Accessibility of dungeons, fractals, strikes and response missions

[Cuks.8241]

Do you play dungeons, fractals, strikes, DRMs (instanced PVE)?

[Cuks.8241]

With the latest expansion we got new instanced PVE content with again slightly different format. They are not that much different to what we already have in forms of dungeons, fractals and strikes and could just as well be one of these.Instanced PVE doesn't seem as popular in this game as with other mmorpgs. Maybe I'm wrong on this one but Anet is constantly trying to invent a new format that would get more players to play this type of content but I am not sure it is working. In my opinion fractals have the best format but still have some problems that I will ge into below.They also added a public instance with strikes which I think is a great idea but just got deserted after a few days and I think not much will change with DRMs.

What I think is the biggest problem is the accessibility in the game, the interface that is holding all these content back. It is not the difficulty, not the required player amount for a full instance and not the toxicity which is really low in this game compared to games that have much more popular instanced pve.

What this game need is a common interface window that can be accessed at any time and any place in the game and throgh which we can enter the requested instance. A button on the main screen would open a lobby window thought which you could enter either a public instance or join a party (incorporate the existing LFG systems) or a squad and also enter the private instance.Most importantly we should be able to enter any instance from anywhere in the world. No need to travel to a certain map or even worse a certain instance of a map. This way I can play in open world, check the lobby if there is a party for a dungeon of my liking and in next moment I am in an instance.And once I am done with an instance I am back to where I was before.

I excluded raids from this post since those are harder and need more organisation. Anything else can be tackled by any average player without much organisation.

[kharmin.7683]

I've tried a few low-level fractals and a strike mission. Not my preferred type of content, so I haven't gone back to them. I have no interest in raids, mainly because I'm no META player and don't want to spend the time to learn specific rotations to please a select few. I know, create my own group, but I don't really have time or desire to do that, either.

[Randulf.7614]

I enjoy strikes and low level fractals

DRMs are fine in principle but the current ones are just dull

[sitarskee.5738]

I play them rather often, I split my time pretty evenly between PvP, WvW, Open World and instanced content.

[Danikat.8537]

It's not my main focus, but I do all types of instanced content sometimes. At least once just to try it out, then either because I want something from it or because someone I know wants help completing it. Or sometimes just because one of my guilds is doing a run and I feel like joining in.

The main reason I don't do it more often is because I like to take my time with things, zig-zagging across the map, looking at the scenery, talking to NPCs etc. and I don't feel like it's reasonable to do that when I'm playing with a group, I feel like I'm more under pressure to keep up, do things quickly and get it right. That and I need to make sure I have enough time to finish it, which can be easier said than done for me. If I have to stop playing when I'm in the middle of a story instance it only affects me, if I'm doing a big meta-event it's highly unlikely 1 person leaving early will affect everyone else, but if I'm in a 5-person party and I leave it's likely to cause a problem for all the other people.

As I understand it people in other games focus on instanced content because that's usually where many of the best rewards come from. I know that's the case in Elder Scrolls Online where many of the best armour sets, and popular motifs (skins) come from dungeons so players will run them repeatedly either for items they need or for ones they can sell. (Sometimes to the point where by the time they get the drop they were hoping for what they're celebrating is that they'll never have to do it again, which doesn't seem like a great outcome to me.) Whereas in GW2 group instances have always been designed to be optional, with any exclusive rewards being purely cosmetic and open-world content equally viable as a way of progressing and making money. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's not like there's a shortage of MMOs which focus on group content so having one which focuses more on the open-world and other areas of the game is nice. It wasn't something I really considered when I got the game but it's probably one reason I've stuck with GW2 for so long.

