Guild Wars 2

I am not sure it was discussed here before, so here the latest of my last suggestion. Just as for sPvP, “hardmode” raids should include a ladder (by guild and by player) (or even better, a web service) once it has been proved that they offer a really good challenge if you want to promote a competitive mindset around them and eventually promote this part of GW2 as e-sport. I think you can take ample inspiration from WoW on that point.

1. Replayability

The content that comes out of Arenanet is always top notch. Making sure that the content created is enjoyably experienced many times will give longevity to player satisfaction allowing for ample time to create more top notch content.

2. Advancement

GW2 arguably has the best character customization in any MMO to date. Seeing this trend continue will be a motivating factor in running these raids many times over. Also, I’d love to see gameplay advancements as well.

3. Profitability

Not just for the players, but for Arenanet as well. Finding ways to monetize raids through gem store items would be great.

Well…after reading the thread, I realize that raids can be a controversial topic, specially for how diverse opinions are about it.
This are my priorities after reading this thread and playing the last LS update-

• Difficulty and Dynamism: After playing the last LS update, I realize that the mechanics for truly fast paced combat are there. I don’t know the specific design choices behind the mechanics of the crystal golems but I think that, overall, if we can get monsters with that kind of mechanics, but with twice as much ASPD (attacks per second) it could be very fun. Most of the time during those encounters I could just walk away from the very well telegraphed attacks those enemies do. I would like to have to predict as well as react, so I have to use my dodges more wisely, and truly feel the danger of a hard hitting blow from a massive beast/construct. This is for both boss and normal enemies inside raid instances.

• Instancing and Scaling: After reading the discussion in this thread and rethinking some of my ideas on the subject, I think that the best course of action would be to have instanced raids, on big maps, with a lot of things to do inside (a whole play session worth of content at least), meaning, no speedrun material (I don’t hate on speedrunners, but I think that content that can be speedran, is too easy to be considered challenging, and by speedrun I mean high fluctuations of time, so for a normal group it takes an hour, and for a specialized group 5 minutes?). Also the amount of players inside should be 15, or 3 groups. I think more than that would destroy the visual appeal of combat, would twist the mechanic difficulty of the content, and make the personal contribution to the encounters too disperse. So instanced 15 players raids. I would like to add, that content should be possible to complete with less people, this has to be the way players could “scale up” the difficulty, and I would very much like if they could be rewarded for doing so, like a gambit.

• Theme and Flavor: This is something that hasn’t been discussed a lot in this thread, but in my opinion, raids should bring some themes that don’t necessarily orbit around the Main Story lore. The world of Tyria is vast and full of wonders, and I think raids are a good opportunity to explore some lore passages that are not necessarily related to our Living Story, or the Main Story centered around dragons. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be raids related to the main story though, I think there should, but also, I would like to explore some other aspects of the world, that let players build their own story too. And about flavor, this was discussed a bit, but to me, one of the mottoes of raids should be “classes matter”, I want my thief being able to do something unique, that my warrior can’t do inside the dungeon, aside from combat mechanics, like being able to pick locks, or my elementalist being able to channel magic, or react with elemental related puzzles, my engineer being able to operate machines and constructs, and tinker with traps and such.

Said that, I just will thank you Chris, Crystal and Gaile, for your patience during this particular CDI, since I felt the discussion became a bit dense, and it was sad reading some people inviting others to leave the thread.

1.) Accessibility(No gear requirements) 100% Skill-based.

2.) Challenging

3.) Rewarding (Unique Armor and Weapon sets NOT better stats)

Accessibility Knowledge and skill should be the only major barriers to completion. Barriers to entry should be much much less since that would allow people to fail and try again to get better. I also think that a Raid should not be very long (2 hours max unless you find a creative way of progression). It should also be about 10-15 players I think but they should not be needed. If there are any puzzle then make them doable with 5 players. Also to this end the roles in the raid should be soft; i.e. able to be completed by more than one class and any gear (difficulty would vary of course).
Creativity I believe that raids can be great place to implement unique mechanics that make great use of the awesome combat mechanics of this game. Make us change our traits and utilities but not our gear since that is much more costly (accessibility issue). Feel free to use bundles and transformations to supplement mechanics and give options not require it. There should be many options and paths to complete a raid the shortest way should be the hardest and the easiest (but still challenging) the slowest.
Review of Some Mechanics I think that this is a great opportunity to try to address some concerns people have with mechanics, specifically condition damage, CC application to bosses, and AOE caps. Since this would be higher tier content, I think that it would be fine if it had different mechanics. This could be a great place to test mechanics too.

I want raids to not only be fun challenging content but to also serve as assets which benefit both the players and the developers. Use raids, abuse them. Don’t be afraid to be radical. Let us make this an opportunity to advance player cooperation and skill by having the developers show a bit of their malicious side and to continue to provide us better and better content.

