Guild Wars 2

Most of the mechanics I would like to see in this kind of challenging instances group content has been expanded upon. However, most of them already exist; such as the mechanics in many places of the game that are either ignored because of lack of impact, or that they are already understood by a majority of players and do not require the whole party to participate. I think there are a huge pool of mechanics that exist within the game now and they just need to be adjusted to be a bit more punishing and require more teamwork/coordination in these “raid” encounters

What about mechanics that haven’t existed in the game?

- mobs that take damage or gain debuffs from the parties heals

- mobs that require a specific condition to be upkept to take damage
Example: a mob that only takes damage while chilled or with vuln or cripple this reminds me of the shaggaroth in Arah though (on fire)

- something requiring the down state?
Example: a player goes down at the enemies feet and that allows extra damage, or initiates a burn phase, the player could be Rezzed after or kept down with party members partly rezzing for the duration (make use of extra down hp traits)
^ I know this one is a stretch????

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.

My answers for these questions:
- No. I would make it so that legendary armor has the same stats as ascended armor, only having the extra ability to multi-spec, like it is today with legendary weapons (on that topic, I would make ascended equipment able to dual-spec).
- I think that the raid shouldn’t flat out give legendary armor, only give a component that is essential to it.
- Legendary armor would be created from ascended armor, plus some raid components, plus a lot of other things. Just like legendary weapons need components that show mastery in many areas.
- In my vision the armor is not the reward per se, so it doesn’t apply.

The ability to dual-spec for ascended and multi-spec for legendary would open the door for the content to be much more challenging and focused. We could have a boss that can only take conditions, since people could “change” their stats for the encounter. Or maybe a boss could only be killed by an NPC, and all we could do was heal and boon this NPC (and not die). Many possibilities!

spoj.9672:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

for the sake of further ideas, would someone be so kind and explain to me GW1s raids in a few words. I’ve watched Woodenpotatoes Underworld-vids and it looked quite boring to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I get what eveyone loved about these.

What I know about it:

• it’s instanced and a big map with possibilites to teleport (just like our GW2 maps)
• there are 10 quests you can finish (aren’t events superior to quests?)
• there are some hard enemies (quite similar to Cursed Shore)

What’s the difference? Those seem to me a bit like GW2s lv.80 maps, maybe a bit more difficult.

Just think of them as elite zones. With unique and good rewards. And no open world interference. Thats whats so appealing. It would be nice to have a very challenging explorable zone which is instanced with various quests/events and bosses. Which is the appeal.

Imagine if you will,

Cursed shore, All of the events all of the quest lines and all of the little things. ( all of which make GW2 really good)

Now make it so it is instanced. Only one wp, and there are only 15 of you.

Ropechef.6192:

spoj.9672:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

for the sake of further ideas, would someone be so kind and explain to me GW1s raids in a few words. I’ve watched Woodenpotatoes Underworld-vids and it looked quite boring to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I get what eveyone loved about these.

What I know about it:

• it’s instanced and a big map with possibilites to teleport (just like our GW2 maps)
• there are 10 quests you can finish (aren’t events superior to quests?)
• there are some hard enemies (quite similar to Cursed Shore)

What’s the difference? Those seem to me a bit like GW2s lv.80 maps, maybe a bit more difficult.

Just think of them as elite zones. With unique and good rewards. And no open world interference. Thats whats so appealing. It would be nice to have a very challenging explorable zone which is instanced with various quests/events and bosses. Which is the appeal.

Imagine if you will,

Cursed shore, All of the events all of the quest lines and all of the little things. ( all of which make GW2 really good)

Now make it so it is instanced. Only one wp, and there are only 15 of you.

Pretty much. Only difference is it would have a bit more structure and some clear end goals. So it would have various events and each event chain would lead to a different boss. And then after completing all those chains you unlock a final chain which leads to the big bad end boss. So from the start its very much a case of you choose what to do in what order and how to do it. Theres no predefined routes or clear instructions.

cesmode.4257:

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but curious what people think about environmental objects being used in raids(or any content for that matter..but specifically raids). For example you see a “rock” or a “piece of scrap metal”. When you run around the world you see these objects you can interact with..pick up a piece of rusty metal and swing it at something for …pitiful damage *. Always wondered why these were in the game if they were so weak.

In any case, what about using this feature in a raid. We see something similar in a Fractal where we need to pick up boulders or something to break a shield. Something similar and even expand upon it for a raid.

Thoughts?

This interests me too, a lot.

I think not just the random objects you can find on the floor should play a bigger part on raid instances, but also other kind of elements.

• Objects on the ground should go from random/not really useful to crucial for beating certain enemies. I would like to see skeletons on the floor from previous adventurers (fallen) and being able to pick up a sword, or an axe from the ground. Maybe find a legendary hero dead, and being able to pick up his sword/weapon. This also adds another layer to the idea of exploring a raid instance: heroes from the past also visited this places, you can learn from them.

• There should be some destructible objects too, like rocks, crates, walls, etc. Breaking the environment is also part of exploring, and having enemies break them, not just adds to the immersion, but also, let us interact better with the terrain: for example, getting behind a rock, that an enemy can destroy, modifying the terrain for the rest of the fight. Or having a rampaging beast charge at you, you take cover behind a wall, and make it pierce it and get stuck (assuming it has horns…) for a brief moment, allowing you to dps it down. There is tons of ways you can make the environment add to the fun and depth of combat, specially with how dynamic gw2 combat already is!

• Doors, locks, chests, keys: This are part of the classic RPGs, why we don’t have them on GW2? I would like to have to explore further, find a key (or take it from an enemy) in order to open a door. Or a chest. This could potentially add to a way of randomization that makes the mini-map relevant. How many times do we look at the map when inside a dungeon, other than for using a WP?

• Machinery and siege weapons: I think that siege weapons should be the base of fighting raid bosses. But in my opinion, they should work like the cannons we used to see on the long lost Raid on the Capricorn pvp map. I want to have to go and get cannon balls in order to use a cannon. Why? Just to annoy myself and others? No, because this can lead to interesting mechanics. For example, with limited ammo, having a great shot with a cannon matters. Or having to enter a high monster density zone in order to get the valuable ammunition necessary to damage a raid boss.
  In addition to this, I want to have more “trap interaction”. Obsidian Sanctum (in WvW) has a lot of this, but more often than not, we don’t even look at the traps and contraptions that exist there. There is some of this on some dungeons, but I think that it isn’t enough, if operating dungeon equipment (or being a dungeoneer) is relevant, this could lead to more build diversity. There is an optimum for combat, but does combat has to be the only role we can fulfill inside a raid/dungeon? Among others, like defending an npc, or holding a point, or resisting damage in order to reach something (look at the river of sand in front of prosperity, even if not that important, there is an achievement that ask you to survive long enough inside of it, and you have to change your build to do so!).

Why stop at bundles? Why not use transformations too? Tonics and the like (can be bought as a gold sink or given by npc during the raid).
It could be useful in multiple circumstances:
*1*There are a lot of mobs in a field that continuously gives them protection, regeneration and retribution. They don’t chase players and reflect projectiles.
Now players can try to knock them back one part at a time and then kill them. Or some or all players can turn into something that frightens the mobs (Ettins/Dragon Minnions/Wasps/Spiders) and make them run of a cliff or into an area where they can be more easily dealt with.
2 There is a heavily defended castle that the players need to assault. It has a lot of devastating siege equipment and other defenses at the gate (like the ascalonian fractal but more immense).
The players can employ their own siege, already placed in the field, which the defenders will often sally out to attack. They also have longer ranged bundles (like jormag fight) available to target towers which onagers (catapults) that are routinely do an attack like the mai trin cannon phase.
Or all or some of them can use tonics that they had bought to turn into enemy soldiers and infiltrate the door. They can avoid the fight entirely (and lose rewards from successful destruction of the towers and the gate) to quickly get to the boss. Alternatively only a small team infiltrates the area and they covertly sabotage the siege weapons and try to open the gate.
3 It opens up underwater quite a bit. It removes the problems of underwater class balance, gear requirements, utility selection etc. If everyone turns into the same thing (krait/shark/jellyfish etc) they will be equal in their effectiveness. Alternatively they can turn into different beings each of which serve a different role (CC kraits, Krait Shamans, etc).
Or hey, maybe we can turn into Largos.
4 Having one person turn into a giant/colossus/golem to fight a boss giant/colossus/golem that can only be reliably CCed by something as big as them. All the while the other players use turrets to heal the friendly being while hurting the boss and another group defends the turrets and another assaults the enemy turrets or helps keep mob off the transformed player. If the giant boss isn’t held in place he can make the player’s jobs harder by doing big aoe attacks and knockbacks.
We can have a giant robot deathmatch between a golem and the Destroyer of Worlds in SE story. The players should be able to switch the giant role if needed (it can have a cooldown and a limited duration) another person can turn into a giant when the other player reverts.
5 Transformations can also provide a unique way of travel in raids. Players can try to run a dangerous narrow part while under assault of CC and siege which can knock them off the passage and kill them (they return to the start of the passage). They also have to escort a dolyak (which can’t be CCed but will get hurt by the siege) through the path.
The players can then turn into a creature than can jump to previously not accessible platform to destroy the siege (shouldn’t be very well guarded and so can be done in the transformed form). The players may take care of all the siege before escorting the dolyak but will have to back track and it will take longer. Doing all this simultaneously would be more dangerous but faster. Ignoring the siege may be possible but very hard.

