Guild Wars 2

Hi,

Currently guild wars 2 is revolving around dungeons that are of 5 man in size and personally they are fun to play, i’ll admit that. But eventually when I start to run it srather often, it starts to be repetitive and it sort of gets duller each run.

Currently to acheive the FoTM back its more of a grind for ectoplasm or $ to be able to acheive it and personally I think it is driven in the wrong direction. Which inevtiably makes it feel grindy which I think that is not the intention of Anet’s staff for GW2.

Personally, since GW2 is a none grind for gear (stats wise) game, why not introduce “raids”. Where in this raids, it might be 10-15 man (or even more) with the eventual goal of farming for nice looking “skins” that looks better then the current dungeon armors? Eg. Each boss will drop a certain skin for each profession (heavy,medium,light) when defeated? As the guild does these “raids” it makes them bind more as a whole group as they collaborate and work together to defeat these “raid” bosses. I hope to be able to see dungeons that the guild can enter in together and play.

Some people might say that world bosses like dragons would serve this purpose. But there are definitely some things that are different like the sense of acheviement you get when defeating the dragons with pure huge zerg numbers in open world and when you do it within your own 10-15 man. Also the loot chest rewards from these dragons are rather underwhelming with very low chance at exotics/rare. They don’t drop specific skins also. Which is partially one of the reasons why these map bosses are getting less popular as time goes by.

Here are my 2 cents worth. How about yours?

A real dungeon that doesn’t get old after 5 runs.

to Robert: besides more fractals, don’t add any dungeons to this game before straightening out the ones already in it AND the various open world encounters. in fact, add more open world mini dungeons(and longer more complex ones) before adding more instances.

Add more skins to choose from. Tired of being forced to wear one armor skin on my charr that’s mildly acceptable because all the other options are hideous. Adding more skins will also give people motivation to do things they normally wouldn’t. The 2013 future post thing was kinda vague, not entirely sure what we’re getting in this area.

An instance where you defend a castle (or anything similar).
Let’s say first the waves come from 1 side, after a while it starts coming from 2 ways and also increasing in numbers and/or harder to kill mobs.
Haven’t thought about whether or not you are able to complete the instance, or if the waves are suppose to run you over.
Depending on how many waves you can take down you get a chest rewarding you with the appropriate items.

It’s just a small suggestion but it could become something extraordinary!

habbe.2986:

An instance where you defend a castle (or anything similar).
Let’s say first the waves come from 1 side, after a while it starts coming from 2 ways and also increasing in numbers and/or harder to kill mobs.
Haven’t thought about whether or not you are able to complete the instance, or if the waves are suppose to run you over.
Depending on how many waves you can take down you get a chest rewarding you with the appropriate items.

It’s just a small suggestion but it could become something extraordinary!

This reminds me of those challenge missions in GW1, although you didn’t really defend things in those, you just ran around in a loop and the mobs would increase in amounts and difficulty per lap eg. Dragon’s Gullet. They didnt have a time limit on these, you just had to get the best time, and there would be a scoreboard for you, daily best, monthly best etc.

Great Idea, I’d love something like this again, It was all about group optimization and cooperation, we always came out better players and a better team with each attempt.

The only reason the majority of these weren’t popular was the lack of a substantial reward, although I believe Dahkjah inlet gave sunspear armor remnants which made it quite popular for HoM’er’s and people after a quick buck.

Junjie.3074:

Hi,

Currently guild wars 2 is revolving around dungeons that are of 5 man in size and personally they are fun to play, i’ll admit that. But eventually when I start to run it srather often, it starts to be repetitive and it sort of gets duller each run.

Currently to acheive the FoTM back its more of a grind for ectoplasm or $ to be able to acheive it and personally I think it is driven in the wrong direction. Which inevtiably makes it feel grindy which I think that is not the intention of Anet’s staff for GW2.

