Guild Wars 2

I’ll just say it, I think the raid content should be difficult and rely on team work across 10-20 ppl. Will this exclude some players, yes but so what. Fractals has already done the same with 5 man-dungeon party. It’s not like fractals caters to people just starting the game. Dungeons are a good progression of learning to play in 5- man party team and fractals work as the high-end point of 5-man parties. So it makes sense that once we add that organization to more people it should be high-end. World bosses and guild missions already cater to the casual crowd. And Honestly I think it’s silly for it to be so casual and easy. Why do we need more content that’s like that? I do not want to wait for 20 ppl to organize to do a 20 min event that’s so bland and easy.

kratan.4619:

The only games I have enjoyed raids in have been games that do not limit the number of people who may participate. I have been a member of rather large guilds from EQ1 on and it has not been fun letting someone know that they cannot come on the raid because we are full up.

The limit on players seems to be the major cause of the exclusion of people and the elitism of prove you did it before or gear checks.

If “hardcore” people want to do the raid with fewer people they would still be able to “challenge” themselves. While the less than hardcore people would be able to bring more to enjoy the same content their way. A perfect example of this was doing the dragon raid in DAoC, for hte life of me I cannot remember his name, an open world mob so you can bring as many as you like, but a lot of people would only bring 24 people because then everyone got one of both seal types that dropped.

TLDR; create raids so that you can bring as many or as few people as you want.

The problem with this is that you create a balancing nightmare.
The only remotely working solution I have seen anyone mention, is having 2 version:
One with scaling (for the masses) and therefore no unique rewards, and
One with a fixed size and unique rewards.

While I wouldn’t mind them making that scaling version, I’d prefer if they focused on making the challenging, fixed version first, and then maybe later released the other version. Otherwise, those of us looking for (rewarding) challenges (for a long time) would have to wait even longer before we got some content.

I wonder… will we get some dungeon rework too, with all the good suggestions here. I think it would be MUCH easier to try some of the suggested features in our current dungeons first, before we take a step up to raids.

Dungeons, especially explorable paths, should have been really challenging raid-like experiences, if I remember right. Cheap strategies like stacking and skipping made a lot of the content trivial though, if you know what you do.

My suggestion because of this: try to rethink combat on a smaller scale (dungeons) first and if it works well for 5man, it’s likely that it works well for 10-15 people as well.

Blaeys.3102:

..
I could get behind multiple raid tiers, even though, as Ive noted before, I think their should be three tiers – 8, 12 and 16 person raids. These numbers mean, regardless of how many people you have (as long as you have at least eight), you are never more than 3 people away from viable raid groups.
..

A question for you Blaeys:
How would you feel about it, if Anet started out by making the raid(s) for 12 man only, but then later introduced the two other sizes?
(Hereby giving them time to perfect the balance of each size)
Side question:
Would you have faith in them to follow through on delivering the (3) sizes over time?

Ohoni.6057:

No. Sorry, but you have to share this game with the rest of us, and we’ve gotten along quite well without raids for two years now. If the choice is between having raids, but everyone needs to do them if they want the “cool new raid lewt,” or not having raids at all, then I vote no raids at all. If you want to have raids you have to get along with those players that don’t, this is NOT a raidista game and never should be. I’m fine with there being raids, so long as non-raider players have no reason to go there. If they put in mechanisms to “encourage” non-raiders to participate then they can burn in the pits.

The whole idea of this CDI is to brainstorm about ideas to encourage people who have never been able to raid before to go inside a raid and experience it for themselves. A large part is how to do raiding in a different way to how other games do them, and that includes finding ways to get as many people as possible on board with raiding.
Inclusion, not exclusion, is the keyword here.

So the idea of there being a ‘raider’ and ‘non-raider’ already is anathema to one of the goals. We should get raids to a point where everyone is either a ‘raider’ or ‘raider-to-be’.

Roybe.5896:

*Because frankly you cant create epic difficult raids without causing exclusion. Its impossible from a logical standpoint. And with exclusion comes elitism. So I will repeat they are non avoidable issues.

Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by trying so hard to be inclusive to everyone. If you go down that route we wont be getting epic difficult content. We will be getting more bland easy stuff with poor rewards.*

THIS needs to be talked about. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic rewards is another way to look at this. However, keep those emotions in check. THIS is a very important issue and needs to be focused on. This is my next concern past the issue of rewards.

How do we create inclusive raid material? Is it possible? Our reward discussion has been interesting and shows we can do this. Why is exclusivity so important?

Can you come up with any suggestions? Because ive thought about it a lot. And whatever solution I came up with either doesnt solve the issue or it hurts the content. Which is exactly why I said its impossible to solve and the issues are non avoidable.

Id be curious to see if anyone has any ideas. Because i seriously doubt its something you can find a compromise on.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder… will we get some dungeon rework too, with all the good suggestions here. I think it would be MUCH easier to try some of the suggested features in our current dungeons first, before we take a step up to raids.

Dungeons, especially explorable paths, should have been really challenging raid-like experiences, if I remember right. Cheap strategies like stacking and skipping made a lot of the content trivial though, if you know what you do.

