Guild Wars 2

Balsa.3951:

I have a question

Ppl say nobody should be carried/ pull there weight in those raids.

So how is that monitored/ controlled ?

Without a dps meter how we know who is been carried by 20 people?

By not inviting strangers in the group and play with people who you know well.

Dalanor.5387:

Balsa.3951:

I have a question

Ppl say nobody should be carried/ pull there weight in those raids.

So how is that monitored/ controlled ?

Without a dps meter how we know who is been carried by 20 people?

By not inviting strangers in the group and play with people who you know well.

Raids must never be made only for people that you know.They have to be made with having in mind the pugs too.You can’t know every random pug that you invite your group out there.

Dps meter/Recount and inspect function is a must for a MMO.If it lacks those things then you can’t be certain who you will be grouped with.In other MMOs i can fast look through a few tabs – gear/achievements/progression + dps meter.

He never said raids must be exclusive to guilds. He said that if you run with people you know, your chances of succes increase, which is totally natural (see real life).

Proposal Overview
Possible Raid scenarios and outlines: Part 1: Arah and Dwarven

Goal of Proposal
To lay out possible raids with some descriptions.

Proposal Functionality

City of Arah: The central sections of the city have been breached due to the efforts of the pact and can now be explored:
Visuals: A less destroyed section of Arah (maybe magically protected from wear and tear etc. With some of the skyscrapers you can see when fighting zhaitan present too.
Raid Effect: Vile Maisma: the thick stenches and corrupting atmosphere makes healing magics less effective : healing reduced 33%.
Events/steps:
Zhaitan shard: A piece of zhaitan radiates magic in this area raising corpses and imbuing them with necrotic powers. Seal the shard or drain it of magic.
The Vault of relics: A vault filled with powerful relics, most of which have been absorbed/drained by zhaitan, save for X. Its mesmer properties cause your party to become separated, can you rejoin and overcome its effects.
College of Arah: Experimental creatures are contained within can you survive?
Bosses (in order): Spawn of Zhaitan , Guardian of the Vault, Mesmeric construct, Grounds keeper, Delta , Omega and Zeta (three o boss), Dean of Undeath.

Remnants of the Dwarfs: An untouched dwarven facility has been opened by priory explorers. Find out what you can.
Raid Effect: Musty Air: Endurance is halved (1 dodge)
Events/Steps:
Dwarven Gauntlet: Filled with traps, false passages and a constantly changing pathway to prevent entry into this mysterious old facility.
The repository: A collection of buildings containing dwarven knowledge and ancient weapons. Investigate but be wary of guardians.
The Depths: A spacious sub-basement rough huen and recently attached to a natural vast cavern., Watch your step or you may plummet to your death.
Bosses in order: Dredge demolition team, The Gatekeeper, Fragments of the dwarves, The Librarian, Crazed stone dwarf , Jormungand (giant thing that made the passage).

I haven’t attached boss mechanics because I’ve already made 7 posts on potential ones.

Edit: woops was typing this and did’nt see Chris’s post.

Balsa.3951:

I have a question

Ppl say nobody should be carried/ pull there weight in those raids.

So how is that monitored/ controlled ?

Without a dps meter how we know who is been carried by 20 people?

One things is not making the raids too big – put a relatively low amount as the max numbers of players. 10 or 15 players ensures that there are not too many people in the raid, and thus makes it harder for each individual player to hide it if they’re not pulling their weight.
Alot of it lies in the design of the encounters as well. If you make the encounters difficult and complex enough, everyone will need to do their part, or the raid fails.
You can’t base the encounter on having
2 people doing thing 1
3 people doing thing 2
3 people doing thing 3
2 people to spare
etc.
There has to be something everyone needs to do (it’s doesn’t have to be super specific, but I hope you get what I’m saying).
This is also why scaling is a bad idea. It will make it much more likely that 1 or more players in the team don’t have anything (important) to do.

Roybe.5896:

Orpheal.8263:

Based on which kind of Fractals and which Level you did, will influence raise the End Amount of Fractal Knowledge that you will gain.

Is this fractal type gated behind the FoTM’s? If so, not sure this is a good idea. How many raiders are playing these? How inclusive does this feel to the rest of the community? Does everyone have to do Fractals to gain access to all of the raid content…or just this one type?

It requires after my concept just to become Fractal Explorer Rank 10 (of 1000) to unlock the access to the Heroic Fractals.
You can be assured, that reachign the first ten ranks of that new progressive reward system behind Fractals would be reached very quickly, so that players don’t have to play first a massive amount of fractals of the Mist first, before they become able to get into a Heroic Fractal.

Think of something like this:

Doing a Fractal Run grants you 3 Points + 2 for the Boss Fractal, so 5 Points per Run if you complete is totally.
That would be for a Level 1 Run.
Increased Fractal Levels would raise every 10 Levels the Base Amount of Fractal Knowledge by 10 FKP and the level itself would multiply the Boss Bonus by 2 per Level.
So for example doing a Level 10 Run instead would grant you at the end then 132(times 20) = 300 FKP (Fractal Knowledge Points).
So the maximum one could currently get would be 53+2( times 50) = 2750 Points when you’d do a Lvl 50 Fractal Run + Boss successfully.

Now you could think of the required amounts of FKP for the Ranks with say the first 10 ranks starting extra low, so that a fast unlock of Heroic Fractals could be given:

Rank 1 = 1000 FKP
Rank 2 = 2100 FKP
Rank 3 = 3300 FKP
Rank 4 = 4600 FKP
Rank 5 = 6000 FKP
Rank 6 = 7500 FKP
Rank 7 = 9100 FKP
Rank 8 = 10800 FKP
Rank 9 = 12600 FKP
Rank 10 = 14500 FKP

With Lvl 10 Runs only a Player would get that after roughly 49 runs.
With Level 50 runs you’d be done with the Heroic Fractal unlocking after just roughly 6 runs.
Just means, so more skilled you are, so faster will you unlock it, otherwise, just have a bit more patience.

You could theoretically simply calculate out by that simple to grasp scheme also, how much FKP one would need for Level 1000
However, I let the FKP Point System up to Anet, maybe they have something better for that in mind.

PS: To answer your last question: this would be required just for Heroic Fractal Raids only, not for any of the other Raid Types that I’ve suggested so that there are for any Raid Type preferences some different ones to ensure, that there are Raids for everyones personal taste.

Heroic Fractals are for People, which love Short Term Small Scale Raids and Lore.
Dungeon Crawlers are for people, which love Long Term Medium Scale Raids .
Battlegrounds are for people, which love Various Term Large Scale Raids and prefer Quantity over Quality in regard of Loot
Hunting Reservoirs are for people, which love Long Term Solo/Small Scale Raids
Guild Crusades are for people, which love Various Term Medium Scale Raids and prefer Quality over Quantity.