Personally, since GW2 is a none grind for gear (stats wise) game, why not introduce “raids”. Where in this raids, it might be 10-15 man (or even more) with the eventual goal of farming for nice looking “skins” that looks better then the current dungeon armors? Eg. Each boss will drop a certain skin for each profession (heavy,medium,light) when defeated? As the guild does these “raids” it makes them bind more as a whole group as they collaborate and work together to defeat these “raid” bosses. I hope to be able to see dungeons that the guild can enter in together and play.

Some people might say that world bosses like dragons would serve this purpose. But there are definitely some things that are different like the sense of acheviement you get when defeating the dragons with pure huge zerg numbers in open world and when you do it within your own 10-15 man. Also the loot chest rewards from these dragons are rather underwhelming with very low chance at exotics/rare. They don’t drop specific skins also. Which is partially one of the reasons why these map bosses are getting less popular as time goes by.

Here are my 2 cents worth. How about yours?

I have to agree with everything you posted here. I love GW2 but the end game for PvE is definitely underwhelming. I am a player who loves to do dungeon runs but its only a few months in and i have exhausted my interest in 5 man dungeons for the most part. As there is nothing else harder than 5 man dungeon at the moment my interest in the game does fizzle out from time to time. Even if they don’t go the way of WoW for example and make super difficult organized raid content it would be nice to see a few 10 man dungeons or something that are more challenging than the 5 man content.

Regarding the world bosses i do find them extremely dull and unrewarding. Something more interesting to consider would be making unique loot that only these bosses can drop like weapon and armor skins. Retooling these encounters to make them more challenging would also be a big plus. Even if they remain somewhat easy zergfests i would still enjoy the prospect of actually being able to be killed if im careless. Right now its possible to pretty stand in 1 spot on all these bosses and (for me) just spam fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball. I could go make dinner and come back and i would still be alive with a nice shiny chest sitting there waiting for me

I still think raiding would be a good asset or at least a form of more organized, structured PvE content with more players, which is raiding in essence anyway. There’s a lot of hate regarding it, which I don’t really get, because there is a lot of people that would like to see it. Not everyone wants it, no, but neither does everyone like PvP or WvWvW. And also “GW2 ISNT THE GAME FOR ITASUDHAUSHDAS” is invalid, because as far as I can remember WoW (OHNOHEDIDNT) didn’t have raiding from the beginning, nor a lot of dungeons. It all got more and better polished over the years and the same could apply for GW2. The combat system is awesome, the professions are cool and I think raiding for be nice as well. Will it work with the current professions, roles and combat system? That I do not know.

I’d like something that isn’t another raid or dungeon or operation or flashpoint or whatever. I got tired of them on WoW, TOR, and I am dreading Dungeons and Fractals because it’s just the same thing with a different name.

Speaking of something that is different from dungeon makes me remember the last CBT of GW2 where everyone was playing the hunger games. That for one really interesting and fun. A new form of “WvW” where people could have a laugh over(when you die of hunger etc.) rather then the current WvW which quite alot of hostility are involved.

Till now I still yearn to play the GW2 hunger games again, but unfortunately Anet doesn’t seem to be re-implementing it anytime soon. The event updates are good and such(lost shore etc), but none of them seem to be able to compare to the mindblowing mindset of the GW2 hunger games.

Rhinzual.7861:

I’d like something that isn’t another raid or dungeon or operation or flashpoint or whatever. I got tired of them on WoW, TOR, and I am dreading Dungeons and Fractals because it’s just the same thing with a different name.

hmm im not sure what would possibly interest you in an MMO then? They are built with repetitive content in mind like dungeons, PvP, raids etc

Direksone.3867:

I still think raiding would be a good asset or at least a form of more organized, structured PvE content with more players, which is raiding in essence anyway. There’s a lot of hate regarding it, which I don’t really get, because there is a lot of people that would like to see it. Not everyone wants it, no, but neither does everyone like PvP or WvWvW. And also “GW2 ISNT THE GAME FOR ITASUDHAUSHDAS” is invalid, because as far as I can remember WoW (OHNOHEDIDNT) didn’t have raiding from the beginning, nor a lot of dungeons. It all got more and better polished over the years and the same could apply for GW2. The combat system is awesome, the professions are cool and I think raiding for be nice as well. Will it work with the current professions, roles and combat system? That I do not know.

