The Dungeons in GW

This is a quote from Kakumei in the WoW and GW thread. I agree with it too. Although EOTN went for a traditional dungeon crawling game, with epic bosses and big loot they don't seem to quite make it as well as the WoW dungeons or the Zelda dungeons (are they the best to compare?). It's hard to say why as well, so I like to see if we can determine that through this thread.

My guess would be: GW dungeons are really just "kill your way through a floor". Zelda ones feature many more puzzles, and WoW ones have many more "events" to break things up. Also, in WoW the dungeons are clearly broken in sections with different terrain which makes a nice change.

For example, in GW Darkrime Delves is just a long line of three levels fighting Jotun. There's a few switches to pull but each lvl is mostly the same as the last. Fight this, kill this, reach the door/boss with key. Also, the whole dungeon is just ice, ice, ice. No change.

In Zelda you'd have monsters to fight but they'd each be different, maybe requiring the use of the environment to beat them. Also, you'd be expected to do puzzles around every corner. I mean intelligent puzzles, not just pull this leaver over here and the bridge comes down. I mean noticing things in the environment and making intelligent steps towards getting out of a room, getting a chest or opening a door. That kind of thing.

In WoW (in my experience) there are no puzzles to solve. the dungeons are more like GW in terms of the fact you just fight from one end to the other. But the fighting it broken up by events, either bosses or just a change in scenery. When you enter a room bosses taunt you, they call reinforcements, they change form.But most important is the talking. It makes you feel like you're there, actually doing something to stop the evil in the dungeon. not just walking through and your presence won't change anything.

Also the difference between rooms helps break up the fight. For example in Deadmines (which all wow players will have done, I'm sure) you move from mine to shipbuilding room, to mine to forge to mine to giant pirate ship in an underwater cavern. It's no small thing stepping out from an enclosed tunnel to this cavernous cavern housing a huge pirate ship swarming with pirates! It feels epic and epic is good. Save bloodstone caves, how many boss rooms feel epic? Not most sadly.

Obviously there are exceptions in GW. There are some good dungeons. For example, I'd say that the Oola's lab mission was a really good example of how a dungeon should be. The terrain changed, the were puzzles, Oola taunted you all the way through. If there'd just been a few more levels of that gold then it would've been great. Also, in terms of epic scenery Duncan's boss room is epic looking, although it's spoilt by it's messiness and the fact that he is a double damage short guy who goes down in about a minute HM once you've got rid of the spirits. He should've had another phase or two. Maybe he could be released from his body and become a very large deamon/spirit thing. Anyway, that's something for another thread.

So, do you think the dungeons in GW are as good as they could be? If not, why not? And what dungeons stand apart from the rest because they've got good design, or bad design?

Merry Christmas

Mazey

Good thread, and let's hope, this help improve GW2 dungeons.
Yes, i really missed puzzles, and yes, Oola's lab was a great fun, to fin out how to pass through each obstacle. Sure, it's not a big thing to find keys and open doors.

So please more puzzles in GW2

That is so true. Dungeons were no different to normal areas. It was the same spamming of c + space, it just happened to be 'underground.' (Also agreed on Oola)

Epic rewards are missing in Guild Wars. Sure, dungeons can be fun, but when you know that what you're working towards isn't all that great, it takes the epicness out of it.

And this could never change... unless ANet went into the realms of 'PvE weapons and armor', or decided to do away completely with balance in PvE - as they have already started to.

Dungeons don't need "epix".They need decent gold drops.

I'd like to see that you'd get at least a useful gold out of the chest.It'll at least feel like you were rewarded instead of getting a Gold Req 13 Zealous,18% slaying mod with a +19% While Hexed inscription for an hour or more of said dungeon.

Hey come on, that'd fetch you 300g! Stop being so negative.

Fortunately, I got something pricey enough to pay off a debt from one of the chests.

Anyhow, agreed with the OP. Sure, we don't necessarily need swinging from ropes, or anything, but few more well thought out puzzles would have been nice.

And yes, Oola's Lab was fun. Unfortunately, I didn't read into it beforehand and brought an MM hero my first time. Whoopsie daises!