The tonics could be given right there by the NPC but I think having to buy a stockpile before the raid would be better. It would mean that players need to do more preparations and would have to learn when to use what tonic. They may be dropped as rewards at the end and by trash mobs. Rare chance to get unlimited versions.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Why stop at bundles? Why not use transformations too? Tonics and the like (can be bought as a gold sink or given by npc during the raid).
It could be useful in multiple circumstances:
*1*There are a lot of mobs in a field that continuously gives them protection, regeneration and retribution. They don’t chase players and reflect projectiles.
Now players can try to knock them back one part at a time and then kill them. Or some or all players can turn into something that frightens the mobs (Ettins/Dragon Minnions/Wasps/Spiders) and make them run of a cliff or into an area where they can be more easily dealt with.
2 There is a heavily defended castle that the players need to assault. It has a lot of devastating siege equipment and other defenses at the gate (like the ascalonian fractal but more immense).
The players can employ their own siege, already placed in the field, which the defenders will often sally out to attack. They also have longer ranged bundles (like jormag fight) available to target towers which onagers (catapults) that are routinely do an attack like the mai trin cannon phase.
Or all or some of them can use tonics that they had bought to turn into enemy soldiers and infiltrate the door. They can avoid the fight entirely (and lose rewards from successful destruction of the towers and the gate) to quickly get to the boss. Alternatively only a small team infiltrates the area and they covertly sabotage the siege weapons and try to open the gate.
3 It opens up underwater quite a bit. It removes the problems of underwater class balance, gear requirements, utility selection etc. If everyone turns into the same thing (krait/shark/jellyfish etc) they will be equal in their effectiveness. Alternatively they can turn into different beings each of which serve a different role (CC kraits, Krait Shamans, etc).
Or hey, maybe we can turn into Largos.
4 Having one person turn into a giant/colossus/golem to fight a boss giant/colossus/golem that can only be reliably CCed by something as big as them. All the while the other players use turrets to heal the friendly being while hurting the boss and another group defends the turrets and another assaults the enemy turrets or helps keep mob off the transformed player. If the giant boss isn’t held in place he can make the player’s jobs harder by doing big aoe attacks and knockbacks.
We can have a giant robot deathmatch between a golem and the Destroyer of Worlds in SE story. The players should be able to switch the giant role if needed (it can have a cooldown and a limited duration) another person can turn into a giant when the other player reverts.
5 Transformations can also provide a unique way of travel in raids. Players can try to run a dangerous narrow part while under assault of CC and siege which can knock them off the passage and kill them (they return to the start of the passage). They also have to escort a dolyak (which can’t be CCed but will get hurt by the siege) through the path.
The players can then turn into a creature than can jump to previously not accessible platform to destroy the siege (shouldn’t be very well guarded and so can be done in the transformed form). The players may take care of all the siege before escorting the dolyak but will have to back track and it will take longer. Doing all this simultaneously would be more dangerous but faster. Ignoring the siege may be possible but very hard.

The tonics could be given right there by the NPC but I think having to buy a stockpile before the raid would be better. It would mean that players need to do more preparations and would have to learn when to use what tonic. They may be dropped as rewards at the end and by trash mobs. Rare chance to get unlimited versions.

I agree, I forgot about transformations, but your ideas sound cool!
There is a lot of creative interactions that can happen with it.

Baltzenger.2467:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

snip

I agree, I forgot about transformations, but your ideas sound cool!
There is a lot of creative interactions that can happen with it.

Totally forgot about these! I second it.

And what about consumables? Not neccessary the ones that can be purchased in the open world.

Dalanor.5387:

Baltzenger.2467:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

snip

I agree, I forgot about transformations, but your ideas sound cool!
There is a lot of creative interactions that can happen with it.

Totally forgot about these! I second it.

And what about consumables? Not neccessary the ones that can be purchased in the open world.

I imagine that if we get raids with themes similar to what we see on the Open World, nearby consumables (those you can get from hearts, or that are relevant to the theme of the zone) could be used, or even new ones, that you have to craft for certain utility inside of raids.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

3 It opens up underwater quite a bit. It removes the problems of underwater class balance, gear requirements, utility selection etc. If everyone turns into the same thing (krait/shark/jellyfish etc) they will be equal in their effectiveness. Alternatively they can turn into different beings each of which serve a different role (CC kraits, Krait Shamans, etc).

YES. I want to do this.

A raid of players turned into sharks just sounds a little too awesome to me.

Or Largos, maybe.

I want to do this.

i know i may be asking something stupid but is there any chance ANY at all to bring back healing in gw2 ,dedicated healing ? cuz i dont see raids work whit out healer they just seems shallow to me whit out it somehow ?? Can any dev tell me if they have ever discus this as expansion or something ofc doge can stay .

Gele.2048:

i know i may be asking something stupid but is there any chance ANY at all to bring back healing in gw2 ,dedicated healing ? cuz i dont see raids work whit out healer they just seems shallow to me whit out it somehow ?? Can any dev tell me if they have ever discus this as expansion or something ofc doge can stay .

I feel pretty comfortable telling you that they will not do something so drastic. It would be a complete overhaul of nearly the entire game to do something like this.

Fernling.1729:

Gele.2048:

i know i may be asking something stupid but is there any chance ANY at all to bring back healing in gw2 ,dedicated healing ? cuz i dont see raids work whit out healer they just seems shallow to me whit out it somehow ?? Can any dev tell me if they have ever discus this as expansion or something ofc doge can stay .

I feel pretty comfortable telling you that they will not do something so drastic. It would be a complete overhaul of nearly the entire game to do something like this.

yes thac why expansion will work perfectly for that how to return players and invite new healing i love to heal in games bro

Gele.2048:

i know i may be asking something stupid but is there any chance ANY at all to bring back healing in gw2 ,dedicated healing ? cuz i dont see raids work whit out healer they just seems shallow to me whit out it somehow ?? Can any dev tell me if they have ever discus this as expansion or something ofc doge can stay .

I doubt they change healing for the game, but I could very well imagine that they have a raid which changes the rules while inside. Imagine all self-heals in the raid were made useless and only water field combo finishers would do the job of providing a good heal.

They could give us environmental weapons (only 3 available for each raid) which provide the only heals available.

Anet has all the options really, to change the rules inside of instances to try out new things.

I really like the idea of multiple teams working together. However, the 15 man thing has a charm, so i also like the suggestions that have been around of a “culmination” type of thing where everyone groups together to finish off the raids.
Here’s a… i dunno, i suppose i’ll call it a template? Encounter proposal i was thinking of. Note that this is for the.. ‘smaller’ variant of raid, more dungeon-esque, of the “half-hour-to-complete” type.

I was thinking of a split up raid. The raid starts, and the group progresses through a guild-puzzle esque start with a few smaller encounters, a few things to solve, perhaps a champion mob or two.