Whether its called “raiding” or not i would definitely like to see more challenging end game content for GW2. I think a group size increase for larger scale dungeons would be a lot of fun. Creating a few 10 man dungeons with harder mechanics than we currently have would be huge for this game. I read in a post by Anet that they have better tools for boss scripting etc now so im sure they can and will pull off something awesome in the near future.

(PS WoW actually launched with Molten Core and (i believe) Onyxias lair)

I would like some harder content that involves 10 players, like 10 people actually have to do stuff.

I would really love to see one hard-mode path for every dungeon. This dungeon would not have one clear path (if anyone remembers Sorrows Furnace in GW1) but rather different ways with different challenges (whole area open).

Uw/FoW with party size of higher than 5 but still lower than 10 players.

Rinbox.2570:

Direksone.3867:

I still think raiding would be a good asset or at least a form of more organized, structured PvE content with more players, which is raiding in essence anyway. There’s a lot of hate regarding it, which I don’t really get, because there is a lot of people that would like to see it. Not everyone wants it, no, but neither does everyone like PvP or WvWvW. And also “GW2 ISNT THE GAME FOR ITASUDHAUSHDAS” is invalid, because as far as I can remember WoW (OHNOHEDIDNT) didn’t have raiding from the beginning, nor a lot of dungeons. It all got more and better polished over the years and the same could apply for GW2. The combat system is awesome, the professions are cool and I think raiding for be nice as well. Will it work with the current professions, roles and combat system? That I do not know.

Whether its called “raiding” or not i would definitely like to see more challenging end game content for GW2. I think a group size increase for larger scale dungeons would be a lot of fun. Creating a few 10 man dungeons with harder mechanics than we currently have would be huge for this game. I read in a post by Anet that they have better tools for boss scripting etc now so im sure they can and will pull off something awesome in the near future.

(PS WoW actually launched with Molten Core and (i believe) Onyxias lair)

Ah well, I wasn’t 100% sure, but I do know raiding, as much as it was cool it was awful. Sitting behind my PC for HOURS, like 8-10, a freaking work day to clear a handful of bosses. Over the YEARS it got better and right now people don’t have that patience as there is a lot of choice out there and a lot of comparison. I like this game, over 400 hours out of it (10x more than an average 60 dollar game, so I feel like I already won regardless) and I am eager to await any changes to it.

Someone almost attacked me for saying ‘get out and enjoy something else, come back when you feel like it’ in another thread where he was, well, hating on the game, which I don’t get. It’s a game and because it’s f2p you aren’t obliged, as I felt in WoW and other subscription based games, to stay.

Raids, dungeons, open world stuff, I am all down! I got eager again by reading the books, heck I might even give PvP another shot!

Rinbox.2570:

Rhinzual.7861:

I’d like something that isn’t another raid or dungeon or operation or flashpoint or whatever. I got tired of them on WoW, TOR, and I am dreading Dungeons and Fractals because it’s just the same thing with a different name.

hmm im not sure what would possibly interest you in an MMO then? They are built with repetitive content in mind like dungeons, PvP, raids etc

City of Heroes, it had none of that aside from STF and LRSF, up until the whole Flashback system onwards, then it started to be too similar to dungeons and such. I guess if I look at Fractals less as dungeons and more as huge areas in Dark Souls with no bonfires (waypoints/checkpoints) then I’ll be able to have a lot of fun.

Raids might be interesting if ArenaNet can pull it off without having the encounters feel like total zerg-fests.

With that said, in a recent blog posting from Colin Johanson, he does mention something about “adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together.” The very first thing that came to mind were raids. Whether that’s instanced-based or out in the open world has yet to be seen.