That ANet can’t please absolutely everybodies taste should be clear, but I think with these five Raid Types should be Anet able to please the overall biggest part of the whole community in the best way, that is possible.

Roybe.5896:

A lot of the players I know would enjoy a reworked map of Underworld. The various missions leading to a conclusion was a great idea. It was originally designed for 8 players so the scaling to 15 shouldn’t be tremendously difficult.

I would like to see some of the quests within this be splitting quests. 3 5 man groups have to do something to advance to a bring up an NPC that gives the next quest in the chain.

I also would enjoy seeing an environmental debuff that is removed after the successful completion of a particular quest (it could even be a bonus quest rather than a main quest, so it increases the difficulty for speed clearing..you have to make the choice to do this quest or go for the faster way dealing with mitigation as you go).

If the underworld is utilized (or any other previous map) lore must be preserved with as little reconning as possible. Otherwise, the long time players will have issues that will decrease their desire to play.

Underworld had some timed events, kill x in y time or you lose. This is a nother valid quest type.

One quest could release NPC’s throughout the map, to either open doors or portals, provide small levels of support, or need to be saved before they all are killed…possibly another case can be made for a split party quest.

Just a few ideas

I would love to see UW in GW2, that would be an amazing raid in my opinion. As for the lore, I would like to see a continuation of the story in the GW1 UW. Maybe have Dhuum’s servants try to retake it, or maybe Dhuum got out and has already taken some of it. That’s for the lore guys at Anet to figure out.

moiraine.2753:

Dalanor.5387:

Balsa.3951:

I have a question

Ppl say nobody should be carried/ pull there weight in those raids.

So how is that monitored/ controlled ?

Without a dps meter how we know who is been carried by 20 people?

By not inviting strangers in the group and play with people who you know well.

Raids must never be made only for people that you know.They have to be made with having in mind the pugs too.You can’t know every random pug that you invite your group out there.

Dps meter/Recount and inspect function is a must for a MMO.If it lacks those things then you can’t be certain who you will be grouped with.In other MMOs i can fast look through a few tabs – gear/achievements/progression + dps meter.

Pugs will be able to do such content after a while when tactics become well known and they get the neccessary equipment (at least in other games but for a degree it’s true in GW2 too, just think about Teq and PVT gear). Hell after a year pugs are still unable to do Teq most of the time not to mention the Wurm …
Back in the days we could manage to do even 25 man raids in WoW because we socialized and keep contact with people who we liked and has at least a decent skill to go through content together. If something RL issue kept someone away of course a pug was invited with a proper advertisement and filtering.

But sadly the proposals here mostly wish for such “hard” content where everybody is able to join with every kind of build and skill level and experience and still go through it which i find both saddening and hilarious. Either it’s hard or so pug friendly that they faceroll through it easily. Both simply can’t happen. Period.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

1. Skins, other visual effects upon further completition (the infusion idea that came up multiple times), maybe vanity items. Titles based on achievements and achievements that enforces proper playing (eg: Flawless Defense, Above the Waves at Teq) instead of party griefing and neglecting group succes (eg: Tail Flail at Teq).

2. I’ll ask a question instead. Do you find the 5 target aoe cap on buffs and boons a proper mechanic in raid environment? Wouldn’t that cause problems in party compositions and design overall? What i mean currently 1 warrior per group is essential if you want to buff your whole raid or guardian per group is essential if you want to cover defensive abilities and so on. Of course it’s only problematic when every raid member is at the same place but i hope you get what i mean.

ps: Fix the camera please. :/

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

Regarding 1, are you talking about reward progression or physical progression through the raid instance?

I’d like to see a Reward Track system for Raids with the same type of “filling bar” rewards that happen in Pvp but for Raids. I like when progression can take a while but you are rewarded along the way. It reinforces why you are doing it without feeling that you are putting in more effort than you are getting out of it and it leaves the RNG to mob drops. I would couple this system with the system that is in the Fractals where you get a chest at the end.

The only system I think I would like from older game’s systems is the “Raid Wing” system where there are multiple wings to a Raid and you don’t feel forced to do the entire thing in one sitting. I think this naturally goes with how GW2 is setup. Most of the dungeons are 4 “wings”(paths).

As far as mechanics go Chris, I think I would like platforming sections but the camera really needs some love in tight spots. I’ve given it some thought since my last post and I don’t think I would waiver on this. There are JPs I would love to do if it weren’t for the camera zooming out and back in really quickly because of walls etc. It doesn’t make for a good platforming experience and I would hate for a Raid to be marred by that when I think that really cool things could come out of a Raid that had a Jumping Puzzle only wing with a boss fight or two.

I think Jumping Puzzle Raids(if the camera issues were addressed) would be a great idea actually if we are classifying a Raid as “challenging content”. I have quite a few guildies whose favorite thing are the JPs. It would give people not traditionally into raiding a raid of their own and if it were light on combat but had it, it may get some people on the fence about raiding into raiding proper. It would also fit the game.

I think more content like the laser trap in Crucible of Eternity should be things seen more in Raids. Also, I remember when the game was still being developed you guys had looked into dungeons being more dynamic with the way things were triggered and it would open up different paths etc. Would there be a way to do that with the way specific rooms were designed? Maybe certain rooms could be designed where if one group in a raid wipes in a room the next group to enter that room has different mobs to fight so that it’s always different? For example, I take a raid group in and we wipe in Room “B” and your raid group was the next group in the raid and you would get a different set of mobs in Room “B” than if my group had defeated Room “B”. Is that something that would be viable?

I don’t think I have anything left to add, being by and large a casual player who used to raid before raids really took off in WoW and other games. I’ve pretty much said everything I could think of on how to handle things (without going into detail just setting up the whole framework) and it’s apparently not in the direction people want to take things so . . .

I don’t think raids, however they are added, are going to be of either use or interest to me. And I don’t think those who would do raids are going to see me as being of use, or interested in allowing me to join in.

Have fun, everyone.

Proposal
Environmental Options

Goal
Give players options of how to complete a raid to increase re-playability and help with smaller groups

Proposal Functionality
Before a raid encounter, either through dialogue or other forms of interaction, several variables of the environment could be reconfigured. Each should be of similar difficulty, but enable a group’s strengths to be played for. They could compensate for being heavy or light in a specific profession/role, and offer achievements for each ‘option’ to encourage different options to be explored.

