[Dungeons] Please make the Story Mode soloable

[Linken.6345]

@"Devildoc.6721" said:There's only a few reasons this really even becomes an issue is if you try to join a group for an explorable dungeon path and NOBODY has story mode done in the group. There's 2 options: Run the story mode in that group, which sometimes happens, or.. the group falls apart, which is more common because story mode simply isn't worth the time because it's so unrewarding.

The other issue is.. if you want to enjoy the story/cutscenes and all that, a group of players, having already seen it all, will be rushing you "hurry up, skip the cutscenes, lets just kill the boss" Solo you'd be free to enjoy the cutscenes and dialogue if it's your first time.

Or you put up a lfg, first time watching movies.Then everyone that joins know what will happen and watch the movies themselfs.

[Kal Spiro.9745]

@flog.3485 said:

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@flog.3485 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Eramonster.2718" said:The problem can easily be solved by having friends in-game.

That's not the point. I do have guild mates, I can always find someone by LFG as well if I want to.

I am saying that story mode should be soloable, because it is 100% part of the campaign's story, not something seperate like fractals or raids, thus should be treated as story missions (hence be soloable).

Just chiming in...Honestly that is a weak argument you have here. Dungeon story mode is not part of the story because it doesn’t require to play the dungeons to lvl up and advance your story.

It's part of the story because if you just go from "everyone hates each other" in that meeting in LA to "everyone is friends again somehow" in Victory or Death, it doesn't make any sense. Everything between those points plays out in the dungeon story modes.

Then they should have made dungeons required to play through and scale its content based on how many players entered the instance. Because, at low lvl, when players have the choice to either play dungeons (with the potential risk of running into toxic players) or casually lvl-up in open world, I think most would choose the path of least resistance (and when you would peruse the LFG back at dungeons hayday, I would also point out that most group requests were LvL 80 only).

As for the story aspect, I don't necessarily agree with you. It feels much more like side story to me because the story leads you to kill zhaitan and whatever happens in the dungeons is totally irrevelant to it.

The story of killing Zhaitan, though, is the story of Destiny's Edge. It is the culmination of two stories, their story are told through the dungeons and yours in the personal story. Since they're both being told, they should have been experienced, but they won't have been. So they should be made into story missions. They should be fit in as part of the personal story, where they belong, so that when you get to the end it all makes sense.

[Devildoc.6721]

@Linken.6345 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:There's only a few reasons this really even becomes an issue is if you try to join a group for an explorable dungeon path and NOBODY has story mode done in the group. There's 2 options: Run the story mode in that group, which sometimes happens, or.. the group falls apart, which is more common because story mode simply isn't worth the time because it's so unrewarding.

The other issue is.. if you want to enjoy the story/cutscenes and all that, a group of players, having already seen it all, will be rushing you "hurry up, skip the cutscenes, lets just kill the boss" Solo you'd be free to enjoy the cutscenes and dialogue if it's your first time.

Or you put up a lfg, first time watching movies.Then everyone that joins know what will happen and watch the movies themselfs.

You really have a rosey eyed vision of how other players are in online games. I didn't get to watch cutscenes in GW1 missions until heroes were a thing.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Devildoc.6721 said:You really have a rosey eyed vision of how other players are in online games. I didn't get to watch cutscenes in GW1 missions until heroes were a thing.

Hah hah, yeah, me too!

Yesterday, when CoF was the daily, I found nice mates to do story mode and then all three paths for fun afterwards. I made it clear from the start that this wasn't a rush-though and that it would be appreciated if they didn't run ahead while people were watching the movie seqences. They were all okay with it, so it was a pleasant experience.

Still:

@Kal Spiro.9745 said:The story of killing Zhaitan, though, is the story of Destiny's Edge. It is the culmination of two stories, their story are told through the dungeons and yours in the personal story. Since they're both being told, they should have been experienced, but they won't have been. So they should be made into story missions. They should be fit in as part of the personal story, where they belong, so that when you get to the end it all makes sense.

Exactly!

[Teratus.2859]

I'm reviving this thread because this is something I have recently attempted and I feel it is still something that the core Gw2 game needs to have for multiple reasons.First being that few bother to even play the story modes anymore as there are no token rewards for doing it so finding a group is difficult.Second being that even if you can find a party even fewer can be bothered to take people along who want to watch the cutscenes and talk to the NPC's which is the whole point of even doing the story modes in the first place.These story modes really do need to be made more friendly to solo players who want to experience all of the core game's story.

So I am playing through the Personal story on a reasonably new lvl 80 character and I wanted to take on the dungeon story modes because they are relevant to the final Arah dungeon that must be played to complete the personal story.

