Guild Wars 2

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Agony. Personally I would not want to use it for Raiding. I would like us to focus on the core combat and movement mechanics of the game and then build on that as a foundation to how encounters and mobs interact with the player and group.

Chris

That is some good news!
Though I’ve seen lots of ideas and even replied with my own preference based on my experience, though I’m curious of how you see progression. (repeating raids, moving on to the next one, or again, within the same one) Even if its on a high level, I’d like to know what the team’s idea is in regards to this aspect.
From what you stated here I get enough of an idea of what you are aiming for in terms of mechanics within the raid.

Edit: let me rephrase, not the team’s opinion and direction, but more yours, since within the studio you have more of a high level view of things and its easier to state your own opinion, specially this early in the process.

I wouldn’t sweat it, Chris. Your topic is a bit more nebulous and a lot more loaded. I’m starting Beast Mode in fantasy, so I’ll be cheering along with you.

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

Am I right to assume the bolded part refers to mechanics on encounter level, and not on the level of how the raid would function as a whole?

Crystal Reid.2481:

Dalanor.5387:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Nick.6972:

Just please top with all this Casual vs Hardcore.
Just because I’m able to play few hours in a week doesn’t mean I like hand holding and hate challenging and punishing content.
Likewise, I could be playing 12 hours/day for 2 years straight role playing and exploring without even touching dugeons, fractals, spvp or wvw.

I’m a few pages/days behind, but I would like to bring up this post again for the sake of keeping things on track.

I’ve seen the terms casual and hardcore thrown around a bunch in this thread. Those terms are too loaded and are going to have different meanings for different players. This thread is about brainstorming what raids could be in GW2.

Instead I propose we stick to using our own experiences as a gamer with regards to skill and play time when it comes to raiding.

Crystal! While you are here i would like to ask something.
Regarding to raids players would make bigger efforts to be succesfull, but what about time investment? Do you find it acceptable that raids are at least 1 hour long or you (ANet) wish to tailor it for casual players who has less playtime a week?
Oh another one. Weekly resets? Maybe only gate the rewards so players who run it for challenge or whatever they can still run through the content and practice.

It’s hard to comment on time investments because there’s no real answer to that. Every one has different play times. I’ve seen screenshots of players with over 10,000 hours played on their main character. Whereas I’ve only got about 800 hours on my main. Skill is also going to play an important role here too. A skilled group of players will be able to defeat a boss in fewer attempts, resulting in needing to spend less time within the raid.

Ideally, raiding should be about challenge, not time.

A very skilled group of players that might only be able to raid one night per week could potentially progress through a raid instance slower than a group of lesser skilled players that can play 4 nights per week. And yes, a group of very skilled players that have a lot of time are going to progress through the instance the fastest.

Yeah i understand you, but my question was more like about how big the instances would be. Think about WoW’s Ulduar or ICC. Even with good gear and team it took hours to complete which would be a lot considering how fast paced the combat is in GW2.
This is only an issue of course if you lack the time to play, thats why i highly suggest the progress saving and weekly resets so such players can keep up with others and won’t get in a disadvantage with rewards.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Resets are a much easier topic to discuss because they are somewhat less time involved. So let’s talk about that, and here are some questions for you guys to answer:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

Weekly, at the same time as guild missions to keep up some consistency in such things especially if it becomes a guild restricted thing.
Hmm i would say no to this. Correct me if i’m wrong, but without the ability to continue the progress after a week should encourage the group to step up and try to beat it next time. Of coures, life is a birch (old sylvary proverb, don’t infract me) and sometime you can’t play. Thats life. On the bright side you may fight against a certain boss again and get the exact reward you want.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

First: eww seahawks :p

If it helps, I’m trying to base my thoughts on the lyssa(?) temple event, where you must control and maintain the points to attack the priestess. That fight I still consider fun (except for the one shorting ape image >.>) because if you lose a point, the she resets and everyone gets knocked out. And although no one does it, a group going out and taking down trebs would help.

So fights that have one main objective with mini objectives are nice, as they force the people to move and think on their feet, and determine priorities.

I’m actually tempted to create a mock encounter if that would help further the discussion.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

Thanks for bumping this and bringing to my attention. That is definitely a cool idea, but of course it does touch a little on the topic of gear progression. So here are some more questions for you with regards to your proposal:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?
• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?
• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

Just on legendary armor:

• no, legendary armor stats = ascended
• perhaps not the SAME armor, but a different armor
• if anything, just make it an unlockable skin. Double click to add to wardrobe
• I’d rather it be some kind of scavenger quest hunt like was just done for the new mystic forge recipe. Except you would need certain items from bosses to throw into the forge, and craft the the parts of the armor piece.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Petrus Petraeus.7368:

Don’t know if this has been mentioned before in this thread, but thinking of content that is uniquely GW2 and could be used in designing raids, the first category of content that came to mind was the Guild Puzzle.