With that said, I’d imagine Raids in this game would be more welcoming to both newcomers and seasoned raiders from other MMOs. It could also be flexible in that you could go in with as low as 6 players but as many as 20+, and the encounters would scale in a way how most Dynamic Events scale depending on the amount of people (as opposed to 10 or 25, and nothing in between).

Rinbox.2570:

hmm im not sure what would possibly interest you in an MMO then? They are built with repetitive content in mind like dungeons, PvP, raids etc

Classic MMOs are built through repetitive content.

Classic MMOs are also mediocre games.

For people who want the same old, same old grind based repetition of classic MMOs, well, there are a lot of classic MMOs out there.

GW2 has been designed for a different kind of player, that doesn’t fall for all the tricks the designers of classic MMOs like to use in order to pretend their playerbase is little more than a bunch of donkeys chasing carrots.

I’m wary of any mention of raids in the conventional context. I personally think they’d be terrible, but not for reasons stated already.

Raids and the like are not geared towards the bulk of the player base. The larger and better organized your group has to be in order to succeed, the fewer people can actually access/enjoy said content. You don’t want to make it an exclusive and elitist activity for really dedicated PvE folks, because they just don’t make up enough of the population. Even if you consider that it’s geared towards guilds and not individuals, keep in mind that only services larger ones that consistently have enough people online to put larger groups together.

The idea has a number of pitfalls I’d rather not see GW2 fall into. I couldn’t really argue that you shouldn’t EVER put that kind of thing in, because there always will be PvE enthusiast types, but it can’t be the future of PvE. I tend to think as a concept WoW-style raids have become stale and painfully conventional.

Love it or hate it, I think they had the right idea with the fractals. Something that anyone can do with scalable difficulty, so casual folks can plug away however they choose, and people looking for a challenge can keep making things harder.

I tend to think you need to go attack the root of the problem, which is that repetition of the dungeons without variation is boring. If the encounters are scripted, people figure out what works best and then dungeon runs just follow the same motions over and over.

Step One would just be to find a way to make the encounters more chaotic by introducing unpredictable behavior, like changing the skill sets mobs and bosses use from run to run. I think it’d be great if you couldn’t know what you were going to run into at the start of a dungeon or even a particular fight and had to adjust on the fly. But that’s technically hard to implement and balance. It has to be functional and repeatable tens of thousands of times without glitching out.

So, I’d suggest a more modest alternative. New dungeons have novelty for a while but ultimately they wear out, so we really need to look at doing more things with the available resources. If due to technical limitations you can’t make repeat dungeon runs unique, you can make it so people can be rewarded for challenging themselves more. Say if you ran with 4 people instead of 5 for increased rewards. Bonus for clearing a dungeon without anyone reviving at a waypoint. I’m sure people could think of a number of different ways to challenge players. Giving people some incentive not to simply run through half the dungeon mobs like they currently do, like making them drop better loot because the bulk of the players don’t care about the experience. The bottom line here is to make it so effort and skill on the part of your players has some influence on what they get out of the dungeon. Effort scales to rewards. Think that’s the key.

Lastly, I’d suggest that the available rewards be expanded. The tokens allowing you to pick what you want is all well and good, but frequently we run into a problem where certain dungeons don’t hold anything for people. If you don’t like the look of the Twilight Arbor gear, then you won’t ever get anything out of playing it because that’s all there is. The tokens are the biggest chunk of the reward. There needs to be a greater variety of items, or a way to convert tokens into something else. Maybe if you could roll the dice on random rares or exotics instead of the set pieces for tokens, it’d be enough. Or exchanging them for crafting materials. Just something, so when your friends want to go Arah you can still get something out of it even if you have the armor and weapons you want.

To the person above: you mention Fractals, in essence if you open something like that up for larger player groups you got raids, they’ll be shorter than the average one perhaps, but still. It has fun boss mechanics in there and accessable for everyone with a difficulty you can increase. Raids in games like WoW have become available for everyone, something the more elite players did not appreciate as it resulted in them becoming ‘too easy’ mostly.