Doing the "elite" dungeon slavers *cough* looks at his phat reward *cough* A TRUNCHEON. Seriously I think the way dungeons can get better is by giving better rewards.

- Ganni

They had the option of taking the dungeons in a better direction, one more like Sorrows Furnace or the Deep, but went for a much smaller and cheeper method that allowed them to reuse maps and terrain.

One thing I had hoped for, and though we might get, was a dungeon with a real feel of depth. If you have explored the temple areas in Factions you would find a map that stretches vertically, from the undercity all the way up to the skyway. This map gave me hope that the degeons of GWEN would start on the surface and truely sink deep into the bowels of the earth, rather than just moving horizontaly from one portal to the next.

They also failled at the final boss fights in almost every dungeon. I would have loved to find the final level of a dungeon containing just one massive monster, think Glint here, and requiring a bit of planing and strategy to take down. Not really a massively hard boss but one that took time and skill to beat.

As most have and will state, the rewards are just not worth the time and effort put into these long dungeons. One simple solution would be to raise the reward points for the titles you recieve upon completion. Another would be to limit gold drops to R9 and perfect mods. With the random skins and other drops such as elite tomes and onyx gems the rewards might actually keep people playing these frustrating zones.

I thought the dungeons were fun, as there was a bit of a different perspective from the rest of the game. Some dungeons I felt didn't try hard enough. What makes a dungeon hard is not a bunch of monsters that can wipe your party out, but the complexity with puzzles and team work. I understand that they may have been trying to make dungeons do able with one person, but really, I think it should have inspired team work. Two people pulling a lever at the same time, while a third walks through a door to open the lock so everyone can go in. That sort of thing would inspire groups to get together more often.

Hmm.. but that wouldn't inspire teamwork, it would force it. Unless they come up with a way of allowing you to target a hero to an object, it completely excludes the solo player, which would make a lie of the 'play solo or with your friends' statement. Elite dungeons perhaps, but not an entire expansion's worth.

I think that one reason the WoW dungeons seem so different is that it takes so blasted long to find a group to do them. There are no heroes/henchies to help people get through them and with the sheer volume of enemies in the WoW dungeons you really couldn't do them solo unless you were a couple of levels higher than the enemies in the dungeon.

For the most part, the WoW dungeons (Deadmines) looked way more epic (as you say) than almost all of GW's dungeons.

A bit off topic - To make the perfect game IMHO would be to have the best parts of WoW combined with the best parts of GW. (Keep in mind this is highly subjective)

I would keep GW's henchies/heroes, the graphics, the weapons (maybe with higher dmg outputs), the fighting style, the quests/missions that are more in depth than just kill x amount of x, I like the ability to map everywhere, no traveling. From WoW I would keep the Auction House/Email system (this rocks!), the secondary professions (ie. Fishing), the non-instanced zones (I love that you can die in town). I'd also keep the pet system and the mounts (mounts are fun), higher levels (Level 70 or even higher), and the most important thing I would keep from WoW is...JUMPING (yeah I'm that kind of idiot).

I could go on and on, but those are the main things I would want for the "perfect" game.

welcome to......GW2(I hope )

I sure am becoming popular!

I mean what is quoted here, too. I really see that Anet tried to capture the magic of a epic dungeons, and they did succeed on a couple--Oola's Lab does, indeed, spring to mind as a fun excursion--but damn if I didn't see the same rooms repeated over and over in other dungeons. When I realized they had reused entire rooms in multiple dungeons, I felt really let down.

It really could have been so much more, and it ended up being somewhat disappointing--the promise is there, it just needed more work. I suppose that could be applied to all of Eye of the North, though.

Let's hope they learn from their mistakes for GW2.

wow
/agreed a thousand times over.

I don't care about anything else, asides from jumping!

It rocks.

I've never played WoW so I can't do a comparision. I usually enjoy doing an EoTN dungeon, but I do have 1 complaint...... I thought it was really cheezy to re-use the same levels in different dungeons. You warp into Frostmaw's and notice that this level looks exactly like the Snowman Lair, or you're in the Catacombs and recognize part of the Shards of Orr.

