[Suggestion] Dungeons....

[Avenrise.3592]

So we all know that dungeons will never get an overhaul and while this is a shame it's been known for a long time. However I'd like to see more people in dungeons for reasons other than just gold so without further adieu my master plan...

...a treasure mushroom in each dungeon. You heard me correctly! A unique mob that can be looted once per day at the end of each of the longest paths (or maybe all paths but that might mean too many players in dungeons instead of other content) that very rarely drops a unique item. Maybe a dungeon-themed infusion? A single unique weapon skin? Different 'Invisible' armour items? Pick your poison.

It's not an overhaul but it gives people another reason to enter dungeons for very little ANET time invested in development. Either that or remove explorable dungeons and move them into Fractals.... but that's a whole other can of worms! Thoughts? Feelings? Am I grasping at straws here??

[BlackBullWings.2734]

it's a bit grasping at straws but at this point, anything for dungeons would be awesome.It wouldn't be too bad tbh, would give you a reason to look around instead of just running superfast speedruns through dungeons.

[mindcircus.1506]

So people would enter.... find and kill the TM...leave the instance and move on to the next path and repeat.Big brain armchair game design.

Seriously, just go do some fractals

[Rasimir.6239]

@"BlackBullWings.2734" said:would give you a reason to look around instead of just running superfast speedruns through dungeons.Unfortunately the audience that enjoys instanced group content seems to consist for a sizeable part of people that play for rewards and are pretty fixated on the reward/time ratio. I'd actually expect the "superfast speedruns" community to have a bigger impact on running dungeons with this overhaul than they do now (where in my experience people running dungeons are a lot more relaxed and running them because it's content they enjoy, as opposed to people running t4 fractals because "that's where the gold is").

Another point of contention I have with op's suggestion is the general topic of "unique loot". Dungeons already have a good bit of unique loot, a complete weapon and armor set per dungeon (which these days can be gotten through pvp/wvw, too, but if you enjoy dungeons are much easier to gather that way) as well as unique and moderately rare crafting recipes and (last but not least) legendary gifts. This game's design of "play the content you enjoy to win comparable rewards" doesn't work well with unique loot. The more unique loot put in game that can only be gotten through a narrow set of content, the more the game becomes similar to every other game out there, and moves away from one of the main reasons many of us play this game instead of others.

All that aside, I honestly believe that the "problem" op tries to solve isn't one to begin with. Last time we had a "dungeons need moar loot" thread a couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity to pug dungeons more regularly again. I've been playing all kinds of different dungeons and paths over the last few weeks, both through putting up my own lfg and jumping into other people's, and I never once had a problem of a party not filling in a decent timeframe. People do run dungeons to this day, simply because it's enjoyable content to a lot of us. There's no need to pollute the dungeon experience with a ton of "hate this content but want the reward" type of player that often simply ruins other people's experience more than anything else.

[Avenrise.3592]

@"Rasimir.6239" said:Another point of contention I have with op's suggestion is the general topic of "unique loot". Dungeons already have a good bit of unique loot, a complete weapon and armor set per dungeon (which these days can be gotten through pvp/wvw, too, but if you enjoy dungeons are much easier to gather that way) as well as unique and moderately rare crafting recipes and (last but not least) legendary gifts.

By unique I mean very rare and exclusive. Something to brag about. I'm not sure I can ever remember anyone bragging about of a full set of CoF armour.

This game's design of "play the content you enjoy to win comparable rewards" doesn't work well with unique loot. The more unique loot put in game that can only be gotten through a narrow set of content, the more the game becomes similar to every other game out there, and moves away from one of the main reasons many of us play this game instead of others.

If I want the Queen Bee where do I go? Are Invisible slippers available game wide? Do I get Tequatl's Hoard from level 15 mobs in Kessex? Sorry for sounding like an ass but the game is full of items only available in certain areas of the game. The key is having these unique drops in as many places as possible, to spread people around. Dungeons currently do not have these except for maybe the recipes you mentioned but again do you take pride in getting one of these or are they just dumped on the TP immediately?

All that aside, I honestly believe that the "problem" op tries to solve isn't one to begin with.

I'm on EU and I won't pretend like there aren't parties for dungeons as there are. However certain dungeons are not frequented as much (the times I've been on and looking this week there have been no HotW parties at all in LFP) and of the parties I have been in only a couple were casual runs for the fun of it.

I don't know exact numbers of course but I'd be willing less of the playerbase plays dungeons compared to Fractals. I'd personally like to see this evened out a little, that's all.

[Danikat.8537]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"BlackBullWings.2734" said:would give you a reason to look around instead of just running superfast speedruns through dungeons.Unfortunately the audience that enjoys instanced group content seems to consist for a sizeable part of people that play for rewards and are pretty fixated on the reward/time ratio. I'd actually expect the "superfast speedruns" community to have a bigger impact on running dungeons with this overhaul than they do now (where in my experience people running dungeons are a lot more relaxed and running them because it's content they enjoy, as opposed to people running t4 fractals because "that's where the gold is").

As far as I can tell this is why dungeons lost popularity in the first place, there were a series of changes which meant they're no longer one of the fastest ways to make gold. As well as shifting most of the gold from the individual dungeon rewards to the repeatable achievement (meaning you have to do different paths instead of repeating the fastest path/s) there's the introduction of map-wide meta events with decent rewards (Silverwastes especially), Fractals and the introduction of precursor crafting which dropped prices, meaning buying exotic weapons with dungeon tokens to throw in the Forge wasn't as profitable. As a result the majority of players who used to run dungeons to make gold shifted to playing other areas of the game...and that was the majority of people doing dungeons.