For example:
Should I fight the boss on land or underwater?
GW2’s underwater fighting is one of it’s fundamental differences with other games.

Should I fight in a room that’s on fire or a room with asura platforms which disappear?

Should I fight in a room with pre-existing fire or water combo fields?

Should I fight with a regen buff or a damage buff provided by the helpful NPC at the beginning of the dungeon?

Should I fight with the aid of NPC a, b, c, d or e?
Like in that mission in factions I can’t remember the name of, all NPCs should have a unique ability which could help. Smaller groups may even be able to take more NPCs.

I had written on paper a lengthy post that probably would fit on Herr, so I’m going to narrow it down while on my phone.

For the foundation, the premise should be that instead of just killing one boss, you should be killing bosses, sabatoging, and capturing points. Think if it as instead of killing bosses, more of ’capturing areas.".

First off, for bosses themselves. They should “cheat” and always make it unfair for the raiders, or try to make the raiders stop focusing him. Example would be that as the raiders are fighting, buildings are on fire trapping some townsfolk. The some raiders would have to break off from the boss to go save them, or suffer a penalty. But if they believe they can survive with the penalty, more power to them.

Another could be like the dredge machine in the flame and frost factory, and for p2 with the defend encounter. Protect a npc, machine, etc while environmental hazards happen around you. Then there could be objectives like a control panel to the side that once destroyed, a certain element stops spawning. But then another event pops up to stop repairs, etc.

A third could be a pve form of seiging a harbor, attacking it with seige, then defending it once you take it.

Finally, whenever you conquer these points, it has an effect on the rest of the instance. If you kill the guy lighting homes on fire, the rest of the trash mob troops may get a rebuff of low moral, taking more DMG and dealing less. Destroying the machine may disable harmful traps. Conquering the harbor may reduce trash mobs in general as they were sent to try and take it back. Basically, if you succeed at a boss, it should weak either the rest of the instance, or the final boss itself.

Course, this also leaves the option to take on the greatest challenge and face the last boss first, something extremely hard as he could draw from the rest of the instance to protect him.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am asking the CDI group to concentrate on the core combat and mobility of the game. I am asking folks to think like systems and mechanics designers and essentially take the core foundation of the game and theory-craft and discuss how these systems and mechanics evolve into challenging collaborative instanced content.

In essence, I suggest major encounters should have mini events, forcing the raiders to decide if they should participate in it, and what the cost is for not completing it. If they complete it, they could get a buff, if they fail, they may get a debuff or the boss gets a buff. But the boss should have mechanics set up to try and force raiders to not stay as one group, but split up and effectively cover different areas of the fight.

Dodging is something that boss attacks are going to need to be able to deal with.
Some existing bosses have their one threatening attack that gets telegraphed for several seconds beforehand giving ample opportunity to dodge it. (sure sometimes I mess up a dodge jump and end up jumping on the spot while still having time to dodge again).
-Shorter telegraph windows you have to be quick on your feet.
-Higher damage (I’d avoid insta kills but would go for an amount over half health so that you get one “safe” fail before getting killed.)

I’d like to see moving around during the fight (further than the usual back and forth) perhaps having a boss fight where elevation plays a role and where you must ascend or descend on say elevators around the arena to get optimal damage.
I quite like the Reactor fractal boss fight since standing still will generally leave you dead something like that could be fun either.

Example: A four faced boss with different damage preferences , they move up and down/ side to side so you must keep moving and re adjusting your position.

I think we are supposed to be talking about raid progression at this point.. i’ve only skimmed the thread so sorry if i’m repeating anything.

Progression:

One of the big draws of raiding is being confronted with a difficult fight and having to try different strategies, different team compositions and different positioning to figure out the best way to beat the encounter. This is accomplished in a fairly straight forward manner in other MMOs by the use of the trinity. In GW2 we have no trinity so this needs to change slightly. I think for raids to be successful we need to have roles take a more prominent role in combat. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. I will try to work within the established form of the game as much as possible:

1. Roles through gear: Currently gear determines your DPS and survivability, but has no real impact on your role. I have access to the same boons, same debuffs, same heals and same damaging skills regardless of what gear I am wearing. This is in stark contrast to other games where your gear determines how good at your role you are. This is one of the fundamentals of GW2 combat, and one of the hardest things to work with in terms of raids. I would propose introducing more role focused gear sets. Sets with massive amounts of condition duration, boon duration, etc. Remove the previous 100% caps in PvE and allow people to take on buffer/debuffer roles in combat. Introduce traits or utilities that greatly increase the power of buffs/debuffs as well. This will allow a variety of roles in combat without having to resort to the traditional tank/healer roles. Also reexamine the AOE caps so that you don’t “require” multiple of each role in raids.*

*I think roles should be optimal but not required. A group of skilled dps players should still be able to complete the raid, but with more difficulty.

2. Combat feedback: This seems to be a touchy issue for some players, but it is ESSENTIAL for successful raids. If your group is wiping you NEED to know why. A recount type interface is a must for a raiding environment. Make it only visible in a raid group to keep non-raiders happy, but it does need to happen. If we are failing because two of our dps players are drunk and afk then we should be able to see that. If we are failing because our buffer only has a 50% uptime on the buffs then we need to be able to see that. The only way to improve is if we know what is wrong. You can propose all sorts of complicated message systems, personal infographics, etc. but without a raid wide meter you will just be wasting time. I’m sorry if it makes people irrationally upset, but every raid i’ve ever successfully completed in multiple MMO’s relied on having feedback to what was going on and who needed advice/help.

3. Multiple raid progression: In typical MMO’s levels of raids are determined almost exclusively by gear. If you have the previous raids gear set then you can attempt the next raid. GW2 does not have a gear treadmill so some other method of progression is needed. I propose an achievement based progression. Killing the final boss of raid 1 grants an achievement which allows access to raid 2. It is simple, has clear progression, but does not have gear involved.

Ok so im still very much set on encouraging the overall design of raids to be very much in theme of Underworld, FoW and DoA from GW1. With a large open explorable zone which gives groups the options to complete objectives in whatever order and gives them the freedom to split up if needed. My previous posts have already gone over rewards quite thoroughly. So i thought i would contribute some combat mechanics now.

In terms of fights we already have some very interesting boss mechanics currently in the game. Most of them are on the easy side but if you take the best parts of each of them and combine them then you can some up with some really interesting fights which incorporate the many aspects of GW2’s combat which make it so fun (dodging and positioning).

To start i will list a number of bosses which are regarded as challenging and/or fun/interesting to fight. And explain why they are popular bosses from a hardcore players perspective.