@Cuks.8241 said:What this game need is a common interface window that can be accessed at any time and any place in the game and throgh which we can enter the requested instance. A button on the main screen would open a lobby window thought which you could enter either a public instance or join a party (incorporate the existing LFG systems) or a squad and also enter the private instance.Most importantly we should be able to enter any instance from anywhere in the world. No need to travel to a certain map or even worse a certain instance of a map. This way I can play in open world, check the lobby if there is a party for a dungeon of my liking and in next moment I am in an instance.And once I am done with an instance I am back to where I was before.

The LFG tool does all of that except teleport you to and from the instance, and honestly I find it hard to believe that people who spend the majority of their time playing other areas of GW2 are put off doing instanced content because they're not sure how to find the entrance. If you can find story instances or specific maps for meta-events then you can find dungeon entrances.

[JekthAvid.1408]

I play fractals, and am nearly to t4! After that, I want to try strikes and then raids

[sorudo.9054]

i tried dungeons but even there players are selfish so i stopped, all the others are worse the bigger the party.

[neighto.7386]

Its the other players that make these sections of the game inaccessible, not the actual game. I, for one, can't be bothered to play these when I have people expecting me to play the game to their standards and no other way. I am here to have fun and get away from the stresses of real life. I have zero interest in Dungeons, Strikes and Raids... This past installment has actually made me play the game less. It's just not fun doing the same thing over and over for a few measly achievement points and crummy rewards. This is the first time I have seriously considered NOT buying the next expansion... looks as though the direction the game is heading is not one that I will enjoy too much.

[Kichwas.7152]

That poll is badly set up - given that it presumes someone plays all of these or none of these, and then just asks frequency.

I play fractals almost every day that I log in. I used to do a lot of dungeons but those are just too old feeling now. I've yet to bother with strike missions and I'm not even sure I know what a DRM is yet.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I would call myself an open world/story player first, but I spend varying amounts of time in every game. I find this content very accessible. I'm able to play the same build I play in open world and perform more than adequately in all of it. I typically join PUGs on LFG and avoid groups which require experience/proofs, but finding groups and completing content is rarely an issue. Today I've completed all of the strikes as well as my T4 dailies + recs and have done a few of the DRM CMs for the achievement as well.

As far as the range of difficulty, I think it offers something to nearly anyone's taste, provided they are inclined to enjoy the content in the first place. I frequently play with a friend who prefers to run fractals at T2 level. On my own I prefer T4. The really serious fractal players run daily CMs as well. With strikes you have several which are really very easy and most any group will succeed, and others which can be a real challenge for less skilled/experienced groups. DRMs with all 3 challenges active are probably on the level of some T4 fractals (possibly unintended as it's mostly due to the challenge that increases the toughness of non-boss enemies), but the normal mode is closer to the level of ordinary story content.

Of the listed content, dungeons are the only thing that I would say can sometimes be an issue? There are times I have struggled to find a group in the past, but I would say most times I'm successful. There are plenty of skins and other things to buy from dungeon currencies. I personally preferred to earn most of that in WvW, but I've been known to run a dungeon now and then.

If not my central focus and where I spend most of my time, all of this content is at least something I regularly participate in and look forward to seeing more of (except dungeons because fractals!). DRMs are too new to form a concrete opinion on, but I feel they need some work to be repeatable content. The challenge modes could be enjoyable if the rewards were there and they addressed some of the things that drag it out unnecessarily (not ideal for replay!).

[Silvia.9130]

I play dungeons more or less regularly, Fractals only when I feel I can and Strike Missions only on Sundays when my guild has a chill run for them.

[Westenev.5289]

I don't play strikes, because I have to kill deimos 50-200 times with kp to get into a group. Even if I had kp, I'm pretty sure these types of players don't know how to have fun anyway.

Dragon Response Missions aren't my jam. Public groups are just a bunch of open world players tickling the health sponge of a boss to death with mesmer laser swords and ranger pewpew. A little too accessable, imho.

I vastly prefer fractals and dungeons. Unlike DRM, people actually try to deal dps, and groups are MUCH more casual and accessable than ~raid~ strike squads. So I don't think it's fair to lump them altogether.

