Please re-purpose Dungeons for Solo adventurers

[aaron.7850]

Its safe to say that no one runs dungeons anymore and they are pretty much dead content, and for those of us that want to experience the content is a pain to find groups even for story mode.

I think its time to repurpose dungeons, Story mode should be for 1 player while Explorable mode for 3 to 5 players.

[dace.8019]

I've long held that they should be updated and folded into Fractals - as some kind of subcategory.

 

There's work involved to polish and rebuild/redesign some of them, but the existing base is solid and there's a lot of framework and content to exploit.

 

ANet could tie them and their rewards into the Fractal rewards systems. Everyone wins. ANet get to revitalise/redeploy existing content and assets, fractals players get new content, dungeon fans get their dungeons back on the map.

 

But its never going to happen.

 

[thepenmonster.3621]

I've been saying for years that the story mode should be rolled into the personal story.

[Super Hayes.6890]

I just run a minion necromancer for those. I haven't done all paths but I have completed all story modes solo.

[Orion Templar.4589]

People still run them, although admittedly a lot less. I too would like to see them melded into fractals somehow.

[Ganathar.4956]

Only story mode should be solo, and also part of the personal story. The rest can stay as they because they are fine. If anything Anet should roll instanced content in general into events, similar to things like boss rush. Having those sorts of events being only open world is limiting and doing some for instances could keep things interesting. Especially dungeons could use something like that.

[Hannelore.8153]

ArenaNet doesn't like dungeons because back when they were the main thing, people found ways to cheese almost all the content, especially with skips, strealth and summons to the point where some items, movement skills, etc. were nerfed.

 

The whole farming culture around dungeons turned them into a "how can we get the gold with the least amount of work?" and this caused an endless nightmare for the development team to constantly fix all the ways that players found to dungeon bypass. Fractals don't have this problem so much because they're more like puzzles and there's mechanics like Agony that slow players down.

 

Only a few dungeons are designed this way (CoF, CoE), and only primitively by comparison.

 

Even to this day many problems with dungeons remain because the devs just got tired of fixing them. In fact you can solo most explorables just by running the right build, knowing exactly what content you're facing, and how to handle it precisely.

 

The Explorable dungeon paths should definitely be rolled into Fractals, making them all lv80 (but still allowing uplevelled newbies to play them), and standardising the Fractal mechanics along with some fixes to challenge the old ways of doing things. This would also include splitting up the final battles into "boss" Fractals like was done with Molten Furnace and Aetherblade Retreat.

 

Story Mode paths on the other hand should be rolled into Personal Story, the same way as Arah Story Mode.

[GummyBearSummoner.7941]

Yes please !

[Luthan.5236]

I wouldn't mind if the story mode for all was soloable. I have watched the vids since Zhaitan got made soloable and I needed the story knowledge from the other ones since it is tied to the core personal story.

 

Maybe for explorable a hub and making it similar to strike missions and people joining a public instance waiting at the beginning until a few others join. To make it more prominent than the lfg tool? I guess personally (I don't like to play dungeons and raids might give strikes a try though) I mainly need everything once for achievements. Dungeon currency I can get from PvP reward tracks then.

 

Probably the main problem is that not many people that have finished everything need to do them regularly (maybe not enough normal farmable rewards?) so you'd need to look for people that still need achievements.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Due to the power-creep of the past years, some dungeons are already solo-able. However as a single person it is rather tedious and it does not work with every build. Sadly there is currently no dungeons-team and as some people already mentioned, it would require some additional work. I see a couple of options that require very little effort:

 

- Make the NPCs immortal and give them some boons. That is the system we had in LS4 and POF. You are part of the team. The more players you have, the lesser the impact of the NPCs is. They will constantly resurrect you, buff & heal you a little. Their damage can be slightly enhanced, so they make up for tanks. You can even give Logan and Rytlock a taunt-ability. Can the dungeon be completed by the NPCs only? I think it would take too long without player participation. Besides, you still need to walk as the NPCs are programmed to follow your path. So you cannot enter the dungeon, go afk for 5 hours and collect all the loot.

