes) but at the same time should be twicked so all combinations should take a similar time to complete and give similar rewards. No specific builds should be required.

continue to the next post

Step 6:
Future dungeons shouldn’t require to take place in the same area as their lower tier.
For example:
The fight with Mordremoth should be considered a hard or raid tier of TA, but it should take place in the Meguma Wastes.
Instead of becoming Fractals, have the Atherblade and Molten Facility become the Normal or Hard versions of CM and SE respectively. (And replace the fractal with something other that takes place before the events of GW2 to keep with the theme and avoid players whining)
The existing Ether path of TA should be classified as Hard tier.
As the Living Story continues, more chances appear for future dungeons, but they shouldn’t be bound to that one location. The players then can adapt and change their names, and for example start to refer to TA as Toxic Dungeons or something.

Step 7:
Super Hard Raid dungeons should be considered optional with simple/skippable Stories.
Example 1: The priory goes to Arah to take Zaitan’s tail with a group of 20 players, just to find that Zaitan is alive though gravely wounded, and the players decide to fight the wounded Zaitan hand to hand instead of letting him bleed out.
Example 2: A guild can initiate an instanced fight with Tequatl, where an Armored Tequatl will fight against 40 players.

Hints for Raid content:
Raids should require 10-20 players. More should be optional guild content.
Raids should be completable only once a week.
Raid bosses should be an exception and allow twice the number of conditions.
The raid mechanics should encourage players to spread, and gather on key moments to share they support skills.
Raids require good communication, so some sort voice chat or awesome commander command system are necessary in the game.
The areas must always be big, and with flat terrain.
All raid content should be instanced.

Example of Raid trash mobs mechanics:

• Force them to stay away from each other so they won’t heal them selfs, but each will require about 10 players to fall.
• Mechanics similar to guild puzzles where a few players will have to stand out of combat and make use of some of the map’s mechanic to support the players fighting the battle is a good idea, but make it harder, involving combat and in the end be the player’s skill in combat that decide the outcome.

Example of Raid boss mechanics:

• A classic Raid boss mechanic is having it spawn a ton of trashmobs. It’s cheap but it’s solid. Use it when you run out of ideas.
• Most MMO’s involve some kind of Tank, and have the boss going nut’s if there isn’t something to melee in frond of him. In GW2 that mechanic shouldn’t normally work, but A-net can let it work on a single boss as an exception/homage, by offering some sort of “Healing Laser” enviromental weapon on the map for two players to pic, and have the boss description say “going nuts if there is nothing to hit in frond of him”.
• Have the boss Jump around Grabbing players, and if holds them for to long, the player become defeated, unless the remaining players manage to overcome it’s steady defiance and interrupt him.
• Have the boss revive defeated players as his own Mobs and also attempt to stomp downed players unless interrupted.
• Have the boss Swallow players and transfer them in (a seperate area) his stomach.
  There the players will build a certain condition that will eventually kill them unless they get out. But they have to intentionally take turns staying inside in order to do dps or block the boss from gaining a certain strong boon.
• Have a boss whose about to die break the arena where the players stand and the players deal the last bits of damage to the boss while in the air before they hit the ground/water.
• Have a boss keep moving to one direction while a few players will use some map mechanic to slow him down and others will try to damage him while on the move.
• Have the players use a mechanic to “grab on to” an underwater boss in order to keep up and follow it.

These are the ones I can come up.
Feel free to add your suggestions.

I like some of the ideas you have put forth, namely the Ascended versions with the different types of agony, and the different difficulties of dungeons. Things like this might prod me into dungeons again.

Yes i liked step 4 as an idea, altho having thee type of infusion for one dungeon seems iver the top. Grinding out a gear piece to do a dungeon has always baffled me as a chicken and egg appeoach to gaming.

Norhing wrong with the rest of it, except its all a bit run of the mill. Which is what the raid cdi was set up to work ideas away from. I like some of your mechanics ideas though

Kudos for putting time and thought into it though.

Randulf.7614:

Yes i liked step 4 as an idea, altho having thee type of infusion for one dungeon seems iver the top. Grinding out a gear piece to do a dungeon has always baffled me as a chicken and egg appeoach to gaming.

This “grind” will ensure that no amateurs will attempt raiding. Also, dungeons need to be grindable in order to stay populated. Besides, only the infusion aspect of the ascended gear is actually required from the dungeon, and the gear it self can be aquired from other content.

As for the 5 player hard dungeons, I suggested the built variety it self to work as the unofficial block in content since it’s not hard to make an exotic build build combination, and what the game is currently lacking is content to support players having more builds than dps in PVE.
Teaching them to know the strength and weaknesses of the different builds will help them to get ready for the Raid content.

In Vanilla WoW, Fire, Frost and Poison resistances where a thing, and they where use as an entry point for the raid, with one set of them (molten core) requiring fire resistance, another (Anqi Raj) requiring poison, and the last (Naxxramas) requiring frost.
Nowdays, they’ve got rid of the individual resistances, and it’s all about the item value you are wearing. But since in GW2 the values of all tier of items remains the same (there are no exotics stronger than other exotics) and instead focuses on providing different stat combinations, I’ve compromised for a system that make use of both of those aspects.

Randulf.7614:

Norhing wrong with the rest of it, except its all a bit run of the mill. Which is what the raid cdi was set up to work ideas away from. I like some of your mechanics ideas though

I’ve thought of the raid content as something that require co-ordinations between players, and not something that can be zerged with. I’ve just thrown the most cheesy ones up front to get on with them.

Randulf.7614:

Kudos for putting time and thought into it though.

And getting a negative “something” by the mods for bumping it…