Presentation affects perception affects enjoyment.
Guild Wars has 8 dungeon options. I have run them all. I am pretty much out of things to do rather than re-do, and do I really want to grind a dungeon 19 times to get an armor set?
Guild Wars has 33 dungeon options. Every dungeon has story mode plus three exploration paths (four in Arah). I have run 15 of those 33. I am less than half-way through. Most of the endgame lies before me, and having run all 8 story modes, it is all immediately accessible.
How you count matters. If you think of the three explorations as the same dungeon, doing all three in a night is a groan-worthy grind. If you think of the them as different dungeons, doing all three in a night is quite a varied experience. Some dungeons will lend themselves more and less to either interpretation; some have a choice of paths before you see the first enemy, while others have significant overlap.
The November monthly achievement set includes “run 5 dungeons.” Some forum-goers are up in arms about this. Do they really believe that of 33 dungeon options, they cannot find 1 or 2 worth running weekly? ArenaNet is batting 0 for 33? They more likely see 8 dungeons, all of which will have at least 1 problem on at least 1 path, so all the dungeons are borked. How you count matters.
: Zubon
I understand the angry soloers, but hey, you lose that argument. MMOs will have some achievements that encourage and reward group play. It’s kind of a thing, you know?
“If you think of the three explorations as the same dungeon, doing all three in a night is a groan-worthy grind” – except that doing all three exploration paths will take less time than one run through, say Gnomeregan did in vanilla WoW.
When, exactly, did dungeon runs go from being an entire evening’s activity to something you bash out in less time than it takes to watch an episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’?
As for the forum-goers being up in arms… official forum-goers for any game are ALWAYS up in arms. If it weren’t for this, they’d be finding something else to complain about. Never mind dungeons, it seems whining on forums is the real end-game for modern MMOs.
“do I really want to grind a dungeon 19 times to get an armor set?”
I think this is still a valid question, especially if you don’t really like any of the sets.
There are lots of ways of getting Exotic armor though. Dungeons are possibly the most restrictive way as each set only has a maximum of 3 inherent stat types (that is 3 sets of stats that go along with the skin) and they’re different between sets.
If you don’t want the skin, I suggest looking at crafted armor which is pretty cheap at the moment and then transmuting whatever skin you like on top of it*. It’ll net you the stats that are most beneficial to your character and play style while still looking stylish. I’m currently running around with crafted Exotic armor that has been partially transmuted with Embroidered and Conjurer’s, because I really don’t like the skins that you get from dungeons or the crafted set.
The exception is if you want the Soldier’s armor stats, which is only available from WvW or a couple of dungeons.
*You can get fine transmutation stones from completing any of the level 80 zones.
I’ve also received plenty of fine stones from black lion chests–and I’ve never bought a key. I think I’ve got 15 or 20 of them now and none of my (7) characters are even level 80 yet.
I completed my first ever couple of explorable dungeon runs the other day with Tasha and a few people from MYST. We did path 1 and 2 of Caudecus’ Manor.
The first involved destroying stolen golem parts and culminated with a large norn with a freeze-ray and 3 hefty golems.
The second involved rescuing kidnapped Seraph soldiers, and culminated in a fight with a crafty thief boss who spammed conditions.
Admittedly, they did both involve fighting pretty much the same style of bandits along the way, but the feel of both dungeons was totally different imo – one inside the bowels of the manor, the other in the open etc.
I’ve done precisely one dungeon so far, the Story mode for the final one. It was alright, no more than that. As a way of spending my leisure time, I’d rather wander round Lion’s Arch taking screenshots but it wasn’t actively unpleasant.
Putting the Dungeon requirement in the Monthly is fine so long as that requirement gets rotated. I’m happy to skip a month. I think the WvW Kill requirement should be rotated too – there are people playing who have a genuine moral objection to PvP in any form and I don’t think locking them out of the Monthly achievement should be a permanent thing.
On the other hand, what’s the Monthly for, anyway? I don’t use any of the stuff it gives as rewards – all of it, and all the rewards I’ve ever had for the Dailies, are just clogging up my bank. Does anyone actually use this stuff? The only reason I do the Dailies and Monthlies is because I think they are fun. Adding the dungeon requirement makes it Not Fun, not because there’s anything wrong with Dungeons in general or GW2 dungeons in particular, but because the faff of organizing getting into one is too irritating to bother with, so I won’t be doing this month’s monthly.
I’ll most likely be playing Rift for the second half of the month anyway, so the point will be moot.
A “genuine moral objection to PvP in any form”? I can accept that someone might sincerely hold that belief, but not that it can be held rationally, especially by someone who engages in the other pretend murder and war that is the rest of the game. PvP is harmless player competition, with no moral component any more than Stratego has. If this were EVE, if meaningful griefing were possible, I could see something, but “moral objection to PvP in any form”? If there is any coherent account of that, please, link.
I’d like to read that too…
Also – as far as dungeons go, Arah Storymode is the easiest, by quite a long way. So in that way it’s not really a good taster of what dungeon play is like.
Not saying you have to love dungeons, but might be worth trying out Ascalon Catacombs just to give it a go.
I don’t think people understand that the monthly achievement is an achievement, it SHOULD have things listed not everyone likes doing. Also no one is forcing anyone to do the monthly achievement, if you hate dungeons so much you can’t run 5 in a month, then you don’t deserve the achievement, simple as that.
Well whatever you do don’t save any of the monthly achievement requirements until the evening of the last day of the month. US servers will officially end the “month” and reset the related achievement at 8PM eastern time (or thereabouts). Lost last months achievement on 10/31 with 30 salvages to go because I took a break for dinner. Came back around 10eastern and the monthly achievement was showing November already.
Yep, the servers reset based on GMT, which is 5 hours ahead of EST. It was only four hours ahead for a week, since the Brits ended their Summer Time a week before the US ended its Daylight Savings Time. I suppose they have to reset the servers at _some point_ during the day.
Guild Wars has 8 dungeon options. (snip)
Guild Wars has 33 dungeon options.
I’m confused.
All a matter of perspective, I think.
Or a matter of reading the words that come between those two quoted sentences…
Reading the opening of A Tale of Two Cities will either prove instructive or be even more baffling.