Then, they meet the big boss, at which point the group splits up. I’ll base this around 20 people, but it’s easily adjustable to any other size.

This is where the encounter gets split up, both in team and in multiple stages. Half of the team engages the boss, trying to keep it occupied and slowly whittle down its health. In the meantime, the other half of the team has to complete individual, smaller problems, in order to let the main boss team advance, potentially being pestered by thrash mobs requiring some of them to defend those doing the puzzle. If the secondary team doesn’t manage to complete their objective in time, the boss regenerates and deals out a large, but non-lethal, AoE damage, forcing the attackers temporarily on the defensive and forcing them to recover while the other team attempts to complete the puzzle.
Once all puzzles are completed, the boss gets to a final room, where it grows in size and power, and the full team reassembles to take it down.

I think this gives interesting opportunities to implement mechanics. I think it’s very important that every profession gets to play to their strengths here, so we don’t see the exclusion of necromancers and other professions with poor (AoE) DPS. Rather than just plain DPS the boss, the main fight would also focusses on endurance and outlasting the boss, giving much more use to support builds, healing builds, and condition builds, without taking away from the usefulness of DPS builds. It creates an environment where berserk and full-on glass cannon isn’t the best way to go anymore, and making people strategise and choose between the different skills they could be using.
At the same time, the puzzle aspect makes it so that even those who enjoy kitten combat less get to be productive in the raid, and gives a boost to utility-based professions like mesmers.

As for actual boss mechanics… i think nice idea’s for mechanics would be those where you’re taken away from the usual idea of combat, and forcing you to do other things than you would in normal combat to deal damage or avoid damage. I’m thinking of things like phases where the boss goes invulnerable and you have to complete something specific in order to deal a chunk of damage and get on with the fight, like Tequatl. Another interesting idea i thought of would be a mechanic where the boss starts channeling an incredibly powerful, near-lethal AoE attack at specific points in the fight, unblockable by traditional means, and instead people have to do something (say, for example, mine power crystals around the area and place them into dampeners) to reduce the power of the attack to easily tank-able levels. Environmental weapons could work well with this too, giving you a replacement set of skills that you need to use instead of your normal ones to damage the boss during specific intervals.
Of course, all of this would be alternated with normal combat. I really like GW2’s normal combat mechanics and they should definitely be part of the fight. I just think this kind of mechanic would make for a more interesting fight, and further increasing the potency of defence and utility over the major advantage that full DPS holds right now.

Hi everyone, I’m Atlantino and I’m one of the leaders for TTS, like Light Guardian Jack. I figured that since whatever conclusion is reached in this CDI would affect myself, and those I play with, I should probably chip in so here we go. This will come in multiple parts because it’s pretty long. Sorry <3

Proposal Overview
The proposal is to integrate hard core raiding instances into the current game in which a group of players would enter to find incredibly challenging content. By this I don’t simply mean needing a large amount of DPS or a new stack spot. At the present moment the most complicated world boss, Triple Trouble, which somewhat resembles a raid, already includes this. To fill this vacuum new mechanics will need to be created in order to stimulate higher level players. These will be discussed later. This proposal will include a list of potential new game mechanics along with implementation strategies as well as the general functionality of raids. There will also be a slight mention of rewards near the end, but this will be kept to a minimum.

Goal of Proposal
Amongst players who have successfully completed the higher difficulty world bosses a large number of times there often begins to grow a sense of boredom. Tequatl was incredibly hard when first buffed yet now an organised map can easily accomplish it. Experienced tequatl killers can kill tequatl in under 4 minutes (defence not included) and TTS has started running “chaos teqs” where there is no setup and the kill is still achieved with more than 50% of the time left on the timer. Triple trouble is somewhat similar amongst the groups which have it on farm. I have heard many a player say something along the lines of “Remember when wurm was challenging? It’s getting boring now that we do it 95% of the time”. By implementing incredibly hard core/challenging content, there will be an activity specifically to cater towards those who excel in a co-ordinated PvE environment.

Proposal Functionality
This section will be split into multiple sections. The first will discuss the basics of a raiding environment. Then I will go into details as to the types of challenges a player should expect. I will then briefly suggest potential mechanics which could be included. Finally I will touch on rewards for completing such a difficult challenge.

Basics of a Raiding Environment
Raids themselves are somewhat similar to dungeons in that they allow a (relatively) small number of players to co-ordinate to achieve a common goal. However, they differ from dungeons in aspects such as difficulty and amount of players.
The first issue with raids would be “how to get the raid members into the raid instance”. There are two potential ways of solving this. Firstly, the commander squad mechanic could be utilised (it already has a cap) and thus the entire squad would be invited to the instance. A second option would be the instance spawner to be able to invite members in their party to the instance in a similar way to current “taxiing” methods work.

The next question would be the number of players allowed in a raid. Obviously this could drastically vary depending on the raid itself however I would set the range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of a full 150. This would work in a similar vein to dungeons where they could be ran with less numbers although doing so would be far more difficult.

The person who initiated the raid should then be able to assign people with various set roles such as “commander” or “party leader” to enable further delegation of responsibility. It should be noted that anyone with a delegated role should not be subject to suppression over any chat (except whispering people not inside the raid) as this would hinder organisational efforts.

Expected Challenges
For raiding, players should expect the hardest content possible. There should be harsh penalties for failing to achieve objectives such restarting the task at hand or a long term debuff which reduces damage output or movement speed. This can be seen in a similar vein to the mechanic currently at the Amber wurm of Triple Trouble with the need of 20 harpoon shots. However, it could be changed where if more than X harpoons do not hit the target then all the players in the area get killed (tequatl wave). Essentially what we are looking for here is a mechanic that punishes hard for minor mistakes, because in the end that’s what incredibly challenging content is.

There will of course be boss battles in raiding environments. However, these bosses should differ from current ones (except perhaps tequatl). They should have massive amounts of HP and should take >8 minutes to kill, even with a quality group. Their mechanics should change as the fight progresses and become harder and harder as the fight progresses through its stages. What should be absent is the existence of a “burn phase” which is similar to tequatl or tri-trouble, as in tequatl on a good map, burns are chained and some mechanics are skipped entirely (Whirlpools, anyone?).

There should also be a large floor plan which needs to be cleared which is filled with mobs that are difficult to kill. However, there should not be one strict path. What should set a raid apart is that each instance should be different from all the others. A labyrinth type zone where the layout is different each time is a good example of this. The mobs which need to be killed should change accordingly and should be rated champion or higher (except in cases where the group is required to split up).

Speaking of combat, something which makes the current fights far far easier is the ease at which one can waypoint and thus return to the fight after death. I propose that in raids, waypoints only exist at the very start and the rest requires players actually reviving each other. This is to further create a challenge whilst also actually penalising those who die instead of “waypoint to Brooloonoo and run back.”

There should also be spot challenges similar to guild puzzles which require players to complete something BESIDES combat as those can be ridiculously challenging yet still pertain to a raid environment.

Potential Mechanics
There are already existing mechanics in the current game which would be great to incorporate into a raiding environment. Tequatl would make a great boss (with slight changes) and Triple Trouble is exactly what many players are looking for in terms of required co-ordination. There have also been many new mechanics recently which are great for raiding (e.g. boss in dry top which is invulnerable whilst its minions are alive). I believe these can be integrated, slightly changed, and combined to create incredibly difficult encounters. Imagine fighting 2 bosses such as the shatterer and claw of jormag and having to kill them within a minute of each other, whilst they are constantly healed by something further.

I’m purposefully keeping this section short because I don’t want to suggest such mechanics, I want to solve them. Those who were in TTS (or any group which regularly kills tri-trouble) often talk about “the time when we didn’t kill wurm for X weeks”. What the players are looking for is a puzzle that takes us weeks or even a few months to finally solve. As a leader of one of these communities (and thus one if its strategicians) I don’t think it’s in my place to suggest much in this department. But I can say the direction lately has been good Anet, just combine them in ways we’d never imagine and it’ll be incredible.

