Do Dungeons Need a Nerf? A viewpoint on the New Player Experience

[Defias.1892]

It is quite common knowledge at this point that dungeons have largely been classed as "outdated" or "abandoned" content, but from time to time, appear as PVE Dailies. As a Veteran player, most of us know that dungeons can take hours depending on the skill and experience of the group, and usually choose to skip these dailies (or skip dailies entirely if concerned with gold/hr), meaning that many of the players who choose to step foot into a dungeon will be a new player.  Meaning that many new players will step foot into these dungeons and have their time wasted on outdated PVE content that yield little to no rewards.  Years after the introduction of dungeons, we've come pretty far in terms of challenging PVE content with the introduction of Fractals, Strike Missions, Dragon Response Missions, Raids, etc.,  so I was just wondering what the community consensus was on nerfing dungeons.  Do they need a nerf or should they just be kept as they are?

[mythical.6315]

They don’t take hours even with brand new players… lol

[Defias.1892]

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

They don’t take hours even with brand new players… lol

 

Got stuck in an Arah for an hour and a half because the team kept dying on Giganticus, which eventually ended up disbanding. There were 2 new players in our group.  Maybe it's just the 80 dungeons that need tuning, but there's a good reason why most people don't touch dungeons anymore.  The rewards are simply not good enough for the time spent. I personally don't mind doing them if it means helping new players, but they take WAY too long.  Which begs the question why they're included in the PVE daily rotation, since it's now considered "outdated" content. The only players at the end of the day willing to do these will end up being the new players, and they'll likely realize why most players avoid dungeons altogether. Which is sad, because I did enjoy the dungeons at launch, but saddening to see that they haven't been touched or even attempted to be rebalanced in the coming years.

 

[Zohane.7208]

Whenever a dungeon is daily I usually see quite a few veteran players (assuming >200 MP are veterans) joining, and even with less experienced people it only takes one person to explain the Lupi fight to such a level that new(-ish) players are able to get it done in 2-3 attempts.

 

The only time I've seen dungeon runs take upwards of an hour was back in "the good old days" when a pug run of Arah 4 could take hours since people refused failed to learn the mechanics of Simin. These days the power creep has even made that fight trivial.

 

I can understand a group of 5 complete newbies (to Arah) would struggle with Lupi, but that's entirely on them; there's enough information on youtube and on the wiki to come prepared.

[mythical.6315]

4 hours ago, Defias.1892 said:

 

Got stuck in an Arah for an hour and a half because the team kept dying on Giganticus, which eventually ended up disbanding. There were 2 new players in our group.  Maybe it's just the 80 dungeons that need tuning, but there's a good reason why most people don't touch dungeons anymore.  The rewards are simply not good enough for the time spent. I personally don't mind doing them if it means helping new players, but they take WAY too long.  Which begs the question why they're included in the PVE daily rotation, since it's now considered "outdated" content. The only players at the end of the day willing to do these will end up being the new players, and they'll likely realize why most players avoid dungeons altogether. Which is sad, because I did enjoy the dungeons at launch, but saddening to see that they haven't been touched or even attempted to be rebalanced in the coming years.

 

That’s just one dungeon and it took that long because people repeatedly failed mechanics over and over. The encounter hasn’t really changed at all since 2012, and if anything, it’s easier due to the power creep. 

[Firebeard.1746]

13 hours ago, Defias.1892 said:

It is quite common knowledge at this point that dungeons have largely been classed as "outdated" or "abandoned" content, but from time to time, appear as PVE Dailies. As a Veteran player, most of us know that dungeons can take hours depending on the skill and experience of the group, and usually choose to skip these dailies (or skip dailies entirely if concerned with gold/hr), meaning that many of the players who choose to step foot into a dungeon will be a new player.  Meaning that many new players will step foot into these dungeons and have their time wasted on outdated PVE content that yield little to no rewards.  Years after the introduction of dungeons, we've come pretty far in terms of challenging PVE content with the introduction of Fractals, Strike Missions, Dragon Response Missions, Raids, etc.,  so I was just wondering what the community consensus was on nerfing dungeons.  Do they need a nerf or should they just be kept as they are?

 

 

Arah is the only dungeon that takes forever.  That could possibly use a nerf. Or Aetherblade path is also bad. Otherwise, they're mostly fine. I remember doing Aetherblade with a group of exp people and it took longer than 2 hours.