Before GW tackles raids I’d like to see them improve what they have now, what they are going to anyway.

I agree with your rewards, right now there are no achievements for instance (aside from complete path x and when you did them all you get another), I used to love doing stuff like that in WoW as it was also mostly harder and changed it up. Your Step One I don’t see working though, because it has to be, as you said, balanced and not glitch, which I don’t see happening. Already some fights are chaotic with ridiculous amounts of damage that, when first doing the encounter, are hard to find out what causes it.

I think the suggest you made: achievements, will already solve a lot in terms of replay ability.

We’ll see what they do! I am eager!

Torrad.1075:

Raids and the like are not geared towards the bulk of the player base. The larger and better organized your group has to be in order to succeed, the fewer people can actually access/enjoy said content. You don’t want to make it an exclusive and elitist activity for really dedicated PvE folks, because they just don’t make up enough of the population. Even if you consider that it’s geared towards guilds and not individuals, keep in mind that only services larger ones that consistently have enough people online to put larger groups together.

This needs to be copied and pasted into every thread suggesting raids.

Lane.3410:

Torrad.1075:

Raids and the like are not geared towards the bulk of the player base. The larger and better organized your group has to be in order to succeed, the fewer people can actually access/enjoy said content. You don’t want to make it an exclusive and elitist activity for really dedicated PvE folks, because they just don’t make up enough of the population. Even if you consider that it’s geared towards guilds and not individuals, keep in mind that only services larger ones that consistently have enough people online to put larger groups together.

This needs to be copied and pasted into every thread suggesting raids.

I’m curious, did you play GW? If so, did you feel that the majority were excluded from UW, FoW, Deep, Urgoz, or Tombs, as they were “elite” areas? I’m not being snarky, I am asking sincerely.

Nuka Cola.8520:

A real dungeon that doesn’t get old after 5 runs.

This ^

Something like Fractals 2.0 with 100 instances and random encounters/events (loot wouldn’t be random like it’s now).

Meret.5943:

Lane.3410:

Torrad.1075:

Raids and the like are not geared towards the bulk of the player base. The larger and better organized your group has to be in order to succeed, the fewer people can actually access/enjoy said content. You don’t want to make it an exclusive and elitist activity for really dedicated PvE folks, because they just don’t make up enough of the population. Even if you consider that it’s geared towards guilds and not individuals, keep in mind that only services larger ones that consistently have enough people online to put larger groups together.

This needs to be copied and pasted into every thread suggesting raids.

I’m curious, did you play GW? If so, did you feel that the majority were excluded from UW, FoW, Deep, Urgoz, or Tombs, as they were “elite” areas? I’m not being snarky, I am asking sincerely.

Most of my experience with raids comes from playing WoW in its earlier years, perhaps to my everlasting shame. I was with one of the few companies that could run the 40-man raids with some measured success in the early days. And I’ll be honest here, it actually destroyed us. Most everyone I played with had gotten so burned out on the ludicrousness involved in organizing it that most of them quit playing altogether. The majority of all new content prior to the expansions was high-end raid dungeons that maybe 1% of the players ever actually saw, due to needing to grind heavily for the right gear and the raiding groups becoming exclusive out of necessity. It sounds more recently they’ve gotten their act together and made that stuff friendlier towards the everyday players, but I can’t say I’ve ever felt any inclination to go back.

Thus far, GW2 has been a much better experience. It seems like they’ve learned from the other titles in the genre. Anet’s approach to dungeons and the like is simply better. Small groups are faster and easier to put together and also easier to manage. Individual effort and skill goes a lot further. The more people you add, the more difficult coordination becomes and the more your approach becomes based around overwhelming things with numbers and gear grinding.