[Linken.6345]

@Westenev.5289 said:I don't play strikes, because I have to kill deimos 50-200 times with kp to get into a group. Even if I had kp, I'm pretty sure these types of players don't know how to have fun anyway.

Dragon Response Missions aren't my jam. Public groups are just a bunch of open world players tickling the health sponge of a boss to death with mesmer laser swords and ranger pewpew. A little too accessable, imho.

I vastly prefer fractals and dungeons. Unlike DRM, people actually try to deal dps, and groups are MUCH more casual and accessable than ~raid~ strike squads. So I don't think it's fair to lump them altogether.

That why strike and raid squads ask for kp.They dont want open world range mesmer range pew pews in their squads.'

Get your own tag and start leading more chilled strike/raid squads and put req in your tyrian groups for drms and you will have a much better experience.

[Raknar.4735]

I only play them if there‘s something I want from them, like a skin. Once I have that I‘m never touching it again, because instanced content just doesn‘t satisfy me.

[Cuks.8241]

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Cuks.8241 said:What this game need is a common interface window that can be accessed at any time and any place in the game and throgh which we can enter the requested instance. A button on the main screen would open a lobby window thought which you could enter either a public instance or join a party (incorporate the existing LFG systems) or a squad and also enter the private instance.Most importantly we should be able to enter any instance from anywhere in the world. No need to travel to a certain map or even worse a certain instance of a map. This way I can play in open world, check the lobby if there is a party for a dungeon of my liking and in next moment I am in an instance.And once I am done with an instance I am back to where I was before.

The LFG tool does all of that except teleport you to and from the instance, and honestly I find it hard to believe that people who spend the majority of their time playing other areas of GW2 are put off doing instanced content because they're not sure how to find the entrance. If you can find story instances or specific maps for meta-events then you can find dungeon entrances.

I don't think they are put off, they just don't play them as much because it is not convenient.I'm basing this on my Wow experience before and after they added looking for dungeon tool. It really revitalised dungeons and I think for exactly the reason that people didn't have to travel to dungeon entrance and wait for others to join and come. There were many complaints and fears before it went live and after it went no one looked back. Wow didn't have waypoints though.

With Strikes and now DRM they added public instance. And at least with strikes it only really worked on day 1. After that people just join, see no one is there and leave. I think people would use public instance much more if you could join a queue for it, play whatever you like and the game would teleport you to the instance once it would be full. We will see how it goes with DRMs.

It is easy to find a group for popular instances. It can take a long long time for one of the harder dungeon paths or a certain achievement. With an interface, I described I could post a group, play whatever, maybe even with a different squad and when enough interested people would apply I would be straight in the instance.

LFG is functionally a good tool. The interface is severely lacking though. Whoever designed it never heard of any basic interface optimisation. And good interface attracts people. There are plenty of suggestions that come up for additional information it could offer but the foremost for me is why the kitten is it a second tab in the Contacts menu. It is the most important tool and feels like they are hiding it. I know this might sound silly to people that are used to it but I have met people that play for years and didn't even know it existed.And I bet there are people that play a long time and don't even know how to enter fractals or strikes. Many people just play the game and don't check any external sources ever. There is nothing in the game that leads you to these instances.

Anyway, we had this kind of matchmaking tools, interfaces since the 90's. Either as inherent game functions or external programs like gamespy or all seeing eye or irc bots. There is really no excuse that almost 30 years later a massively multiplayer game has none of it and can't even come up with a coherent system between different modes.

[Danikat.8537]

But literally the only difference between the system you're describing in WoW and the system we have is that when your group fills up you need to use a waypoint to get to the entrance (and only one person actually needs to go in, the rest of the party just need to get to the map the entrance is in), and as you already said that's solved by the fact that we have waypoints.

There's no need to wait in or near the entrance to the instance while using the LFG tool and I really don't know why you would if you're expecting it to take a long time to fill up. You can advertise or join a group from anywhere in the game, then open the instance once you've got enough people. Of course you need to be prepared to stop whatever else you're doing when that happens but the same is true in other games.

