why are dungeons dead?

[xXMapcoXx.9614]

anyone?

[AgentMoore.9453]

Devs don't want to develop them anymore and have moved on to fractals as an alternative. I wish they'd go back and give the existing dungeons some polish and maybe add some additional rewards to chase. I also wouldn't mind an 'unlocked' mode being added that would let you just go in and hang out in any dungeon you've cleared. Very nice maps with a lot of lore in them.

..but they've signaled that dungeon code is very twisty and horrifying for them to modify. For the moment, looks like they're gonna stay dead/undeveloped.

[Sobx.1758]

Fractals came with the "look at me, I'm dungeons now" meme.

[MedievalThings.5417]

Yeah, the launch of fractals was that it was a new dungeon type.

Then, it got called by it's own name...fractals.

Then, to make fractals more appealing, they nerfed all dungeon loot into non-existence.

Then, to make fractals even MORE appealing, they made fractals rain ascended gear like every other game mode gets the junk drops.

 

In the end, no dungeons.

(Dungeons were better content)

Edited October 24, 2021 by Ubi.4136

[Linken.6345]

13 minutes ago, Ubi.4136 said:

Yeah, the launch of fractals was that it was a new dungeon type.

Then, it got called by it's own name...fractals.

Then, to make fractals more appealing, they nerfed all dungeon loot into non-existence.

Then, to make fractals even MORE appealing, they made fractals rain ascended gear like every other game mode gets the junk drops.

 

In the end, no dungeons.

(Dungeons were better content)

Then they buffed rewards with 8 different paths to get the raw gold instead of running the same one over and over and over and over and over and over.

+buffed dungeon currency per path daily, so its close to prenerf levels reward wise but people did not return because other things are more rewarding.

[Sobx.1758]

30 minutes ago, Ubi.4136 said:

 

(Dungeons were better content)

(no, they weren't 😁 )

[ASP.8093]

imo?

Fractals are designed to be "self-teaching" in a way that dungeons mostly aren't. And they generally are designed around tighter time caps and more interesting mechanics. Also more interesting rewards.

Dungeons often have trivial bosses but throw a pile of enemies or weird obstacles at you (think about the turret stuff in Caduceus' Manor). Optimal play is often just doing a lot of skips, and the skips are punishing when failed but very boring to execute.

On top of everything else? The level scaling makes everything a bit messier. Part of the hardcore-PvE fun of this game is optimizing your gear/build. Raids and Fractals reward that on a per-encounter basis, where you can carefully choose your rotations and utilities to fit the specific encounter mechanics. Dungeons are more like, "This one's level 40 so all your crit numbers are wrong. Sorry, bud."

 

Also, just as a personal thing? A bunch of dungeon stuff is in tight spaces that don't work that great with the game's camera system. Fractals, Raids, Strikes, story missions, open world, &c., &c., &c. are all much better about not stuffing you in a weird basement that constrains your view super hard.

[Super Hayes.6890]

Fractals, Raids and Strikes are just variants of Dungeons imo. They rename them every so often to market them as "new content" and to to experiment with difficulty and reward structure. All of them are different types of dungeon content!

[AliamRationem.5172]

I find the excessive trash, traps, puzzles, and gimmick fights in dungeons pretty annoying.  Fractals are just better, in my opinion.

[JUN YANG.4328]

for me i prefer dungeon. more then fractals and raid. It is more flexible, i dont need to worry about stacking AR for fractals and strict roles and rules for Raid.  

Edited October 25, 2021 by JUN YANG.4328

[Khisanth.2948]

2 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

A bunch of dungeon stuff is in tight spaces that don't work that great with the game's camera system.

and then there is stuff like engineer's grenade kit which ends up colliding with the ceiling in some sections of Caudecus

IMO the absolute worst part of dungeons is that it involves way too much NPC escorting. Especially when the NPC breaks.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Khisanth.2948

[Klowdy.3126]

3 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

imo?

Fractals are designed to be "self-teaching" in a way that dungeons mostly aren't. And they generally are designed around tighter time caps and more interesting mechanics. Also more interesting rewards.

