Do you want new dungeons?

[Chay.7852]

I would like to see more instanced content in gw2. But a little bit different, more gw1-style of dungeons.

* designed for different group sizes (i know you can low-man content but that's not what i mean - gw1-players might remember)

* different difficulties (not simply the challenge mode) - we used to have "normal" - dungeons and elite dungeons/missions, which were harder themselves (you could still play them in hard mode though)

* multi-layer dungeons like "Slayer's exile" (where you had 4 paths you could do in which order you wanted, in your pace - like you could do one today and the next one in 1 month and it didn't reset on a certain day, and after you finished those you could enter the last path with the end boss)

* more group-vs-group fights than group-vs-one-boss-with-x-phases-fights

* unskippable "trash-mobs" (you had to kill certain groups or do a certain event in order to proceed)

* dedicated drops (don't know if i choose the right word, sry, i'm not a native speaker) - in certain dungeons you got certain special (mostly high-desired) skins/weapons/items.

* and last but not least, though i know it might not be received well, gw1-style of difficulty where if you died, you were dead and had to start the mission over.

 

[lokh.2695]

> @"flog.3485" said:

> > @"lokh.2695" said:

> > I would love to see the already existing and paid for assets put to new use. The difference between Fractals and Dungeons is that the Fractals are about special events, frozen in time in the mist, while Dungeons are the stories of the locations they take place in. It just feels strange that nothing has happened in CM after the events of LS3 for example, or that nothing has changed in Arah, 5 years after we killed Zhaitan.

>

> But your logic doesn’t make any sense. It is true that “dungeons are the stories of the location they take place in”. However, the location of the stories they take place in are always frozen in time anyway. No matter how you twist it, you can’t change Arah path because if new players come into the game in the process of defeating Zhaitan, the dungeons have to reflect on the story of Zhaitan being an ominous threat to Tyria.

>

> In the end, the biggest mistake they did with dungeons, was to introduce us to them and yet, never force us to play the dungeon story like they could force us in GW1 to play the story missions with people.

>

> It just feels like to me, that some players consider that dungeons have to be developed only because “dungeons is a staple of MMO”, which is quite a poor reasoning.

> At this point the only missing for fractal is a fractal skin armor just like there is dungeon armor.

 

It's not about changing existing paths but adding more, like it is the question in the OP.

 

Also, yes, dungeons PATHS are frozen in time, Dungeons already have different times in them. Story path usually takes place before the explorable paths, or in the case of TA, Aetherpath takes place even after the explorable paths. So no logical failure in adding a White Mantle Path to CM or a Mystery of Zhaitan Path to Arah that take place after the explorables.

 

I agree that Dungeons were not obligatory enough for the core Story. Adding reward tracks to PvP and WvW was convenient and an additional option to get the skins/tokens/achievements on the one hand, but on the other it made Dungeons themselves optional content not worth dumpng workhours into.

 

I don't care about staples in MMOs. I just like the locations and it saddens me that 1)already existing assets/locations/maps are going to waste when there was a plan(see Aetherpath) to keep improving them and 2)Dungeon content has become so mind numbing easy due to powercreep and the age of the content that they're just not fun anymore.

 

It's just my opinion and they won't do it anyway.

[arielwind.8921]

I don't feel like to go Fractal and Raid. Fractal requires agony resistance and Raid takes much time when group keep failing.

Just old types of dungeon; story and explorable were the best.

[Scar.1793]

> @"Rhiannon.1726" said:

> I still don't see any difference in dungeons and fractals. If I'm in a group and port to LA and get a pop up to enter fractals or if I port to Caledon Forest and get a pop up to enter TA is no difference for me.

> The only difference I see is that fractals have 4 tiers of difficulty.

>

> LS is the kind of "dungeons" here in GW2 which is used to go forward with the story.

 

99% of the people do LS solo. It’s not hard or challenging content. You don’t need to have tiers to make something challenging and fun right off the bat.

 

Fractals are some random maps within the mists and are mostly in terms of scenario « what if » with agony gating while vanilla dungeons were part of the story as pure group content.

[flog.3485]

> @"lokh.2695" said:

> > @"flog.3485" said:

> > > @"lokh.2695" said:

> > > I would love to see the already existing and paid for assets put to new use. The difference between Fractals and Dungeons is that the Fractals are about special events, frozen in time in the mist, while Dungeons are the stories of the locations they take place in. It just feels strange that nothing has happened in CM after the events of LS3 for example, or that nothing has changed in Arah, 5 years after we killed Zhaitan.