In the regular dungeons we have the famous Lupicus which has a large pool of skills and multiple phases which keep most groups paced. Despite this there is still the possibility to avoid all his attacks providing you are very experienced. And then in TA we have Leurent who is relatively simple yet highly punishing in solos & duos. He has a nice range of high damage skills and even uses a heal skill. The problem is that he is not a threat in a 5 man group. We also have Vevina (RIP) from TA Fw/Up path. She used stealth, area denial, teleports and conditions to make her hard to burst down and very dangerous if you didnt pay attention.

These 3 bosses stand out to me because they provide high amounts of threat while also preventing groups from trivialising the fight through area denile or repositioning. The only exception is Leurent in a full group. But as I said he is well balanced in solos/duos. They also do this without causing excessive irration from over the top pace control. Mai Trin is the opposite of this. She has very irritating timegated invuln phases.

Fractals has a much larger selection of good bosses. The Imbued shaman, Archdiviner and dredge final bosses all have interesting mechanics. Skills wise the bosses are quite dangerous with just their base attacks which provide area denile and high damage. But they also have mechanics which force players to use the environment and positioning to suceed. Shaman has the shield with elemental spawns. Archdiviner has the hammer seal phases and the dredge bosses have the lava buckets to make it vulnerable.

We also have the molten duo. This is one of my favourite fights conceptually. Unfortunately organised dps groups can trivialise it quite easily. The core mechanics of the bosses are good though. Two separate bosses complimenting each other well by having the firestorm create potent area denile fields and keeping a moderate distance. Whereas the berserker tries to stay in melee range of players by teleporting. At the same time they also have an enrage mechanic when they reach health thresholds. Making them even more dangerous and forcing players to move around even more to avoid the area denile skills.

We also have open world bosses such as Priest of Melandru and Statue of Dwayna. These are actually incredibly fun for small groups and solos. Because they are so dangerous and they have a good amount of different skills which force you to not just dodge but also move out of the danger zones.

Finally we have bosses and mobs that have recently been introduced in the latest season of the living story. The mordre dragon is interesting because it has phases of vulnerability and inbetween it forces you to move around and avoid the area denile attacks while also dealing with various mobs. And then there is the champion thrasher which is simple yet has a lot of condition attacks. Its very easy to outsustain and avoid direct damage attacks. But if theres also high condition threat at the same time then it will force players to take cleanses and maybe change their strategy.

Summary
What makes a good boss is a wide range of different attacks with clear tells. They should have area denile skills and maybe combat puzzles to change the pace of the fight. But they should avoid timegated phases. Phases should last until an objective is complete not until a time runs out. Bosses should also have high damage per skill but also incorporate conditions and boons to add complexity. They should allow you to avoid most if not all damage if you are experienced skilled but at the same time you should not just be able to simply dodge attacks. Positioning to avoid damage should also be important. The use of environmetal weapons and terrain to add to puzzles or to compensate for a classes shortcomings should also be considered.

Here are a list of mechanics that I think would be fun in parts or together:
Boss: One Winged Angel
Sort of like lupicus in that he has stages in which he acts differently.
First Stage: He has so much toughness that physical attacks are useless. He does CC conditions (and torment) to those around him. This is a stage of attrition, players must manage him with condition damage but while his minion wreck havoc with their charges and big aoe cleaves (sort of like rise abominations and the molten due combined). Another way to bring his HP down would be to have the minions charge into him. The boss is relatively large (size of lupicus to clockheart) and stationary. He also does an AOE attack that targets everyone and gives a stack of a debuff whose accumulation results in the summoning of a mob like the risen plaugecarrier which does a lot condition damage (bleed and poison mainly). This attack is dodge-able and very apparent.
Second Stage: Changes shape, loses toughness. He begins to move a lot using charges and leaps. He still does CC (chill and cripple mainly) but only before doing a massive AOE (something like the vines from the shadow of the dragon in LS). Slow heavy attacks. The name of the game for the players is DPS and evasion (timing is important but more knowledge than skill). He mainly uses melee attacks.
Third Stage: Changes shape again and this time he is faster, he may even fly and do evades. He also uses teleport charges like Lupicus does. This time his attacks aren’t very deadly or big AOEs but he does many more targeted multi strike attacks (Confusion and Retribution is important). He occasionally either flies high above or stealths and marks one target among the players. In about 3-5 seconds he either swoops or teleports to that player (doing a 300 distance aoe) and tries his best to down him in 10 seconds. If he succeeds than he gains some health (relative to the health of the person marked at the moment the mark was applied, this makes it easier though). This time the players must show that he can survive him even after the onslaught of the previous phase. This part is harder, players must try to keep alive and their best opportunity to attack the boss is when he is trying to kill a person. The zerg must be able to keep together and disperse fast (to save the person and to avoid the attacks). We can make the boss invulnerable unless he is attacking or vulnerable only from the flanks or front but this may be overkill.
Terrain:
large circular room (lupicu’s room size or larger) divided into three circles (outer, middle, and inner). These circles move in alternative directions at alternating speeds. There can be penalties for crossing these circles but it’s not needed. The circles may change to become harmful or beneficial to players (regen players, cripple them, give stacks like the snow blind fractal, or they can have some mistlock stability like things).
There are also four points, as far from each other as they can be) at the edge of the outer circle that routinely spawn balls (like those in the rytlock ascalon mission in LS but little faster) which give boons and healing to enemies and hurt players. They try to prioritize the boss. (with my boss they may be disabled after stage 1 or two). This makes mobility and dispersal important.

These mechanics rely heavily on mobility and the boss and the terrain try to limit player mobility as much as they can so condition cleanses are important. It also features a lot of attrition so sustainability and defense is important. You must also out dps the heals and need to burst the boss at times so dps is very important.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Both Symph. Thanks for asking.
Chris

Cool, gonna try giving a few ideas then.