I'm happy to say that only 1/7 of the dungeon story's I was not able to solo.. Honor of the Waves being the one in question which is by far the most difficult due to some crippling mechanics and a last boss who is to say for a solo player is overpowered to hell would be a massive understatement.

I did this on a Spite/Soulreaping/Reaper Necromancer running a mix of Marauder and Valkyrie stats designed mostly as shroud based damage dealer (or literal Reaper) hence the high vitality/life force as well as ferocity and power.

Ascalon Catacombs.. It wasn't to much trouble and might just be fine with a general enemy damage nerf for solo instances.

Caudecus's Manor.. This one was significantly more difficult due to it's elite enemies health pools being extremely high for the limited level cap.. add to that there are a lot of high damage enemies such as snipers which can one shot you which can make soloing this story mode pretty annoying.

Twilight Arbor.. Ok this one give me slight problems, Aside from being overwhelmed and ganked by powerful enemies one of my biggest annoyances was the huge fear spam some enemies could put out, I was able to overcome this with condi transfer (likewise shutting the enemy down with their own big fear duration) but it was still an annoying thing to deal with.

Sorrows Embrace.. The typical issue of being ganked by Elites persists here but overall it's not too much trouble until we get to the large room with the mortars.Ironically taking out the mortars and their elite guards was more difficult than slaughtering my way through the dredge army in the middle XD.What give me the biggest trouble was the semi final boss Kudu, this guy is annoying to fight solo as he jumps around, deals a lot of damage and can lock you down with AoE immobilize.The other annoying enemy was Prototype T-IV Golem who can rapidly stack poison and bleed on you dealing massive damage very quickly.Those two need a good looking at to make this dungeon story solo friendly.

Citadel of Flame.. Tbh this was a lot easier than I was expecting, The only real challenge was fighting the final boss Gaheron Baelfire who is more like a world boss than a typical enemy.Being able to break combat and heal up under Logans shield was very useful but the biggest problems were the meteors which can easily launch you into a CC combo potentially throwing you off the ledge to an instant death.. or launching you into a fireball again leading to an instant death and forcing you to restart the battle.

Honor of the Waves.. Oh boy, this one was utter hell.To start with Icebrood elementals.. their V shaped ice trail attack is utterly ridiculous.. it's like getting hit by 50 attacks all at once >.< it's more or less a one shot if you get hit by it and it seriously needs to be nerfed game wide.. horribly overpowered attack.Kulag the Fallen.. I despise this boss even in 5 man team.. he spams knockback like no tomorrow.. almost all his attacks cause it and it is horrible.. utterly horrible to deal with solo.. this guy more or less needs a overhaul to be solo friendly and his knockback needs to be gutted down significantly.Lani Winterfist.. All this guy really needs is a good damage and health nerf.. his AoE is a little extreme but managable if he did a fair bit less damage.And finally Kodan's Bane.. This guy is an absolute monster.. more so with his Drake, I had to resort to jumping in and out of the water trying to trap/bug him out just to get his health down.. he can obliterate a solo players HP in seconds and his attacks are relentless.He's ridiculously hard to solo if not nearly impossible for most builds without trying to exploit game mechanics.. I could not beat this guy alone with my build.Out of all the dungeons this one is most in need to attention to make it solo friendly.

Crucible of Eternity.. This one wasn't too bad overall.There is a small segment where Zojja hacks into a terminal and it's very easy to get swarmed by enemies there.. I barely managed to get through it due to the amount of elites that I just couldn't kill fast enough.The only other challenge was the final encounter.. Kudu's power armor was difficult to melee due to it's crazy melee damage and ability to stun you then beat you into the ground if your not careful.Kudu himself poses a much bigger threat as he pretty much has a one hit kill.. I hate 1 hit kills in pretty much anything.. even raids, it's such a cheap mechanic but the main reason it caused me so much trouble here is because sometimes it randomly ignores terrain and he can hit you with it even when you're taking cover behind a pillar.. not cool.Kudu's Monster wasn't bad though.. probably the easiest part of this fight providing you're familiar with fighting Giants and can easily avoid their attacks.

Overall the bulk of the problem is elite enemies and their big health pools.. as well as some enemies who deal significantly high damage far too often which makes outhealing it extremely difficult or impossible.There are a few bosses here and there which do need to be looked at and rebalanced but overall I don't believe that making dungeon story's more solo friendly is a particularly big job.. It was done with Arah and I really don't see why it cannot be done with the others so that everyone can enjoy the story modes on their own time without having to worry about being kicked for watching the clips or wanting to waste time talking to the NPC's.This story content is important to several major characters in the game and it connects to the main game storyline.. so I firmly believe these instances need to be made more solo friendly.