Rewards AKA EPIC LOOTS

I’ll keep this short because at the end of the day, I enjoy tackling the challenges with fellow players more than the loot, but I would like something to show off for it. First things first, for raid specific loot, there should be no RNG. There is a problem when raid/boss specific drops are rarer than legendary weapons (I’d estimate the number of legendries to outnumber the number wurmslayer armour by over 100-1). What I would like is a guaranteed drop be it tokens or a crafting item of which you need 10 to do anything with.

There are two things I’d want to see with raid loot. Firstly, skins. They’re easy to include and can be an awesome “hey I did this” item. However, they shouldn’t just be standard skins; I’m talking legendary/quasi-legendary level. They need a “wow factor”. The other reward I’d like to see is an account bound non-consumable item which, whenever activated, will buff certain stats (e.g. Berserker’s Aura grants ++Power +Precision +Ferocity in addition to armour/weapon stats). At the end of the day, a skin is nice and all, but I want to be but through the ringer with these raids and struggle for ages and a skin just doesn’t cut it. Something which actually rewards players by helping their gameplay would be what’s required.

Associated Risks
Major risk 1; players without community ties won’t be able to access raids. It’s a valid concern however I should point out that raids shouldn’t be for those who already struggle with existing content. Yes it’s harsh but at the end of the day there needs to be something which separates the top end PvE players from the rest (or else they get bored and leave the game). Also, there are ways of forming your own community for content. The forums exist for a reason; player to player organisation is possible.

Major risk 2; It’ll be too hard for players. Good. Again, it sounds bad but raids exist to challenge, you can’t particularly complain about being challenged in an environment which is supposed to be a challenge.

Major risk 3; Your suggested reward of a buff item like that would make it unfair for players who don’t want to run that content. This is a valid point. The buffs would give a benefit to the more experienced, particularly as runs should be incredibly challenging and thus discourage the unprepared/casual players. Yet doesn’t a similar system already exist with ascended items? Yes, casual players can access ascended easier but we are talking about content for hard core players. It would be similar to the ascended system but more stratified.

Nota Bene: this post represents my opinion alone. I am not posting on behalf of the entire TTS community or leadership base.
Sorry for the long post but I guess I had a lot to say

Hello,

Back to this topic. Sorry to rejoin late, I was delayed. I did not yet
have the time to read all the 17 new pages and did not find a summary in
the dev tracker. I get that the discussion moved onto mechanics but
please allow me to throw some ideas concerning previous points before
moving on.

Proposal Overview
This proposal aims at solving several raid access related issues at once
while at the same time retaining some of the GW2 open boss flavor

Goal of Proposal
- allow the “hardcore” crowd to enjoy very challenging content
- yet raids should not be restricted to that small population. It would
frustrate the “casual” crowd and developping content for a small part of
the player base is a waste of ressources
- semi fixed raid size (with scalability) to allow various number of
players to attend and avoid the frustration of being THE player in excess
- keep one of the GW2 defining flavors: open access bosses

Proposal Functionality
The raid system would be cut into two difficulty tiers with a somewhat
different functioning:
- in hardcore mode, the raid size is set to 10/15/20 (a multiple of 5,
the base of a group). The set size allows for custom tailored encounters
for a maximum of challenge. In this mode, the raid is fully controlled
by the “opener”
- in softcore mode, the raid size is freeform with scaling by tiers of 5
players to allow large casual guilds to play together. Since “casual”
gamers care less about watered down experience due to scaling, that
should not be an issue. Moreover, a mechasism is suggested below to counter this issue. In this mode, the raid is “open”, meaning anyone
can access it, thus retaining the “open” aspect of GW2 bosses. Similar
to guild missions since 06/09, a guild joining a raid will have a given
amount of reserved spots.
- in soft mode, the raid still has a min and max number of players (max
being larger than the hardmode counterpart). When players join the raid,
they are moved to a lobby. Once the minimum amount of players is reached,
a timer starts to allow more players to join in. Once the countdown ends or the max number of players is reached, players are allowed into the
raid. A similar lobby already exists in rated arena and may be reused

Associated Risks
- “casual” raiders may dislike having to share the raid

Proposal Overview
Here we look at a scaling system that do not water down individual
player experience as raids grow in size.

Goal of Proposal
As said by many posters, in many existing games the individual raiding
experience waters down when more players attend the game. This is due to
encounter mechanics that do not scale properly and only require a set
amount of player.

Proposal Functionality
GW2 groups count 5 players in. Many AoE are limited to 5 targets and so
on. Let us decide therefore that the base magic number is 5. Encounters
should then be designed around base mechanics that require 5 players to take
care of them. Every time 5 more players attend the raid, the base
mechanic is duplicated (on the other side of the boss e.g.) instead of
being made harder. This way, all players have to perform the task, how
many they may be.

ex:
- prevent adds to reach the boss: one more spawn point every 5 players
- boss follows on playere and hits hard: every 5 players, the boss
designates on one more player, hits twice as hard but the damage is divided
between players located in the same place. If the players move along different paths, then the boss inflicts heavy damage to the whole raid => all focused players have to react properly, whether they are 1 or 10
- players have to perform an action (e.g. molten metal bucket in dredge fractal): every 5 people in the raid, one more people must perform it at the same time as other so as to trigger the mechanism
- raid with several parallel paths (suggested in many places in the thread): let’s say 3 paths, each accomodates 5 players. When 20 players in the raid, the 5 players in excess all have to join the same path and this path scales for 10 players following the general principle hereabove

Associated Risks
- requires large open spaces. There is still a max number of players in
the raid because you can’t make 100 copies of the base mechanic in the same area
- may actually become harder to manage for raiders for larger raid sizes
- requires to think differently while designing encounters.

Proposal Overview
Rewards should scale with raid difficulty

Goal of Proposal
If we look at GW2 reward system (WvW and sPvP), we can see that everybody has access to the rewards. What differenciates good players from bad players (collectively) is how fast they can earn rewards. More WvW tokens for winning servers, faster track progress for won arena.

Proposal Functionality
Whatever they are, raid rewards should make use of a similar system that allows for earning rewards faster (and braging rights !) for hardmode raids, would raids use difficulty tiers

Proposal Overview
How to gate raid access and ensure that players meet some minimal class and general gameplay mechanics understanding, all with a GW2 flavour

Goal of Proposal
I suppose that raid leaders in vhl raids will know the abilities of each of their raiders. However, in large “casual” guilds, assessing each member ability to successfully raid becomes harder. The same problem arises if “open” raids are to be implemented. The raid
system should therefore gate raid entrance behind a GW2 flavoured mechanisms that allows to check that players can actually contribute to the raid

Proposal Functionality
Just as dungeon, raids would have a short history mode that can be beaten by groups of 1 to 5 people. Beating the story mode allows to join in the “explorable” version of the raid, the real thing. The history mode should check for understanding of the dodge mechanic, the combo fields/finishers and bosses should use a lesser form of some of the raid encounter mechanics so as to give raiders an idea of what to expect in the raid

Associated Risks
Many raiders dislike time gating

Proposal Overview
How to gate raids to make them last longer and tie them with one of the GW2 trademark system

Goal of Proposal
In many games, all raid encounters are available at once, the hardcore guilds beat them quickly then complain that there is not enough content. A classical solution is time gating.

Proposal Functionality
Raids could be released one encounter at a time on the same schedule as the (wonderful/dreaded) living story. This would allow to have raids last longer and give a very strong emphasize on the living story. Each released encounter would then have to tie with the current living story in a way similar to aetherpath in its own time. If we consider that, as the story unfolds, we go closer to fighting a dragon/any arch-ennemy that grows stronger, that could fit very well with having raid encounters growing harder as we go “deeper” in the raid.
If we go down this road, I would also suggest that attending an encounter requires to have beaten the previous ones. However, the different encounters of a “same raid” may be geographically distinct, as required by current living story, breaking away from the classical model of one raid in a same location. I think this may fit well with DnT suggestion.

Associated Risks
Some players really hate living story

And now two mechanisms

Proposal Overview
Holy trinity revisited

Goal of Proposal
More than anything, even more as a game grows old, raid encounters always need to add new variations. GW2 combat system is really good and I don’t want holy trinity back, yet from time to time it may be interesting to have one (part of an) encounter based on it.