Reward Progression

• Someone mentioned Reward Tracks, and I kinda like this idea.
  • Of course I immediately think of the PvP tracks, and how it can be converted to something in a raid.
    The PvP tracks progress based on each match, and a few other factors of those matches (winning etc.).
    For this to work in a raid, I think the raid would have to be separated in smaller parts. By this I mean that small parts of the raid should correspond to 1 PvP match.
    • This would obviously be every boss/encounter.
      For linear raids, I think the amount of progress should increase with every boss, and maybe a bit more at the last boss.
      For non-linear raids, I think the amount should be based on the individual difficulty of each encounter.
    • Perhaps optional objectives during each encounter would increase the amount of reward progress you gain.
      Successful optional objectives could possibly still give progress even if the primary objective (ie. the boss) failed. (not quite sure about this though, could be exploited)
    • Unlike PvP, failure should not give any progress (would be exploited).
  • Having a system like this, would ensure, that even those people who are not capable of beating everything in the raid, still eventually get to the shiny stuff. Just at a slower rate (seems fair to me).
  • Finally, this system should not stand alone in my opinion.
• Loot Tables
  • One thing I’ve really been missing in this game is loot tables.
    The problem with having very rare items (read: precursors) drop from everything, is that you never know when to be excited about killing something.
    I miss that feeling I had in WoW when we killed that specific boss that dropped the item I wanted. My heart would always be pounding, hoping to see it after defeating the boss, and I really want that excitement here in GW2 as well.
  • Of course it would have to be a little different, since the loot in GW2 is individual.
    That’s what we have the boxes for.
    Much like the Ascended Chests, but instead of an ascended item with specific stats, you would get a choice of anything from the boss’ loot table (the box would be the loot table).
    • Each piece of gear could be present in 2 or more unique boss chests.
    • Whether they should just be skins, exotics or ascended I’m not really sure about.
      If they were exotic or ascended, they would have to have chooseable stats.
      Since such a box would guarantee the item you wanted, it would have to have a reasonably low droprate. Something along the lines of getting one every 3-4 kills.
    • Naturally, the boxes could be locked behind daily/weekly chests like fractals.
• Upgrading Skins
  • A nice way of keeping the raids interesting would be skins that could be upgraded.
    This could be done by combining several of the same skin (plus some materials), several different skins, or one skin with special materials dropped in the raid.
    The upgrades could be similar to the way the fractal capacitor was upgraded over several steps (also works if the skins have stats).
  • As I mentioned in an earlier post, the materials needed to upgrade could be included in the boxes, and thereby giving the player a choice of whether they first wanted several basic skins, or first wanted to fully upgrade the first skin.

• Finally, I still believe very strongly, that raid unique skins should not be tradeable between players.

Raid Progression

• Linear raids would probably be the most straight forward approach, and easiest way to make sure everyone face the same challenges along the way, but I do think I’d prefer some choices along the way.
• I think the way Twilight Arbor was build is a really interesting design.
  By having several choices along the way, every run has the possibility of being different from the one before.
  It also gives the players the option of going for specific bosses, either because one (or several) boss(es) are causing trouble for their team, or because they want to kill a specific boss for its unique drops.
• Some of these choices could be gated behind optional objectives that had to be completed in order to access that choice (like the bonus in D’Alessio Seaboard in GW1).
• Finally I would like to see optional super hard bosses, that could be unlocked/accessed by completing several difficult optional objectives throughout the raid.
  Perhaps with some completely unique drops tied to them.

A little long, hope the bullets make it easier to read
Gotta get something to eat now, so mechanics will be later

Here is a feature that I think might be necessary for raids (and it would be helpful in WVW as well, maybe).

Introduce target calling ability for the whole squad, not just for the group. I’d like to see it implemented in a way that you can choose which TC you’re going to assist. That way you could e.g. split up ranged vs. melee target calling. This might lead to some interesting options when designing multi-boss fights.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Casual vs. Hardcore argument is not in the spirit of the CDI as you know, and I mean this in regard to those on both side of the fence who can’t see that we aren’t even at the stage where this is even worth discussing.

Chris, raiding is a social activity.

Social dynamics will determine whether your mechanics “work.” If you choose mechanics that do not support a broad social dynamic, raiding in GW2 will fail for the population at large.

You’ve stated that GW2 raiding should “fit” with the overall philosophy of the game. I agree. But you’ve put the cart before the horse IMO.

We need to decide what the social aspects of raiding are before designing mechanics.

Sytherek.7689:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Casual vs. Hardcore argument is not in the spirit of the CDI as you know, and I mean this in regard to those on both side of the fence who can’t see that we aren’t even at the stage where this is even worth discussing.

Chris, raiding is a social activity.

Social dynamics will determine whether your mechanics “work.” If you choose mechanics that do not support a broad social dynamic, raiding in GW2 will fail for the population at large.

You’ve stated that GW2 raiding should “fit” with the overall philosophy of the game. I agree. But you’ve put the cart before the horse IMO.

We need to decide what the social aspects of raiding are before designing mechanics.

No offense to you but the social aspect of anything comes AFTER the said thing is released. It is not something you can discuss in advance. I can slap you an entire wall of text in the face explaining to you how a well designed raid can solve the issue of casu vs hardocre.

And btw The summary is up: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Raiding-The-condensed-edition-2-19/first#post4531399

Sytherek.7689:

Chris, raiding is a social activity.

Social dynamics will determine whether your mechanics “work.” If you choose mechanics that do not support a broad social dynamic, raiding in GW2 will fail for the population at large.

You’ve stated that GW2 raiding should “fit” with the overall philosophy of the game. I agree. But you’ve put the cart before the horse IMO.

We need to decide what the social aspects of raiding are before designing mechanics.

Quite the opposite I would say.
I don’t know how you’re supposed to properly design the social aspects of ANYTHING if you haven’t given form to the thing in question first.
Modifying it based on social needs, sure. But you need a base to work with first.
“Let’s have a convention!”
“What kind of convention”
“It doesn’t matter, let’s just invite a bunch of people and figure it out later!”

That, my good sir, is what I would consider “putting the cart before the horse”.

Most of the time I spent raiding was organizing the raid, not on actual encounters.

Even in a hardcore raiding guild (of which I was part), we spent an enormous amount of time waiting for people to show up, making sure everyone was buffed, assigning roles, replacing players who left (for whatever reason), reorganizing after a wipe, and discussing strategy.

I suggest encounters be relatively short — no longer than Tequatl.

We need tools for planning and designating roles, marking things on the map, generally anything that facilitates organization. Simple colored “tacos” won’t cut it for any mechanic that’s complicated enough to be interesting.

Another problem is progressive difficulty. For the first couple of weeks, the Tequatl fight failed more than it succeeded; groups were eventually organized to the nth degree, and we started beating Tequatl more often than not. Fast forward to today, where any PuG any time of day wins with ease.

Raids grow stale as designed in WoW. People eventually run them just for the loot, without having much fun with the encounters.

Static boss tactics, even two or three “difficulty levels” won’t keep the raids fresh. We can see this with 5-man dungeons, which were long-ago considered hard, and are now run solo with relative ease.

I’d suggest an adaptive AI that evolves boss tactics dynamically during a fight, just like players evolve. If a boss is taking lots of damage from one source, change his tactics.

Arewn.2368:

Sytherek.7689:

Chris, raiding is a social activity.

Social dynamics will determine whether your mechanics “work.” If you choose mechanics that do not support a broad social dynamic, raiding in GW2 will fail for the population at large.