- Change the level scaling. The downscaling in dungeons depends on how many players are in your group. 5 = 100 %, 4 = 80 %, 3 = 60 %, 2= 40 %, 1 = 10 % downscaling of the original values. They could tie the rewards to the scaling %. So the dungeon-system would still encourage players to run the content in groups.

- Give all NPCs the Skale Venom buff. It is one of the rare secret buffs in the game, that is no longer used by the majority of players. I use it in a couple of builds as it still performs well. If the NPCs have it, your bosses would always have a 25 Stack of Vulnerability (= your attacks deal 25 % more damage) and permanent weakness (= damage output - 25 %).

 

I hope they add more Strike Missions in the style of Forging Steel, large explorable areas and solo-able content. Doing it was a lot more fun than most of the fractals I ran in the past years together.

[Westenev.5289]

I run dungeons. Sometimes I run (explorable) dungeons solo. It's not as hard as you'd think, you just need to be creative with the environment, pathing and AI.

 

Honestly though, at this point, Anet could probably make one "dungeon" lfg tab...

[Aridon.8362]

I literally did three Arah paths with complete strangers 2 days ago. And it took like less than a min to find them.

[Loboling.5293]

Just ran through all the dungeons in my new character. Some with a group and others solo. Truth be told though, putting my party in the search always worked. However, I wouldn't mind players being more directed to them again. As they are critical to the story. I wouldn't mind seeing them nerfed a bit too, since I needed to be level 80 to solo them easily.

[DonArkanio.6419]

Actually, I could see dungeons being added to the Personal Story, as they actually play a pretty important part when it comes to Destiny's Edge and the political situation in Tyria.

 

Dungeons explore each race's evil faction; Nightmare Court, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion, etc.

 

For example, Ascalonian Catacombs play a pretty important part in the pre-HoT Living World seasons, explaining the way Sohothin and Magdaer work.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"aaron.7850" said:

> Its safe to say that no one runs dungeons anymore and they are pretty much dead content, and for those of us that want to experience the content is a pain to find groups even for story mode.

> I think its time to repurpose dungeons, Story mode should be for 1 player while Explorable mode for 3 to 5 players.

 

People still run them and there's plenty of solo content in the open world. I see no issues with story mode being made soloable.

 

[sorudo.9054]

i personally don't care about challenge because i just like story mode, if the story part of dungeons are made for solo players then i can finally experience them after 8 years.

[SkyCakeLight.3750]

I thought maybe it would be kind of neat if they added henchmen for Dungeons. Build your own party to run them. Just some presets builds on a generic NPC. Or, maybe even allow us to slap our own characters on a henchmen like a skin. Could be fun.

[Ashen.2907]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"aaron.7850" said:

> > Its safe to say that no one runs dungeons anymore and they are pretty much dead content, and for those of us that want to experience the content is a pain to find groups even for story mode.

> > I think its time to repurpose dungeons, Story mode should be for 1 player while Explorable mode for 3 to 5 players.

>

> People still run them and there's plenty of solo content in the open world. I see no issues with story mode being made soloable.

>

 

This.

[Obtena.7952]

> @"aaron.7850" said:

> Its safe to say that no one runs dungeons anymore and they are pretty much dead content, and for those of us that want to experience the content is a pain to find groups even for story mode.

> I think its time to repurpose dungeons, Story mode should be for 1 player while Explorable mode for 3 to 5 players.

 

I don't think it's safe to say that at all. I do agree that story mode should be solo .. .though I see little reason for Anet to change that now.

[coso.9173]

I want something, anything to be done with dungeons. Now they’re abandoned.

