Guild Wars 2

By far my favorite feature of GW2 PvE, and sadly one of the hardest ones to find, are mini dungeons. They’re not quite jumping puzzles, as there is usually very little jumping required, but instead they focus on mixing puzzle solving, combat, and avoiding traps.

Notable examples of mini dungeons:

Flame Temple Tombs in Diessa Plateau, involves usage of environmental weapons to solve puzzles and open new areas, all while avoiding traps and looking for the items required to progress. It’s currently tied to one of the adept traits.

Forsaken Fortune in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, is probably my single favorite location in the game. use torches to not only see the area around you, but to keep the skelk at bay, while (once again) solving puzzles and fighting enemies. The boss fight at the end of this one makes use of the mechanics that you used to progress through it, giving it a Zelda-esque touch.

Those are among the best minidungeons, which are among the best of what GW2 can offer for PvE explorers, but they always were too few and far between, and not being instanced always caused some trouble (like getting in the dungeon when someone is already more than halfway through it, and missing out on a lot of the fun). With Season 2 having a mix of open world content and instanced story content, I am hoping we get to see more of the creative, puzzle/combat mix mini dungeons offered, rather than the “click through the dialogue options until you hit the right one and/or fight all the mobs” style of progression we’ve had in living story instances so far. Plus, it gives players challenges to achieve, and isn’t that the point of S2’s achievements? to ask players to complete tough challenges? well, mini dungeons are the solution!

I know it might be a lot to ask, but pleeeeeaaase, more of them.

TL;DR: mini dungeons are amazing. Like, AMAZING. But we haven’t seen many of them in-game, which is a shame. Bring more puzzle solving dungeon crawling into GW2 through Season 2 story instances! They even work well with the idea behind upcoming achievements.

agree….and they would fit perfectly into story journal as “instanced” 5-man content. cap it off with a boss at the end that also has a daily world-boss chest (along with the one-time story reward/skin) and a few really tough achievements.

Relshdan.6854:

agree….and they would fit perfectly into story journal as “instanced” 5-man content. cap it off with a boss at the end that also has a daily world-boss chest (along with the one-time story reward/skin) and a few really tough achievements.

I agree many of these mini dungeons would be great instanced. I’d say instead of 5-man though make them solo or best, scale based on how many in the party, so that they can be played years down the line when others don’t care or everyone got their daily chest after reset. SO much they could do with instanced content if they could add in scaling. Right now, whenever I’ve gone into these mini dungeons somebody else is already there and I just walk up to the end chest and get a free achievement and loot.

Yes mini dungeons are great!

I wouldnt make them part of the LS itself however, they’d be much better in the open world where you can team up with randoms and enjoy it spontaneously.

We’re likely getting new zones now in S2, I just hope together with the rest of the goodies like tons of new DE, JPs and secret stuff sprinkled in we might get a couple of mini dungeons as well

Some of the best thing about these dungeons are that
- you can fail
- they are just the right content for a couple of friends and not PUGs
- the rewards are not important as they are fun to do once.

If we put those into the Living Story though those strengths become weaknesses. Story based sections are meant to be completed by players with low capability. The Living Story sections should be repeatable for fair rewards. The Living Story should support open access and pick up groups.

jblade.6470:

Relshdan.6854:

agree….and they would fit perfectly into story journal as “instanced” 5-man content. cap it off with a boss at the end that also has a daily world-boss chest (along with the one-time story reward/skin) and a few really tough achievements.

I agree many of these mini dungeons would be great instanced. I’d say instead of 5-man though make them solo or best, scale based on how many in the party, so that they can be played years down the line when others don’t care or everyone got their daily chest after reset. SO much they could do with instanced content if they could add in scaling. Right now, whenever I’ve gone into these mini dungeons somebody else is already there and I just walk up to the end chest and get a free achievement and loot.

agree that soloable mini-dungeons would be ideal…..then let them scale up to 5-man parties.

Stooperdale.3560:

Some of the best thing about these dungeons are that
- you can fail
- they are just the right content for a couple of friends and not PUGs
- the rewards are not important as they are fun to do once.

If we put those into the Living Story though those strengths become weaknesses. Story based sections are meant to be completed by players with low capability. The Living Story sections should be repeatable for fair rewards. The Living Story should support open access and pick up groups.

I would hope each LS installment contains more than just one personalized instance/mission type…..so that you could tell the narrative’s important points through easier missions and stand alone cut scenes…while still providing more challenging content as “flavor”…..“easter eggs” and/or side stories related to the main narrative.

Flame Temple and the event chain to open it was a part of the server world boss tours that occurred before megaserver, because it was fairly quick to do, and had a nice boss chest at the end. the reward vs. effort was in the players favor, so they repeated the content. if these story instanced mini-dungeons had a good risk/reward ratio (maybe i bit more skewed toward harder content/better reward than current minis), peopel whould want to play them….and buy them if they missed the installment while it was live.

and while i agree, that the “fun aspect” might be lost after a few completions in their current form, that’s where the new achievements come in. design the mini-dungeon so that it can facilitate a variety of “difficult” achievements. Since it’s instanced content, you don’t have to worry about players not interested in the achievements ruining your run.

i think the fun mechanics of mini-dungeons, combined with decent rewards and difficult achievements would be worth adding to LS. Since it seems they are not going to tie open-world content (mass-events, new zones, etc) to these unlockable LS installments, they need to make them purchase-worthy for new players or those that missed the content.