> >

> > But your logic doesn’t make any sense. It is true that “dungeons are the stories of the location they take place in”. However, the location of the stories they take place in are always frozen in time anyway. No matter how you twist it, you can’t change Arah path because if new players come into the game in the process of defeating Zhaitan, the dungeons have to reflect on the story of Zhaitan being an ominous threat to Tyria.

> >

> > In the end, the biggest mistake they did with dungeons, was to introduce us to them and yet, never force us to play the dungeon story like they could force us in GW1 to play the story missions with people.

> >

> > It just feels like to me, that some players consider that dungeons have to be developed only because “dungeons is a staple of MMO”, which is quite a poor reasoning.

> > At this point the only missing for fractal is a fractal skin armor just like there is dungeon armor.

>

> It's not about changing existing paths but adding more, like it is the question in the OP.

>

> Also, yes, dungeons PATHS are frozen in time, Dungeons already have different times in them. Story path usually takes place before the explorable paths, or in the case of TA, Aetherpath takes place even after the explorable paths. So no logical failure in adding a White Mantle Path to CM or a Mystery of Zhaitan Path to Arah that take place after the explorables.

>

> I agree that Dungeons were not obligatory enough for the core Story. Adding reward tracks to PvP and WvW was convenient and an additional option to get the skins/tokens/achievements on the one hand, but on the other it made Dungeons themselves optional content not worth dumpng workhours into.

>

> I don't care about staples in MMOs. I just like the locations and it saddens me that 1)already existing assets/locations/maps are going to waste when there was a plan(see Aetherpath) to keep improving them and 2)Dungeon content has become so mind numbing easy due to powercreep and the age of the content that they're just not fun anymore.

>

> It's just my opinion and they won't do it anyway.

 

I see. Thx for explaining your viewpoint.

[Critical Lag.9075]

I'd like to have more fractals similiar to 99 and 100 with CM if possible. I really like those 2 because there is not much filler content in them and they offer decent challange and rewards with CM. Cool boss after boss with little to no trash in between that everyone would just skip in dungeons.

 

But honestly, I don't have much hopes anymore for this game when it comes to instanced content. It takes them like 6 months to create 1 fractal or 10 months for 1 raid wing. My guild alredy fell apart because of that.

[Arden.7480]

No, I don't. It's pointless now when we have Fractals, raids and... Story.

 

If you think about it, the story instances are like dungeons.

 

[Walhalla.5473]

> @"Rhyse.8179" said:

> > @"Omnicron.2467" said:

> > Unless they improve the rewards for dungeons I don't see people being motivated to run them, unlike Fractals

>

> They deliberately nerfed the rewards to discourage people from running them. You used to be able to get (IIRC) 5g per unique daily run.

>

> Why they stopped supporting dungeons and replaced them with fractals I'll never know. It's the same thing... yet they went to significant effort to push people out of dungeons and into fracs. I don't get it.

 

Well whenever Devs talked about dungeons on reddit, it was made clear that the code the dungeons were written in, was quite horibble to work with. There was a bug fixing comparison from one dev who said that a bug that would take 30 minutes to fix in fractals or raids would take an entire day to fix. If true then I would count this as a big reason on why the devs stopped bothering with dungeons. Way too much work to do it in comparison to anything else.

 

If the devs ever return to do dungeons then it would be very likely that they implement a completely new system for them, so implementing a dungeon wouldn't require so much work that for the time and work they used to create one dungeon, 5 fractals could have been created. A new system that would be expansion material basically.

 

I think with the demand on dungeons people display, that we'll get them again somewhere in the future, but with Anet having now better experience on how to do instanced content and a better grasp at the game and its balance itself, those dungeon would be the first really high quality dungeons ( Even though I see fractals as dungeon but lets brand them differently, for whatever reason xD ) the game would ever see.

[Kossage.9072]

The big difference between fractals and dungeons lorewise is that fractals have been stated to take place in the past (basically recent past, distant past, ancient past and mythic past) with Mists "interpretation" of events whereas dungeons always take place in the present timeline of the map they're in.