Guild Puzzles require cooperation, timing, jumping skills et cetera. ArenaNet has shown they can make amazing Jumping Puzzles and puzzles of other sorts. What I’d love to see in a raid are encounters that force teams to choose: either they can go toe-to-toe with a boss and bash their way to mobs, or they can split up: 5 people attack the boss and mobs and 5 others have to work their way through (jumping) puzzles with punishing AoE and mobs on their path to get to side objectives that if reached help defeat the boss or even are necessary to defeat the boss.

Imagine a giant robot, each limb of which can be turned off independently of each other by turning off a generator of some sorts. Getting there involves a Not So Secret JP style journey on a timer with at least 5 people required to get there to turn off the generator and fight off mini-bosses at stages in between. If they fail to get there in time, the specific limb get enhanced and can’t be shut off anymore, adding to the power of the boss on the ground. Turning off the generator also requires that a certain health treshold of the boss robot is reached by the fighting team on the ground; if they fail to coordinate this, the boss goes rampant.

It’s just a scenario, I’ve seen many people talk about JPs and SAB to pull ideas for raids, my main reason to post is to draw attention to Guild Puzzles and to provide a scenario in which this type of content design could work out in Raids. Am sure others can think of more insane and more detailed scenarios; eager to read them.

Cheers.

Heck. Think of any co-op platformer.

Think also of Natural Selection 2: imagine above robot fight taking place in some kind of giant Inquisition Lab. Have one player take place in some kind of control room, being able to spot enemies, open and close doors, drop bundles, activate and deactivate traps, deploy structures, direct allied NPCs, but doing all this is limited by the amount of resources the other players provide him/her, by collecting batteries or securing accumulators. At the same time they need their ’operator’s’ help to get intel on certain enemy mobs or manipulate the environment and drop the right bundles in certain ways to progress through the lab (imagine puzzles and insane Orcs Must Die type onslaughts that the players ‘in the field’ can’t beat on their own) – there are several ways forward, but if the resources are spent unwisely the progress of the team will stall and the raid will have to restart. I’d like that.

Fun Fact: We had to tone down the original guild puzzles somewhat due to the nature of them being in the open world. It would be a very frustrating experience if the Painting room puzzle failed because someone performed the wrong emote on purpose.

What do you think of using Guild Puzzles as encounters, but ones that have consequences for failing to coordinate properly?

You could probably guess :p, but I think using (jumping) puzzles to progress through a raid is a great alternative to what is generally done in gaming with running and so-called trash mobs. They test a group in other ways than combat co-ordination and are way more interesting. The only instance of a punishing Guild Puzzle encounter is the last part of Langmar’s Estate where you have to keep the rooms free of poison. There’s so many options though.

Today I played OS, entered a room, stood on a pressure plate: a ghost popped up, told me that if I’d move stuff would blow up. I moved. Boom. Team wipe! I had to use my other party members to search the room for a switch.

To come back to Langmar’s Estate and the paintings: imagine that the paintings would scream if people failed to do it right, causing fear and confusion on everyone in front of them and at the same time waking a large group of ghosts to fight with annoying cc to prevent a retry of the puzzle. In the meantime the clock keeps ticking. Imagine the first puzzle, with the weapons and the statues, where the statues come alive to fight you when you give them the wrong weapon.

I see rolling flame boulders, rising water levels, spike traps, arrow traps, bombs, mines, waking minions, shaky platforms, forced teleportations back, poisoned rooms, burning floors, blocking of doors and passageways and the passing of time which makes the boss at the end stronger and stronger.

The hard question is, how to make these puzzles sufficiently difficult to not become trivial for a really well co-ordinated, focused, Skypecalling group (contrary to an unruly, joking, costume brawling mob of guildes)? Anyone experience with good examples?

Chrystal,

“Ideally, raiding should be about challenge, not time.” Ideally, the raid wont be cleared the day it comes out and I’d even be all for the least possible informative UI (like not telling us where to go and what to do, let players discover it)

Raids should reset weekly
There should be checkpoints along the raid that people can reach with the rewards spread throughout those checkpoints (unlike dungeons where people just want to rush to the end instead of doing everything) People should be able to resume from the checkpoint they left at even with a different team based on who opens the instance.

On progression, I’d love to see a system where content is really hard, but unlocking perks, raid level or ranks making it easier the next time or puts us “on level” for the next one, I wouldn’t even mind raids requiring raid specific gear.
Basically 2nd raid harder than 1st and requiring “progression” from completing/repeating the first to set up for the next one. ex: Raid #2 requiring raid rank 3 which would be based on your accomplishments in the first raid?
ex: gorgones’ skill that can turn us to rock for X time within the raid, unlocking a perk that reduces that time (making progressing through the raid easier next time)
I think this would allow you to progressively equip raiders for more and more complex stuff as we advance.