I would also take this opportunity to comment on fractals. I think that fractals are a great thing on paper and that they alone should be able to satisfy many of the player’s itches along with my wishes. They are a very excellent medium for challenging content so please give them some more love. Maybe release a fractal or two every year. They have their problems which need so adjustments (better rewards, more exposure to newer players, etc.).

as mentioned in this thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Any-progress-on-letting-us-replay-Season-1/first#post4543829

using the living world season 1 for raid content could work as many of the events are raid-sized from the beginning.

it wasn’t too hard to pug either

Michael Walker.8150:

as mentioned in this thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Any-progress-on-letting-us-replay-Season-1/first#post4543829

using the living world season 1 for raid content could work as many of the events are raid-sized from the beginning.

it wasn’t too hard to pug either

Three candidates for raids of varying sizes:

5-15: Tower of Nightmares
15-30: Marionette / Escape from Lion’s Arch
30-50: Battle for Lion’s Arch

Anything else is unnecessary and not structured at all for a raid. (The Invasions were structured more for open-world fighting in multiple spots, and geared towards that.)

The ancient karka would be an option, too.

Doomed.5201:

The ancient karka would be an option, too.

I’d rather design that as a standard 5-person encounter built like a dungeon instance, given the choice. Making it solo-able would defeat the impact of that battle . . .

. . . which for a lot of people was disconnecting, stuttering lag and FPS drops, and in general “is it dead yet? No? Zerg harder!”.

. . . man I both loved and hated Lost Shores. Loved it for the concept and hated it for the execution and technical errors. It could have been so much better . . .

Rambodacious.7495:

3. Profitability

Not just for the players, but for Arenanet as well. Finding ways to monetize raids through gem store items would be great.

What do you mean by monetize raids? This sounds like a terrible idea. Raids should have absolutely NOTHING to do with the cash shop. Ever. Please don’t give them any ideas.

The cash shop needs to continue doing what it is doing with just skins and minis. Nothing more.

The artwork of the game is strong, between the graphics, combat and especially the music. Picking a theme that is fun and makes players want to do it over and over would be applying the games ability to win over the players. I know there are so many soundtracks that are truly amazing that are very rarely used in the game that you have at your fingertips. Maybe even change the character selection theme and background? Seeing something new and exciting at logging in will make even the veteran players feel like they’re playing a new game.

xarallei.4279:

Rambodacious.7495:

3. Profitability

Not just for the players, but for Arenanet as well. Finding ways to monetize raids through gem store items would be great.

What do you mean by monetize raids? This sounds like a terrible idea. Raids should have absolutely NOTHING to do with the cash shop. Ever. Please don’t give them any ideas.

The cash shop needs to continue doing what it is doing with just skins and minis. Nothing more.

That then look better as the skins and mini’s in you earn in the raid devaluating those? I disagree with both. Yes it should be completely separate from the cash-shop but in all ways it can. If you can earn a mini in the raid content but a better one is available in the cash-shop it’s just as bad. Of course I agree Anet needs to earn money. One way of doing that is releasing the raid content as part of an expansion. Then there is no need for cash-shop involvement in the raid content, not directly as indirectly.

Instanced: Open World Raids wouldn’t work very well, a fluctuating number of players can cause a severe problem with the encounter design. Instead Raids should be Instanced, doable by a specific amount of people.

Open ended: Instead of following just a specific path, like Dungeons, Raids can be more open ended, offering a variety of paths. Use some of the already existing mechanics of the game to split the blob, so instead of fighting boss after boss in a row, fight multiple bosses at the same time, maybe bosses that must be killed within a specific time frame.

Variety: Raids should have a variety of different tasks, including some puzzle elements, some jumping elements, and of course lots of fighting elements.

Reward distribution: I don’t want Raid to continue with the same loot reward system we have everywhere else, that is, everyone is rolling on the same loot table for abysmal chances of getting anything useful. Instead a better way of giving out loot is needed. Allowing players to “buy” items with tokens is a solution to the problem.

Incremental Rewards: If the idea of Open ended is used (see above), then Raids don’t need a “Save Point”. Simply, increase the rewards players get, the more encounters they overcome, they can stop at any point without penalty, just those who continue to the end will get increasing rewards. So imagine a Raid on a huge map that has 6 big Raid Encounters, first encounter completed can give 1 token, second 2 tokens etc, similar to how the Domain of Anguish worked in GW1.

Variable players: Raids can use a fixed number of players to complete, however variations can be used, for example 10, 20, 30 players with different mechanics. A way to keep the game mechanics exactly the same (including the Boss health and damage), is to make larger groups kill multiple bosses at the same time. So a Raid can have a few Boss Encounters, with 10 players they defeat them one at a time, with 20 players they need to attack two at a time, etc So the encounters are the exact same with 10,20 or 30 players, but the number of Bosses that must be killed changes.

Skill lock: some of the hardest parts, or entire Raids in a Hardmode version, can lock the player builds, much like a game in Team Arena, so players can’t change their skills/traits/weapons once they start making pre-raid decisions more important.

Release lock: some of the hardest parts, or entire Raids in a Hardmode version, can disallow reviving of a dead player at a waypoint, meaning a raid wipe means a start over. Much like Skill lock, these two should be used only in a special version of the Raid and not be baseline.

PVP skills: When enemies form a “blob” to counter a player Raid, they should be given player-like skills and abilities. AoE Condition removal, AoE Boons (like Stability), AoE Boon stripping, AoE Healing are very important aspects of a successful WvW Raid. Use similar design in Raids, so the players too must adapt and use multiple builds in their composition in order to win (See also Skill lock). Damage / Control / Support should be used extensively by the mob groups, so players need to use it as well.