 

> **Q:** Okay so, in a previous interview with TowerTalk there was a tease of a mention of about just when the Cliffside Fractal takes place, but we still don’t know much about the Underwater and Volcanic Fractals. In the former we see some sunken statues which look a bit Elonian but the surrounding ruins feel Ascalonian. Can you shed some light on when and where that takes place?

> **Scott McGough:** Uh, not very much I’m afraid. I feel like I’m letting you down here. But yeah, the existing fractals are all scattered far and wide throughout Tyria’s history and pre-history. Some of these things are from the time of myth and legend and so we can’t exactly verify exactly how they happened or how they connect to the modern world. That one, uh… yeah, I’m afraid that’s just going to have to be my answer for now.

> **Jeff Grubb:** One of the things with Fractals is because they’re in the Mists, they are echoes. They are not true history, they are basically the resonant history. So therefore you’re seeing a lot of combined feelings coming in sometimes. Maybe there is a place that had that Ascalonian Elonian crossover area. But just as easily, it may be the effect of the Mists.

> **Scott McGough:** And, check me on this guys, the Mists as we define them – the Mists by definition: anything that can be there, or has been, can show up in the Mists. So we get some strange pairings sometimes. Sometimes, for examples, in the Urban fractal, it’s a recreation of the battle for Ascalon, but it’s not – it’s a recreation, not the actual – there’s no time travel involved, you’re not taking part in the actual battle.

> **Ree Soesbee:** If it was just the actual battle, if it was just a very precise rendition of history, you couldn’t go fight there, you couldn’t do things there. The Mists very much are flexible because they’re like memories – you can go back in your own minds and sort of write someone into a memory where they weren’t there and what would have happened ‘if this person went to the movies with us.’ And the fractals are very simpler, the Mists are very simpler.

> **Jeff Grubb:** It also makes it easier for the players who are of other races. No one’s saying ‘hey what’s an asura doing here’ or ‘what is this strange leafy creature.’ It opens the entire pasts for all of our races. Which is a cool thing and we basically use that as a sounding board and a starting place like our PvP Raid on the Capricorn, that’s a piece of history, there weren’t any norn there. [(Source)](https://www.guildmag.com/magazine/issue9/interview.htm)

 

Although fractals definitely have their place as content, they're by necessity a different beast compared to dungeons. Although I enjoy fractals, what I liked about dungeons was their deeper connection to the world setting and lore and being an actual location in Tyrian world map. Unlike fractals which rely on the unreliable narrator trope inherent in the Mists, dungeons show us what's actually there while the only unreliable narrator aspects in dungeons coming from the NPCs themselves who are interpreting things one way (e.g. some of the scholars in Arah explorable paths who try to uncover lost lore) and in some very rare cases about which way events occurred (notably Twilight Arbor where it's unclear which path is ultimately canon as the Nightmare Court countesses and count can't all be fused into the Nightmare Tree while betraying their rival courtiers).

 

Dungeons also have the benefit of both story and explorable modes with the latter intriguingly depicting the aftermath of the events depicted in story mode: Citadel of Flame, for instance, shows us the fallout of Gaheron Baelfire's demise and the rise of Flame Legion splinter groups with unique goals, while the Ruined City of Arah explorable opens up with previously inaccessible areas with lots of major lore revelations as we venture deeper into the mysterious city. Unlike fractals which are shorter due to their inherent nature, explorable dungeon paths can take significantly longer especially for new groups just traversing the content and battling/attempting to skip enemies where they can (Arah explorable's lengthy Seer path says hi!).

 

I do feel dungeons could still be worked into future content and us not just relying on raids and fractals for that feeling. Raids are already a kind of mix between challenge mode fractals and dungeons in the way how the encounters are hard and mostly going from boss to boss (fractals) while allowing greater exploration of the map with all its nooks and crannies and existing properly on the world map (dungeons) with the exception that raids have far more interactable stuff in them than both dungeons and fractals combined. If dungeons were ever revisited, the old paths or at least potential new dungeons could benefit from the advancements made in fractal and raid assets and coding to make them a smooth and enjoyable experience. The old dungeons already had lots of cool ideas (traps, puzzles etc.) and even boss fights (Tribune Burntclaw in Citadel of Flame explorable path 3 is a very enjoyable if simple end boss fight, IMHO), so these could be refined further with the technology we now see in use.

