Greetings!

It goes without question that developers have put an immense amount of detail into Dungeon designs and narratives. unfortunately, unless you have a full group willing to invest in the quests, it is very unlikely you have time to experience dialog or absorb key features of the surroundings, furthermore these quests are currently singular and cannot be repeated unless a new character is made. This will be a suggestion for the addition of a system that allows players to perform Dungeon related quests outside of group play, whilst retaining all current game elements related to dungeons and diversifying the use of Dungeon gameplay aspects.

Target Players and themes:

-Questers
-Beginners
-Relaxed gameplay
-Solo Gameplay
-Companions

Aim:

- To allow repeated plays of Dungeon quests outside of group play.
- To allow players to experience dungeons at their own pace.
- Introduce a new area of play that is approachable for all players to participate in irrespective of skill level.

How it will work:

- A new section is introduced under 'find a dungeon' in the Group tab.
- This 'narrative' section contains a list of dungeons, however the difficulty of these dungeons is significantly scaled down with the intention of being achieved solo, however it is not exclusively solo (you may bring your friends along as well).
- To prevent farming and abuse of the system, Set drops from bosses and are disabled. chests may spawn but will not drop sets, and any other additional elements of gain (such as Keys from Scrivener's Hall) are also disabled. All associated achievments are also disabled
- Starting Quests for dungeons will remain and provide the same rewards (Gear piece and Skill point), after this quest has been completed, a Daily quest version will be added for this game mode. it will provide you with a token container with a random set part (Daily cooldown ensures this cannot be farmed effectively and encourages people to join grouped dungeons to farm for gear).
- Enemy Health and Damage is changed to be much more manageable ( likened to Normal Maelstrom Arena)
- Group mechanics are removed/ significantly scaled down. this will allow for some dungeons to be completed Solo (E.g. Direfrost Keep with pressure plates or Death-beam from Zaan in Scalecaller Peak) and also add space for newer players to observe how dungeon mechanics operate so they may re-apply them when they move onto grouped content.
- (Optional) New system of multiple companions being active at once of this mode, however, a system will need to be introduced to penalize each additional companion to prevent excessive XP farming. For example, XP Gained from you is divided further per each additional companion followed by an additional reduction (EXAMPLE ONLY: 2 companions = (total-5%)/2 per each, 3 companions= (total-10%)/3 per each). this ensures that it is overall much faster to focus on one companion at a time for XP, however multiple is possible but slower to progress.

Pros:

- Will allow players to experience both the detail of dungeons and their associated narrative in their own time, this is even more valuable to new dungeons that act as prequels to upcoming updates, where players can receive the fullest amount of information presented before the upcoming update and 'meet' with returning characters and participate in choices in dialog when presented.
- Secondary function of being a beginner/ training mode will mean new players can have a better understanding of map layout and mechanics of the dungeon prior to group play. allowing for overall faster group play runs.
- As the primary quest would be completed in this mode, the occurrence of players needing to do quests in group runs, slightly speeding up overall runs in group play.
- could serve as a new way to incorporate multiple companions the player has unlocked into a new game mode.

Cons:
- may require time to produce as certain dungeons will need to be re-worked to allow compatibility.
- may very slightly reduce population to dungeon queues
- may present new areas of exploitation if not correctly implemented.

Conclusion:

An addition of a Narrative driven mode separate to the current system would allow for players to absorb the wonderful detail of narrative and design that is implemented in this aspect of the game. resulting in better informed players overall of story related aspect as well as secondarily providing newer players with a way of learning dungeons at their own Pace.

Note:

I would not usually incorporate others into a suggestion (as it may be regarded as a nuisance) but members of one of my Guilds mentioned to add the tag of @ZOS_GinaBruno as they appreciated the idea. I do apologize for any inconvenience should it occur.