[Dante.1763]

@Devildoc.6721 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Devildoc.6721 said:There's only a few reasons this really even becomes an issue is if you try to join a group for an explorable dungeon path and NOBODY has story mode done in the group. There's 2 options: Run the story mode in that group, which sometimes happens, or.. the group falls apart, which is more common because story mode simply isn't worth the time because it's so unrewarding.

The other issue is.. if you want to enjoy the story/cutscenes and all that, a group of players, having already seen it all, will be rushing you "hurry up, skip the cutscenes, lets just kill the boss" Solo you'd be free to enjoy the cutscenes and dialogue if it's your first time.

Or you put up a lfg, first time watching movies.Then everyone that joins know what will happen and watch the movies themselfs.

You really have a rosey eyed vision of how other players are in online games. I didn't get to watch cutscenes in GW1 missions until heroes were a thing.

Long time for a quote i know, but Devildoc is correct.

Nobody does storymodes anymore, hell, none of the three guilds im in where even willing to assist with them when i said i wanted to watch the cutscenes despite how easily they usually will assist with explorable paths.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

What annoys me the most is how many people get to Victory or Death without knowing most of Destiny's Edge.

The story paths of dungeons should have been updated the same way as Arah's story, inserting them at the appropriate points in the story, after each mission in which your friend from Destiny's Edge sends you a letter talking about Destiny's Edge members going to that dungeon.
Also, unlocking the explorable paths should have been account-wide, whenever any character does the story path.

Story dungeons would be even better if each required learning a core mechanic to continue. For example, Ascalon's Catacombs could teach defiance bars and CC, by making the Adelbern's champions stronger with defiance bar and weaker while its broken, and Adelbern outright invulnerable to any form of damage without breaking his defiance bar. There's lots of rocks around to throw even if one doesn't have CC skills, making this story the best place to teach CC.

[Sinistral.5309]

Was just thinking about making this exact post, so im gonna necro instead, don't care, sue me.

People just LOVE to blaze through on their necro/ranger and then seem to think anyone can do it, no they can't. I've done AC on all my characters except mesmer, she just gets blown up and can do kitten all about it. Manor?...don't even bother trying. Also, i'm pretty sure the level scaling is just plain broken in there too, for instance, how does a level 65 (scaled to 45) have an easier time than an 80 espec (scaled to 45)? and im not the only one that's noticed either.

For a game based around its lore/story, ANet sure as hell don't seem too concerned with this rather large "hole" in it do they.

Seems everything core is just abandoned, i mean really, there's NPC's in beetletun "gardening" without any tools, event NPC's without walking animations, the list goes on, but all they care about is updating gem store and adding new raids that less than 1% of the playerbase even do.... #logic.

[Warscythes.9307]

@"Sinistral.5309" said:Was just thinking about making this exact post, so im gonna necro instead, don't care, sue me.

People just LOVE to blaze through on their necro/ranger and then seem to think anyone can do it, no they can't. I've done AC on all my characters except mesmer, she just gets blown up and can do kitten all about it. Manor?...don't even bother trying. Also, i'm pretty sure the level scaling is just plain broken in there too, for instance, how does a level 65 (scaled to 45) have an easier time than an 80 espec (scaled to 45)? and im not the only one that's noticed either.

For a game based around its lore/story, ANet sure as hell don't seem too concerned with this rather large "hole" in it do they.

Seems everything core is just abandoned, i mean really, there's NPC's in beetletun "gardening" without any tools, event NPC's without walking animations, the list goes on, but all they care about is updating gem store and adding new raids that less than 1% of the playerbase even do.... #logic.

Mesmer is by far one of the best profession to solo dungeons due to its multiple evade and blocks. This is in addition to the ability to go invisible, skip trash mobs and rapidly dash through with mirage stealth 1. Now doesn't mean solo dungeon as a mesmer is easy, it does require a bit of skill and understanding of class which you are probably lacking which is why it seems like is difficult. Necro and rangers are safe, but they are not the best at dungeon solos.

As for downscaling, it is probably because your max level character has crappy gear because that gets downscaled down too. So if you are have level appropriate gear on your level 65 character but green/blues on your level 80, then your level 80 character will likely be worse in terms of stats only but traits more than makes up for it. So no, level scaling is not broken. I don't understand your point about this missing hole, have you ever tried to make a group on lfg for story mode dungeons? If you can't solo it then even having 1 more person helps.

They have been consistently trying to tie core maps to releases so just pointing out a few missing animation is really nitpicking. So really most of this comes down to that you need to play the game more to understand it better.