Dungeons often have trivial bosses but throw a pile of enemies or weird obstacles at you (think about the turret stuff in Caduceus' Manor). Optimal play is often just doing a lot of skips, and the skips are punishing when failed but very boring to execute.

On top of everything else? The level scaling makes everything a bit messier. Part of the hardcore-PvE fun of this game is optimizing your gear/build. Raids and Fractals reward that on a per-encounter basis, where you can carefully choose your rotations and utilities to fit the specific encounter mechanics. Dungeons are more like, "This one's level 40 so all your crit numbers are wrong. Sorry, bud."

 

Also, just as a personal thing? A bunch of dungeon stuff is in tight spaces that don't work that great with the game's camera system. Fractals, Raids, Strikes, story missions, open world, &c., &c., &c. are all much better about not stuffing you in a weird basement that constrains your view super hard.

Gotta say, 7shot in dungeons makes me cry, because there are so many "obstructed" popups on my screen, lol. I do love the dungeon system. New cosmetics can literally breathe life into any aspect of this game, and they know it. ANet is a shark. Never look back. Focus hard on what is in front of you, until it isn't anymore.

[Danikat.8537]

Dungeons aren't the quickest way to farm gold any more, so you don't get many people running them over and over (especially since to get the best gold reward they'd have to do 8 different paths instead of identifying the single fastest one and only doing that, and that in itself makes them 'inefficent').

But if you just want to play through the paths, or even repeat them to get tokens for the skins you can do that, just start a group in LFG (it often helps to put something like 'everyone welcome' in the description) and people will join. Some guilds also do regular dungeon nights and things like that.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Danikat.8537

[Rasimir.6239]

Are dungeons dead?

 

I must've missed the memo, and so apparently did a lot of other people, because every time I feel like playing dungeons, I get a party filled through lfg in a matter of minutes.

[Vidit.7108]

Everyday after Teq we used to pug a daily Citadel of Flame for a two quick gold, then they nerfed it to 35 silver each path. They reduced the daily gold reward and the player base went with it. So now most of the people doing each path are new and they take longer than they're worth.

[Xanadrine.4352]

Dungeons are dead and its sad, I have never even seen half the dungeons in this game. But no one wants to do them, I think if they tied a legendary dungeon armor set to them they would be very busy. But it looks like along with dungeons anet is killing off raids fracts in favor of strikes. Thats really sad because few people want to do strikes either, so they will stop updating them too.

[Sobx.1758]

I, by far, prefer fractals over the old dungeons, but from my experience, whenever I want anything from dungeons, it's rather easy to get a party filled. So it's in line with what some of the other people in this thread already wrote:

On 10/25/2021 at 11:58 AM, Rasimir.6239 said:

every time I feel like playing dungeons, I get a party filled through lfg in a matter of minutes.

 

On 10/25/2021 at 11:04 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

just start a group in LFG (it often helps to put something like 'everyone welcome' in the description) and people will join.

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Excursion.9752]

I have fought this giant of a topic before. Wondering / wanting more from dungeons and what I have came to the conclusion that asking for anything more out of dungeons  is a lost cause because the community always uses the excuse that "its to hard" or "I would rather them work on something else" that gives ANET a pass on actually combating the actual core issue. 

The set it and forget it content. It is one of my biggest complaints about this game. Dungeons, Fractals, Raids, Strikes, Dragon Response Missions. As far as we have been told only one of those game modes is receiving updates in EoD. 

But lets stay on track and focus on Dungeons it is written in a archaic code base and from what they have said in the past (I don't have a link but it was 2 forums ago) that they would have to do a total rework of system because of its current complexities and its tie ins into other core systems. 