Requiring 10 people doesn’t seem like much compared to five, but the forum-goers tend to represent the most involved minority. To someone with a 100-member guild it probably doesn’t seem it’d be much trouble, but small clumps of friends and smaller outfits can’t regularly find 10 or 15 people willing and able to go do a dungeon. If you create a situation where guilds have to stuff their ranks in order to do content as a guild, you’ve committed an error. Making group sizes bigger would also make it a huge pain for people who run with pick-up groups. Look down on them however much you want, but organized guild groups aren’t the majority running dungeons.

I don’t know if you can make a dungeon with scripted content that won’t get old with repetition. That much seems inevitable. Adding new dungeons gives it a shot in the arm, but ultimately doesn’t fix the base issue. Activities like WvW and sPvP re-use the same environments over and over, but the experience is always minutely different because your opponent will always adapt and adjust. With AI opponents that’s vastly more difficult to accomplish.

So I tend to think that you need to find a way to add more variation in what you do with the dungeons, mostly by allowing players to choose ways in which to challenge themselves after things get old. It could be as easy as having variable difficulty for each dungeon, even if it’s not as complex as fractals with levels. Or rewards for doing things within the dungeon that aren’t the minimum required to get the tokens. Something that encourages people to stop with bullkitten exploit or skip tactics because they’re easier. Any sort of mechanic that creates a skill challenge with the potential for greater reward. That would breathe much more life into the PvE side than adding a new dungeon every so often.

Then you have to combine it with something that offers players a reason to go there if they aren’t looking for the dungeon-specific sets any more.

8-12 man UW/FoW zones like in gw1 would do perfectly

Torrad.1075:

Most of my experience with raids comes from playing WoW in its earlier years, perhaps to my everlasting shame.

Why shame? It’s a good game, and can be a great challenge. You’re right, in the previous expansion they added the raid finder. No matter how much people complain about it, it allows those who might not otherwise, see and experience high-end content.

Now, the reason I asked about GW was because those “elite” areas I listed were 8-12 player content. The bosses and quests in those areas were more challenging, required communication and coordination with the team. For my guild, it was a special occasion to do one, we always had a great time. (I never did speed clears, so I can’t speak to those.)

I really wanted to know whether anyone who played GW felt excluded from those areas, or whether anyone had heard of anyone complaining that it was just too difficult.

The rewards were high-level crafting material (material you could also buy from traders) and some special skins, but nothing was guaranteed, and perfect items were extremely rare. Still, the fun was in the challenge, the teamwork, the accomplishment, the experience, and the chance at a nice item.

And I’ll be honest here, it actually destroyed us.

I know of WoW guilds who have broken up over raiding issues. But never in a million years did I hear of a GW guild breaking up because of an Underworld run. I simply cannot fathom it.

The more people you add, the more difficult coordination becomes and the more your approach becomes based around overwhelming things with numbers and gear grinding.

Again, my only experience with ANet is referring to the original GW. It was not about overwhelming things with numbers or gear grinding. It was about teamwork. Come to think of it, very rarely were WoW raids just about a zerg either.

Look down on them however much you want, but organized guild groups aren’t the majority running dungeons.

Who’s looking down on them? :O We did some of our best recruiting for our guild when we pugged UW, FoW, Tombs.

So I tend to think that you need to find a way to add more variation in what you do with the dungeons, …. Any sort of mechanic that creates a skill challenge with the potential for greater reward.

lol I hate to repeat myself, but it’s the reason I asked the question in the first place. In GW, Hard Mode was hard. And since there was never vertical progression, it was impossible to outgear the place; it only got easier with skills and experience. Our guild did runs in the same dang dungeon for 7 years and were happy about it. In fact, a couple weeks ago some of the GW2 players came back to GW for a run in hard mode Tombs just for the hell of it.

Meret.5943:

I know of WoW guilds who have broken up over raiding issues. But never in a million years did I hear of a GW guild breaking up because of an Underworld run. I simply cannot fathom it.

