What if instanced dungeons were designed to be hardcore?

I have seen that something like 80% of the ashes dungeons will be open world while 20% will be instanced. I was wondering what if the 20% instanced dungeons were designed and intended to be a hardcore experience? What I mean by that is the dungeons would reset to the beginning if everyone zones out or there is a party wipe. Additionally, I would personally like to see any gear and xp you get in the dungeon removed if you party wipe. Each dungeon could include a warning of modifiers that were built into the dungeon at the entrance. one example, maybe there is a lock carved on the wall to show that the dungeon locks when you enter it so you can not leave without dieing and/or if you lose a party member you can not get a new party member and have them zone in you get to decide if you can keep going with 4 people or give up. One way to offset this would be to include strategically placed resurrection stones/obelisks good for one resurrection so if your healer dies to a trap he should have seen coming you can revive him without having to restart as long as you have gotten to one of these stones.

Regardless I think it would add a level of fun if getting your loot was only half the battle you then needed to get out alive to keep what you got. Some additional modifiers that could be used I have included below

Dungeon has a higher than normal number of minion mobs (e.i. bring aoe if you can)
Dungeon bosses hit harder than normal.
Dungeon contains traps
Dungeon is unstable and will collapse 5 minutes after the last boss is slain.

I am not saying these should change regularly or anything like that but it would be a cool if a dev could take the normal dungeon formula and say I really want a bunch more of X and then add it while also giving people a heads up at the entrance what they are in for when you discover the dungeon. Imagine coming across a new dungeon with a new symbol that is not in the wiki yet and finding out the v shape with a water drop off it is a vampire fang and all the mobs heal for part of the damage they do so focus fire is extra important.

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Comments

Rainwolffield

Personally I like the idea of having both because I’d do both depending on my mood at the time. But I don’t want to get to endgame and be forced to go into an open world dungeon each time I log on to do PvE. I would like to see about 8-10 max level dungeons with some taking a solid hour to run until you know the dungeon and then maybe take 30-40 minutes. Why? Because I’ve played plenty of open world dungeons in PvP and PvE dungeons and the 500th time you get train wiped by non PvP flagged people you will be saying “why can’t I just get on and play an hour doing a run without gankers and wankers screwing up my run every time.
Then there’s boss camping and the worse thing that it opens up exploitable paths for people not even playing for PvE flag but just screwing you 20 ways come Sunday with no penalty. I sometimes would just like to log in, get a small guild group or friends group or just random people to go on a quest.. You could Even work in dailies and such as “Go to X dungeon and on the final floor there’s a troll god, get his two Lightning Controller Ring, one for me and one for you and I’ll give you a sword recipe to forge the Lightning Dragon Sword.”
Just things like that to add verity to the runs and quest.

Dygz

Ashes doesn't have an endgame.

Vhaeyne

@Proxy

Just going to offer up my own personal insight to this topic. Take it as you will.

My gut speculation is that the 20% instanced dungeons is "As needed for story". I imagine that this means that the instanced dungeons would be pretty easy.

I offer to reasons why you may not want instanced dungeons at all in a game like Ashes.

1: It takes people out of the focus of the game, which is an open world focused on Risk vs Reward.

2: Hardcore instanced content requires that skills and gear are tuned and balanced around that content. Since the majority of the game takes place in the open world, you would want skills and gear to be balanced with open world content as the priority.

I say this not to shit on the idea of hardcore instanced content. I love that stuff in other games, but it is not something I think many expect from Ashes. I hope this prospective is helpful in some way.

Ironhope

I don't see any reason why we can't have easy instances AND hardcore instances (obviously the hardcore ones will have the best rewards).

I don't see any reasons why we can't have team-members-only portal instances AND open world instances (obviously the open world ones will have the best rewards).

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