Maybe GW2 can borrow some ideas from CoH’s Incarnate Trial “raids”. I’ll not spell it all out, but there’s a breakdown of one right here.

Note that it goes in phases. Phase one is kind of a zerg mess which actually gives slower systems a chance to finish loading into the instance. Phase two is a boss fight. Phase three is stopping a mass prisoner escape. Phase four is another boss fight similar to phase two but a bit tougher. Phase 5 is then fighting both those bosses together, needing to kill them both within 10 seconds of each other to keep them from reviving, and against a time limit.

I think the different phases were important here, as it really changed the nature of what you were doing and how. Phase three in particular called for more control than raw damage, and phases three and five both called for good teamwork.

The other important thing was that there were different side goals you could go for (somewhat like the additional achievements in the LS). The first time you met one of these goals you would get an additional reward. This meant that knowing what to do and paying attention was enough to have a good shot at the basic trial completion, but a good group could go for those additional goals.

I think keeping any raid fairly short is a good idea. Breaking it up into phases allows for large gameplay changes from part to part. And adding in more difficult side goals (for example, if a special weapon is given to weaken the boss, don’t use it) could be a way to increase the rewards and difficulty without cutting out a less skilled or organized team.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Bumping so we can stay focused on the two topics.

Chris

Is loot / treasure in “Progression” or a completely different subject?

Crystal Reid.2481:

Resets are a much easier topic to discuss because they are somewhat less time involved. So let’s talk about that, and here are some questions for you guys to answer:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

Personally i dont think raids should have any form of lockout. And i also think that there should be no daily or weekly reward. So a group can raid twice in a day and recieve the same rewards. It is challenging content and it will take time to complete so i dont think its an unreasonable suggestion. At the very least i dont think there should be restrictions on how often you can attempt and complete a raid. If things are over rewarding then i can accept diminishing drops or some boss chests to be locked behind daily reset. However I would be really unhappy if i have to wait a day or a week to enter a raid again. We dont need more timegates.

The rewards would be purely drop, chest and reward track related. So you dont have to worry about daily resets etc. Or if you are going to give a daily end reward like in dungeons. Then it should be minor and the majority of rewards should come from drops throughout the raid. This way groups can still get decent rewards even if they cant finish the raid. Obviously the rewards would be better for the final boss etc.

In terms of resetting instances. I definately like the idea of being able to save your progress. I think the best way would be to just make it automatic and saved to the raid leader or something. And if you want to reset then you can simply select a button at the raid entrance before you enter which will wipe the raids progress. It would appear underneath the usual “enter instance” button.

Crystal Reid.2481:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?
• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?
• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

Just make legendary armour same as legendary weapons. Desirable because of their unique effects, but not very stats desirable since ascended already got those stats.

Now, however, if we can swap stats for armours whenever we want (same as we do with legendary weapons already) they will be desirable for the raiding community but won’t place extra pressure for the casuals or people without one, because ascended would be equally worth stat-wise.

So imo Legendary Armour should share the same “swap stats” out of combat feature as legendary weapons. That will make them worth while they’re not more worth than ascended, hence it won’t devaluate ascended armour but will make legendary armour desired at the same time.

:D that’s the perfect solution. I can’t believe we found a perfect reward for raiding so early LOL.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

The discussion on foundational design is a bit more wordy. If I am correct, youre asking us to think of encounter ideas and mechanicsfor you, which becomes a lengthy post for us and I kind of thought you wanted us to be a bit more concise. Not many people want to type out 5000 word posts For this reason, I made a post earlier on some encounters in other games that were pretty nifty.

I think GW2 has all of the tools in place to make a mechanic-rich raid.

Combo fields are something that are woefully under utilized. Things like raid-wide debuffs that are dispellable via combo fields are at the core of your combat. In traditional games, you would have healers casting ‘purge’ or some other debuff removing skill on individuals. In GW2, have a Guardian, or some other appropriate class, drop a combo field..call it out on teamspeak and have players blow it up (metaphorically) to remove conditions. Currently, out of all of the combat, world bosses and dungeons in the game…nothing requires this. Nothing that I can think of off of the top of my head. But this is where you need to focus your efforts.

Dodging can also play a critical role for avoiding damage. I can’t remember the boon name , but whatever class can cast a field that increases dodge-energy regen rate or whatever. (I really cannot think today ).

The DPS and mechanics around DPS are kind of straight forward and you can do some interesting things, but I think this game has enough content that is based around burning mobs down. I really think you need to focus your efforts more on the support roles.