[mythical.6315]

If they were exp players, then aetherblade path wouldn’t have taken over two hours. 

[Defias.1892]

15 hours ago, Zohane.7208 said:

Whenever a dungeon is daily I usually see quite a few veteran players (assuming >200 MP are veterans) joining, and even with less experienced people it only takes one person to explain the Lupi fight to such a level that new(-ish) players are able to get it done in 2-3 attempts.

 

The only time I've seen dungeon runs take upwards of an hour was back in "the good old days" when a pug run of Arah 4 could take hours since people refused failed to learn the mechanics of Simin. These days the power creep has even made that fight trivial.

 

I can understand a group of 5 complete newbies (to Arah) would struggle with Lupi, but that's entirely on them; there's enough information on youtube and on the wiki to come prepared.

 

11 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

That’s just one dungeon and it took that long because people repeatedly failed mechanics over and over. The encounter hasn’t really changed at all since 2012, and if anything, it’s easier due to the power creep. 

 

Those are fair points, but that's my point exactly - that content haven't changed, but the playerbase has.  These are DUNGEONS, not RAID or Strike Missions. Requiring New Players to look up Youtube Videos/Wiki is a horrible New Player Experience, especially for something that's daily PVE content. And reminder - this IS NOT 2012. Dungeons are no longer the primary endgame focus and don't really need to be as difficult as they are.

 

3 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

 

 

Arah is the only dungeon that takes forever.  That could possibly use a nerf. Or Aetherblade path is also bad. Otherwise, they're mostly fine. I remember doing Aetherblade with a group of exp people and it took longer than 2 hours.

 

Thats a fair point. Admittedly I haven't done anything else besides Arah for the past week, so maybe it's just Arah

[mythical.6315]

53 minutes ago, Defias.1892 said:

Those are fair points, but that's my point exactly - that content haven't changed, but the playerbase has.  These are DUNGEONS, not RAID or Strike Missions. Requiring New Players to look up Youtube Videos/Wiki is a horrible New Player Experience, especially for something that's daily PVE content. And reminder - this IS NOT 2012. Dungeons are no longer the primary endgame focus and don't really need to be as difficult as they are.

It’s not a requirement to look up guides to do the mechanics. 

[Zohane.7208]

4 hours ago, Defias.1892 said:

Those are fair points, but that's my point exactly - that content haven't changed, but the playerbase has.  These are DUNGEONS, not RAID or Strike Missions. Requiring New Players to look up Youtube Videos/Wiki is a horrible New Player Experience, especially for something that's daily PVE content. And reminder - this IS NOT 2012. Dungeons are no longer the primary endgame focus and don't really need to be as difficult as they are.

By the time people reach Arah, they really can't be considered "new" anymore, so I think the point is kind of moot.

 

Also, if you want "primary endgame focus" to be on the list of dailies, does that mean you want daily dungeon replaced with daily strike mission or daily raid wing?

[ArtemisJade.9068]

Many dungeons can be solo'd by experienced players (with a few mechanical exceptions like CoF path 1 and the braziers for example). They do not need a nerf. What they need is a revival, but that won't happen unfortunately. Since the content is basically dead, not many older players bother with them unless they need the currency for something and new players are expected to look up a guide or basically be carried because no one wants to take the time to properly explain dead content. My suggestion if you have an aversion to youtube guides is to find a nice guild who still runs them and have them teach you. 

[Astralporing.1957]

On 12/12/2021 at 11:25 AM, Defias.1892 said:

 

Got stuck in an Arah for an hour and a half because the team kept dying on Giganticus, which eventually ended up disbanding. There were 2 new players in our group.  Maybe it's just the 80 dungeons that need tuning, but there's a good reason why most people don't touch dungeons anymore.  The rewards are simply not good enough for the time spent. I personally don't mind doing them if it means helping new players, but they take WAY too long.  Which begs the question why they're included in the PVE daily rotation, since it's now considered "outdated" content. The only players at the end of the day willing to do these will end up being the new players, and they'll likely realize why most players avoid dungeons altogether. Which is sad, because I did enjoy the dungeons at launch, but saddening to see that they haven't been touched or even attempted to be rebalanced in the coming years.

 

Arah paths (and Twilight Assault path of Arbor) are outliers. Nothing else comes even close to those.