You’ve stated that GW2 raiding should “fit” with the overall philosophy of the game. I agree. But you’ve put the cart before the horse IMO.

We need to decide what the social aspects of raiding are before designing mechanics.

Quite the opposite I would say.
I don’t know how you’re supposed to properly design the social aspects of ANYTHING if you haven’t given form to the thing in question first.
Modifying it based on social needs, sure. But you need a base to work with first.
“Let’s have a convention!”
“What kind of convention”
“It doesn’t matter, let’s just invite a bunch of people and figure it out later!”

That, my good sir, is what I would consider “putting the cart before the horse”.

Wrong.

If you design something that is not “fun”, people won’t play it.

You need to understand “fun” first.

I have to admit I don’t have a clue where to begin and what has been covered having only read ~20 posts.

1: Progression

Open World?
I felt that the basic concept behind the marionette fight was a good core for a “raid” setup. Multiple 5-10man groups in a zone in different portions doing individual events to work through a zone and whittle down a large beastie. The concept of ogre wars event is also decent.

However to make things challenging I feel like something similar to GW1 faction battle line movement could be implemented. Say there is a raid that spans a large zone with very separated groups. If one group pushes far ahead they will face extremely difficult roadblocks that they can’t overcome without other groups in other sections catching up to their region and “weakening” it. Something like 1 group opening a door for another or a generator activating to remove a bosses boons/invulnerability. Thinking about this in terms of a “tower of nightmares” with multiple paths that need to be done consecutively. Waypoints would have to be unlocked per raid or something if it was an open world event.

Say tower of nightmares was a raid and there were more floors and a few bosses managed by individual teams and a few convergence points with large full server fights – killing a hybrid or something. Once a large boss is down it can be a rest area with a few minutes for everyone to re-coordinate and move out on the next set of individual paths. One team can’t get too far ahead because they’ll have to survive at a roadblock which may not be possible for long periods of time – standing in poison room or etc. If a team wipes you could have an event failure returning everyone to the last “safe” room. Once at the top and final boss or whatnot is finished big party reward chest and everyone involved through each checkpoint gets their chests and teleported to the end loot. If you only played thru 1-2 checkpoints get reward chests but not the end chest or something similar to Teq/Triple Trouble.

Individual Instances?
This may be a neat use of instanced regions. Say you had a group of 30-40 players in Domain of Anguish (GW1) lobby and you enter as a singular group separated into 3-4 teams.

Each team is in their own instance – individual squad chats and sharing a team chat. They work through their individual instance to unlock Mallyx at the end where all teams teleport to a new instance and have a battle of the breach maker type fight.

Then again if the “Tower of Nightmares” example could be managed with 30-40 it would be nice to have that as as instance for those 30-40 ppl so that someone dcing can get right back in and not be stuck spamming “join friend” etc. Open world “raids” may be more useful for say progression across a map for a huge zerg fight like teq. More challenging content should probably contained to group instances and manageable down a player or 2 in case of disconnect.

Looking at concepts like “The Deep” on GW1 I though also has the foundations for an instanced “raid” – especially the starting section.

Rewards: would preferrably be unique sets of armor/weapon skins costumes and minis – say from a spawning token vendor at the end and not RNG. DoA gemstones from GW1 for example.

2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Ask some PvPers about how they feel “pressure” should be applied to teamfights
Conditions seem to be very infrequently applied in this game – and when they are like tower of nightmares ppl get angry. They get angry because it makes things hard Rather than 40 zerkers plowing thru a raid it would be nice to encourage a distribution of eles and engis and guards that can HEAL and REMOVE CONDITIONs.

Let there be targets in the sky that rangers or eles can hit or a war with a rifle to do more damage or progress to further encourage build diversity.

Combat and movement is great in this game, however if things like “jump the shockwave” and “dodge the rocket” are going to be used they need to be very well portrayed where the (hitbox?) is. That does NOT mean surround it with a huge orange circle. Say a missile comes at a character the very tip should need to be dodged so players know right when to roll. Very tip of the shockwave as well. It may be neat to implement a need for the “somersault dodge-jump” where if you jump a shockwave but aren’t in dodge a missile hits you (we are talking more challenging content). Also if you want things to be challenging there shouldn’t be giant orange aoe circles – just well portray when things are happening and let players respond appropriately. If a monster takes back its foot to kick you should probably move without needing a huge orange line.

That said AoE effects could probably use a simplifier – like you have standard character models in PvP perhaps we need standard AoE caps so that bosses are visible and not in a nuclear explosion. Simple indicators for conditions and buffs like GW1 would be more useful than huge guardian focus chains and elementalist everything.

I know we hate the “holy trinity” as well. But aggro control and heals and skillful dodges allow for things to be made much harder and manageable. If there was say a heal skill that grabbed monster attention or a method to do so it could allow for skillful aggro trading. Shooting a monster in the knee for example enrages it to come at you. If your allies don’t hit the knee it stays on you.

Bosses need to be more mobile and terrifying. Shatterer and Teq standing there and being structures leads to a giant mob on a foot spamming one. If bosses walked around the maps / swiped thing with their paws players may need to be more active in their movement. A sand giant with sprint dodge roll and skill chaining comes to mind People will learn to dodge and jump and use positioning if there is a reward there to encourage active behavior.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Evening All,

Relics of Orr podcast about the CDI below:

http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=3403

‘In this special episode we chat with guest host Soren of Gaiscíoch about the Raiding CDI and how Guild Wars 2 could create unique raids.’

Chris

P.S: Thanks Relics of Orr and Soren for your feedback.

On progression i’d like to reference something that was said in this podcast. Personally i’d recommend everyone take time and check it out their were many good ideas thrown out. An idea that was given on progression was having zones in each raid where you can unlock more and more ascended pieces to eventually be able to tackle the last zone. Now I know people don’t like gear treadmills and let me just start of by saying ME TOO! Lol read through my post history and you can see for yourself but in this situation I think having raids eventually become runs that you need ascended gear is a must for the content.

The idea in the podcast was basically ( better to check it out real quick because I might be butchering the idea lol) having the 1st raid zone be for exotic armor set and you beat that zone you unlock one piece of armor and eventually you get equipped with ascended gear just by playing the raids and not force you to play fractals or craft (if you don’t want too.) Eventually when you get to the last zone which is the hardest you are fully equipped and when raid 2…3…4 you must have ascended gear but its ok because if you play raid one you will be equipped to run raid 2..3..4. Also another thing that was discussed was death and the penalty for that and two ideas were given first was you die and you start the raid from the start and the other was doing checkpoints. Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

First of all, count me out on raiding with anything more than 10 or more players due to the blinding light(s) not being able to see a boss. Might as well make IO (hero from Dota2) as every boss since that is practically all players can see.

