Key to good dungeons, and fun times?: Getting Lost.

Yes, what seems to be a factor in one's annoyance level is actually one of the hallmarks of a well-designed dungeon, and key to its replayability.

Remember Sorrow's Furnace? How long did it take for you to figure the layout of that place?

Now take the newest guild wars dungeons...they are linear, boring, repetitive. Sorrow's Furnace had knuckleheads like myself going into that place a million times, WELL after it had lost it's just-released sheen. Bosses dropped green weapons, the dungeon design was awesome, it was huge, and complex.

The same pitfall has occurred with other online games. Look at the instances in WoW, pre-BC. Huge, complex dungeons with many opportunities to get lost. Now look at the dungeons in BC and WotLk. Linear, short, easy.

Why must this happen? Is GW2 doomed to more Frostmaw's Burrows?...or can the old dungeons ever return?

I'm wondering myself why the new dungeons are so much suckier than SF, which has just 1 level! That proves more levels doesn't equal better dungeon

The new dungeons are built modular fashion and they stick pieces together so that's why you get the basically flat structure. I didn't think were that bad though, but the lack of outposts killed people grouping for anything but Slavers.

I enjoyed them you can atleast say theres something about each dungeon thats different and they have their own little story and bosses despite obvious copy and pasting of some rooms

The key to best replayability is Randomization!

Making every run different, unique, with lots of unexpected encounters. Make the best use out of the whole instancing and kill repetition. If there are dungeons meant to be repeated multiple times don't make every run identical.

This is ofcourse about GW2, and there's a huge potential for something truly awesome. There are many ways in which randomization can be done. It can be whole layout of a dungeon, where premade rooms and corridors are put together to a new maze every time an instance is created. It can be just a combination of closed doors, levers, keys and traps that spawn differently every time. There can random mob encounters, with different groups at different locations every time, they can have even skillbars chosen from a list, with nice 'surprises' for abusive solofarmers

Have to laugh at the map location points, where usually an ambush is waiting..do it first time, will remember the way and avoid it all when repeating the dungeon, bit pointless..also seeing the same levels ripped from other areas/missions I find quite dull and un creative...

More, SF had 5 quests that changed the whole purpose of entering. Different spawns, different areas to be accessed... EotN dungeons are just: travel from A to B, killing everything in your path, slap Pain Inverter on the Dungeon Boss and rape the chest. Sure, there are some quests in those dungeons, but they are most of the time completed by simply traveling through those dungeons.

SF is the best dungeon/elite area in GW , mainly because I only know about 2 monster skills that the enemies use , no map effects and it's still challenging to play (maybe because the enemy groups are large?).
All in all the best part of GW pve , too bad there are no groups for SF , h/h is boring.

If that's the case, they should have played a bit more Morrowind before they dove in. Modular doesn't necessarily have to mean linear and boring.

I'm fine with some shorter dungeons mixed in with longer ones. I don't always have the time to spend hours on a dungeon--on the days where I'm really busy with kids and work, the shorter missions, quests, and dungeons are the things that get done. Other days when we can get a good guild group going, a longer dungeon is in order.

The shorter dungeons in EotN are for the bigger knuckleheads to get lost.

I hurd Guild Wars /phail'd after Nightfall.

^^^ that, I've always thought bosses should not spawn at the same place, every time you go out, you cannot expect anything, one day diessa lowland will be filled with minataurs, another, nightmare stalker, according to the level of that place, off course.

and bosses they run around, depending on what happen to the world "environment"

endless possibility!

The dungeons that exist have promise - in that most are a good representation of what part of a dungeon should look like. I know what you guys want, a good dungeon crawl - as do i. I want to enter a dungeon with the mindset that I may spend days in this dungeon, and (in GW2) have to worry that I have enough food to last until the end of the dungeon. I want some dungeons to force my team to send a few guys back to get healing potions, mana, and food from a nearby town. I want a few dungeons to force my team to give up, realizing that we need to have an extra player just for a pack mule to be able to take enough provisions to make it to the end of the dungeon. Damn it, I want to be forced to go out and buy graph paper so I can draw a map of my teams progress as we advance through the dungeon! Anyone that has played some good dungeon crawlers knows exactly what I'm talking about, and if ANet does as we hope, some of the newer players will get to experience what I've described.

Sure SF gave us just a taste of this, but hopefully in GW2 we'll get some of the old dungeon crawls that many of us crave from the days of paper and dice D&D.

Fix'd for truth.

Yeah, EotN does have some good stuff in it but the dungeons are a bit of a funny one. Most of the activity is around Slaver's and the well known CoF runs. Access is key also. A lot of the dungeons are a pain to get to more than anything and some of the end bosses are a bit much. All in all it means that the vast majority of dungeons are not very popular.

And I agree that the fact that they used the same layouts for levels in different dungeons makes it feel a bit cheap as well. Also for the Master of the North title you see that a lot of people get runs for pretty much all dungeons. A real achievement that title...yet again.

And Shards of Orr for the Bone Dragon Staff farm.

I'm not too keen on the graph paper, but I know what you mean. There is something really exhilarating about needing to actually try to complete a dungeon. Challenge is good. I got rewards faster in, say, DoA (even though that's not a dungeon) with Ursan, but I'm going back again with friends and trying to do it with BYOB, and that's more fun than smashing through everything with UB. Same goes for dungeons, really.

(On a slightly more off-topic note, that's one of the reasons I love the level 20 cap. It makes me think of my characters' levels in D&D terms.)