No damage mods: Things like Agony or similar ways to prevent players from playing content until they farm the previous levels, shouldn’t be used in a Raid. They should be accessible and skill / teamwork /build should be the factor for success, not having more Agony Resistance (or similar)

Guild Raids: A new/improved Guild Mission type called Guild Raid could be added into the game, to give Guilds EXTRA Raid rewards. These Guild Raids shouldn’t be the only way of doing raids, but an additional one.

No raid locks: Raids should be accessible at any point, no pre-events, no schedule either. Daily locks like the ones in dungeons are enough for locks.

I really hope raids, at least some, are not just a single boss fight. I’d really like them to be something that can be done over time.. whether it be really long and the instance can be held open (or the progress can be, a check point must be reached or something) or just an hour or so.

Other than the boss fights being unique and interesting (mechanics like glints lair in s2ep5) have puzzles that need to be figured out.. a randomly generated maze would be awesome for one of them.. hedges that grow and move and such.

I would really like to see a combination of things put together to make for a longer instance that is both rewarding for your time (same as dungeons, everything in balance of course) and just fun to do as a larger group. For instance, the CM path with the air rifles and turrets.. very cool. Minibosses that requires the larger party break up and meet at the other side as each small team takes out a miniboss. The mini dungeons are all great places to take inspiration from as well. Puzzles, traps, mini bosses, boss fights, long interesting areas with nice scenery to give the raid a certain ambience. It’s the whole package that makes the difference, you want to craft an experience that players can differentiate from other experiences.

Sorry.. no specifics from me.. I can try to provide them though if anything high level doesn’t make enough sense.

My top 3:

1) Difficulty Scalability – I’m a “casual” L80 player who does not have the time to sink into large chunks of content that takes hours to complete, full of wipes and razor-thin margin for error requiring specific gearsets which take a lot of time to acquire. I don’t want to be shut out of raids just because they take a bunch of time to set up, organize, and complete, nor do I want to be excluded because raids are so difficult that only the absolute best can play them. I want a challenge, for sure, by my idea of a challenge differs greatly from someone who’s on T50 FOTM and has 5,000 hours invested in this game. I think that the best solution here would be to have “standard” and “epic” versions of raids with different difficulty levels for each.

2) Progression/Rewards: I would like to see reward mechanics that don’t encourage/reward “farming” the raid. I would much rather be locked out for a week or more, if that means I don’t have to play the raid 20 times to get a “full” reward set. I love the idea of Legendary Armor, but if it’s RNG only and has drop rates resembling the current precursors it’ll just become unattainable for all but players who sink thousands of hours into the game. I’m fine with said players getting a “special edition” Legendary Armor (like the bioluminescent effects on the new armor) but please find a way for us casual players to work towards rewards without having to invest gobs of time. Currently it takes 4-6 runs through a dungeon to earn enough tokens for a single piece of exotic gear. I devote as much of my free time to GW2 as possible but I still haven’t even managed to earn a single full gearset from a dungeon yet… This leads me to my third priority:

3) Replay Value: While the concept behind Dungeons was really cool, they turned into a grind – 20+ runs through a dungeon’s explorable for a full gearset? Yikes. As a casual player I’m turned off by repeating content during my limited game time, so finding a way to make replays feel new/exciting is a major priority for me. I’d hate to see raids devolve into “stack ’n whack” like dungeons. IMO raids should be like instanced versions of Teq or Claw with sparse but large and complex combat encounters that require adaptable strategies rather than rote mechanics and infallible (but boring) tactics. If history is any indication, raid “rewards” will only be avaialble through a (IMO) high number of repeat playthroughs, and that is very off putting for a casual player if the content itself isn’t equally exciting. Plus – think of the new players; if raids only cater to people who have already played the game every day for 2+ years, how will new players catch up…?

Accessibility

• If I’m in a guild scheduling raids don’t make me leave the 16th in LA.. but if I could have 2 raids of 7/8 instead, without the difficulty getting stupid, that’s fine.
• ~1hr or less to complete
• Don’t limit to a single guild per instance

Tell a story/Fit in the Lore
Don’t make the raid be a disconnected instance that no one remembers what it’s really about other than the mechanics. Or worse, something which jars with continuitiy/existing lore.

Replayability
Most harder dungeon paths I did once to see what it was about, and that was it. Increase replayability by different options within the raid, different sets of achievements, and even some randomness.

Proposal Overview
Always include non-standard roles for a small number of people to perform which isn’t DPS related and requires sneaky utility of skills.

Goal of Proposal
GW2 doesn’t run on the divine trinity. Instead it gives all players a murky mix of dps, healing and tanking for all. That aside though, each class is given a unique set of utility effects – and the creative use of these utilities should be emphasised along side the fight.

Proposal Functionality
My proposal is that there should be roles, or phases, in which the utility effects of a limited number of self-marked players should have their full intended effects against the normally immune raid-bosses. In this, there should be phases where individual players would be expected to distract a raid boss while the rest of the group retreated to safe grounds.