In my experience it was never one run. The drama and general friction revolved around the whole enterprise being so complicated that it defined the purpose of your guild. It wasn’t something just any bunch of folks could get together and do. I suppose you could say it was nice if every one of them was a friend, but for most people the social structure only really existed to get them into the raid. Excluding drama over loot, which Anet has smartly improved on, guilds tended to explode when they were unable to perform, either by lacking available bodies or by being unable to progress.

The point I intended to make was that large raids in that style were a headache and required far too much organization for the average guy. It even required too much organization for a lot of the dedicated people.

Again, my only experience with ANet is referring to the original GW. It was not about overwhelming things with numbers or gear grinding. It was about teamwork. Come to think of it, very rarely were WoW raids just about a zerg either.

I beg to differ, but I suppose my experience may be a bit outdated. As you increase the group size, it becomes much more difficult to do choreographed encounters. They usually require a lot of repetition, failure and rehearsal to get right. The bigger the group the more effort has to go into it. If you’re a guild with a consistent set of players that can be OK, but it’s not that great when you’re a smaller group that can’t keep bringing in the same people. You can only balance those encounters for one of those types.

If you make it to provide a challenge to organized guilds it will shut out anyone else on account of being too difficult for a pick-up group that will undoubtedly not be as well coordinated. Guilds often also have the benefits of voice chat, choosing builds to be mutually supporting, and being able to choose the class make-up. This is how WoW raids were originally balanced, requiring copious gear grinding and a litany of failed attempts before finally succeeding. To be honest, gear and repetition was more a determining factor than skill in many things. You needed only a few people who really knew what they were doing to run key elements, everyone else was just filler. The mechanics of boss fights tended to be predictable and simplistic because of it. The real difficulty was in just getting everyone to do things as a group and follow instructions. And there were some encounters that could only be completed with the right equipment, regardless of how good you were.

The casual player, even with the best gear that could be obtained from non-raid dungeons, was still largely excluded because the raids required specific builds that weren’t great for much else, and items obtained in the raids were necessary to keep progressing forward. You had to be dedicated to the task.

Likewise if it’s balanced so a bunch of pick-up players can muddle through with difficulty then the organized folks will probably find it easy. That, as far as I can tell, is how current GW2 dungeons are set up. It’s not necessarily the wrong approach because it appeals to many more people, but there has to be a way to also give something to the enthusiast crowd without having to create content like super-hard dungeons exclusively for them. In this case how many people you stuff into the dungeon is a bit irrelevant, because if it’s intended for casual pick-up players to be able to complete then you’re back to organized guilds finding it boring.

So, my conclusion on this matter is not to call for raid dungeons with bigger groups because people in larger guilds want bigger group activities. I’m sorry, but dungeons made for those people are not going to be good for anyone else. From the blog postings it seems someone out there has heard and is trying to come up with a different solution.

lol I hate to repeat myself, but it’s the reason I asked the question in the first place. In GW, Hard Mode was hard. And since there was never vertical progression, it was impossible to outgear the place; it only got easier with skills and experience. Our guild did runs in the same dang dungeon for 7 years and were happy about it. In fact, a couple weeks ago some of the GW2 players came back to GW for a run in hard mode Tombs just for the hell of it.

I would be just fine with Hard Mode. In fact I think I’d welcome it. Though if the original GW had it, I tend to wonder why GW2 doesn’t. It shouldn’t be that difficult mechanically compared to making lots of new dungeons. The point here seems to be that it’d be a good solution for everybody. Except people wanting bigger groups, anyhow.

I wrote a thread on storylines/ascended items/reasons to go back to starter cities. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Ascended-Armor-Personal-Storyline-etc

Arenanet has stated many times that WvW is one of the focuses for endgame.

So…maybe some new WvW maps? Don’t get me wrong, I love the maps we have and I’m still astounded at how meticulously they were created, but I would love to see several new maps of similar quality released. Maybe have 1 new map come out a week and cycle through it over a few months? This would be in addition to the maps we have now.

So 3 standard BG’s, Eternal, and 1 Random that is changed every week?