I can’t be sure, but are there not any “taunting” abilities for classes like warrior or guardian? “tanking” or other protective measures for your group will be difficult to discuss because there is no true tanking in the game. You can have a class build around taking a few extra punches but in the traditional sense, you’re not going to have one person taking all the hits like a normal tank. Again, for this reason, I would first focus on bringing the support roles/builds/playstyles to the forefront and finally letting those staff guardians, staff elementalists, etc..shine.

Yes? No? Maybe so?

I like the idea of a raid being the size of a small map. Sort of like a more focused Wurm fight, but with pre-requisite challenges telling the story of why you are fighting it. Your Dry Top analogy might be more apt though

A small map zone dedicated as a raid could be something GW2 could pull off quite naturally the way it is currently set up.

I can’t suggest mechanics etc though – not something I’m particularly strong at brainstorming

Crystal Reid.2481:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?

Absolutely, 100% no. Just as Legendary weapons and Ascended weapons have the same stats, Legendary armor and Ascended armor have the same stats. The difference is the addition of stat-switching, something I’d be pretty excited to have in armor.

Edit: one additional consideration… what if Legendary armor could be used on any toon and not limited by weight? So I could use the same gear on my Warrior and Mesmer? I’m not sure if that’s appropriate or not, but I’d LOOOOOVE to never have to craft more armor. :-D

Crystal Reid.2481:

• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?

I could go either way on this. I’d want the raids to at least have a unique Legendary armor skin which cannot be acquired elsewhere. I would think there would be additional Legendary armor skins available through other content: perhaps Fractals. A crafted set would also be a good idea, but it would have to reflect the time and effort required to obtain the raid set. Meaning: you shouldn’t be able to easily craft Legendary armor when it’s a pain in the kitten to get it through raids.

Crystal Reid.2481:

• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?

Honestly, there’s no way to play this perfectly. I would suggest considering a “shortcut” by using existing Ascended armor. Perhaps there’s a Forge recipe that converts existing Ascended armor to the raid-upgradeable Ascended armor. If it requires 20 runs to get the raid Ascended armor, perhaps it requires 10 of those charges to upgrade an existing Ascended piece? Enough that it still requires substantial effort on the raid, but less than it would take to create a new piece.

Crystal Reid.2481:

• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

My suggestion was a mix. The Ascended piece can, on rare occasions, drop directly, but you have a guaranteed progress track alongside it. So maybe you get lucky and save yourself some time, but in general, you’re making progress along a fixed path of acquisition.

Crystal Reid.2481:

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

Personally, I think the problem with Ascended weapons and armor is that they increased stats beyond Exotics. That’s why you saw a huge outcry at the initial release but not when the Tequatl weapons were added. Much less outrage at “oh, that’s a cool skin, I have to do WHAAAAAT to get it?” than “oh, my BiS gear is no longer BiS and I have to do WHAAAAAT to get the new stuff?”

Serophous.9085:

• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

Just on legendary armor:

• if anything, just make it an unlockable skin. Double click to add to wardrobe
• I’d rather it be some kind of scavenger quest hunt like was just done for the new mystic forge recipe. Except you would need certain items from bosses to throw into the forge, and craft the the parts of the armor piece.

my take on this:

• Ascended Armor is the precursor to Legendary Armor.
• a necessary ingredient for the crafting of the LA will drop in the raid (not necessarily RNG but maybe through achievements, getting skillful group oriented things done —> a perfect team could get the reward in the first try, not the norm for these challenging achievements though; definitely harder than the story mission achievements of season 2)
• mats you need to craft your ascended armor will drop more frequently in raids compared to outside sources (because it’s the hardest content of the game)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Agony. Personally I would not want to use it for Raiding. I would like us to focus on the core combat and movement mechanics of the game and then build on that as a foundation to how encounters and mobs interact with the player and group.

Chris

I harped on using agony as a core mechanic for raids because it eliminates the problem of segregating the playerbase.

If player A is a raider and player B is not…do you think player B will want to raid just to have the BiS gear or best gear he can acquire from raids? Well, if the only gear you acquire in raids are agony-centric gear…or gear that is specifically itemized for raids only(thus useless in the open world), then player B has nothing to worry about. He/she can go on about their business in Tyria without having to worry about raids.

But if raiding becomes an optimal area for awsome gear acquisition, whether it be fantastic statistical gear or aesthetic, then player B might become compelled to raid even though he/she initially did not want to.

I do think the discsussion around gear needs to happen at some point. And I would be in favor of ideas that do not compel player B to raid just to have the latest and greatest stuff. Raiding, in GW2 specifically, should be about killing difficult baddies with an organized group. Not about loot, whether its vertical in nature or aesthetic.