Proposal Functionality
Some encounters could emulate the holy trinity thanks to the use of bundles. Some players would have to pick a “tank” or “healer” bundle giving them dedicated abilities (while damage dealers would retain their GW2 class abilities). Players carrying the “tank” bundle would automatically draw aggro.

Associated Risks
Some players may dislike the return of the holy trinity, even if it is in 1/20th of encounters

Proposal Overview
A GW2 reinterpretation of the classical stack<->spread mechanism

Goal of Proposal
I think everybody has seen the “disaster” that the stackign meta is in dungeons. I hope raids will discourage this behaviour except in specific encounter scenarii. Here is one mechanism to play around with it using some typical GW2 mechanics

Proposal Functionality
During an encounter, all players get a buff. If more than 5 players are too close to each other, they take large damage (this allows for the scaling system explained above).
On top of this, players switch between two states: one when they can stack (5 at a time) and one when they can’t (pick any mechanism of your choice that prevents stacking)
Finally, during the encounter, all healing spells or might granting spells or dispels are disabled. Yet the encounter requires heavy healing/damage/dispel respectively to win over it.

Therefore, players have to switch between a spread state and a 5 player stack state. During times they can stack, they will have to in order to use water/fire/light combo fields to get access to abilities that are required in the encounter but otherwise unavailable.

I’m going to go ahead and pitch an example of how I envision a GW2 raid. (planned with 15 people in mind)

Raid: Lair of the Mistborn
A demon of the mists, known as Mistborn Monstrosity, has taken residence in an ancient underground dwarwen city, and preys upon the surrounding areas at night. You can see where this is going, the beast has to be slain.

Entering the lair
When the group enters the ruin, it’s in complete darkness, like the dark room in Sharkmaw Caverns or the minidungeon in Dredgehaunt Cliffs. At the entrance, there are five permanent torch bundles to pick up. The torch could be passes around like a keg in Keg Brawl, would have a nifty skill or two, and would convey a buff called “illuminated” to nearby allies (no cap on how many), in addition to lighting the way. It would keep working if dropped, too. As soon as the players enter the main cavern, the Mistborn Monstrosity will start preying on any players without the buff, killing them in one swift blow.

Bringing the light
To fight the Mistborn Monstrosity, the players must first light up the city. Navigating the ruined dwarwen city while fighting off the spawn of the beast (trash mobs), the group has to light five great braziers located around the main cavern. Getting to them isn’t simple – the city is complicated and largely caved in, so some skilled jumping and coordinated exploring is required to find the route. At each brazier, a pretty basic boss fight occurs. Once the boss is killed, the brazier can be lit with one of the torches, and a few extra torches spawn.

Facing the Mistborn
Once all the braziers are lit, the darkness of the city is somewhat lifted and the players can see the demon, shrouded in darkness in the middle of the cavern. At each brazier, there’s a prism that can be used to direct a beam of light. Pointing all of these at the Mistborn starts the boss fight.

Enraged at the light, the boss will leap to random players. If the player is not near a lit brazier, the player will be instantly defeated and the boss will disappear from sight until the next attack. If the player is under the buff, however, the boss will do minimal damage and stays visible and vulnerable to attacks. For each light directed at it, the boss will take increased damage from attacks. At every 20% of health lost, the boss will enrage and destroy one of the braziers – the players there must quickly hustle to another brazier or they’re cut down in darkness.

All through the fight adds spawn to attempt to destroy the braziers, so they have to be defended – getting even one of them destroyed by the adds will result in failure, as then the boss will destroy the last brazier before it is killed.

Once the Mistborn Monstrosity is slain, part of the cavern ceiling collapses, illuminating the city for good and revealing a grand end chest.

Notes
This would be a fairly simple raid, and would last perhaps 30-60 minutes.

If I were a boss in this game…

I’d always focus my damage on the opponent with the lowest HP. Most of the time, they are the ones with highest DPS as well, so I get rid of the guy hurting me most.

The notion of tank/healer/dd has made player focus their minds too much on the idea of a tank keeping aggro, IMO. I never understood why this would ever be clever acting on the part of the boss. I only know one (turn-based) MMO, where bosses and other mobs focus on the weakest players first. It makes fights way more delicate.

Not sure whether there is space to offer content options for small raids.. or if ‘small’ and ‘raids’ already contradicts itself, however I’ll repost a few ideas that I would like for smaller groups:

Proposal Overview

More guild and group content, especially guild/ group vs environment (in instanced areas)

For smaller groups (~ 5 minimum) to medium-sized guilds (no idea.. maybe 50 maximum??).

Goal of Proposal

Increases the diversity of content for groups or guilds and gives us some more options what to do ingame. Now there is still a lack in a few areas where there should be more content.

Proposal Functionality

Some ideas:

a) defend a building/ place:
you and your guild (or a bigger group of friends/ random people) face waves of mobs; you don’t have to care for picking up loot because everyone will receive it automatically after each wave/ at the end depending on how far and good your group is; mob strength scales on player number and will increase with each new wave

there could be several modes to choose from before it starts like ‘infinite mobs’ (ends when you are not able to kill them anymore) or a limited thing like ‘defend for 10 minutes’ or ’kill 500 mobs" and of course the area, landscape and mobs can vary, etc..

b) attack a building/ place:
you and your group/ guild attack a building and try to capture it, loot should be given at the end, mob strength scales on player number

several modes possible like “capture in 10 minutes” or “kill the chieftain” (for that one you first have to break through the wall, then kill lots of enemies before you get through to the chieftain), different areas, buildings etc…

c) mixed, but overly a friendly game option where your group is building a camp/ whatever and you have to gather things for that; from time to time you have also to ward off a few mobs, but the aspect is more in doing something friendly together

d) boss challenge:
you and your group/ guild are fighting together against random bosses (maybe some of the existing world bosses, too)

there could be also an option for single mode

a), b) and d) could both be offered in normal mode and hard mode

Associated Risks

People might enjoy it. (-;

Make it hard and rewarding ^^ all i want. Maybe chance for legendary even?
new legendaries which u can only get from raids?

oDe Da Beast.7596:

new legendaries which u can only get from raids?

Raids should not be “more special” than any other part of the game. That should apply also to rewards that they would bring. So, no raid-only legendaries (unless all other gameplay modes will receive their own legendaries, but i wouldn’t consider that a good idea). You could possibly use raid drops as components in precursor crafting (assuming all the current ways of getting precursors would remain, and that pecursor crafting would require components from other parts of the game as well).

raid progression.
As in what unlocks raids.
lets say each raid has possible finishing bosses.
beating each boss unlocks a different path, which leads to another raid.

so raid progression, between raids would essentially be like a map, beating different things takes you in different directions.

However, i would make it such that most raids are on the same difficulty/reward tier. Raid progress is horizontal in this case not quite vertical.

Eventually you could make some raids that are considered to be a teir higher in difficulty, but that would be much later.

I would have multiple starting point raids, (much like we have different starting zones)

I will keep this very short and simple:

Tower of Nightmares

Tower of Nightmares was an amazing map, and it demonstrated the highlight of GW2 that any players could group up, and help each other.

The only flaw was that it was introduced before Mega Servers.

How it could work, especially with regards to prevent “zergging”, it adding multipe pathways, and events which require slight coordination.

A player’s “Floor Level” (1, 2, or 3) is saved whenever they reach a checkpoint, and reset each time they reach the end chest. This promotes users to help other players on the first and second floors.

The atmosphere itself of the tower was amazing, and I really miss it. Please bring it back.

Also, PLEEEEEEEEAZZZZ bring it back! KITTEN EYES

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, if so it is a reinforcement of the original mention;

Revamping Story Modes with ‘Raid Mode’ to make them still playable content but for 10 people, but allowing for the Story to be told as the ‘story mode’ lore is richer than the explorable mode, and it would be a shame to leave it almost untouched save for the odd beginner to run to gain access to explorable where all the rewards are.

For example I will use Ascalon and Orr as templates:

Ascalon – Story ‘Raid’ Mode

Include an updated ‘tequatl’ style AI where 10 people, with good cooperation can take down said boss without simply tank and spank, where you would need good build diversity and strategy to succeed.