 

I'd love to see a permanent option to let us visit a cleared dungeon after we've beaten both the story mode and the explorable mode paths (while still allowing us to repeat both story and explorable modes at our leisure for reward purposes) so those of us who are into the lore could be chatting with NPCs who have migrated there since and listen to dialogue at our leisure without being interrupted by other players kind of like we get with some of the raid wings post-completion like Bastion of the Penitent with us learning more about the inmates in a scavenger hunt, or deciphering coded messages in the three Forsaken Thicket raid wings that shed light on the events that took place before our arrival. It was already nice visiting Caudecus's Manor in Season 3 Episode 4, so imagine us actually getting to walk around the entire place as an environmental area post-completion with various interactable NPCs (maybe showing how Lord Faren may have redecorated the manor and added all those mesmer fangirls of his in there). Granted, some explorables would be tricky to apply this method to such as Crucible of Eternity which was lorewise sealed shut in the explorable paths, but the developers could simply focus such post-clear visit efforts to new dungeons instead. :)

 

However, unless there's a drastic change in direction and resource allocation, I don't see dungeons ever making a return when fractals and raids are already demanding enough to make given the current schedule of content delivery and already serve as a form of challenging group content. The only way this might be feasible is if the currently merged fractal/raid team spent longer releasing raids and fractals just to fit in a dungeon or two in between every now and then which, given the size of dungeons (particularly in explorable mode), would be a tricky feat to pull off and possibly lead to delays down the line.

[Ben K.6238]

Dungeons are just story instances where you're supposed to bring along 4 other people for some reason. Pass.

[Opopanax.1803]

I would just love a dungeon in one of the new expansion maps that has lore related to pof. Fractals feel so disconnected from the expansions and story.

 

Use the engine for fractals, but make one or two for the new zones with life that is appropriate. Add a gate in zone but also via the fractal or dungeon search. Profit!

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> All the dungeons are still in the game, they're all still fully playable and still give gold and unique skins. But for whatever reason players keep talking about them as if they're broken or give literally no rewards.

 

In fact, the rewards are substantial. They just aren't competitive with the better known farms of Istan & Silverwastes. (Then again, nothing is, which is why _some_ people think those farms are too lucrative.)

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

Dungeons are dead and have been for 5 years now. Development was abandoned in favour of Fractals. So unless ANet is completely changing their stance on instanced content in the game, there will never be new dungeons (and no, LS is not a dungeon equivalent). Dungeons are a part of the vanilla story and the only reason they're easy is because they haven't been updated in 5 years, while our gear and skills have been upgraded since then (elite specs make most of the dungeons a lot easier than they were in the first year after launch, when dungeons were actually quite challenging compared to any other content in the game). Fractals only feel disconnected from the story because we are basically going back in time to play through things that happened in the past of Tyria. They were never meant to be a tie in to the current story. The closest we got to a tie in is the Twilight Oasis Fractal, which deals with Joko and the Sunspears, a tie in to PoF even though the occurences in Twilight Oasis happened long ago.

 

I would love more dungeons in the game, but only if they also update the already existing ones and make the new ones up to date with our current specs and power level. Since that's highly unlikely to happen, Fractals and Raids still satisfy me sufficiently and don't make me miss dungeons at all.

[Substance E.4852]

> @"Rhyse.8179" said:

> > @"Omnicron.2467" said:

> > Unless they improve the rewards for dungeons I don't see people being motivated to run them, unlike Fractals

>

> They deliberately nerfed the rewards to discourage people from running them. You used to be able to get (IIRC) 5g per unique daily run.

>

> Why they stopped supporting dungeons and replaced them with fractals I'll never know. It's the same thing... yet they went to significant effort to push people out of dungeons and into fracs. I don't get it.

 

Because it simply takes less effort.

 

You don't need to anchor the content in any actual context what so ever. We just teleport to some part of the mists from a hub location and then teleport back. Anet can just insert whatever they want without worrying about theme or location.

 

It also frees them from having to create any content specific rewards. Eveything's just mists content so everything just awards the same boring "muh economy" loot.

 

They dumped the dungeon format because they've long stopped supporting the "R" in MMORPG.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

The problem with fractals is very simple. There will only be 25 and none of them will be placed in the current time setting. If a player wants to explore a new instanced location with a party in the current Tyria then the chance of that ever happening is almost zero.