As an example, say there is a massive malfunctioning Inquest golem with a massive laser cannon and a massive hatred for all things blue. Now, provide 3 equipable baby quaggan hats which glow a bright blue and make meowing noises when worn. When ever someone is wearing the quaggan hat, the golem will focus that person solely with it’s laser cannon. The laser cannon deals 100% health damage on hit but the buffs and conditions of people wearing quaggan hats have 100% effect on the golem. This means that projectile blocking will block a laser shot, protection will leave a player with 33% health, aegis will block the laser, fear will fear, interrupt will interrupt, blind will cause the next laser shot to miss, deathshroud will absorb a shot ect…

Now give the golem a 120 second immunity to any effect which caused it’s laser to miss any glowing quaggan hat – meaning that if a laser beam has been dodged in the last 40 seconds, anyone with a quaggan hat trying to dodge in the next 40 seconds will be nuked.

This means that the raid will have to organise 3 completely different builds, probably on 3 completely different classes to try use quaggan hats to distract the golem for as long as possible. This means that at least 3 raid members will need to spec into rather bizarre skill sets to carry out a task specific to the given situation.

It doesn’t have to be quaggan hats and lasers. Any unique aspect of Gw2 skills which can be grouped under a common theme suggests a unique activity that a small set of players should be forced to spec for and practice with regards to a given raid boss encounter.

Associated Risks
You are setting role gates on raid bosses if you do this. I don’t feel its a problem if you require 3 out of 10 people to spec or gear in a specific (and bizzare) way. The turrets in the Teq encounter don’t have these role gates (even if their boons work better with boon traited users).

Raids Guild wars 2 style

Lets start with a video of what is a raid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR66CXYmN5Q

The big question is how GW2 can bring about raids in the image to what this game is all about? No holy trinity in my opinion gives more freedom and gives limitless design to raids for this platform. Raids should not be limit to just trash mobs then boss, you also have puzzles in many forms that can be worked with to challenge the players as they travel deeper into the raid. Jumping puzzles are another idea that can be thrown into the raid that can be challenging like the halloween clock tower for example.
Also I would like to point out that GW2 does have raids but on a small scale (length and time wise) Guild puzzles are just a small window into what raids could be, just add big bosses and there you go… Raid!

As for loot we can rest assure that Anet will not put a gear treadmill on raids if they ever to end up on the scene. All cosmetic Items or mini pets shall only appear in the big boss chest, personally I don’t want to see blues and greens in raid chests only tokens to buy that raids cosmetic items, no rng plz, I have enough rng in other parts of the game.

Player count, the amount of players to enter a raid. 150 players enter a raid and 1 is only hit, snooze fest if I wanted to play with 150 people and hit 1 standing in one spot Id do world bosses as my raid. For this you need a compact size raid for example 15 players is good that gives the designers 3 party to play with and would give you an exact idea of how high the bosses health needs to be. 3 parties equals a lot to work with, oh and guild only can do this, need to be in a guild for that raid feel as this will be instanced, enough said.

Lets see I’ve gone over what are raids, check. We went over what raids could be, check. Loot was factored in, check, and raid size was talked about. Its not that hard to think about as long as you have the passion to create something fun and challenging, oh one other thing raids could in fact be like a mini series a story that did not make it into the LS that was thought to be a great idea but no time, you could use raids to tell short stories around the world of GW2. Also if you do a story like say AC story with cut scenes and what not remember to make a skip button for those players who only see numbers and want to beat this gorgeous game in a matter of seconds then sit in LA showing off their goods.

If you build it they will play it.

1.) That raid rewards provide no additional gameplay options or advantages in any aspect of the game outside of raiding.

2.) That lore and story content included in raids be accessible to the entire player base, and not just the top 5-10% completing raids. A story mode that does not give raid unique achievements or cosmetic rewards would do well for this.

3.) That raid design takes into account and adjusts for the following:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Rank-what-class-you-take-in-dungeon/first

Otherwise, high difficulty organized content will just become a lengthy game of “No Necros Allowed.”

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’re looking at a different want to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently kitten player input.

I think you mean:

a different way to offer … more efficiently (azzess, with essess not zees) player input …

The feline filter really wrecks that innocent word for “look at and weigh merits of.”

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’re looking at a different want to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently kitten player input.

Oh my….you do what with player input?

Those poor kittens….

kalzana.3192:

Accessibility

• If I’m in a guild scheduling raids don’t make me leave the 16th in LA.. but if I could have 2 raids of 7/8 instead, without the difficulty getting stupid, that’s fine.
• ~1hr or less to complete
• Don’t limit to a single guild per instance

Tell a story/Fit in the Lore
Don’t make the raid be a disconnected instance that no one remembers what it’s really about other than the mechanics. Or worse, something which jars with continuitiy/existing lore.

Replayability
Most harder dungeon paths I did once to see what it was about, and that was it. Increase replayability by different options within the raid, different sets of achievements, and even some randomness.

That’s a good top 3, mind if I use it too?

1. Accessibility
Guild Wars 2 has been about playing the game your way since the start. If a player doesn’t know enough people to form a Raid group, he should be able to join one almost as easily as he can walk into open world content like a Tequatl attack.

