Guild Wars 2

Yes if they can make them interesting and not designed so that the current zerker meta is the best way to do things.

The game already doesn’t have a gear grind, and its current PvE is either open-world zergfest, simple story content, or poorly designed 5man dungeons/fractals that force everyone into a berserker gear, kill things in a corner meta.

The game could definitely use instanced challenging PvE content. It just needs to be well-designed.

The one thing I miss the most from Guild Wars 1 is the fact that the PvE game was driven by an all-encompassing story that could be played through by a team of people. These missions had a great sense of scale, discovery, and mystery as you moved through the world and came upon new allies, enemies & creatures with friends. They weren’t amazing or anything, but I’ve never had a greater story-driven experience in an MMO than the first time I played through GW1 when it first came out. Revisiting the game over last summer brought the nostalgia back, and it was wonderful for the couple weeks I played it.

Do you guys think we’ll ever see such a thing again? I suppose GW2 somewhat does this with personal story and story mode dungeons, but both of these lack what made the GW1 missions so great. They focused around the fact that groups of heroes were needed. Those groups were the players. Now in GW2 it’s only about Destiny’s Edge (in dungeons) and kittening Trahearne (in personal story). I want to see my friends and I in cutscenes as we run with the game’s NPC heroes to save the day. The back and forth conversations between only 1 player and the NPCs needs to be done away with. At least recognize and show the presence of the players who helped achieve these things.

Involving things outside of lore, I’d love to see the return of hard modes and timed dungeons to the game. Fractals of the Mists seems to be the current attempt at making something like this, but it still lacks an obvious competitive aspect. There needs to exist some sort of leaderboard and competitive rewards system (titles, skins, minipets, tonics, etc.) for the hardcore players. Let people try and beat timed and hard mode dungeons and then track their accomplishments in the view of the public. It’s kitten these players want, so give them a way to compete. Update FotM to track everyone’s accounts in terms of how high they are in difficulty levels. For this we don’t necessarily need all-new dungeons, just an update to old explorable modes so that players want to go back and compete for speed runs. People love speed running, so instead of trying to stop them, take it and make it a whole new game mode. That way we can have story mode for well, story. And then explorable mode with an option to activate a hard mode option on entry.

This definitely needs to be an option. I find playing certain races to feel much more unconfortable than others due to camera placement. It’s an option that definitely needs to be made available. If we get horizontal placement, why not vertical as well?!

Lovely! I have run this dungeon completely about 4 times now, and only completed it once due to the bug at the end. I do love this path and the bosses/mechanics involved, but the bug has everyone avoiding it like the plague.

This is a wonderful idea. I love playing through zones and I haven’t even seen half the events in this game, despite having 2 level 80s. The thing is, leveling through zones is usually tougher than it was at launch because of low-mid level characters becoming a minority.

“Underflow shards” would fix this issue and let the game be played the way that the developers intended!

I would enjoy this!

+1

Despite the insane amount of… in this… post…. I totally agree.

Zhaitan’s fight, even after the so-called “fix” to him, is so depressing I almost didn’t want to kill him. It just felt like a sad slaughter of what is supposed to be the master of dragons and bosses far more formidable.

It’s almost as if Destiny’s Edge does everything for us. It’s awesome that they are there, but Guild Wars 2 fails in making players feel like heroes. Instead we just sit by and watch Destiny’s Edge and Trahearne do everything for us.

Kohler is pretty darn easy but there definitely needs to be an improvement with the boss sounds. The visual cues just aren’t enough because of the insane amount of particle effects in this game sometimes.

Gotta agree, traits and even some skills in the game need way better tooltips. There are a lot of traits out there (I won’t go through a list) that I’ll never use because I don’t really understand how they work. It’s awesome that you can test these things out (to some extent) in The Heart of the Mists, but that shouldn’t even be necessary.

I think a lot of the issues with the story are addressed here by the OP.

Instead of posting another dissertation on the issues with Guild Wars 2’s story, all I’m going to say is that the main story in every Guild Wars 1 campaign was more memorable than almost the entire Guild Wars 2 story. I feel as though the lack of memorable moments is due to the fact that the team tried far too hard to create complex branching story lines. Instead of having one-on-one conversations with people, I want to be addressed as a team of heroes again, with things said by individual players from time-to-time.

I much prefer quality over quantity, and it is clear that quality ends with the death of loved characters such as Tybalt Leftpaw. Quality is further reduced when Trahearne is suddenly made the hero of the story instead of ourselves.

I completely agree with OP, but it shouldn’t just apply to the precursors to legendary items. Currently there is really NO reason to do dungeons that don’t have the token gear you want or lower level world bosses because there just are not any level 80 incentives.

All world bosses and dungeon chests need to be given sets of their own unique and interesting loot. If you’re going to base a game around cosmetic gear, there needs to be a lot of different looks AND various ways of obtaining that gear. Right now you have to dump tons of money into a gambling machine or the TP to get what you want. This doesn’t involve playing the older zones or going through dungeons. It has turned the entire game into a race to get gold so you can afford whatever Mystic Forge exotics you want.