Is lack of planning a valid excuse?  Not where I work.  Could dungeons be reworked to be a tie in to fractals? Probably. So what it boils down to is that will this make money. The answer is no.  So nothing will be done until there is an actual valid need to. They don't believe they need to because not many people run them. But the funny part is that not many run them because they're not updated.  So we are in this endless loop where nothing will ever be updated for older instanced content.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 11/2/2021 at 12:58 PM, Excursion.9752 said:

Is lack of planning a valid excuse?  Not where I work.  Could dungeons be reworked to be a tie in to fractals? Probably. So what it boils down to is that will this make money. The answer is no.  So nothing will be done until there is an actual valid need to. They don't believe they need to because not many people run them. But the funny part is that not many run them because they're not updated.  So we are in this endless loop where nothing will ever be updated for older instanced content.

underrated post. I manage a somewhat large team of people and the fact that what they designed is too complicated to be changed creating a feedback loop further prevents it from being changed is a fault of how that system was built with lack of foresight into the future

 

How I also see design issues like this is that if they did alter their systems, they could in fact make money from it but it wouldn’t be explicit it would be implicit, in the sense that players would use it less as a negative talking point when trying to get other players to play the game or play it for longer periods of time. Lack of foresight is a managerial issue, where those managers are not seeing “the bigger picture” which is part of the job description.

 

if they built a better game, it would make more money, pretty plain and simple equation, and any intermediary goal in between should be to further that agenda. If they are so focused on these intermediary goals like “add more skins = more money” then they have their thinking caps on backwards.

[Tescao.3042]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

underrated post. I manage a somewhat large team of people and the fact that what they designed is too complicated to be changed creating a feedback loop further prevents it from being changed is a fault of how that system was built with lack of foresight into the future

 

How I also see design issues like this is that if they did alter their systems, they could in fact make money from it but it wouldn’t be explicit it would be implicit, in the sense that players would use it less as a negative talking point when trying to get other players to play the game or play it for longer periods of time. Lack of foresight is a managerial issue, where those managers are not seeing “the bigger picture” which is part of the job description.

 

if they built a better game, it would make more money, pretty plain and simple equation, and any intermediary goal in between should be to further that agenda. If they are so focused on these intermediary goals like “add more skins = more money” then they have their thinking caps on backwards.

Brilliant post, you are getting closer to the beginning of understanding emptiness. Foresight is everything that your second hemisphere already knows.

Edited November 4, 2021 by DomHemingway.8436

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

They're not dead, they're just called Fractals now. I mean raids. I mean Strikes. I mean VoTP. I mean DRMs.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Cyndercat.7615]

I know plenty of people say the lfg is fine to do dungeons in. But I went through every story dungeon on an alt a year ago and I ended up soloing almost all. Only COE actually got pugs. The rest were guildies that I asked for help. Maybe its different on NA.

[Linken.6345]

48 minutes ago, zombyturtle.5980 said:

I know plenty of people say the lfg is fine to do dungeons in. But I went through every story dungeon on an alt a year ago and I ended up soloing almost all. Only COE actually got pugs. The rest were guildies that I asked for help. Maybe its different on NA.

Well story path is the hardest to get people for since they offer their end reward only once.

Edit

I think when people say it is easy they talk about the explorable paths.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Linken.6345

[Cyndercat.7615]

9 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well story path is the hardest to get people for since they offer their end reward only once.

Edit

I think when people say it is easy they talk about the explorable paths.

That's fair. I imagine COF and AC are pretty easy to get people for explorable. SE maybe not so much. 

[SkinnyT.5382]

I think the problem with dungeons is that they weren't updated along with the rest of the game.  When it was just core game it was fine, but once the expansions started to drop they needed QoL updates, but never received them.

For example updating mechanics on bosses (or even changing some of them all together), making trash mobs something that you actually have to deal with as oppose to just run from, and most importantly giving dungeons loot you can't find elsewhere (other than the skins you get by using tokens).
Taking GW1 as an example, when people went to the Underworld or Fissure of Woe  they would clear everything because those were pretty much the only places you could get ectos and obsidian shards respectively. So killing those enemies was an essential part of the area. And the end chest of the The Fissue of Woe was the only place that one could get the super rare Obsidian Shard sword.

I think that having exclusive, desirable, rare, tradable loot/skins drop from bosses would attract more people to dungeons. Having trash mobs drop items that are needed for say cooking or other recipes, would also create an incentive to not skip them.
Dungeons needed to become intertwined with the rest of the game, but instead they were set aside and forgotten.