[Kelly.7019]

tldr: i've been saying for years they should make use of all this underground areas beneath the map. HoT was great don't get me wrong but I remember they had an unfinished area in caledon forrest we used to be able to access just for exploration (i don't think it was intentional as they closed it. I think it was a work in progress they shelved) But that kind of idea excited me. That there could be sea caves or other areas to explore for explorer types. Then i stumbled across this game "ESO" after taking a 3rd look at it after 5 years (heh) and realize they've done what i have basically been saying. They've made "DELVES" little (and by little i mean HUGE) instanced dungeon like areas that can be done solo or in groups beneath the map. Some GW2 LW new maps would have been perfect for this! I would have thought Desert Highlands would have been one of them, heck PoF would have been a great introduction to solo dungeons (cough delves) to the game. I mean i didn't know delves existed when i was writing about this type of content that should be added for GW2. I'm not saying copy another game but adding more content can't be a bad thing. I awlays thought it could be added with a new game mode like archeology or something~ I get that solo really isn't the goal of gw2, but there are lots that would like "something" like this. People that explore the edges of the maps would love to find crevasses and cracks that lead down to old abandoned mines and more places to explore!

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

> @"aaron.7850" said:

> Its safe to say that no one runs dungeons anymore and they are pretty much dead content, and for those of us that want to experience the content is a pain to find groups even for story mode.

> I think its time to repurpose dungeons, Story mode should be for 1 player while Explorable mode for 3 to 5 players.

 

I support this 100%, i have never understood why this isn't always an option when content is created. Make it so everyone can enjoy the content and just raise difficulty levels the more people are logged into the area, and adjust rewards accordingly.

[Teratus.2859]

> @"thepenmonster.3621" said:

> I've been saying for years that the story mode should be rolled into the personal story.

 

Same.

 

Dungeons are part of the Personal Story experience as they both tie off in the same place.

Unless you actually know the story before hand then you'll end up with big continuity breaks as well which I have mentioned a dozen times on here before.

 

For starters you get mail about Ascalon Catacombs at level 30.. yet the setup for this dungeon happens at level 40 when you meat Destiny's Edge in Lions Arch.

Add to that the location for this dungeon is in Ascalon.. Plains of Ashford which is a Charr Legion area and the official treaty between Humans and Charr doesn't actually get signed until some point during the Order Storyline, if you play the Vigil campaign you get to play security for the negotiations of said peace treaty.

 

Until this point in the personal story Humans and Charr are just under a ceasefire which makes human players in Ascalon and Charr players in Kryta pretty funny tbh.

Also explains why there is a certain lack of these rival NPC races in each other's early zones as well, outside of the orders anyway which are exceptions.

 

Due to splitting paths there is a lot of gaps in the story which don't fully make sense until multiple playthoughs with different races and choices.. and having the dungeons which are key to the Destiny's Edge story requiring party play doesn't help this either.

If you don't play the dungeons you go from Destiny's Edge hating each other and fighting in Lions Arch to hey we all buddies now lets kill a dragon in Orr..

The dungeons story's are just as important to the Vanilla story as the Personal Story is, Arah story was made solo friendly so clearly this is something worth doing for the others too.

Specially Honor of the Waves which is imo the hardest of the dungeon story modes and was the only one I was unable to get through solo.

[Mutisija.5017]

i think that best would be to add a solo mode for the story stuff. people who prefer to play solo will get to see the story content, and people who prefer doing dungeons in a group for whatever reason wont get their fun taken away. everybody wins!

 

but yeah, i really would like to get dungeons soloable in a way or another because even tho i have been playing this game for half decade, i still have not played the story content for dungeons. i get extremely nervous if im trapped in an instance doing stuff together with other players. it makes me little sad that im missing large chunk of the story.

[Randin.5701]

Definitely agree with making the story modes soloable, and possibly even integrating them into the personal story more directly. I'm running through the full story with an alt currently, and I had forgotten just how little Destiny's Edge are actually in the story if you don't run the dungeons, which makes their appearance in Arah and the post-launch story feel really weird.

 

And even back closer to launch, I could never find anyone interested in running Crucible of Eternity's story. I'd like to be able to cross that one off the list someday.