Instead of 18 distinct dungeons, you have about 18 distinct levels that are mixed and matched to form different dungeons. That is just wrong. I would have strongly preferred less dungeons, or another month delayed release on EotN in order to build properly distinct dungeons.

I gotta agree with Zelda. I enjoy puzzle games and those games were a lot of fun to explore.

Another thing is that WoW dungeons contain quest which are doable inside the Dungeon (As in escort someone to the exit, collect some items from the mobs etc) whereas GW only contains 'Take person to boss kill boss' quests. And some dungeons in WoW require entrance quests, those dungeons have the best rewards. Oh, And whilst I am talking about keys, in WoW there are dungeons with locked doors which lead to strong bosses who drop rare loot as a reward for doing the quest to get the key. IMO we need more 12+ Player content which requires quests to unock the dungeons.

I'm sorry, but I gotta put a hold to comparing Zelda with Guild Wars. We are talking about two different kind of game basicly.

I'm currently playing Twilight Princess and loving every minute of it. I'm currently in an icy mansion and I can tell why it would not work in MMO enviroment. There are some complex puzzles over which people would fight what to do next, like moving box X to switch Y over icy ground.

It's already happening in some dungeons. I know this adds to the challenge but Zelda is too much 3D for MMORPG to work, therefore it should remain a solo game. (not to mention the amount of items.)

What I would like to see is more like The Deep. Forcing teams to split up and operate together but in a separate area so that error is an option.

But there should be more things to make it better, I agree on Oola's Lab to be a primairy example. Here are the reasons why:

1. protect the robot towards the gate
2. paying attention to all the "friendly" robots in the next room alerted many of the possibilitie that they could go hostile
3. having to acknowledge that the enemies in the beginning of the 2nd floor arent for beating but avoiding and just go along with the item.
4. Find a way past the pit of many darts.
5. Figure out how to open the next door.
6. Figure out how the beat the Invincible Golem.

I know this sounds like a small walkthrough but we're talking about the exact reason why Oola's Lab is a succes. These are actually party wide puzzles.

GW dugeons greens would be Epic rewards.

Imagime what would Havoc Maul be worth if it was the only green hammer that dropped with 20/20 15^50 30. But guess what? we have *7* (yes, SEVEN) greens with same perfect stats.

There is still chance to make drops "worth it" - if dungeon green was -2/-2 shield, imagine demand. Or shields with +10 armor vs and -2 while ... sucky drops from PvP pow, but they would give min/max farmers orgasms.

All this would be ballanced, but it would feel epic to get that green drop.

Good points there. If green weapons had been kept to Sorrow's Furnace, the elite missions and the dungeons (with perhaps a few exceptions e.g. Shiro's Blades), they would be worth a lot more and would be unique. Littering them all over the easiest of bosses in Factions and Nightfall was a massive mistake of ANet's, even if some of them had terrible stats. Using new skins for every green would have been nice, too, to separate them from your average inscribable weapon.

Spoken like a true WoW player. This is precisely why I got fed up with WoW and cancelled my subscription.

I give AreneNet high praise for their foray into adding dungeons. It was definitely a step in the right direction. I would say that each of EotN's dungeons does have a different "feel" to it, even though many of them look alike (yes, that was a bit cheesy -- the dungeons in WoW are all quite unique).

It always irked me that the promos for WoW feature bosses and epic encounters (Illidan? -- yeah right; Kharazan? I'm so sure ...; Oooh, a new 10-man troll dungeon? What is that to me?) that most players will never see. If it takes 30 to 45 minutes to pull together a 5-man group (assuming you can find a group at all!), imagine the planning and coordination (read "pain in the butt") required to get 10 to 25 players together (let alone 40!) for some really time-consuming dungeon! That, to me, is where WoW promises but does not deliver. Casual players are completely left out of all this. In other words, huge portions of content are effectively roped off from most WoW players.