Add in more bosses (old ascalonian trainers and npcs could be a gold mine for lore based content).

Fight with Adelbern could involve a first phase which is similar to the first fight, second phase where he takes over a giant statue or uses magdaer to spawn a fire dragon-based giant fight, third phase, the ground collapses and you fight him in his purest form while intermittent phases are about disarming him, then attacking magdaer itself to break it.

Orr:

Similar AI changes as the ascalon section.

1 or 2 more bosses with lore-based introductions (another eye of zhaitan, maybe a risen gw1 character such as the charr general that led the attack against orr in history).

Zhaitan fight;

First Phase

Complete overhaul, still having the airship first phase but with more tactics and maybe multiple siege weapons to accomplish different tasks as Zhaitan is an elder dragon, so he wouldn’t just sit there and be shot down.

Second Phase

A ground based fight in which we fight a ‘wing-clipped’ Zhaitan.

Multiple-phase ground fight in which we keep Zhaitan grounded, and take down the extra heads.

Third Phase

Finishing Zhaitan off with the help of Destiny’s Edge, and killing Zhaitan outright.

Could use items gained for completing these ‘raids’ as prerequisites for a precursor scavenge hunt? Another discussion for another time.

So what kind of raids we are speaking about tho?

Open world raids?Random Encounters?Instance Raids? Possible raids in WvW too? Will they be included as a part of events? Will the player be able to trigger them somehow? Or will you see some of them standing still waiting to be killed somewhere in the map?

There are countless possibilities in the design of this content.
But i would like them to be massive with a fair amount of people cooperating to bring them down. Like Lineage 2. Some of them required like 50+ people. Like the battle on the Breachmaker. And of course they must be challenging. Put our skills to the test if you know what i mean. Something extremely different than what facing Zhaitan was.

If you think of it carefully ..the major enemy… and we simply boarded a huge ship with a few Npcs and pewpewd him in a completely plain and dull battle . Wouldn’t it be cooler if we just faced him en masse? A big scale battle to kill him? With mechanics and tactics that must be followed to manage a complete success?

Why not have some raid encounters in WvW? If i recall right places in the Mists also are residences for powerful spirits or deities. Why not angering one of them while clashing with enemy servers in EB and the other maps. Why not making one of them appear and attack us all out of the sudden?And how would we react to this unexpected foe? Run, attack him or use him to defeat our enemies?

There are many possibilities for “raids” . And i believe those can be achieved. Many other games have done it before, why not Guild Wars 2?

Raid level attack
We didn’t speak about this (i think). But what is a raid level attack? It’s an attack from a boss or enemy that can entirely wipe your group unless it’s interrupted.

Interrupt is a system mechanic that i’d like to see getting involved with Raids. Every proffesion can interrupt, be either fear, stun, knockback, pull, etc.

If you make some thrash enemies have access to raid level attacks, the group will need to be focused in something more than DPS and you will also add the role of Interrupter. This will be more fun at bosses since they will have Defiance (let’s say 14 stacks, 1 per player) and they need to be removed to have the boss ready for when it’s channeling his attack. That channeling thing should be 5 long seconds for easy bosses and 1-2 seconds for final bosses.

What happens if you don’t interrupt? You all die, yes, the entire raid. You are free to repeat the encounter, but punishment is needed for challenges and chris already said they want challenging content.

Advice: Boss channeling should make him invulnerable and happens each 10% health or so for 2 reasons:

• 1: To not allow a DPS burn-out and bypass the boss attacks (like happens with lupicus and reflects…).
• 2: To make sure the raid did kill it because because of an efficient way of interrupting, not just plain luck because of CC spamming once or twice.

Some more thoughts on Progression:

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”?

- same stats as ascended, but selectable stats out of combat
-Yes, but the specific skin associated with raids should be ONLY in raids
-Ascended gear should be one part of the recipe for legendary gear. This keeps the progression but takes out the vertical bit.
-I think a raid type component, i.e. gift of raiding could come from either the final boss in a raid as a random drop, or from the end of a raid reward track. If it came as a drop then it would need some method to prevent crazy RNG from keeping one person from getting their armor even though they’ve run the raid 100 times.

Time commitment:

I think raids should be large in scope but broken up into sections. If a raid had 17 bosses then there would essentially be 4 sections of 4 bosses each that could be done independently from each other, with a final boss unlocking only after all 4 sections were completed. A single section should take a long time to learn, but be clearable in farm in about an hour. This would mean a group could complete all 4 wings in about 4 hours, or 2 nights of 2 hour raids a week. In order to accommodate people of high skill but low play time, a lockout extender should be available for groups that would take more than one week to clear everything. Numbers here are relatively arbitrary, to determine more precisely the length of each wing, I would need access to metrics on the average play time of people likely to participate in raids.

Wildstar recently ran into huge trouble because they had very long attunement and raid times while the average play time of the raiders was much lower. This kept people from being able to participate in the raids and caused many players to leave the game. Also the time to organize should be taken into account, with at least 30 minutes given to prep for the raid.

If we look at the roles players can fill (and Im stealing liberally from this post among others) -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/22#post4533104

- we can identify tiers of player mechanics based on how many professions can bring that capability.

In the following list, I tried to break the different roles apart by how prevalent that role is in the game. In other words, the more "X"s a role has next to it, the easier it is for parties to bring that capability.

Group Roles/Mechanics

xxxxx Melee Damage
xxxxx Range Damage
xxxxx Condition Damage
xxxxx Crowd Control
xxxxx Interrupts
xxxxx Runners

xxxx Group Condition Removal/Support Heals
xxxx Core Boon Sharing (might, regeneration, vigor, etc)
xxxx Damage Reducing Conditions (blind, weakness, Moa morph)
xxxx Reflects and Projectile Protection
xxxx Combo Fields and Blast Finishers

xxx Boon Stripping
xxx Group Stability
xxx Stealth/Invisibility

xx Group Quickness
xx Group Aegis
xx Group Stun Breaks
xx Instant Resurrection (from downed state)

x Mesmer Portal

And there are many I cant think of (steal from other posts ) this morning before my coffee. Of course, it is also possible for developers to artificially add any role into an encounter via transforms and environmental items (aggro through pheromones, for example). Personally, I love that kind of stuff, but I know some dont, so I would only do it sparingly.

Two Questions
The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) ever be mandatory in an encounter?

My Opinion
I wanted to separate this out so people could provide their own opinions regarding the questions above (and add in other roles and mechanics in a similar fashion, if they wish) – without having to pay attention to my biases.

In my opinion, the primary advantage of raids compared to other content comes from greater access to niche roles. Raids differ from other content primarily because of that access to diversity. Larger groups mean you can assume most roles will/can be filled by someone in the group.

With that said, this is the developers’ opportunity to design fights that do require pretty much every role any player can fill. With players able to switch traits on the fly, there are very few capabilities that most groups with more than 8 players will not have (as seen above).

Blaeys.3102:

If we look at the roles players can fill (and Im stealing liberally from this post among others) -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/22#post4533104

- we can identify tiers of player mechanics based on how many professions can bring that capability.

In the following list, I tried to break the different roles apart by how prevalent that role is in the game. In other words, the more "X"s a role has next to it, the easier it is for parties to bring that capability.

Group Roles/Mechanics

xxxxx Melee Damage
xxxxx Range Damage
xxxxx Condition Damage
xxxxx Crowd Control
xxxxx Interrupts
xxxxx Runners

xxxx Group Condition Removal/Support Heals
xxxx Core Boon Sharing (might, regeneration, vigor, etc)
xxxx Damage Reducing Conditions (blind, weakness)
xxxx Reflects and Projectile Protection
xxxx Combo Fields and Blast Finishers

xxx Boon Stripping
xxx Group Stability
xxx Stealth/Invisibility

xx Group Quickness
xx Group Aegis
xx Group Stun Breaks
xx Instant Resurrection (from downed state)

x Mesmer Portal

And there are many I cant think of (steal from other posts ) this morning before my coffee. Of course, it is also possible for developers to artificially add any role into an encounter via transforms and environmental items (aggro through pheromones, for example). Personally, I love that kind of stuff, but I know some dont, so I would only do it sparingly.

The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) be mandatory?