2. Tell a story/Fit in the Lore
My very first thought about Raids in GW2 was to expand on dungeon’s stories. I would love to see an Arah Raid unlocked after explorable mode where we go make sure Zaithan stays down for good, fighting many of his dragon lieutenants along the way on the ground and in the air. I think it would make for a proper ending to the story as well.

3. Replayability
Replayability should not be “repeat this X times to get reward”. Tokens are an OK way to mitigate RNG but, they don’t make replaying content more interesting. They just make it required. Random encounters that drop specific loot, daily challenges that grant bonus rewards, guaranteed specific rewards such as ascended boxes for taking the hardest paths; make it interesting and rewarding to come back for more. Not more of the same.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please list your top three priorities for raiding (Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative, Content)

0. Knowledge.
The base to avoid zerg.
We already have brainless big fight and we call it “World Boss”.

1. Teamplay Based Encounter
I want to be a part of a team (not a zerg : a team).
I don’t want to be able to do the boss fight alone but I want to play with my teamate.
Ex : Aegis, Blind or Interrupt rotation.

2. (Free of any) Raid Group Setup Restriction
I guess 8 class are in GW2.
I’ve seen 4 or 5 of them… /sarcasm :p
Seriously : I want to feel free to chose my class without telling myself “Hey, you can’t take a guardian, we will lack of bleed”.

3. No Stuff Restriction
Mecanics may be great over lv. 30 in fractals but I’ve never tried them because I don’t get enough agony resistance.
Agony is the worst think Arenanet introduced in Guild Wars 2 (by far), don’t do it again

An exemple of a typical raid boss fight :

Phase 1 – Rush the big boss, Hit him untill XX%
Trigger A – Big boss teleport us 5 by 5 in separate closed rooms
Phasse 2 – 5-man group have to kill a little boss in each room
Trigger B – Big boss teleport us, back to Phase 1.

Phase 1 is about general mecanics and/or personnal skills :
- Position : Stay between lines.
- Interact with the world : Grab a shovel and dig to hide from an awful aoe !
- Nochtli / Tequatl : I said Jump !

Phase 2 is about team synergy :
- Cant touch this : Aegis, blind, daze rotation. Set items (like 2 rifles) on the floor with those effect to avoid situation in which you don’t get the “good” class.
- Hit combo : If you don’t get heal (direct or over time) or protection, this 3-combo will kill you ! (34% of maximum hp each hit)
- Big bad wolf : A teamate is the Little Red Riding Hood and you have to immobilize / snare / stun or keep the teamate under swiftness to let him a chance to stay alive !

If one group fails the little boss (because they are dead or didn’t killed it in time), the big one earn a buff that force the whole raid to focus on a hidden Phase based on survivability and using game mecanics (throwing water bucket on fire, using air rifle to send back missile).

I know Colin doesn’t want something that had been done in other MMO but he may take a look at the Opera Event in Karazhan (World of Warcraft).
Instead of healing the runner, we might help him or slow the wolf.
Sorry for the quality, it’s not my video and it’s pretty hard to find one in 1080p for a 7 year old content :p.

Remember that you got a lot of cool mecanics in Guild Wars 2.

Edit 2 :

1. Accessibility
Guild Wars 2 has been about playing the game your way since the start. If a player doesn’t know enough people to form a Raid group, he should be able to join one almost as easily as he can walk into open world content like a Tequatl attack.

This is why I didn’t say “Accessibility”.
If you don’t have enough friends to make a raid, then make friends !

Sorry, I edit this post a lot.

Its got to be my favourite filter kitten up.

1) challenge
2) multi group based
3) high reward

1.Accesibility
2.Skill
3.More skins to make me look like a christmas tree as rewards.(I just don’t have that desire to have gear grinds anymore.But,skins would be nice)

I’m not sure if I’ll say something that’s been said, but I thought I’d chime in while I had the chance.

I like the idea of open-world, but if done right. Guild Wars really sets itself apart from other MMO’s by how easy it is to interact with other players, so allowing anyone to wander in and help with a raid would be awesome. The only issue would be finding a balance between an uninitiated player being a help or a hindrance. One idea may be to have one big boss for the zerg to aim at and have other more specific goals that the organized players can go for, like clearing certain key monsters in a sequence or something. Don’t make any mobs drop anything until after the raid is completed, whether it succeeds or not, and deal out rewards based on participation. This way you won’t have a group of people running off to one corner for a random champ that spawns, throwing the whole raid off.

Really, a lot of the ideas posted above can happen in an open world design, the design just needs to keep in mind how to direct the flow of a zerg, and allow smaller teams of ‘elite’ players the opportunity to take out covert missions with high organization simultaneously. Also giving commanders more control in PVE would help a lot for keeping things organized.

Of course the raids would need their own gear, something to show off to everyone that you were able to complete the event multiple times. No gear treadmill, just cool looks.

I know this probably will sound like other peoples’ ideas, and it might not be perfect, just thought I’d chime in with my thoughts.

1) Acessibility for all to see the content and learn raiding
2) Unique rewards behind very hard challenging content (maybe like LS achievements, but harder and group based)
3) Better tools for managing zergs, like a Squad Hierarchy, that could be used even for open-world content like World Bosses and for bringing back LS season 1 raids as instances.