In GW, the dungeons would have been better if...
(1) Each one was unique in design
(2) There were many more quests and special encounters in the dungeons
(3) The drops were better

But at least they are accessible to all players; you can solo the dungeons in GW or go in with a couple of friends and not wait for freaking forever to find party members 4 and 5 (most dungeons in WoW are 5-man).

In terms of dungeon design, WoW rocks, however. I have to admit.

Take, for example, Blackrock Depths in WoW. That dungeon is huge. There are whole wings of it that go this way and that. There are crafting encounters that can only occur in certain places, numerous bosses that drop unique items, special encounters (the Arena, the Bar, the Seven Dwarves, and the whole Onyxia/Marshal Windsor quest line, for example), etc., some of which are playable in different ways (such as "getting the key" in the Bar)

There are quests you get in Blackrock Depths that you have to complete in other regions, quests that can only be completed by returning to the dungeon several times, quests that you can only pick up if you are dead, and quests that allow you access to still other dungeons and encounters (Molten Core). Now, that is what I call dungeon design! In short, the dungeons in WoW are designed to keep you coming back.

Next to that, GW's dungeons look a bit ... drab. Nevertheless, I will take a dungeon I can solo or complete with one or two friends over the dungeons in WoW any day. My guess (hope!) is that the dungeons in GW2 will be as creative and rewarding as the ones in WoW but as accessible to a wide range of player types (solo, small groups, full groups, etc.) as they are in GW1.

Number one failing to GW:EN's dungeons: the loot sucks. Even on the preview weekend, I was getting worse drops in dungeons than I did outside of them. I have the most pathetically atrocious luck I know of, and imagining it getting worse is rather hard to fathom. And yet it does. My only spot of luck is the number of Onyx Gemstones I pulled out of Hidden Treasures and end chests (10 so far). And those are only worth something if you want a Destroyer weapon or like selling.

I will stand by the earlier person who posted that end chests should drop rare materials, req9 or perfect mod golds, and greens.

And during-dungeon drops are even worse, even in HM. I know that Hidden Treasures really stink on level 1 so that people don't non-quest farm, but the scads of non-max whites is rather disturbing. If ANet's so worried about destabilizing the game economy in other chapters by letting their high-value skins drop in dungeons, why not add a dungeon-exclusive drop that benefits towards other GW:EN stuff (like armor, consumables, weapons), and nothing else?

/Rant

I find that the Sorrow furnace is still more fun than any EotN dungeons. In the furnace you have multiple quests with very different objectives and stories that bring you to different locations inside the place.

There's no puzzle beside moving the gears from door to door but at least you feel like your doing something other than just killing your way to the boss in a straight line. And the last battle is a lot more Epic than any other EotN dungeon boss battle.

I wish yhat in GW2 the dungeons will look a lot more like the Sorrow Furnace than EotN ones. With lots of puzzle added. Even if they are really hard puzzles, it will only take a day before they are on the wiki for the people who can't manage to solve them. Better story about reason to go in said dungeon is also needed imo.. The "go kill this bad guy" gets kinda boring after the second time. Chain of quests that lead you to doing the dungeon would add a lot of fun too.

Been a while i haven't played WoW but one of my favorite thing was all the quest around Ahn'Qiraj. It required a huge server-wide quest to open it and by doing the normal side quest in the surrounding maps you had the feeling something bad was happening in this dungeon. The more of these little side quests you were doing, the more you wanted to go in this dungeon. And when you first entered Silithus, where the dungeon is located, your mind was set "next stop, Ahn'Qiraj!". I never got to do the dungeon because Nightfall came out but it's the kind of thing that can help make a dungeon look Epic before you even enter it.

I agree with the above poster about SF. The use of quests so each run to the dungeon isn't just a "beat the Iron Forgemen and get chest" affair. Also, there are good greens and unlocked chests that make a run loot worthy.

Sorrow's Furnace is a really good example of a Free Roam dungeon, unlike Oola's Lab mission which is a linear dungeon. Both are good fun, although approached differently.

the only thing that SF could do with is more "events" like wow. For instance, when you meet Galigord Stonestrike he could say:
"Stone Summit! To arms! to arms! We shall drive these interlopers from our stronghold!"
And when you kill him he could say:
"fools! you may have beaten me, but our great lord will crush you flat!"
It would just make it feel like you're actually there, interacting with these Stone Summit.
Also, I wish there was a chest at the end of SF.