My Opinion
I wanted to separate this out so people could provide their own opinions regarding the questions above (and add in other roles and mechanics in a similar fashion, if they wish) – without having to pay attention to my biases.

In my opinion, the primary advantage of raids compared to other content comes from greater access to niche roles. Raids differ from other content primarily because of that access to diversity. Larger groups mean you can assume most roles will/can be filled by someone in the group.

With that said, this is the developers’ opportunity to design fights that do require pretty much every role any player can fill. With players able to switch traits on the fly, there are very few capabilities that most groups with more than 8 players will not have (as seen above).

Oh I like the opportunity of creating constant groups with roles assigned so that everyone can fill and organize a good battle experience.

Serophous.9085:

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.

Instead of using the Mystic Forge, couldn’t we collect materials throughout the raid, and a NPC/Forge is at the end of the Raid instance to craft such armors/skins

@ Chris/ Crystal

Several people have mentioned the Marionette and Battle for LA and they are two pieces of content I really enjoyed (Anything that involves being on coms coordinating several strike teams, getting status reports and an overall ebb and flow of the battlefield type thing is super fun).

I don’t see them being spectacularly suitable for raid content due to part of that fun being the large scale (100+ players) and chaos, but would love that type of thing as a different concept “Battlefields” or “Area Assaults”.

I think it would be a concept worth getting a look over as its own separate CDI.
It could act as an area event ramped up to 11 like scarlet invasions or LA. Perhaps semi instanced as in you choose “Black Citadel” or “Black Citadel under assault” when you attempt to enter a map under attack (Just so a new player doesn’t go “Yay just created my new character, Oh my god a giant death laser has just blasted me and half the map what is going on”.)

PS: Those Airship lasers that fired on you during LA really added to the tension and were awesome.

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)?

Yes please!

I think getting Marionette and even the Battle for LA as Raid instance, Raid in the sense of more than 5 players, and not in the sense of being super long, is a great idea.

And PLEASE do make Raid that tell a story. Being a fan of the lore, new and old, would make me really happy.

Yes they must make it so that those raids will be accessible for players that at least know the basics about the game and how to play, therefore be able to survive in case a raid appears in front of them. It can be introduced to them after a certain level , exactly what happens with dungeons .

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).

The Soft Mechanics are the way to go. Use mechanics that are at least available on two classes, so there’s no “Mesmer only” or stuff like it. But we definitely need these types of mechanic to be a thing.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

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)?

Yes please!

I think getting Marionette and even the Battle for LA as Raid instance, Raid in the sense of more than 5 players, and not in the sense of being super long, is a great idea.

And PLEASE do make Raid that tell a story. Being a fan of the lore, new and old, would make me really happy.

I like what Crystal is thinking. Not every raid has to be the same thing. If this ends up being done through the guild UI, the guild can have a choice of what they want to do. A huge zone-sized raid with multiple bosses/objectives would take awhile and probably earn you more than something a bit more “in-and-out” like Marionette. The raid options could have an estimated time and/or difficulty associated with it on the screen, so a guild has a rough idea of how long it will take.

Hello, thanks for this CDI topic.

just a few words.

- environtal weapons can be fun, but a raid should be beaten by class specific skills. It is (or should be) still a MMO"Roleplaying"Game.

- if it is a re RPG like raid, not all builds will be viable always, teamplay is what is needed.

-U can´t make a good raid which can be done with all “play how u want” builds. Play how u want includes everything. Even sentinel´s gear with condition weapons and heal traits/runes/sigils and utilityskills!

- don´t make to many puzzles. And don´t make too much timegates (like TA Aetherpath, i run it often, i run it fast. But there are too many “useless” timegates in this path).

- use a fix number of players to balance the content. U don´t have the expierence like (for example) blizzard to create nice scaleable content. This is not your fault! But u have to care for it.

- More players won´t make it more epic. 10 or 20 players are good numbers.

thanks for reading, sry for my english. That´s why i wanted to make it as short as possibel.

Elrey.5472:

Example of Inside Raid Roles (hardcore mode)

Let’s call this “The Room”.

• There is 15 players and 2 big bosses (Trolls) in the center of the room (Zip and Zap) inmune to damage, however they can hit players.
• To damage Zap you need to set him into flames.
• To make torchs appear, you need to kill minions (Zap will summon them), 1 random drop of torch for each 10 of them killed.
• If you set Zap into fire, that stops minions to appear, but Zip will go to the South wall to get a bucket of water to help his friend.
• At that moment, to damage Zip you need to use 3 chains in the West and 3 in the East to drop down rocks from the ceiling that will stun Zip (if they hit him in his run to the water point bucket) allowing a 20-30 seconds window to attack.

That said you got already roles for any proffesion:
6 Chain players, would be great ranged players.
X Torch players, melee would be good for this duty.
X Free to help other players. Rezz if anyone dies, kill minions in the meantime, etc.

Notice that you can only kill Zip if you want to kill him first, attempting to kill Zap first would make Zip impossible to kill (it’s important to make a point here: Failing the first time must be a MUST, that’s how players learn for a second try).

Edit: Boss skills at your choice, but powerful enough to kill players. Even minions should be able to.

I do like that you can fail/screw yourself and your group if you do the encounter the wrong way.

Yes it might kitten some people off, but you learn from your mistake and try again. Or you wait for the guides to pop up if you’re that type of player

Playing with Mechanics

Mechanic- Weapon Skills are Static
You can work with this in many ways to break player’s expectations to provide a challenge/interesting shake up of the mechanic-

• Randomly shuffle the weapon skill’s locations (ex. autoattack becomes 3, 3 becomes 1 etc.)

• Take that a step further and destroy the UI! Skills are thrown around the edges of the screen. Also randomized!

• Lock out a skill slot(s)

• Debuff that weakens a skill or makes using that skill apply the effects to the user instead or a mental “bomb” where the skill becomes marked and if you use it, it blows up and does damage/knockdown/stun/whatever.

Mechanic- UI Elements and Effects
One of the coolest things I discovered early on was using a blasting attack in a shallow body of water and having the water splash up and “soak” the UI. Lets take advantage of this system some more!-

• Visual Obstruction. We’ve had mild attempts at this with things like Karka blindness, but take it all the way! Get hit by an nasty ooze attack? Colored slime filter over your screen distorting your vision. Bonus points for combining this with environmental hazards like say… the edge of a cliff or some narrow walkways.

• Flip everything upside down. Double bonus points for combining this with environmental hazards like say… the edge o…

• Lock the camera in “look behind you” mode. Triple bonus points for combining this with environm…

Mechanic- Guitar Hero
The bell choir mini-game is one of my favorite and the mechanics found there could be adapted to group play-

• Shield your team/self from attacks with a bundle item. Press the corresponding button as the attacks approach (think old tom/eye of zhaitan with attacks of different colors) to negate or significantly reduce the incoming damage.

• A soundwave themed enemy (dredge) where you must play the same note out of phase to cancel the attack. (uses music instead of color as the tell)

• Crack the code. Perform a rapid sequence of button presses within a time limit.

• Simon says. Copy a tune.

Blaeys.3102:

If we look at the roles players can fill (and Im stealing liberally from this post among others) -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/22#post4533104

- we can identify tiers of player mechanics based on how many professions can bring that capability.

In the following list, I tried to break the different roles apart by how prevalent that role is in the game. In other words, the more "X"s a role has next to it, the easier it is for parties to bring that capability.

Group Roles/Mechanics

xxxxx Melee Damage
xxxxx Range Damage
xxxxx Condition Damage
xxxxx Crowd Control
xxxxx Interrupts
xxxxx Runners

xxxx Group Condition Removal/Support Heals
xxxx Core Boon Sharing (might, regeneration, vigor, etc)
xxxx Damage Reducing Conditions (blind, weakness, Moa morph)
xxxx Reflects and Projectile Protection
xxxx Combo Fields and Blast Finishers

xxx Boon Stripping
xxx Group Stability
xxx Stealth/Invisibility

xx Group Quickness
xx Group Aegis
xx Group Stun Breaks
xx Instant Resurrection (from downed state)

x Mesmer Portal

And there are many I cant think of (steal from other posts ) this morning before my coffee. Of course, it is also possible for developers to artificially add any role into an encounter via transforms and environmental items (aggro through pheromones, for example). Personally, I love that kind of stuff, but I know some dont, so I would only do it sparingly.