[vicky.9751]

not really fun playing some of the ones that ive played since 2013

[Cyninja.2954]

I've played dungeons daily in the past during core. Now I run them occasionally (I have all the dungeon achievements done) when I feel like it or when people in one of the guilds I am in feel like running dungeons.

I've been playing fractals since 2 weeks after their release back in November 2012. I've gone through pretty much every iteration this content has seen and have been running high end fractals in all variations (rank 30+ when the max rank was 100, rank 45-50 when the max rank was 50, T4 and CMs now, etc.). This content probably changed the most design wise from its original design. Agony resistance used to not be mandatory (if you were good enough to dodge agony boss attacks, you could survive even with less AR. Literally 1 fail and dead back in the day), which was changed into the current system of it being a gear gate (agony attacks are now guaranteed and you need the resistance to survive them).

I've been raiding on and off starting with getting into raids way back when they released with a guild (Karma Initiative actually). Was part of a progress raid guild a few years ago. Have PUG raided in the past for months while not being in a guild which raids (my static guild disbanded eventually due to real life commitments). To being in a raid static atm which full clears Mondays, while helping out guild members in more casual oriented guilds which also raid (usually clearing 4-6 wings per week). It remains by far some of the best designed content for players to play and conquer together, if one is so inclined.

Strikes are to raiding or challenging group content what story missions are to meta farms. Fun to do occasionally, boring beyond belief if one did them constantly. I ran daily strikes for a few weeks, opened the chest weekly, ran Forging Steel solo daily for around 2 weeks even only to basically not care about strikes at all. Now I maybe do a set of strikes 1nce per week, if I have nothing better to do. Cold War I've complete probably 12 times or so, couldn't even be bothered to work on that achievement.

Dragon Response Missions, same thing as strikes, only in this case in relation to dungeons and fractals. My personal guess is: they remain to difficult for more casual oriented players (and let's be honest, why would those players not run a dungeon or fractal?) and for any advanced players these are just beyond boring. I do have hopes that maybe we have simply not seen any development here which the developers intend to implement, given how the mastery related to them is locked mostly and there will likely be more missions coming. So maybe this will make for a good "easy" instanced content set, who knows.

TL;DR:Most of this games instanced content is designed with players who want to play together in mind. In this case mostly guild members, friends, communities, etc. Running this content with such people is good fun. For any one who simply wants his solo experience in a MMORPG, there are open world meta events.

[Adonan.8356]

@Cuks.8241 said:With the latest expansion we got new instanced PVE content with again slightly different format. They are not that much different to what we already have in forms of dungeons, fractals and strikes and could just as well be one of these.Instanced PVE doesn't seem as popular in this game as with other mmorpgs. Maybe I'm wrong on this one but Anet is constantly trying to invent a new format that would get more players to play this type of content but I am not sure it is working. In my opinion fractals have the best format but still have some problems that I will ge into below.They also added a public instance with strikes which I think is a great idea but just got deserted after a few days and I think not much will change with DRMs.

What I think is the biggest problem is the accessibility in the game, the interface that is holding all these content back. It is not the difficulty, not the required player amount for a full instance and not the toxicity which is really low in this game compared to games that have much more popular instanced pve.

What this game need is a common interface window that can be accessed at any time and any place in the game and throgh which we can enter the requested instance. A button on the main screen would open a lobby window thought which you could enter either a public instance or join a party (incorporate the existing LFG systems) or a squad and also enter the private instance.Most importantly we should be able to enter any instance from anywhere in the world. No need to travel to a certain map or even worse a certain instance of a map. This way I can play in open world, check the lobby if there is a party for a dungeon of my liking and in next moment I am in an instance.And once I am done with an instance I am back to where I was before.

I excluded raids from this post since those are harder and need more organisation. Anything else can be tackled by any average player without much organisation.