[Nephalem.8921]

On 12/12/2021 at 11:25 AM, Defias.1892 said:

 

Got stuck in an Arah for an hour and a half because the team kept dying on Giganticus, which eventually ended up disbanding. There were 2 new players in our group.  Maybe it's just the 80 dungeons that need tuning, but there's a good reason why most people don't touch dungeons anymore.  The rewards are simply not good enough for the time spent. I personally don't mind doing them if it means helping new players, but they take WAY too long.  Which begs the question why they're included in the PVE daily rotation, since it's now considered "outdated" content. The only players at the end of the day willing to do these will end up being the new players, and they'll likely realize why most players avoid dungeons altogether. Which is sad, because I did enjoy the dungeons at launch, but saddening to see that they haven't been touched or even attempted to be rebalanced in the coming years.

 

You can solo that dungeon in sub 15min. just a massive l2p issue. If they take too long your build is just bad. Dungeons are legacy content. Even during old days it was dps > all when encounters lasted way longer. Current powercreep allows you to kill bosses within 3 seconds and below.

In dungeons there is absolutely no place for:

Healers

Tanks

Ranged players.

1-2 good players are enough to burst all the bosses. a 5player team with pve meta builds just destroys the content. dungeon endbosses have just 1,3m hp. 1 Soulbeast alone can do 500k in like 5seconds.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Nephalem.8921

[Nephalem.8921]

On 12/12/2021 at 10:53 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

 

 

Arah is the only dungeon that takes forever.  That could possibly use a nerf. Or Aetherblade path is also bad. Otherwise, they're mostly fine. I remember doing Aetherblade with a group of exp people and it took longer than 2 hours.

The aetherblade speedrun from years ago where players had 1/5th of the damage of current players was 15min. Those people werent experienced.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Nephalem.8921

[Dadnir.5038]

Dungeon can both take age to be completed or be done very quickly. I don't think they need a nerf as for them knowledge is power and knowledge about them is already widespread.

There are many path that can block new players, you can see people stuck in caudecus repeatedly one shoted by the snipers, bleeding to death or unable to open the gate with the barrels, people struggling in the aetherblade path "puzzle", people not managing to kill subject alpha in cof, people not managing to det rid of the 2 golems before they get healed in SE... etc.

The difficulty is challenging for new players but, since just a bit of knowledge is enough to alleviate the difficulty tremendously, there is no need to nerf these dungeons path.

 

Edit: To the "confuse person", there are many way to ease the difficulty of the different dungeon path and none require "high" dps. Taking a simple projectile block skill can help tremendously in 50% of the dungeon path, Someone that actually know what he do with stealth can reduce tremendously caudecus paths difficulty, there is a spot where you can lay down a barrel in caudecus that make opening the gate very easy... etc. To put it simply, taking the proper skills and actually knowing the little tricks that veteran spent many hours to find have a much higher impact on dungeon path completion than going with the mindset that "I have meta dps, it will be easy!". A meta group can waste 2h in a dungeon path just because they don't know this much.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Dadnir.5038

[Firebeard.1746]

17 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

The aetherblade speedrun from years ago where players had 1/5th of the damage of current players was 15min. Those people werent experienced.

So if I've killed SH hundreds of times but don't have the 2 min parse, I'm not experienced? We were all experienced in some form of end-game content, whether it be fractals, raids, strikes or some combination of all 3. I was not saying "experienced in AETHERBLADE" I'm saying players who know what they're doing. This is quite possibly the most ridiculous post I've EVER seen. And Aetherblade isn't just about DPS parses either. There's puzzles too man. What I'm saying is, even people who are comfortable with current endgame content can take plenty of time to get through it. 

And our DPS were DPS monkeys from raids who try to get really high parses. I didn't raid with them at the time, but I know based on what they and others who were with them were saying that they knew what they were doing. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Dromar.1027]

I think you mean revamp. Anet please revamp current dungeons and please make new ones.

[Cuks.8241]

Dungeons are fine. I came late to the party in Pof so power creep was already there and I had no issue with any of the paths. The funny thing was that I actually did the harder paths first without even knowing it. My first explorable dungeon path was the aetherblade and I had a group that didn't know mechanics so it took us a bit to get through. Soon after I did Arah. 

So I don't see how "experienced" people are spending hours in whatever dungeon path.