Crystal Reid.2481:

(imagine if we rebuilt the Marionette to be a 15 man encounter in a raid instance and that’s the entire instance)?

Stop writing in the forums, work into that! (hahaha i’m joking, don’t kill me xD)
I’d love the idea of fighting back the marionette once again, I just feel I had to say that <3.

About weekly or not weekly resets… I feel there should be a reset at some point. Otherwise you can’t balance rewards. If you can do the event 10 times per day, there will be players that will complete it 10 times per day. Now there will also be casuals that can only complete it once a week. How do you balance that both groups gets more or less the same chance to get the rewards? It’s not about spent time, it’s about balancing, a programmers nightmare.

I feel weekly rewards would be fine for a final chest or tokens based system, but the players can repeat the raid whenever they want for random drop rewards.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

Thanks for bumping this and bringing to my attention. That is definitely a cool idea, but of course it does touch a little on the topic of gear progression. So here are some more questions for you with regards to your proposal:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?
• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?
• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

1) Legendary armor shouldn’t be better stat-wise, just like Legendary weapons are like Ascended weapons. They should look unique and have the stat-swapping ability to set them apart from Ascended.
2) Personally, I’d make it so that it can be obtained from other parts of the game, much like crafting a legendary weapon is possible.
3) Make one of the final parts of the legendary armor craft be: Ascended Armor + 3 Gifts and factor the cost of that Ascended Armor into what the various gifts for legendary armor cost.
4) Instead of making a full legendary armor drop from a raid or a raid reward track, raids could drop various ‘Gifts of …’ instead, so that raid time investment approximates the legendary crafting time investment.

Crystal Reid.2481:

snip

Fair points but you know too how people hates Aetherpath being long (and risk/reward not being in line for the majority but thats a different issue).

Crystal Reid.2481:

How do others feel about this? Are these types of mechanics are the way to go to circumvent the lack of Trinity in the game? It’s not about tanks/healers, it’s about condi/reflect teams (similar to the Jungle Wurm).

I’d prefer soft requirements, based on those examples, over hard requirements. It’s a lot easier to say, “Okay, we need stealth, so ideally an engineer or a thief” than having to map out specific classes. The small bit of flexibility, personally, is something I’d appreciate.

Dalanor.5387:

Crystal Reid.2481:

snip

Fair points but you know too how people hates Aetherpath being long (and risk/reward not being in line for the majority but thats a different issue).

Not an entirely valid point since i found (and keep in my followers list) already more than 400 players that love Aetherpath and hate how short-lenght are the other dungeons.
Aether was hated because there’s fast dungeons and Aether can’t done “too fast”. The problem is not Aether being long, it’s that Aether takes X time while caudecus takes 5x less time. If All dungeons would take 1 hour to complete, this issue would had never exists because players would had been used to it. Right now the issue is that same content takes different time to complete, out of balancing.

I think that raids won’t have this problem since there’s not an stablished time for raids already. However, once we have raid 1, players will expect raid 2 to be that long as well.

Editted to add info

The problem behind profession specific mechanics brings uo the problem that eliminating the trinity solved in the first place. You can spend ages looking for a specific class to achieve a specific role or the raid will become unstuck.

I like the thought process behind the prof specific mechanics, but in practical terms it doesn’t feel feasible even with the “soft mechanic” approach suggested.

Crystal Reid.2481:

And ultimately, and here’s a totally crazy idea (because I love brainstorming)… Why can’t raiding be both?

• If we have a singular story to tell, can it just be a one off instance that tells one story and has one final boss at the end (imagine if we rebuilt the Marionette to be a 15 man encounter in a raid instance and that’s the entire instance)?
• If we have a much larger story to tell, can it be a full sized map complete with multiple encounters and hidden areas to explore (imagine if Dry Top was a 15 man instance and you progressed through the map learning the story of how a huge sand storm is coming, and the final boss is some sort of magical sand storm giant that summons chickenados as its minions)?

This feels close to what we had in GW1 as options of things to group up and do. The difference between UW/FOW/DOA and getting people together for a HM mission or a specific Zaishan Bounty. It also sounds close to what I’d throw together if asked to design raids as far as physically setting up an area.

Two options of “raids” which I thought up which could fit the spirit of GW2, and this suggestion above.

Long raid – Join norn leading a raid north of Frostgorge Sound. The goal is to strike out and push into the heart of Jormag’s territory. An entire zone roughly two-thirds as big as Lornar’s Pass (that’s still huge) which has a number of pathways and potential side-attractions (ending in chests). Alternate paths could include frozen caverns (need to use fire fields/skills to melt ice) which are treacherous to navigate, old Ebon Vanguard scouting trails which are sometimes used by Svanir or Icebrood. It culminates at the ruins of Gunnar’s Hold where a Claw of Jormag attacks, but has learned new attacks to fight with . . . and there’s no Pact assistance with weapons.