Bonus round:
Bring Back LS season 1 open-world raids as instances! Pretty please…
It was nice to see other people would like to see the season 1 content back as raids, there was a time I thought I was almost alone on this…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Season-2-Zerg-Wars-or-Raid-Wars/4142042

1) Skill
So ppl learn to use different setups and not a zerker grouped optimized, stack killable enemy. We have so many sigils/runes to choose from but usually zerker/stack is all ppl need.
Since this is a guild raid I think you can make these raids harder, ppl will be in ts3 and better to coordinate and mentored.

2) Unique rewards (no RNG!)
In a perfect world rewards that you can only receive during a certain season/year. Things other players later in the game will envy you for. Also making the content more replay driven and desirable. I know this will lock ppl (casual gamers) out of some things but the regulars need some destinction and reward for being around.

3) Access
Scalable/instanced… keep smaller guilds (10 ppl +) in mind please. Although I think access will be instanced because this is a no-brainer. Just adding this to get the top 3.

Bonus: A nemesis trying to destroy your guild and a new ally, making the story personal (it is a guild raid, your there for a good reason) And the game is called GW2.. give the guilds more of a reason to fight against something.

Scaling from 6 players upwards
Instanced
No gear grind/agony

Crystal and Chris!

Can you summarize what you gathered from this thread when you close it?

1. scalable ( small guilds should be able to do all raid types)

2. massive time required ( should be an adventure and not everyone zerging in a tiny spot in a zone)

3. fun?

If Anet ever monetizes any content that is not skins or minis I will quit and also turn away any potential customers . Keep it how it is( buy once , free forever afterwards) . Anet should not be hurting for money atm.

This whole “anet has to make money somehow” is only thought in the minds of the ignorant. Anet makes plenty of cash from the gem shop. Everyone I know spends real money in the gem shop today.

i don’t want stat requirements to join in a raid, I always hated that in other games. what is the point in doing a raid if you know everyone there could solo everything up until the final boss?

we don’t need new daily achievements for the raids either, that just makes it feel like a job rather than a game.

no new gear tiers,

open and instanced raids should be created. ( we sort of have open world raids already anyhow)

1) Instanced.
2) Instanced. Seriously, for those who don’t like that idea, please go farm Dry Top, the Silverwastes or the world bosses and let us have our instanced content so we can play only with the people we want.
3) Variability : If you could add some procedurally generated content, it would be awesome. If not, well it would be great if whatever those raids are, they had high levels of variability so they would require us to think on our feet. For example, having random bosses spawn on different random maps would make it harder for a meta to emerge.

1.) Skill – Players raw skill, knowledge, innovation, and class proficiency. Challenge players by making them think smart and quick. Design the content to fill the same role as SAB Tribulation mode, Liadri 8-orb, and Triple Trouble, then like quadruple that level of challenge and make it the base learning curve.

2.) Group Coherence – Groups need to be aware of what combo finishers are, their class utility, what they can handle as a group, they need to be able to coordinate, they need to be able to time boons, heals, dps, interupts, etc. It needs to be a collective effort in one form or another, whether it be a 15-man zerg, or a 3-way split. Somehow everyone needs to have a role and fulfill it perfectly.

3.) Prestige – Skins, Titles, Minis. Whatever the reward is, it needs to be able to be shown off. The winners need to be proud of their accomplishments, and the losers need to be jealous.

Sooner, I’ve posted my top 3 but I want to underline my flop 3.

So, here it is :

Flop 1 : “Raid-bound” rewards
Nope. Nope, Nope !
“You have done this boss ? Okay, show me the skin / title / mini and I’ll make you a place in the raid.”
I’ve seen this a lot of time in other MMO, I don’t want this to come in GW2.
Never.

Flop 2 : Personnal UberSkillz
If you want to play alone then I got lots of Action-RPG for you.
I don’t want guildmate to blame me because I missed my dodge or because I don’t get the APM of a 15 years-old boy (or girl).
I want to feel like I’m a great player because I’m aware of my team not because my dps rotation is perfect.

Flop 3 : Not linked to guild / Not instanced.
I’m really not okay with that for two reason :
1. : Creating link with other players won’t kill you.
Plus, you can have up to 5 guild in GW2 and some of them are created only for organized event (like great wurm or tequatl). I’m sure you will be able to find a guild created to run Raids.
2. : Dynamic scale is harder to balance.

Kasima.8143:

1) Instanced.
2) Instanced. Seriously, for those who don’t like that idea, please go farm Dry Top, the Silverwastes or the world bosses and let us have our instanced content so we can play only with the people we want.

Fortunately, most people want the same thing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

A thought that might streamline the conversation -

Would it be technically possible/realistic to limit the number and size of posts during the first 48 hours of a CDI. So, for example, each player would be allowed one post of no more than 300 words in the first two days of the thread.

After 2 days, the thread could open up to longer posts and back and forth discussions – after everyone has had the chance to get their initial thoughts out – and limit alot of the knee jerk reactions and conversations heading off on tangents.

Just a thought. Dont want to derail the “3 ideas” discussion. If this post impedes that or you feel is in the wrong place or innappropriate, feel free to delete.