Two Questions
The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) ever be mandatory in an encounter?

My Opinion
I wanted to separate this out so people could provide their own opinions regarding the questions above (and add in other roles and mechanics in a similar fashion, if they wish) – without having to pay attention to my biases.

In my opinion, the primary advantage of raids compared to other content comes from greater access to niche roles. Raids differ from other content primarily because of that access to diversity. Larger groups mean you can assume most roles will/can be filled by someone in the group.

With that said, this is the developers’ opportunity to design fights that do require pretty much every role any player can fill. With players able to switch traits on the fly, there are very few capabilities that most groups with more than 8 players will not have (as seen above).

If you look at TT, the 4’s and 5’s are required for certain part, while the group quickness is a bonus, but I wouldn’t say required.

For Organised raids, I could see it go down to the the 3’s, but under that it becomes way too specific.

Here’s a “is this possible” question for the devs:

Can you make environmental objects that create a constant field around them, such as a water field or fire field? And can you then make them invulnerable, but subject to push/pull/knockback effects?

What I’m seeing is a fight where the large boss stays pretty stationary in the center, but he’s hard to hurt or invulnerable. To hurt him, players have to move around certain parts of the battlefield to create an area of weakness around him so they can harm him. Of course, he will fight this and occasionally send one of those parts flying away from him so that it has to be pushed back into position. Add in a few environmental items to help with the moving of these objects (just in case the group is low on people with good moving skills), and you could have an interesting fight where you interact with the battlefield in a whole new way.

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).

I am very late to this but why can’t we have tanks or healers? Just make it optional or active. Example a boss who is encouraged by your cowardly dodging who gains health, or who swings for the fences and if you take a full combo via tanking each hit raw he is temporarily exhausted and vulnerable. Like an overconfident Norn who thought he could knock out anyone and has a confidence crisis when he fails but gets more confident if you run.

Or add npc allies with heavy degen, at 0 health they deactivate. If healed they turn on and fight offering positive effects. Or make a fight where players can hold a dangerous Asuran laser that hurts a lot to hold and charge. The longer you hold it the more dps out and in. The more hps on the longer you can hold it.

Please don’t write off tanks and healers. There is so much that can be done to make them active roles. And all those solutions can be optional, you don’t even have to force them.

Blaeys.3102:

If we look at the roles players can fill (and Im stealing liberally from this post among others) -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/22#post4533104

- we can identify tiers of player mechanics based on how many professions can bring that capability.

In the following list, I tried to break the different roles apart by how prevalent that role is in the game. In other words, the more "X"s a role has next to it, the easier it is for parties to bring that capability.

Group Roles/Mechanics

xxxxx Melee Damage
xxxxx Range Damage
xxxxx Condition Damage
xxxxx Crowd Control
xxxxx Interrupts
xxxxx Runners

xxxx Group Condition Removal/Support Heals
xxxx Core Boon Sharing (might, regeneration, vigor, etc)
xxxx Damage Reducing Conditions (blind, weakness, Moa morph)
xxxx Reflects and Projectile Protection
xxxx Combo Fields and Blast Finishers

xxx Boon Stripping
xxx Group Stability
xxx Stealth/Invisibility

xx Group Quickness
xx Group Aegis
xx Group Stun Breaks
xx Instant Resurrection (from downed state)

x Mesmer Portal

And there are many I cant think of (steal from other posts ) this morning before my coffee. Of course, it is also possible for developers to artificially add any role into an encounter via transforms and environmental items (aggro through pheromones, for example). Personally, I love that kind of stuff, but I know some dont, so I would only do it sparingly.

Two Questions
The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) ever be mandatory in an encounter?

My Opinion
I wanted to separate this out so people could provide their own opinions regarding the questions above (and add in other roles and mechanics in a similar fashion, if they wish) – without having to pay attention to my biases.

In my opinion, the primary advantage of raids compared to other content comes from greater access to niche roles. Raids differ from other content primarily because of that access to diversity. Larger groups mean you can assume most roles will/can be filled by someone in the group.

With that said, this is the developers’ opportunity to design fights that do require pretty much every role any player can fill. With players able to switch traits on the fly, there are very few capabilities that most groups with more than 8 players will not have (as seen above).

The simple solution is to give environmental weapons to account for a groups lack of a certain utility. Much like in arah p1 there are crystals for reflecting before the jotun boss. And there is a bottle which burns the tar elemental to prevent it from petrifying people. You dont need to use these environmental weapons. Regular burns and reflects work. But some groups might not have them so the environmental weapons fill that gap.

One of the special facets of GW2 design is that traits, gear and utility skills can be swapped on the fly anytime out of combat. As a result, there is a high likelihood that the ideas for “overload” of various things are probably not going to work. If an encounter tries to overload your condition removal all the players will respec for condition removal beforehand. Same for projectiles or CC.

As a result, the concept of challenging people through overloading a single mechanic is probably not going to be a challenge at all. Or more accurately, it will be a challenge once.

In terms of what best characterizes GW2 combat, we have active defenses and movement. Thus, most of the combat should be characterized by effective dodging and positioning. Undodgeable, unblockable, uninterruptable attacks that are nothing much more than a passive defense check are out of place. However, attacks of that nature are perfectly fine if they can be mitigated through CC or proper positioning or some coordination check to prevent. The key point is that through skillful play, the undodgeable/unblockable mechanics can be prevented.

Essentially, learning a raid boss is a dance and learning the choreography is how you complete it. Guild Wars 2 combat is very fluid and dynamic, so I would imagine any raid should make other games’ raids look static and rigid by comparison.

Blaeys.3102:

Two Questions
The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) ever be mandatory in an encounter?

Previously i asked it from Chris that maybe they should take into consideration to change how buffs and boons are applied in raids since the 5 target aoe cap restricts compositions way too much if you want to achieve certain things (1 warrior / group for banners, 1 guardian / group to cover defensive abilities, etc.).

Of course if you remove the cap it may cause some inbalances. Get the neccessary classes that are essential for stealth, reflects, stability, condi damage, whatnot and fill up the rest with high damage classes, possibly with elementalists.

When the raid must split up it’s a non issue, but you know that shouldn’t be always the case.

On progression which are the game mechanics that a player must complete to move forward in the game.

I like a few ideas expressed here already, particularly rewarding would be:
1. ‘zerg’ splits
2. increased difficulty in NPC mechanics (no DPS sponges) with increasing difficulty partway through an encounter due to shifts in the NPC mechanics and/or AI.
3. Environmental debuffs, with player choice to ‘live with them and mitigate’ or remove and continue questlines.
4. Rush type events, similar to cursed chests in Diablo 3. You have x time to kill y things.

I also like the idea of increasing difficulty from start to finish, if done correctly, with proper rewards, it will bring a semblance of inclusiveness. With proper implementation, each step in the raid also brings an inherent group check, to validate inter-group builds and synergy.

Particularly of interest is GW2 specific possibilities:

1. Importance of synergistic use of profession skills and fields and finishers.
2. Emergent game play options through use of CC and environmental objects and weapons
a.) Using a knock back to push a mob into something that affects the overall success rate, either positively or negatively, that is not obvious…but is logical in retrospect.
b.) In raid potions have a costume brawl type effect important to raid completion…another type of split. (i.e. A potion makes members of part of the group smaller and they have to get ahead of the group to flip a switch..)
3. Inclusivity…some people might not be the best fighters in the game, but they might be able to beat the hardest puzzles with ease (I would say this is similar in attitude as the Asura!). Think about a place kicker in football. They are the most important player in the game for one skill set.

An here’s my final GW2 based, controversial item (;P):

4. Raid design that, rather than shifts a meta, is done in such a way that a meta cannot be achieved. Since this is the hardest content in the game, knowing your class, race, and profession should trump Ezway meta and should remove any idea of being able to min/max each encounter. ‘Play your way’ should shine in this type of content. That OMG feeling of I have never seen anyone do that before should be the rule, not the exception.