Short raid – A hole opening up in the ground leads to the Depths of Tyria and some old dwarven mines overrun with destroyers. A bit more free-form but the goal is to clean them all out before a boss will spawn. For variety’s sake, it is possible to have several different parts of the tunnel complex and it is randomized which one you wind up in, or which tunnels are sealed by cave-ins or left open.

TPenny.5071:

RAID ROLES

Build diversity should be promoted through event / boss mechanics.

There are lots of builds out there but so far content has directed to time efficiency with all berserker gear and damage builds. Some say it’s due to the effectiveness of dodges, agis, reflects and how they are just as effective with defensive stats as offensive ones. To farther variety skills should scale with stats but this is a topic for another thread in the future.

It’s no longer as simple as tank, heal and DPS. Guildwars2 doesn’t have traditional roles but each profession dips its toe in several pools.

• Melee damage: Being in melee range is the highest damage but also the most risky.

• Range Damage: Range is for situations where it’s not possible to melee or you are playing it safe to counter an event mechanic.

• Condition damage: Condition vulnerable enemies, such as wurm husks. Removal of the condition duration from the unshakable buff and have unique player conditions.

• Kiting: Aggro of the boss or mobs should feel less random, maybe focusing their gaze onto a specific player through mechanics. (ooze attractant)

• Runner: When things require you move fast this is your guy! See that button? Go press it! Pressure plate over there? He’s on it!

• Reviver: A troop of people able to pick up the downed as fast as possible, and have the best chance of reviving a fully downed player. (not sure)

• Support boons: Primary focus on keeping up vital boons for survival such as: agis, vigor and protection also using appropriate combo fields.

• Support reflects: Supports the raid by placing well aimed and timed reflect spells to counter projectiles.

• Support Condition removal: Exactly what it says on the tin, removes conditions were applicable.

• Crowd Control: Slowing and knocking back of enemies running towards your more vulnerable players.

Encounters should be designed with every role in mind and carefully consider what each could do before excluding one.

I’m going to quote this and say I agree with the list provided and it should be used in discussions about role design and maybe even in future gear stat design. Also I want to use it and apply it to The Triple trouble to show how the list can be applied to a Raid.

Condi-team roles: Condition Damage, kiting, Crowd control.
The condition damage roles on husks which can only take substantial damage from conditions. Not only that but they need to use a pull and proper kiting to keep them as far from the zerg as possible.

Reflect team: Support reflects.
Reflect team reflects eggs and damages the wurm when it goes down, not much to be said.

Zerg mini-roles:

Warriors: Reviver.
I think the thing my Zerg constantly has to remind me of, is to number off the war banners on Warriors, being able to revive a small group of players instantly is important to organize.

Guardians: Support Boons. I know TTS tends to run stand your ground and Hallowed Ground as an emergency measure against husks (some other guilds skip out on hallowed ground). They also can provide aegis on phase 2 for the Wurm’s jump attack.

Various professions: Support boons (might). Fire fields and blast finishers!

And yes I know most of these are done with Zerker gear anyways. However that I think that indicates we need new gear stat sets that cater to these roles with stats like Boon duration and such if we want some diverse gear sets.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Agony. Personally I would not want to use it for Raiding. I would like us to focus on the core combat and movement mechanics of the game and then build on that as a foundation to how encounters and mobs interact with the player and group.

Chris

Thanks for this direct answer Chris!!

I think it’s important to talk about replayablility as well when we talk about progression. Fractals (where we have agony) are highly replayable because of multiple factors. One of the biggest is the randomness in which instances are drawn out of the relatively big pool of possible fractals. Because of this it was possible to introduce agony and people run the same fractals over and over again.

I imagine that raids won’t work that way (just speculating: we get a big raid instead of multiple mini-raids which are put together, for the sake of telling a compelling epic storyline). To create raids which are varied enough so that people enjoy multiple runs there needs to be some kind of randomness involved.

Some dungeons use the mechanic of randomly spawning events during a run. I think this is a great concept which could be expanded for raids. – to make them fun running them more than once.

Random crazy idea: what if there were some hidden event-starters throughout the (huge) map and you’d need scouts from your team who spread out and look for these. It would be a very challenging activity which should be done while the core-group is in an encounter (e.g. boss-encounter). If one of the scouts is fast enough (timer) to make it to the hidden event-starter, the whole group would get some bonus-events right after the encounter (or an additional elite-boss with unique rewards).