We’re looking at a different way to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently analyze player input.

This is going to take some time and research, but thanks for sharing your suggestions. I don’t think they derail the thread, because I’ve been reading it, and I can’t tell you how much I like bullet post lists and brief details. (And I don’t even work on this stuff, I’m just an observer. )

And as the man said…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Get your top three priorities in folks. We will be closing this thread on Monday and shortly after the GvG CDI will begin!

Chris

If you are looking for new ways of doing CDIs, I think I know one method that could work well.

On some indie development contests, you get to submit your entry, and people can vote (like/dislike), and also comment on it. If we could implement something similar, where we could submit our proposals, and people get to vote those that they find good (would potentially remove the redundancy of proposals), and comment on them (allow to have more focused discussion on each proposal without derailing the overall discussion).

This idea would require its own website, doing something like what Steam’s Greenlight does, or like Humble Bundle’s development contests do too. With this, we could browse over proposals under certain tasks (for example, one week Chris proposes an idea about…I don’t know…adding giant cats to the game, and give us some lineaments over what the proposals should be, and we have a week to submit.). That way proposals would be much easier to read (they will always follow the format), you get to read immediately any relevant comment on that particular proposal (under its comments section), and you get to know if people like or dislike the idea with the voting system.

Okay, so originally I was just going to read these comments to see the community’s ideas, but I’m getting a little concerned and would like to throw a few thoughts of my own in here to state what I think the top three priorities should be for raids.

1) Content. I’m seeing some different opinions regarding the length of raids, and to make an obvious statement they need to be longer than dungeons. No, I don’t want raids taking 6+ hours or anything, but under an hour? That’s not going to cut good endgame content. In fact that’s the reason players are complaining about the living world updates right now, the lack of content makes them come on for about an hour and then not touch GW2 for two weeks. So yeah, a single raid run needs to be pretty long.

2) Challenging. This one should speak for itself, but just in case it doesn’t, Anet needs to realize that there’s plenty of casual gameplay already, they don’t need anymore. The casuals aren’t the ones complaining about the lack of content, that would be the hardcore players. Or, if you have the time+resources, have a difficulty scaling and make it so that higher difficulties would yield better rewards

3) Story. I think Fractals could have gone in a really cool direction with stories. For instance, they could have given us a fractal that would have shown us parts of the future of the story, and then as the story progresses we start to understand what that fractal meant in bits and pieces. However, Anet chose to make Fractals a more surreal experience where the fractals actually bore no meaning to the story itself and instead expanded on the universe (the problem I had with this being that we really didn’t care about the expanded parts of our universe that didn’t apply to us. Collosus fractal I’m looking at you :‘( you had so much potential). I’m not saying this was a strictly bad thing, but where fractals failed to give us any meaning to our immediate universe, raids could make up for by giving us not only story, but lore. The people in my guild who followed the storyline closely, particularly those who played GW1, were overjoyed when this most recent update came out because of the priory library instance at the end, which gave us a great deal of GW background that we actually cared about. The raids could tell us about our immediate story, and also give us some insight into the Guild Wars 2 universe.

For me

1: Accessibility: I have played since launch and the only content I don’t engage in regularly is the content that takes a long time to complete. Part of this is the challenge of balancing life’s many commitments but the other part of it is that for me any content becomes stressful or boring content if I am forced to engage with it for too long in a single sitting. I have done the long, grinding instanced PvE raids in other games and I have no real interest interest is going back to that.

So for that reason I would like to see challenging content be kept short and sweet. Rather than a huge sprawling dungeon experience I would like to take on single bosses that can be defeated in 20-40 minutes with little to no trash (or alternatively WvW style Towers and Keeps that need to be breached and captured). That way taking a stab at it and failing isn’t a waste of a whole days play time and taking multiple stabs at it doesn’t cause guild drama.

Also in the interest of keeping things accessible I would like to see the content scale. Starting at a relatively low player count (5-10) and going up to a medium player count (25 players). I have no issue with it going higher but I realize scaling becomes tricky with huge ranges.

Alternatively increase gold rewards for tackling the content with less players (10 players might be optimal but if you do it with 5 it takes longer but you get double the gold.

2: Dynamic Combat: I love GW2s combat system but feel in most PvE content it gets “broken” by overwhelming DPS. I would like to see raid combat encourage situational awareness and reactive play rather than play by numbers (not to mention spending more time explaining fights than executing them). I know this isn’t what most people think of when they think of raids but I honestly feel this game’s combat shines when you have to engage with the core mechanics.

I want to be forced to switch between melee and ranged combat, I want to be forced to interrupt heals, I want to be forced to move and I want conditions to be more relevant (poison becomes a lot more desirable if mobs can heal, bleeds more useful if the party can’t stack and nuke).

ArenaNet have already proven they can make some fun and interesting boss mechanics in things like bounties (they are great when you can’t overwhelm them with sheer numbers), dungeons, frac and world events. More heals, more cleaves, more chain lightning and more AoEs can help curb the stack and burn strategies.

Hell bringing in some siege from WvW would be pretty cool while we are at it.

3: Rewards: Rewards should be consistent as opposed to random. Gold and tokens rather than super rare ranged drops. Rewarding partial success ala Teq is also nice.