At any rate, I’m off topic. Anet wants WvW to be the end-game focus, so hop in and join the fray!

Scavenger hunts for cosmetics, instead of grinding for them or buying them… more depth pweez. Soooo many champion bosses roaming around tyria but aside from the blue loot it isn’t worth the troubles atm. Not to mention they spawn soo quickly it hardly feels like a unique champion.

I never played GW1, so any of those references are completely lost on me.

My main issue with raiding is the exclusivity of it. It typically means that 1) it’s content you will never see as a casual player and 2) there will be items that cannot be acquired outside of said raids.

The only game I’ve seen even remotely attempt to balance this has been Rift. The invention of Chronicles (1-2 player versions of raids) is one of the best things I’ve ever seen added to an MMO with raiding. It allowed people to see the content without having to raid, the content was sufficiently challenging for the 1-2 players it was intended for, and there was a random chance of vanity items dropping.

Lane.3410:

I never played GW1, so any of those references are completely lost on me.

My main issue with raiding is the exclusivity of it. It typically means that 1) it’s content you will never see as a casual player and 2) there will be items that cannot be acquired outside of said raids.

It’s too bad, because like I said, our very casual guild did the so-called elite areas in GW all the time, for years on end, and we pugged them too. As far as I can tell, nobody on the guru forum ever complained about being left behind re: those areas.

So all the fear and paranoia about “zomg raids ruin everything!” is just simply silly. There is another way. ANet found it before, and they can do it again if they want.

Lane.3410:

The invention of Chronicles (1-2 player versions of raids) is one of the best things I’ve ever seen added to an MMO with raiding. It allowed people to see the content without having to raid, the content was sufficiently challenging for the 1-2 players it was intended for, and there was a random chance of vanity items dropping.

I have to agree, however LotRO had 3 man dungeons which were amazing, and also had 1 man dungeons too. easily one of the best moments in mmos in my opinion.

With ArenaNet’s ability to dynamically expand content, scaling the 1 man dungeon to 3 man dungeon would be easy. and they could just close off certain routes should the difficulty prove too difficult to scale.

additionally I would like to see an arena style path where you can compete in a arena against the AI comprised of different mobs and enemies. and should you choose to you can focus on becoming the leader of that arena,

could add a scoreboard of who has made it the furthest and compete against others in that way.

Much like the arena that Edge of Steel fought in in the book “Destiny’s Edge”.

I would much like the ability to have repercussions for venturing into restricted areas like being arrested.

just make the game more fluid in terms of player choice and interactions with others, like a RPG should be

I agree with you OP (Junjie) about all what you said. I agree 5-man dungeons are fun, but only for awhile. I’m happy to hear that they are working on fixing some issues with them. I feel as if something could be added to really broaden the community effectively with large-scale dungeons.

I understand ArenaNet’s philosophy about gear grind, but what about players that would like to have a form of progression within raids? What about even the players that love the combat, but also love the idea of large-scale player content such as raids?

Large-Scale Guild Content
A suggestion of mine would be somewhat similar as how people enter into the Mists or WvW. When you enter a raid instance, your stats become base and as you progress and acquire items you become stronger to further progress throughout the instance. When leaving, your outside world stats remain and become equal with everyone else.

It would be neat if it were possible to show the gear-style acquired inside the instance and displayed out in the world.

Conclusion
This allows the possibility for players to have progression without effecting the outside world with what everyone else has in terms of gear. The players within the raid instance have there progression for what they like and sense of accomplishment. The technology is already there, but the utilization of it can become quite remarkable. This could even be possible for new players with the up-scaling similar to the release of Fractals.

The content would remain relevant and it allows guilds to progress at there own pace.

In-Closing
ArenaNet has the tools and technology to make epic encounters. Personally, I’m intrigued to see a well designed boss script. I brought 12+ friends with me and very little play right now. I’m encouraged to only hope that one day some type of system makes it into the game for players like us.