TL;DR:
Organized groups would need to split the group into a combat group and a scouting group, the latter having the challenge to unlock a follow up boss which will be fought together with additional bonus rewards. Event-starters are in only few possible places and can start a number of possible events.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Dalanor.5387:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Nick.6972:

Just please top with all this Casual vs Hardcore.
Just because I’m able to play few hours in a week doesn’t mean I like hand holding and hate challenging and punishing content.
Likewise, I could be playing 12 hours/day for 2 years straight role playing and exploring without even touching dugeons, fractals, spvp or wvw.

I’m a few pages/days behind, but I would like to bring up this post again for the sake of keeping things on track.

I’ve seen the terms casual and hardcore thrown around a bunch in this thread. Those terms are too loaded and are going to have different meanings for different players. This thread is about brainstorming what raids could be in GW2.

Instead I propose we stick to using our own experiences as a gamer with regards to skill and play time when it comes to raiding.

Crystal! While you are here i would like to ask something.
Regarding to raids players would make bigger efforts to be succesfull, but what about time investment? Do you find it acceptable that raids are at least 1 hour long or you (ANet) wish to tailor it for casual players who has less playtime a week?
Oh another one. Weekly resets? Maybe only gate the rewards so players who run it for challenge or whatever they can still run through the content and practice.

It’s hard to comment on time investments because there’s no real answer to that. Every one has different play times. I’ve seen screenshots of players with over 10,000 hours played on their main character. Whereas I’ve only got about 800 hours on my main. Skill is also going to play an important role here too. A skilled group of players will be able to defeat a boss in fewer attempts, resulting in needing to spend less time within the raid.

Ideally, raiding should be about challenge, not time.

A very skilled group of players that might only be able to raid one night per week could potentially progress through a raid instance slower than a group of lesser skilled players that can play 4 nights per week. And yes, a group of very skilled players that have a lot of time are going to progress through the instance the fastest.

Resets are a much easier topic to discuss because they are somewhat less time involved. So let’s talk about that, and here are some questions for you guys to answer:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

i dont believe in resets at all. I dont really see much benefit to them. Its better for everyone to be able to try/assist etc. Your going to make people a lot less likely to be tolerant of failure/experimentation by only being able to attempt it a certain amount of times a week.

What exactly is the purpose of the lockouts?

I think of the raids like this

A multi level dungeon. Lets say room 1 room2 etc.
You can only start from Room 1 and continue as much as you can further
The party can enter the room1 in an organized form or just random like in mad kings lab
Once the first room goals have been completed, they can access the next room and so on.
The challenge is to keep your party full till the end, because if one player is killed it will have 30 seconds to get resurrected otherwise it will be kicked out.
lets call this a sort of hard mode.

To make an easy mode to this, every room is megaservered which means that every time a team goes in the next room, it will be merged with other teams if the room cap isn’t reached

So, it will be a challenge to get with the same team till the end of the raid because you are not able to invite others “to the last boss” like in the other dungeons
I hope you got the idea, although i have not explained it very good.

Okay, let’s fix the problem with hard proffesions, did you think of Inside raid roles?

Example:

• When we join the Raid, an NPC will ask for 1 volunteer to “keep safe X item” or whatever, it may not even do anything bad to you (like removing skills), just give you a buff, however if the player with that buff dies, you fail the raid.

There you have with a simple example. Roles inside raids, and every profession can do it. Not only 1 player that will be build as Tank, but also the role of others to Protect it. However we can elaborate this a little bit more and add a second role player.

Example 2:

• A player is poisoned (random player ^^) with X by a boss cinematic, so we don’t have a choice. Now that player will lose health over time and we need to make sure he doesn’t die.

With that example we already got healers role needed. However, anyone can do it or blast combos. People would eventually learn effective ways to heal.

Some of the bigger differences between GW1 and GW2 is the fact that you’d had to clear areas out of mobs. There was little skipping of enemies (I might be wrong, I didn’t experience the harder missions in GW1).

What would you think of enemies which have no aggro-reset? Imagine mobs following you around the whole instance until you decide to kill them. Would it be a chore for you or would you like that? (provided that enemies aren’t just trash-mobs which aren’t challenging at all and can all be killed easily by stacking-methods).

Crystal Reid.2481:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal Overview
Potential Raid Mechanics: Part 6 Profession specific interactions

Goal of Proposal
To make use of the unique abilities of specific professions.

Proposal Functionality
I see two levels of functionality:

Soft Profession requirements and Hard profession requirements, soft, its ideal to have this class but at least one other class can carry out the same task. Hard: only one class can carry out this task and is based on the classes theme.

Soft Profession mechanics
-Stealth, Example: You must make it from one end of a corridor to another while stealthed the whole way or an instakill occurs. Can’t be bypassed by mistform or other invuln mechanics.
Another possibility is a stealth portion of a raid where you want to make it through an area unseen with patrols and the like.