I love dress up. Use it to motivate me. Give me skins, minis and the like I can steadily work towards. Put an Abaddon mask in the game (that looks good on Charr) and I will murder all the dragons!

PS: on a slightly different note, this game needs a mini skelk/graveling.

1. Unique boss encounters with different phases – see Giganticus Lupicus for reference. He has 3 phases, each with different attacks. This is by far the best boss in the game and we want/need more like this… he may be overrated by the standards of many of us these days but my point is, there is no encounter in the game like this one— he truly stands out.

So, with that in mind… please make truly distinctive encounters like this as I believe it really is an important factor in making a boss fight challenging.

2. Meaningful rewards – see FotM for reference as to what you shouldn’t do with rewards. FotM gives a horrible gold/hour rate and there’s no guarantee of being rewarded for your time— all RNG. It’s fine for some rewards to be RNG, but since the fractal skins and ascended chests are basically all to be obtained from FotM then in that case it’s bad. Please don’t make the same mistake again.

3. Interesting instance layouts. It’s boring when things are extremely linear, like for example CoE dungeon. Not only is it really linear but there’s tons of overlap in the three paths, so if you are to design raids that are instances and aren’t just a single boss fight, please make it interesting.

Having groups split up, having mazes, adding traps to get by with multiple different routes (long but safe, short but deadly, etc). There’s a lot of possibilities to make really awesome instanced raids.

My suggestion would be to add a sort of “Defend the city” raid instance for each major city. They all could have different rewards (unique armor for that city) for defending against that race’s natural enemy.

This would be a good way of making each city a bit more unique and populated.

This is a bit out there but also had this thought.
An alternate idea , which leaves the realm of raiding and more of world event is each city could come under attack on intervals and have instances open (with limited number of players per instance). the event could happen in each overflow so the instances arnt overflow specific. You could also sign your guild up maybe and give priority for guild mates who are joining so you can fight together.

Just an idea either way im sure whatever anet does will be great!

lunacrous.6751:

1.) That raid rewards provide no additional gameplay options or advantages in any aspect of the game outside of raiding.

2.) That lore and story content included in raids be accessible to the entire player base, and not just the top 5-10% completing raids. A story mode that does not give raid unique achievements or cosmetic rewards would do well for this.

3.) That raid design takes into account and adjusts for the following:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Rank-what-class-you-take-in-dungeon/first

Otherwise, high difficulty organized content will just become a lengthy game of “No Necros Allowed.”

Sorry, but that would be just horrible. If you do this, there is just total casual play and no skill needed. There is simply no incentive for people who want to overcome challenge. If you can’t play games, don’t play games. Not everything is for everyone.

I admit that it should be more accessible than most raid content of most MMOs, since only 5-10% can finish it. But at least make it more challenging than the faceroll content in dungeons. If people want to do the stuff they have to learn something.

I really like the design of the new map, especially the underground bosses. The mechanics are fun and not every group makes it. I haven’t done these boss-fights too often yet, but in my experience a coordinated group would be more sucessful here, while there’s still a place for people who have none.

Good job whoever designed this open world mini raids!

Baltzenger.2467:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

A thought that might streamline the conversation -

Would it be technically possible/realistic to limit the number and size of posts during the first 48 hours of a CDI. So, for example, each player would be allowed one post of no more than 300 words in the first two days of the thread.

After 2 days, the thread could open up to longer posts and back and forth discussions – after everyone has had the chance to get their initial thoughts out – and limit alot of the knee jerk reactions and conversations heading off on tangents.

Just a thought. Dont want to derail the “3 ideas” discussion. If this post impedes that or you feel is in the wrong place or innappropriate, feel free to delete.

We’re looking at a different way to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently analyze player input.

This is going to take some time and research, but thanks for sharing your suggestions. I don’t think they derail the thread, because I’ve been reading it, and I can’t tell you how much I like bullet post lists and brief details. (And I don’t even work on this stuff, I’m just an observer. )

And as the man said…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Get your top three priorities in folks. We will be closing this thread on Monday and shortly after the GvG CDI will begin!

Chris

If you are looking for new ways of doing CDIs, I think I know one method that could work well.

On some indie development contests, you get to submit your entry, and people can vote (like/dislike), and also comment on it. If we could implement something similar, where we could submit our proposals, and people get to vote those that they find good (would potentially remove the redundancy of proposals), and comment on them (allow to have more focused discussion on each proposal without derailing the overall discussion).

This idea would require its own website, doing something like what Steam’s Greenlight does, or like Humble Bundle’s development contests do too. With this, we could browse over proposals under certain tasks (for example, one week Chris proposes an idea about…I don’t know…adding giant cats to the game, and give us some lineaments over what the proposals should be, and we have a week to submit.). That way proposals would be much easier to read (they will always follow the format), you get to read immediately any relevant comment on that particular proposal (under its comments section), and you get to know if people like or dislike the idea with the voting system.

Minecraft has used this in the past, I think it is an amazing tool does just just what you describe.

https://getsatisfaction.com/

1- Scalable difficulty
2- Rewards that affect gameplay (new skills, weapon types and traits)
3- Increased party limit