Keep posting people

Basically more interaction from mobs, other than shout text bubles.

Wow, thanks for explaining an in detail answer to my question I never asked, "why do GW dungeons suck?"

The thing that really turned me off from the "dungeons", if they can be called such, is the copy-pasting of templated areas. I don't care what excuse you have for that, it just utterly sucks. It really ruins the immersion and authenticity. Sigh.

That aside, very cool post. And the Zelda comparison actually fit, well done!

I also agree with King Seymon's post about lewt and rewards. Regardless of what people think, awesome rewards *really* make it fun.

I like EoTN way more than rest of GW PvE - inlcuding dungeons.

Aye, add few unique boss drops (minipets, anything) and you have a playerbase that's eager to go explore those caverns again.

What's the use of more PvE high end loot? Then Arenanet will make it available for 5k balthazar faction and it will go the same place as the Runic Blade and the Stygian Reaver.

But on a brighter note, I agree. The GW:EN dungeons were poorly done if they were supposed to be different from the rest of the game. Urgoz had far more appeal than these dungeons because at least it was a tad unorthadox IMO. Now it's just your basic Tank & Gank. Maybe we'll see improvement, who knows?

It's PvE of course it's "Kill everything" thats what ya do in PvE.

Yes Puzzles are nice, in a single player non-repeatable game, but once you've done the dungeon, now you know the puzzle, whoo hoo how fun is it the next time, or how fun is it if you doing it with guildies who have already done it and solve the puzzle for you? How many "spoiler" threads would there be?


And yes, too many Greens in the world, I remeber almost pissin my pants when I bought a Green bow back in Ascolon City cause it was a perfect max req 9. Now with inscriptions and the over abundance of HM farming those are easy to make. Plus yeah, most of them are not even rare skins any more. Green Flat bows have the same Skin as a Long bow ya can't tell them apart, bah.

Puzzles in ORPGs (for political genre correctness) aren't a good idea. While some element besides killing in dungeons can alleviate the tension (in WoW, certain quests require attention to other details within the dungeon), puzzles such as the two puzzles in Dasha Vestibule (lore quiz and multiplication puzzle, the latter of which had no indication how to solve) break the mood and tension.

It's psychology, more or less.

I agree with the previous comment that Sorrow's Furnace is a dungeon done right.

Recycled pixels are the basis of GWEN. I saved up 3 stacks of every common mat before GWEN came out, because I'm an armor whoar, and I haven't wanted a single set. >-<

I haven't seen a single green I've wanted. All the stats are all bloody generic as every other green in this game.

The multiplication puzzle in Dasha was easy enough for a third grader. Not Goren, though. Zelda like puzzles would be nice.

I got alot of diamonds and onyx gems as rewards from the dungeons so I can't complain about the rewards. I know at times it is disappointing when you do a more difficult dungeon and you wind up with something not so good as a reward but that is just part of the game.

I agree with some of you that mentioned Sorrows Furnace. One of the best places in Prochecies to go to. It is a shame they didn't do more areas like SF. Lots of boss types and good greens droped there at one time, heck it was just totally fun just exploring it and doing the quests there. I hope in GW2 they make more areas like this. I'm sure it would be a big hit with everyone.

I totally agree with you. However, wouldn't all of the puzzles be figured out and posted on the Wiki, eliminating their true intentions? Maybe the first time through everyone would have to figure stuff out, then people would start to only party with those who know what they are doing, specialist builds to accomplish certain tasks would be figured out and people would need to run those, and then, there really wouldn't be a puzzle.

That's how all games are. gamefaq.com will get you through any console game. Besides this point, they could randomize certain puzzles to appear or not appear, or how they are worked.

The dungeons were a let down to some extent. The re-playability was defiantly lacking, They were really cool the 1st time through and after that....

