Guild Wars 2

THIS IS NOT A THREAD ASKING FOR RAIDS OR GEAR PROGRESSION. THESE ARE MERELY CONCEPTS THAT I THOUGHT ABOUT WHILE READING OTHER THREADS.

A few suggestion threads have asked about raids, end-game content and stronger gear, and it got me thinking:

• Do Raids Have To Be Exclusively For Level Cap?
• Do Raids Have To Be Synonymous With Gear Treadmill?
• Do Raids Have To Be Just About Fighting?
• Can There Be A Form Of Gear Progression That Doesn’t Affect Anyone?

Do Raids Have To Be Exclusively For Level Cap?

Well, no. ANet have already shown this by having fights of epic proportions during the leveling process (Shadow Behemoth). While the mechanics of the fight might somewhat be simple, the foundation is there for them to build on.

If they ever did introduce Raids, it would be entirely possible to have Raids throughout the leveling process as opposed to just at cap.

Do Raids Have To Be Synonymous With Gear Treadmill?

As above, see below. In order to participate in these fights, you have no gear requirements (same with Dungeons, although it does reduce the player’s effectiveness, noticeably if they’re wearing Greens as opposed to Exotics).

Also, since this game is more about cosmetic options, it would be possible to make fights difficult through mechanics, rather than increasing numbers (hint, hint), meaning that any content would be down to player skill and not numbers, eliminating the need for people to get stronger and stronger gear.

Do Raids Have To Be Just About Fighting?

Nope, I don’t think so, personally. Raids can also have an element of Exploration and Puzzle Solving to them as well.

Say, for example, one of the Raids was a Labyrinth that contained 9 bosses (see below for why. This Raid would contain no trash, but to get to the bosses you’d have to solve a series of riddles, puzzles, avoid traps and such. No Linear path to the bosses, IMHO, makes for a more exciting experience.

Can There Be A Form Of Gear Progression That Doesn’t Affect Anyone?

By this, I mean can there be a form of gear progression that doesn’t offer better stats than any other Exotics, but at the same time show some form of progress for that Raid?

I believe so. They’ve sort of already got it in place at the moment with Sigil of [Creature] Slaying.

Imagine this for a moment: Evil McBadGuy (the big boss) has a main attack that hits you five times for 1/5th of your health (meaning if you get hit 5 times, you die). He also spawns minions.

Now, each boss in the Raid gives you a specific token for the Armour or Weapon (meaning each raid would have 9 bosses – 8 for the tokens and 1 for the big baddy).

Say you have 2 pieces of Armour. This applies a bonus that blocks one of Evil McBadGuy’s 5 hits, reducing it down to 4. 4-piece bonus reduces this to 3 hits, and the full set reduces it to 2.

The weapons would have effects that only apply to the minions of that boss.

See? Gear progression that’s only useful in that raid. And you only have to run the Raid once (in theory) in order to get the full set (since logging out inside of the Raid wouldn’t reset it, nor transport you out of the Raid. However, exiting the Raid would reset the bosses). Gear progression, and no grinding.

I would like to add that, if ANet were to implement a form of Instanced Raiding, I would much prefer them to polish and refine all the other content types (events, dungeons) to near perfection, and add lesser pieces of content that won’t consume too many resources to create, but will still provide entertainment and encourage people to visit previous zones, before they think about designing and implementing something on this sort of scale.