Another issue I would have is the lack of boss abilities or cast bar. Being able to react to certain things during a fight makes it interesting. Currently we’ve had red outlined areas to avoid which is cool up to a certain point.

DPS and condition damage is broken.

List can go on with current issues I have with raiding in the game. I only wish the devs the best trying to create this extra content for players because it seems cool in concept.

Would definitely be interesting for paths where bosses take amplified condition stacks and damage – similar to husks in triple trouble.

As far as gear treadmill thru a zone I prefer buffs :P Poison protection etc, resistance to physical and so forth.

Zoso.8279:

Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

lets say you have beaten 5/7 bosses and want to progress at the 6. boss now. if you die, and you will because you wont kill bosses first try, you have to start all over again?!

this “death = restart the whole raid” idea is something people havent really thought about for more than one second.

Here’s a minor thing using GW2 mechanics, just a throwaway thought really (I’m starving and have to go inhale sustenance before I fall over).

Terrain challenges.

I’m thinking like the false floor in that pirate cavern JP in nw Harathi, where if you run across it fast enough you make it but it’s crumbling at every footstep, with lethal spikes waiting for you to drop on them. Woe to you if you’re running just behind someone else. Also in Sharkmaw there are false rocks you can actually walk through, and need to to get through the first part. In some dungeons and fractals there are rolling rocks you have to avoid.

Weaving in variable terrain like that could be an interesting factor in a raid, though not a be-all-end-all in and of itself.

/goes off to get brain working again via food

I’m not an expert in PvE, and the raids you all are talking about seem to be PvE-centric.

However, I’d like to give you my personal opinion: make them HARD. I think these raids should represent the very high-end (PvE wise), and should also be considered to be “end-game” features.
Do not allow simple mechanics such as stacking in a corner, or DPSing the boss before it kills everyone like we currently have in dungeons.

Examples

• AC, Spider Queen: good mechanics, completely ruined by the fact that people can simply DPS it down before it even has the opportunity tu properly use them.
• SE, path 1, the three golems: good mechanics, completely ruined by the fact that people can just stack in one corner and kill them.
• CoF, path 1, first Boss: you can just put him in a corner and DPS him. That’s not a boss. That’s just a barrier which will eventually be breached. You could turn off your monitor and still be able to defeat it.

Make raids a challenge! Something that requires skillful plays, like dodging at the right time, moving to avoid AoE damage, usage of terrain through jumps and proper movement. All of this while being constantly under pressure.
Make them require people to actually improve themself as better players in order to succeed.

NoTrigger.8396:

Zoso.8279:

Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

lets say you have beaten 5/7 bosses and want to progress at the 6. boss now. if you die, and you will because you wont kill bosses first try, you have to start all over again?!

this “death = restart the whole raid” idea is something people havent really thought about for more than one second.

The only reason I feel its a good idea because it gives more incentive to work together and makes the event feel not only harder but also worth it! lol once you get past all them boss fights and get to the end your going to need a cig LOL!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

1. On Progression, I feel each raid should be independent like dungeons are (in this case they’d be story independent too unlike dungeons). This includes the rewards.
That way the Raids can all be sorted by the players in terms of difficulty.

The reason for including rewards in being independent is to prevent a situation for where one raid turns into the new Cof1 while the other is an Arah 4 (using dungeons as an analogy they’d be much harder than either of those). This allows the value of the rewards to adjust dynamically.
I.e The Arah raid turns out to be fairly easy and 10% of players are able to do it, so the extrinsic value of those rewards are lower
The Dwarven raid turns out to be one of the harder Raids at 1% completion and as such the rewards have higher extrinsic value.

On rewards themselves I’ve already covered what I’d like and how I’d like it. With the bottom line that the rewards are hard locked behind advancing past certain points and not trade able.
my system would be having each of the bosses drop a guaranteed chest: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first#post4522305

An alternate system suggested as a method for this was using Achievements and a vendor that is achievement locked at the end of the Raid. This way if you somehow skipped say boss 3 or Event 4 you can’t get the items it unlocks.

I.E Boss 3,5 and 6 in my example each have a unique unlock. 3 for weapons 5 for armor and 6 for a special crafting ingredient, If you are missing achievement 3,5 or 6 you can’t buy the crafting ingredient, if you are missing achievement 3,5 you can’t buy the armor if you are missing 3, you can’t buy the weapons.
Either way you should only be able to choose one of each from each run to encourage repeated runs I.E (1 weapon , 1 armor piece and 1 crafting ingredient copy).

2. On mechanics involving more mobility and manipulating the ability to use the dodge ability would be key process.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

2. All mob groups should be able to do everything at once.

If I want to be a Boon corrupter, I want to be useful in every raid dungeon. I don’t want to feel useless in a 4-5 raid dungeon while only be useful in 1 raid.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/16#post4529560

By doing this, even if it doesn’t destroy the zerk meta, at least every profession will have a diversity of builds that tries to cover many utility and role as much as possible.

Zoso.8279:

NoTrigger.8396:

Zoso.8279:

Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

lets say you have beaten 5/7 bosses and want to progress at the 6. boss now. if you die, and you will because you wont kill bosses first try, you have to start all over again?!

this “death = restart the whole raid” idea is something people havent really thought about for more than one second.

The only reason I feel its a good idea because it gives more incentive to work together and makes the event feel not only harder but also worth it! lol once you get past all them boss fights and get to the end your going to need a cig LOL!

incentive to work together and raids that not only feel harder but also worth it is something that comes naturally with challenging content.

NoTrigger.8396:

Zoso.8279:

NoTrigger.8396:

Zoso.8279:

Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

lets say you have beaten 5/7 bosses and want to progress at the 6. boss now. if you die, and you will because you wont kill bosses first try, you have to start all over again?!

this “death = restart the whole raid” idea is something people havent really thought about for more than one second.

The only reason I feel its a good idea because it gives more incentive to work together and makes the event feel not only harder but also worth it! lol once you get past all them boss fights and get to the end your going to need a cig LOL!

incentive to work together and raids that not only feel harder but also worth it is something that comes naturally with challenging content.

The challenge will eventually be learned. The risk of fail is constant. The more you know the challenge the better your chance of winning but that feeling of “oh man I die here its back to square one” is extra incentive (if your looking for a challenge and not just another dungeon like speed run scenario) . Look back at old console games. Games atm are fail and nothing really happens. No real danger in failing. If this is going to be “hard” content then when you fail it should reflect. Im a casual player but even I see value in this. I just feel if this if going to be hard content the game shouldn’t hold on to your hand the whole way.