The main argument against this is that it creates a fantastic gold sink and way to keep the number of weapons and gear circulating low, but the last time I checked, the price of obtaining legendary precursors and unique exotics has gone through the roof. This separates the community into people who are willing to farm for gold and people who cannot. Last time I checked, Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be a fun, somewhat casual, play however you want MMORPG.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

People are just getting better at them. The more you complete the better you get at learning the mechanics. It doesn’t hurt that you also find new gear!

While I agree that random players in explorable dungeons seem to be getting better skill-wise, your remark on them finding new gear bothers me. I have never once received a dungeon drop that was not useless or near-useless in comparison to what I already have. After all, anyone can afford a Masterwork set at their level for an incredibly small amount of silver (probably less than they get for finishing 1 dungeon). The only exciting things from drops in dungeons are tokens (which are almost always guaranteed after the last boss), silver, and anything random that might salvage into ectoplasm or go into the mystic forge.

There needs to at least be some sort of aesthetic drop in terms of dungeon-themed armor, weapons, town clothes, etc. I know dungeon token sets serve most of this purpose, but after a while you realize the only excitement from dungeons is getting close to having the number of tokens you need for that next piece. This turns dungeon running into a race to finish all paths every day to get the token gear.

I really miss the days when I ran group PvE content and there was always a small chance that some super cool dungeon-themed gear might drop. I’d find out about those drops and just spend a ton of time wondering and hoping for that magical moment I got something I wanted for a long time. The current system just feels like we get chests of random junk until the silver and tokens at the end.

In connection with that, I understand that you wish to keep the numbers balanced across all exotic gear so that this game does not become a horrid grind for the newest tier items, but it would be nice to see some PvE gear with unique sigils or runes that can only be obtained during certain dungeons or dynamic events. For example, perhaps CoF chests might have a chance of dropping some type of a special fiery weapon with a unique sigil that has a chance on hit to envelop you in a fiery aura. PvP balance seems to have crept its way into PvE with Guild Wars 2, and I fear it has had a serious impact on the chance for some PvE creativity (while keeping things fair for all PvE players).

My guild just spent over 5 hours in the Jotun path in Arah explorable mode. We reached the gorilla boss named Korag but skipped him because at first he seemed impossible. So we ran straight through the spider packs, through the room with the evil guardian orb attacks, and found the Jotun Stargazer boss. Once we learned how to use the reflecting crystals, we beat him with 3 people as the other 2 ran back.

When the gate behind Jotun Stargazer did not open, we went back and figured out Korag. Once we killed him, we went back into the Stargazer’s room. Still nothing. Because of this we went back and cleared out the spider room. Now we’ve been in this dungeon for over 5 hours and it refuses to continue or finish.

To say the least, I’m incredibly disappointed. Please can someone address this issue? I know we shouldn’t try to skip past bosses, but nothing a party does should be able to break an entire dungeon from finishing.

My biggest concern now is that tons of players already have the full CoF gear set because they farmed the hell out of it with speed runs.

What’s the point of doing the new and harder version for the awesome gear skins, when a bunch of unskilled players are already running around with it?

The CoF gear set is already known by the community as the “easy”/“starter” dungeon set. Please, make some skin change or way for the actually skilled players who do CoF now to differentiate themselves from the rest.

Seriously… I’m sitting at the entrance for Sea of Sorrows on the Eternal Battlegrounds and we’re just being spawn camped. Eredon Terrace completely destroyed us the SAME DAY the servers switched over to week-long matches.

I understand that ET is far more organized for WvWvW, but this is not fun. There is literally nothing we can do.

http://i.imgur.com/uOesd.jpg

THIS ^ should not be possible.

After going through all the dungeon’s story modes in order, my friends and I finally reached Arah’s story mode a couple hours ago. We pushed through and finished it less than 30 minutes ago. Here is a fantastic dungeon filled with interesting and fun fights, but with enough challenge that they stay difficult (for story mode at least). Until the end.

When we reached Zhaitan, all that happens is Zojja powers up a cannon and cripples him? Then he sits on a tower doing nothing while we fight waves of mobs. After the waves, all we do is sit there and spam cannon attacks until he’s dead. My middle finger is sore from pressing the number 2 key non-stop for like five minutes. Why would the dungeon designers create such an amazing dungeon and good story to have it end with spamming one button for five minutes?

I’m seriously hoping that a Zhaitan rework is being made, or maybe a Zhaitan Explorable Mode version, for those of us who want a real fight. For being the first kill of an elder dragon, I cannot believe how disappointing the end of Arah story mode was.

As a side note, where is Trahearn in all of this? Wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of leader for the pact and everyone? And I know Destiny’s Edge is a big deal, but Logan and Zojja are the only two characters that really even do anything.

I love this game, it’s amazing, and if I didn’t care I wouldn’t be typing this out… but please, don’t ever create another elder dragon fight like this one. It was just an abysmal ending to an amazing experience.