I don't know, that sounds a lot like what WoW has, and many attribute the insta-queue to the fall of that game. Although, to be fair, other MMOs have that feature and are doing fine.

[Linken.6345]

@Cuks.8241 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Cuks.8241 said:What this game need is a common interface window that can be accessed at any time and any place in the game and throgh which we can enter the requested instance. A button on the main screen would open a lobby window thought which you could enter either a public instance or join a party (incorporate the existing LFG systems) or a squad and also enter the private instance.Most importantly we should be able to enter any instance from anywhere in the world. No need to travel to a certain map or even worse a certain instance of a map. This way I can play in open world, check the lobby if there is a party for a dungeon of my liking and in next moment I am in an instance.And once I am done with an instance I am back to where I was before.

The LFG tool does all of that except teleport you to and from the instance, and honestly I find it hard to believe that people who spend the majority of their time playing other areas of GW2 are put off doing instanced content because they're not sure how to find the entrance. If you can find story instances or specific maps for meta-events then you can find dungeon entrances.

I don't think they are put off, they just don't play them as much because it is not convenient.I'm basing this on my Wow experience before and after they added looking for dungeon tool. It really revitalised dungeons and I think for exactly the reason that people didn't have to travel to dungeon entrance and wait for others to join and come. There were many complaints and fears before it went live and after it went no one looked back. Wow didn't have waypoints though.

With Strikes and now DRM they added public instance. And at least with strikes it only really worked on day 1. After that people just join, see no one is there and leave. I think people would use public instance much more if you could join a queue for it, play whatever you like and the game would teleport you to the instance once it would be full. We will see how it goes with DRMs.

It is easy to find a group for popular instances. It can take a long long time for one of the harder dungeon paths or a certain achievement. With an interface, I described I could post a group, play whatever, maybe even with a different squad and when enough interested people would apply I would be straight in the instance.

LFG is functionally a good tool. The interface is severely lacking though. Whoever designed it never heard of any basic interface optimisation. And good interface attracts people. There are plenty of suggestions that come up for additional information it could offer but the foremost for me is why the kitten is it a second tab in the Contacts menu. It is the most important tool and feels like they are hiding it. I know this might sound silly to people that are used to it but I have met people that play for years and didn't even know it existed.And I bet there are people that play a long time and don't even know how to enter fractals or strikes. Many people just play the game and don't check any external sources ever. There is nothing in the game that leads you to these instances.

Anyway, we had this kind of matchmaking tools, interfaces since the 90's. Either as inherent game functions or external programs like gamespy or all seeing eye or irc bots. There is really no excuse that almost 30 years later a massively multiplayer game has none of it and can't even come up with a coherent system between different modes.

Yea would be fun last 10% of Drakkar meta and joink your in this dungeon now.EditAlso you can already do this except the instant teleport into dungeon witch is the only way you could get screwed out of rewards.

Join what ever pve map you like put up a lfg for what ever dungeon you like.Your group will fill while you do what ever and when full you Ghasp talk to people and teleport to dungeon wp then go in.

[preacher.9370]

mostly focusing on strike missions lately, recently returned player so trying to get the armor and cape :Pfractals honestly lost their appeal to me when they reworked them. tbh i prefered the old way of four (well, three since they always rolled swamp first....) random fractals, really only did enough of them in the new setup for the legendary backpack.DRMs, played once and didn't really see any replay value in them.

[Yggranya.5201]

If a meta requires team work, then fine, i can stomach that much. Would be great if half the map wasn't AFKing, but it's not like i can do anything about that. Join a party? Nah.

[Cerioth.7062]

Poll did not have "other".

I wanted to say that yes, I do instanced PVE endgame content daily/weekly depending on what it is, but I would not call it primary content, nor from time to time.

[kanemi.4903]

These days i have only been running:Fractal, Strikes, TT and Teq

At weekends i run HOT maps ;)