(This is were I put on the asbestos suit)

The Deldrimor title track and the light of Deldrimor should have worked differently, I think the title track should have stayed at level 1 until all the dungeons were beaten in NM. Then it should have gone up to level 2. The only way to increase the title level should be to complete all the dungeons at your current level. 1-5 NM/ 6-10 HM. With a Boss in each levels "end area".
The light of deldrimor should have "opened" a hidden area a whole lot larger than the hidden areas we have now, on every level(floor) of the dungeon. This should have worked like a chain. You need to be in level 2 "hidden area" to get to level 3 "hidden area". The areas should only open to the lowest party members current Deldrimor title. IE. If you are level 5 and Joe is level 3 you will only be able to access Joe's level in the dungeon, if he is in your party.
This would have given greater re-playability to every dungeon.

They also were missing random patrols, and maybe even a random boss.

The reusing of area maps and the readily avalibility of a map that shows the way was unnecessary. Maps should have been a random monster drop not lying on the floor.

I was hoping for a massive dungeons instead of mini area, like 5+ sorrower's Furnaces stacked on top of each other.

Got to add aswell, UW and FoW are dungeons to a degree, and we still play them after 2 and half years. Ive never had particuarly high gold drops, yeti have gone in a few times recently just for the fun and ectos of it. Like SF they arnt just a 'kill in a straight line' affair with some dire reward at the end.

Im afraid to say aswell, i do at least 2 dungeons a week with my guild, just for the fun of hunting with guildies. Its the only time i step into dungeons. I cant be doing with solo'ing dungeons they are boring as snot solo (and with most pugs tbh). Theres just no inclination to do it. I havent had a green or better than req 12 item in the last 12-15 dungeons that ive done (i admit thats bad luck, REALY bad luck). Why do i want to do it again? Especially the more out of reach dungeons that take extra time to get to? Unless doing them for the fun of hunting with guildies, they just dont intrest me.

The only reason to replay dungeons is: reward. Without proper reward the replayabilltiy of whatever dungeon is as much as zero. I would not care about repetitive levels or challenging puzzles or random area's as long as at the end a huge treasure box with loot is waiting Give me 3 levels dungeons which play like Badhok Caverns, with a treasure box that will always open at the end, and I would be completely happy to replay them every day!

When Anet anounced the 18 dungeons in GW:EN, I expected them to be like Sorrow's Furnace. Funny quests, witty dialogues and special loot. I'm a bit disappointed about GW:EN's dungeon's, there is no incentive to venture to them again after you've completed them all in Hm.

I made a thread in the suggestion portion of this forum before about this. My idea was to bring in the professions for an added diversity. I'll give some short examples.

Theres a gate that requires to suffer 200 points of fire damage and 10 seconds of burning to be opened, so your team makes sure to bring a nuker Elementalist (Or some dude with fire weps, but you get the point.)

Theres traps that everyone is none to wiser to but Assassins, for them a small swirly icon appears, and the activation of a special skill can disarm them.

After a few bouts of running in circles and throwing everything at the boss to try and defeat it, the Mesmer steps in. Using a special "reveal" skill, small swirly markers appear on columns in the environment. Which the party now identifies as destructible and capable of damaging the boss. Upon the boss being knocked down to the ground, a weak spot in his armor is revealed, attacking from this angle is capable of dealing armor ignoring damage.

A switch lays high up and above a gigantic pit, seemingly no one can reach it.
Luckily the Ranger's longbow can. (This of course could easily be done by another profession with a longbow, /broken idea)

Now yes I realize these are broken, and force specific profession play and what not. Basically what I mean to say is that these would never work out in GW1, GW1 was made on quicksand. The more it struggled to advance and introduce new game mechanics, the quicker it sank.

Hopefully with GW2, a much wider selection of mechanics will be readily available. So maybe you can't just bring some doofy wammo with a fire weapon to replicate the ele. Or just someone with an assassin secondary to detect traps. And you know what? When people fire bows and have no marksmanship, they shouldn't hit their target. Why isn't there a 75% chance to miss? So as you can see, GW 1 simply would struggle too much, it's player basis is used to how it is and unwilling to make drastic changes.