I haven’t read the entire thread, so forgive me if this has already been said.

One thing that makes GW2’s combat unique is the power of combos. Some combinations are already very common in dungeons. These include fire-field blasting, smoke-field blasting, and lightning-field blasting. While this concept is super cool, it’s no secret that some of the other combos are significantly less useful. Dark, Ethereal, and Poison fields specifically are rarely useful in dungeons. A further problem with the current system is that blasts are almost always more useful than other types of finishers. I think having asymmetric importance of different finishers and fields is fine for the combat system, and even something that should be encouraged actually. However, in current dungeons I’d argue that the instances do not offer enough opportunity for enough combinations to be useful.

I think that creating instances in which a larger amount of combinations are viable is a great way to make team-work oriented gameplay which caters to GW2’s combat system’s strengths. To give you some examples:

• While weakness is already used frequently in fractals, applying weakness could be required for certain bosses (perhaps they have an endurance mechanic like players?). This would have two effects. The first is that obviously poison fields will be more desired. The second is that leap finishers, which provide longer weakness for single targets, will be useful for that boss, instead of simply blasting the field.
• Confusion on a certain boss could be made very strong during specific phases to increase the viability of ethereal fields as a combo-field. This would cause the numerous projectile finishers in the game to be more useful than the are currently as well.
• Bosses could be designed with blind mechanics to increase the viability of dark fields. While blinds are already often used by thieves to control trash packs, this is not usually by blasting or leaping on a field. I think that if blinds became more important, Necromancer in particular would be more useful for organized groups as currently Necromancer doesn’t offer enough utility for dungeons compared to other professions.
• Provided NPCs could be designed that wouldn’t bug out (Curse you, Detha), you could create a fight where blasting retaliation on certain NPC targets would be necessary. I could see a fight like this where there are groups of four NPCs that group members run into, blast a light field placed there, and the boss attacks the NPCs, hitting himself as well. The retaliation from the NPC attack would be the only thing that breaks the boss’ armor or removes a buff, or anything of that nature.

These are just a few examples I could think of. My basic point is that, when designing the combat in these instances, I would hope for encounters deeply rooted in combo field coordination. To me, this is one of the key strengths of GW2’s system that could be even more interesting with instances tailored to promote the usefulness, or even necessity, of a greater number of combinations. I can imagine particularly difficult bosses punishing players for slow or sloppy field placement as well by requiring different combinations in quick succession.

Needless to say, this combo-field coordination should exist equally alongside other GW2 mechanics that have been mentioned such as dodging, timely crowd-control, and intelligent positioning. I hope my post is useful to you, and I should comment that I am incredibly excited for this type of content possibly appearing in Guild Wars 2.

Another potentially interesting raid variation could be, say, an assault on Kralkatorrik and implementing the GW2 Beta party…

Say priory discover a potential cure for reverting branded effects that haven’t been “fully corrupted” an individual.

Raid progresses with separate teams working through a zone/dungeon – a failure results in a Resurrection as Branded where the team needs to survive NPC vigil assaults using branded skills until an ally group can let priory NPCs get to and heal you so you can continue your path (other players won’t come into contact with this group for PvP). An alternative to instant event failure but still requiring a difficult survival with skills you aren’t used to in order to continue.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Core Combat:

Damage:

• Target prioritization/swapping: Identifying the biggest threat and killing it first is as basic as it gets. This is rarely seen in Guild Wars 2, with one of the few examples being the Molten Alliance Protector; or rescuing an ally out of a Mordrem Prison during the Shadow of the Dragon.
• Target splitting: It might be important to divide the group up in order to keep pressure on different targets that are spread out. Perhaps bringing those two targets together would be detrimental to the group, thus they have to be slain far from each other. (As an example)
• Burst Phases: These are periods of the fight when a small window of opportunity opens up and the damage dealer can take advantage of it. This is actually seen quite often in Guild Wars 2, with fights like Shadow Behemoth or the Triple Trouble Wurm.
• Condition & Power Creatures: Similar to the Partially Digested Husks, there could be creatures that are more beneficial to attack with Conditions and some creatures more beneficial to kill with Power damage. A good damage dealer would be able to recognize where they are most effective, and overall a team would be faster and more efficient if they understood their strengths on each encounter.

Control:

• Creature Positioning: One drawback of Guild Wars 2 is that it’s difficult to tell who a creature is targeting. If this was made clearer, then positioning a creature could become a more important mechanic. We’ve seen this briefly in fights like the Dredge Fractal with the Dredge Powersuit. Imagine if there was something very simple showing which player had aggro such as, if you targeted a creature, a small red ring would appear under its target to show who it is focused on. This could even promote using this in new ways as well, like “aiming” a boss attack at a location.
• Interrupting: While every player can provide some sort of interrupt, it’s hardly ever needed in the game. The only times I’ve ever bothered with it are against the Molten Alliance Defenders and Tootsie from Dry Top. There are issues of clarity when it comes to creature tells in large groups due to particle effects obscuring it. A PvE cast bar would solve this, but that sort of suggestion is off-topic.

Movement:

• Constant Pressure: In WvW, even in the most “zergy” of fights, these fights are very mobile. This is because in these PvP engagements, they are under constant pressure from lots of AoE. This sort of mechanic is not difficult to replicate in PvE. We saw a bit of it during the Queen’s Gauntlet encounter of Salazaan; just imagine it on a larger scale.
• Environmental Hazards: Making the environment the enemy is one of the best ways to engage and challenge players in a fight. The rotating laser walls of , Liadri’s Shadowfall, the trampling centaurs of Kuraii, and the floor of the Thaumanova Anomaly are all great examples of this. They are predictable and thus making them a hazard that is easy to process but remain a constant, looming threat.
• Moving Platforms: We saw these briefly in Super Adventure Box: World 2. I have to ask: Why isn’t this used more? A battlefield being ripped apart and coming together is something I would like to see and can honestly say has not been done in other games.
• Boss “Sweet Spots”: This would require something brand new, but simply put I am unsatisfied with the large stationary bosses that exist. There would be more room to explore positioning if a creature had visible, vulnerable spots; or a boss with different “parts”.
• Spread Out and do “Something”: The Legendary Flame Effigy from Citadel of Flame, Path 1 used to be more challenging on launch. Some groups had to disperse and quickly destroy the crystals and were forced to do that because of how much area these crystals covered and because of the amount they healed for. What this taught me was that forcing a group to cover a lot of ground is one way to encourage movement and spreading out.