[Friday.7864]

You can easily avoid such a horrible daily by looking into easy WvW/PvP dailies and custom PvP arena. Do any of those instead of a PvE daily, some literally take seconds.

If you do insist on doing the Arah (which is long by design) daily for the 100 bonus tokens - know the path, be ready to explain stuff and bring a class which can swap to healer/support. That's how I did it last time, would have been a wipe fest if I didn't explain stuff and bring my heal firebrand. Was even enjoyable to help some nubs figure stuff out, they were pretty happy and grateful for the run.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Friday.7864

[Shiyo.3578]

Just change the forced 3-5 people paths(all of coe, arah 1, pof 1 etc) to be soloable.

[Sobx.1758]

12 hours ago, Dromar.1027 said:

I think you mean revamp. Anet please revamp current dungeons and please make new ones.

Fractals.

[Math.5123]

On 12/12/2021 at 10:53 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

 

 

Arah is the only dungeon that takes forever.  That could possibly use a nerf. Or Aetherblade path is also bad. Otherwise, they're mostly fine. I remember doing Aetherblade with a group of exp people and it took longer than 2 hours.

If aether took you longer than two hours, it was not an experienced group. In sorry. 

[Firebeard.1746]

On 12/17/2021 at 3:56 AM, Cuks.8241 said:

Dungeons are fine. I came late to the party in Pof so power creep was already there and I had no issue with any of the paths. The funny thing was that I actually did the harder paths first without even knowing it. My first explorable dungeon path was the aetherblade and I had a group that didn't know mechanics so it took us a bit to get through. Soon after I did Arah. 

So I don't see how "experienced" people are spending hours in whatever dungeon path.

Anecdotes are anecdotes, Anet has the numbers and they can tell, I'm willing to accept that I could be an outlier.  But, based on your phrasing, I'm not sure you were actually timing your clear. "A bit" isn't very descriptive and some people care more about their time than others spent in a video game. I was tracking my Aetherblade because we started it late at night and I wasn't expecting it to take long but it turned out to be. It also looks like my Arah party may have misled me. They told me it was the easiest path, but looking back at the guides/etc, it was the hardest path. Also not sure how good my Arah party was. I didn't know them very well and it felt like I was almost soloing Giganticus. 

All this being said, it's 100% moot, Anet doesn't want to touch dungeon content and that means even fixing things is something they don't want to do. They only risk breaking what's already there, as I understand they didn't trust the code and that's why they stopped and made an entirely new system (fractals). 

Edited December 22, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 12/12/2021 at 2:35 AM, Defias.1892 said:

 As a Veteran player, most of us know that dungeons can take hours depending on the skill and experience of the group, and usually choose to skip these dailies (or skip dailies entirely if concerned with gold/hr),

What?  As a veteran player, I'm well aware of how most, if not all dungeon paths (Outside of Arah) take maybe 30 minutes at most if you're carrying a bunch of newbies through the path and that, an optimized build for damage will decimate any and all dungeons that scale you back to 65 or lower due to how this game's scaling system works.  There's zero need for dungeons to be nerfed.  They're in 2014 game balance and have never been adjusted since.

 

Quote

meaning that many of the players who choose to step foot into a dungeon will be a new player.  Meaning that many new players will step foot into these dungeons and have their time wasted on outdated PVE content that yield little to no rewards.  Years after the introduction of dungeons, we've come pretty far in terms of challenging PVE content with the introduction of Fractals, Strike Missions, Dragon Response Missions, Raids, etc.,  so I was just wondering what the community consensus was on nerfing dungeons.  Do they need a nerf or should they just be kept as they are?

Dungeons are designed to be done in a group.  Always have been.  So the fact that they're difficult to solo, duo, or do as a group of at-level players, isn't an issue.  It also shows them that they have to get better be it build or skill, to get better rewards.  Believe it or not, Dungeons are actually more profitable than they were pre HoT by rewarding more tokens and giving out more gold if you do 8 different paths in the day.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1) Its moot as Anet has abandoned them as content.

2) If you do have trouble, read up on the path on the wiki and take the skills needed to make it easier.

3) If anything they need a facelift. Not really a nerf or a buff, just some TLC to freshen them up a bit. Speed things along, fix some janky stuff, streamline the fights some. Maybe add a Mastery/title that gives extra loot when you clear it like there is for FotM.

On that last point I think a title or mastery that gives more loot or token drops might breathe a little more life into them.