-Elements and fields: Water/heal fields to douse flames or activate effects, Fire fields to ignite traps or activate explosives, Holy fields for god statue activations etc.

-Reflection: To shield from an explosive blastwave or redirect a magical blast to blow open a door etc.

Hard profession mechanics
Necromancer: Raise a corpse to get information/password/open a locked room from inside etc.

Guardian: Use holy magic to activate a god statue/complete a ritual/ seal a passage preventing reinforcements.

Ranger: Can make use of a fixed position sniper rifle to hit a switch/take out a target of opportunity at some point to assist in progressing.

Engineerer: Can activate disabled golems/rig a door to blow etc.

Elementalist: Can make use of magical reagents, Activate elemental doors, converse with elementals etc.

Mesmer: Can jedi mind trick some goon into opening a door / reveal a disguised illusion, do the kasmeer portal trick.

Thief: Can Identify a trap, bribe for information , locate a weakness.

Warrior: Kinda at a loss for this one since a warriors kinda meant to be the generic everyman. can use brute strength to open something/ force their way through something at some point?

Associated Risks
-Hard class requirements can result in the same lf healer issue in other games.

There’s some very cool stuff in here, including a few I may or may not have prototyped out in my spare time. This specifically touches on Chris’ note about mechanics.

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

How do others feel about this? Are these types of mechanics are the way to go to circumvent the lack of Trinity in the game? It’s not about tanks/healers, it’s about condi/reflect teams (similar to the Jungle Wurm).

no, these type of mechanics are way too specific, you will be waiting around for mesmer just like you used to be for a healer. In wurm its all good because you will have many people, some will fill the gaps, but out of 10-15 people?

its all good that reflection might be useful, but that shouldnt be the only way to handle a problem ( or so much better that all other methods suck)

i feel like most of the condi focused enemies are too far in the condi department. Its ok to give an enemy signifigant defences, but making it so physical attacks do like 10 dmg is kind of ehhhhh. Its not as bad as needing reflect though. Every class has some access to conditions, and conditions tends to be playstyle whereas reflect is more of a gimmick.

Elrey.5472:

Okay, let’s fix the problem with hard proffesions, did you think of Inside raid roles?

Some interesting ideas in here. It reminds me a little of Southsun Crab Toss: we need a player to do “x,” who is best equipped and able to perform the role?

Roles like that would be an interesting addition.

I’m less keen to support a random selection by the raid as it’ll make it a bit harder to bring new people in to teach them – if the person played needs to play a pivotal role, it could cause some major drama.

So I think self-selection is the best bet, but either way, could be an interesting mechanic if used wisely.

just a small idea for raid encounters:

areas which amplify certain combo-fields

Someone stated the importance of players who provide a group with combo fields for support. What if there are areas which greatly enhance the duration of combo fields in order to support a counter to a boss-mechanic?

example:
boss “Venom” uses huge fields of toxic poison to keep players away. The boss-room area consists of a surface which enhances the duration of water fields though. Every water field clears a small area of the poison and the field stays for about 2 minutes. Players have to create paths through the poison-field in order to get some players who carry a certain thingy to the boss/ a certain location on the other side of the room.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Dalanor.5387:

Yeah i understand you, but my question was more like about how big the instances would be. Think about WoW’s Ulduar or ICC. Even with good gear and team it took hours to complete which would be a lot considering how fast paced the combat is in GW2.
This is only an issue of course if you lack the time to play, thats why i highly suggest the progress saving and weekly resets so such players can keep up with others and won’t get in a disadvantage with rewards.

Entirely up for debate. I’ll use two extreme examples here with some hypothetical made up assumptions:

• A raid could be as small as a singular dungeon path that takes 4 hours to learn, but can be completed in as little as 30 minutes on farm.
• A raid could be as large as the Eternal Battlegrounds with many different paths/encounters that takes upwards of a month(s) to learn, but can be completed in as little as 4 hours on farm.

And ultimately, and here’s a totally crazy idea (because I love brainstorming)… Why can’t raiding be both?

• If we have a singular story to tell, can it just be a one off instance that tells one story and has one final boss at the end (imagine if we rebuilt the Marionette to be a 15 man encounter in a raid instance and that’s the entire instance)?
• If we have a much larger story to tell, can it be a full sized map complete with multiple encounters and hidden areas to explore (imagine if Dry Top was a 15 man instance and you progressed through the map learning the story of how a huge sand storm is coming, and the final boss is some sort of magical sand storm giant that summons chickenados as its minions)?

I think us coming up with a system that’s the most flexible and allows for both long exploration Raids and short Boss battles would be best.

I mean even from the most “hardcore” among st us, there are some days you just want to have a quick and fun boss fight and some days even the most time-consumed people want to sit down on a lazy sunday and finish a long 2 hour Raid with our friends.