There's still enough people doing dungeons that I'm always able to put a group together via LFG when I feel like doing one, but you don't get asses of speed clear groups listed like you used to.

Personally I don't see that as a bad thing exactly, dungeons are still playable for those who want to do them and people who want to farm gold presumably don't mind too much where exactly they're farming, as long as it's farmable content. But it does seem to be different to many MMOs where it's the open-world that's largely empty except for casual players doing quests and dungeons are the hive of activity for farmers. (Thinking of my other MMO where you can either defeat world bosses solo or spend longer waiting for other players to show up and fight them than you would queuing up for an automated dungeon group. I can't imagine many people have had the chance to fight a GW2 world boss solo, even at quiet times there's always a crowd.)

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

Here is a thing of how to re-vitalize dungeons by adding a new mini-game to them seamlessly, without breaking immersion at the same time.

Everybody knows you can search for hidden treasures in Deepstone Fractal. Also, everybody knows what is Minesweeper game, and how it's played. So, make it such you can search for hidden treasures few times along every dungeons' path, while using game mechanics borrowed from Minesweeper.

Each party member has a limited number of "charges" they can use to search for it (so you MUST cooperate to win). If you solve the puzzle, you get a locked chest of additional valuable loot, and proceed further down the dungeon's path. At the next treasure location you can either skip it and just continue through the path as normal, clearing the mobs - or you can decide to search treasure there - but if you lose in minigame, you also lose every chest gathered so far.

Each subsequent chest has more valuable loot in it (you can peek into it, to see what's in it - as contents should vary greatly, to add some thrill - but you won't get the loot until the dungeon is cleared) - but also is protected with a more complex puzzle. You can search for the most valuable chest after you'll defeat the final boss. If you skip any treasure location, you won't get the opportunity to search for the final hidden chest.

You got the idea ;)

Just to clarify one thing: these chests hold additional loot and currencies, you still can play the dungeons as before, ignoring new mechanics and getting the same old reward.

[Rasimir.6239]

@"Thereon.3495" said:

All that aside, I honestly believe that the "problem" op tries to solve isn't one to begin with.

I'm on EU and I won't pretend like there aren't parties for dungeons as there are. However certain dungeons are not frequented as much (the times I've been on and looking this week there have been no HotW parties at all in LFP) and of the parties I have been in only a couple were casual runs for the fun of it.You've got me there. HotW is my least favourite dungeon, so I have no idea how the lfg for that specific one is ;) . If you are still looking for groups though, feel free to whisper me if you see me online, I'll gladly join any dungeon run if I have the time.

@"Thereon.3495" said:I don't know exact numbers of course but I'd be willing less of the playerbase plays dungeons compared to Fractals. I'd personally like to see this evened out a little, that's all.I'm not sure that's how things work. There is a sizeable group of players that will only play

the

(perceived) best kind of content to the exclusion of most everything else. If you do manage to lure those to dungeons, then fractals will "suffer" and deemed not worth it any more. Evening things out "a little" rarely works in this kind of game, simply because the group of those choosing their content by the opinion of their peers rather than individually is too large to allow for that.

[Rasimir.6239]

@"MoriMoriMori.5349" said:Just to clarify one thing: these chests hold additional loot and currencies, you still can play the dungeons as before, ignoring new mechanics and getting the same old reward.Nice idea. This game however is largely built upon the foundation of offering comparable rewards no matter what kind of content you play/invest yourself into. Adding additional rewards to existing content that are above and beyond what that content regularly offers/what other content offers quickly kills the rewards balance of this game that to this day is still very well balanced towards "play whatever you want" (even though it's seen better times).

[Westenev.5289]

Dungeons had a sort of "treasure mushroom", but it's bugged. I refer, of course, to jewlery recipies that are unique to each dungeon, with the accessories selling well on the TP. Unfortunately, most of these recipies won't drop, leaving many uncraftable.

[MoriMoriMori.5349]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"MoriMoriMori.5349" said:Just to clarify one thing:

these chests hold additional loot and currencies, you still can play the dungeons as before, ignoring new mechanics and getting the same old reward.

Nice idea. This game however is largely built upon the foundation of offering comparable rewards no matter what kind of content you play/invest yourself into. Adding additional rewards to existing content that are above and beyond what that content regularly offers/what other content offers quickly kills the rewards balance of this game that to this day is still very well balanced towards "play whatever you want" (even though it's seen better times).

That's what was intended - as Dungeons are currently well behind popular metas in terms of profitability. So the idea was to add some additional overlay to it which wouldn't require to rebuild them too much (what Anet clearly won't do), but still give them an unique quirk and additional source of income - and make it more thrilling and fun, at the same time. Because dungeons == treasure hunting, y'know.

I would also add some small chance of really unique drops to these hidden chests, to heat the pot a bit more. Like, a small chance Black Lion chest's key will be dropped, or some voucher for an BL merchant. Even if it will be really small chance, it will be enough to make people agitated.

[Rasimir.6239]

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:as Dungeons are currently well behind popular metas in terms of profitabilityWould you share your calculations as to how profitable both dungeons and popular metas are?