[Einlanzer.1627]

This was another one of Colin's very questionable decisions that has been maintained for no good reason, and it's long past time it be reversed. Dungeons are really a very important part of the MMORPG experience, and neither FoTM nor raids can fully compensate for a lack of regular in-world dungeons because the latter lacks the accessibility and the small-team camaraderie and the former lacks context-based immersion with the ability to add real depth to the world.

 

HoT and PoF were both hurt by the fact that they had no dungeons whatsoever. Think about how cool something like a Cave of Wonders style dungeon somewhere in the crystal desert would have been. I actually think they put too much effort into open world at this point, and need to shift some resources to instance content. Having 2-3 new full size zones with fun metas and 2 new dungeons in a LW season would make a lot more sense than having 6 small zones with competing metas - some of which are much better than others.

[Orion Templar.4589]

I prefer Fractals because generally they are shorter in length. You don't need to have a large chunk of time, and you can quickly get into and out of a Fractal.

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

> @"Ben K.6238" said:

> Dungeons are just story instances where you're supposed to bring along 4 other people for some reason. Pass.

 

This is pretty much how I feel about it as well, especially since the "some reason" is usually that the enemies have tons of hit points and occasionally there's an artificial mechanic that's designed to require five players.

 

> @"StinVec.3621" said:

> Yes, I would love to see additional dungeons. However, I would equally enjoy simply offering a solo/duo mode for the existing dungeons so the enemies scale based on number of players. I would like to actually enjoy a dungeon, take my time instead of the constant speedrun/skip/stack demands from other players.

 

Agreed, I think a solo/duo mode for dungeons would be great - I could actually do them at my own pace!

 

[Ayrilana.1396]

Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

 

I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

[derd.6413]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

>

> I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

 

rename "fractals of the mists" into "mist dungeons"

problem solved

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

>

> I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

 

Yeah, except they aren't for a few very important reasons.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

> >

> > I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

>

> Yeah, except they aren't for a few very important reasons.

 

The only difference between dungeons and fractals is that a dungeon consists of three fractals that share the same map and have an overlapping path. They’re not really all that difference other than naming.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

> > >

> > > I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

> >

> > Yeah, except they aren't for a few very important reasons.

>

> The only difference between dungeons and fractals is that a dungeon consists of three fractals that share the same map and have an overlapping path. They’re not really all that difference other than naming.

 

If you apply a bit of depth to your thinking, you may understand that they are in fact different in a few very important ways. Length and world-context adds a lot for immersion, and dungeons are one of the primary ways other MMOs add immersion to their world. This immersion is important for a lot of players.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

> > > >

> > > > I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

> > >

> > > Yeah, except they aren't for a few very important reasons.

> >

> > The only difference between dungeons and fractals is that a dungeon consists of three fractals that share the same map and have an overlapping path. They’re not really all that difference other than naming.

>

> If you apply a bit of depth to your thinking, you may understand that they are in fact different in a few very important ways. Length and world-context adds a lot for immersion, and dungeons are one of the primary ways other MMOs add immersion to their world. This immersion is important for a lot of players.

 

Immersion is just a loaded word. Fractal and dungeons paths can have similar lengths. How many people are playing existing dungeons for the “immersion” instead of chasing rewards?

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > > > Dungeons are really not all that different from fractals.

> > > > >

> > > > > I get that people are clinging to the “dungeon” phrasing and assume that every game must follow the cookie cutter approach and release “dungeons” but that’s not the case here as fractals work just as well as they’re essentially the same thing.

> > > >

> > > > Yeah, except they aren't for a few very important reasons.

> > >

> > > The only difference between dungeons and fractals is that a dungeon consists of three fractals that share the same map and have an overlapping path. They’re not really all that difference other than naming.

> >

> > If you apply a bit of depth to your thinking, you may understand that they are in fact different in a few very important ways. Length and world-context adds a lot for immersion, and dungeons are one of the primary ways other MMOs add immersion to their world. This immersion is important for a lot of players.

>

> Immersion is just a loaded word. Fractal and dungeons paths can have similar lengths. How many people are playing existing dungeons for the “immersion” instead of chasing rewards?

 

It's not a loaded word. The lore of a setting and how that lore is executed upon within the game plays a very large role in the stickability of MMOs. Fractals do not have the ability to enhance the immersion of new continents and terrains that are opened up within the world the way dungeons do - that's the problem.