My suggestion because of this: try to rethink combat on a smaller scale (dungeons) first and if it works well for 5man, it’s likely that it works well for 10-15 people as well.

As with many suggestions, it is of course far more viable to test things out on a smaller scale first. This requires less of a commitment from the dev team as well, and it’s less of a disaster, economically speaking, if something doesn’t end up working out.

Has anyone considered releasing new weapons on professions as new rewards? I know anet said awhile back that they’ve been working on making all weapons available on all professions. I don’t know what the status of that is, but it certainly would make me want to raid for those rewards.

Just brainstorming, so don’t take this too seriously.

Symph.8407:

kratan.4619:

The only games I have enjoyed raids in have been games that do not limit the number of people who may participate. I have been a member of rather large guilds from EQ1 on and it has not been fun letting someone know that they cannot come on the raid because we are full up.

The limit on players seems to be the major cause of the exclusion of people and the elitism of prove you did it before or gear checks.

If “hardcore” people want to do the raid with fewer people they would still be able to “challenge” themselves. While the less than hardcore people would be able to bring more to enjoy the same content their way. A perfect example of this was doing the dragon raid in DAoC, for hte life of me I cannot remember his name, an open world mob so you can bring as many as you like, but a lot of people would only bring 24 people because then everyone got one of both seal types that dropped.

TLDR; create raids so that you can bring as many or as few people as you want.

The problem with this is that you create a balancing nightmare.
The only remotely working solution I have seen anyone mention, is having 2 version:
One with scaling (for the masses) and therefore no unique rewards, and
One with a fixed size and unique rewards.

While I wouldn’t mind them making that scaling version, I’d prefer if they focused on making the challenging, fixed version first, and then maybe later released the other version. Otherwise, those of us looking for (rewarding) challenges (for a long time) would have to wait even longer before we got some content.

Well personally I feel you could pull off scaling raids if you design it within 3 conditions:

1. There is one “recommended” playercount which the encounter is balanced around

2. All other scaling values are harder then the recommended playercount, whether you have more players or less.

3. There’s still an upper limit to keep things becoming ridicilous to balance (no 150 people in a 15 man raid).

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that difficulty shouldn’t be a higher priority then scaling raids however I honestly think there’s a ton to gain if Anet can actually pull scaling Raids off properly. Players often complain that they’re one player short or they have to leave a buddy out of a raid with a fixed cap, I personally think a “soft cap” of “the raid gets much harder if you go in with those numbers” is perferable.

The whole idea of this CDI is to brainstorm about ideas to encourage people who have never been able to raid before to go inside a raid and experience it for themselves.

Look, if you want to figure out ways to make raids FUN for more people, that’s great. If you want to “encourage” people to raid by showing them how fun it is, then that’s fine. But if you try to “encourage” them to raid by bribing them with unique loot that they can’ get elsewhere, then no, full stop on that. Players should not have to be bribed into activities, they should do them because they want to do them, not because they’re being paid to do them. The rewards should be enough that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but never enough to draw people in from other activities.

Inclusion is a great attitude to have, but understand that some people just don’t like green eggs and ham, and never will, and you don’t want to make those people feel left out of getting cool skins just because they don’t enjoy raiding in any form, no matter how inclusive it may be.

So the idea of there being a ‘raider’ and ‘non-raider’ already is anathema to one of the goals. We should get raids to a point where everyone is either a ‘raider’ or ‘raider-to-be’.

Ok, fair enough. But what would you call “someone who enjoys large scale, pre-organized events in which you have to spend long periods of time engaged with a single large group through complex content,” verses “someone who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing in any sense?” Personally I find “raider” and “non-raider” work pretty well. If your dream is to design a raid that everyone would enjoy, then I’m sorry, that just doesn’t take human nature into account. It’s like saying that you dream of inventing a chocolate cake that everyone would love, even people that hate chocolate.

spoj.9672:

Roybe.5896:

*Because frankly you cant create epic difficult raids without causing exclusion. Its impossible from a logical standpoint. And with exclusion comes elitism. So I will repeat they are non avoidable issues.

Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by trying so hard to be inclusive to everyone. If you go down that route we wont be getting epic difficult content. We will be getting more bland easy stuff with poor rewards.*

THIS needs to be talked about. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic rewards is another way to look at this. However, keep those emotions in check. THIS is a very important issue and needs to be focused on. This is my next concern past the issue of rewards.

How do we create inclusive raid material? Is it possible? Our reward discussion has been interesting and shows we can do this. Why is exclusivity so important?

Can you come up with any suggestions? Because ive thought about it a lot. And whatever solution I came up with either doesnt solve the issue or it hurts the content. Which is exactly why I said its impossible to solve and the issues are non avoidable.

Id be curious to see if anyone has any ideas. Because i seriously doubt its something you can find a compromise on.

It’s actually quite simple.
Lowering the raiding entry barrier. Have raids come in multiple modes. Be it a normal and hardcore mode, or levels like fractals.
Including people to play on the highest tiers isn’t hard either. One way to do it is how Tequatl and Wurm already work: Set the player count really high.
The more players there are, the more the poor players become statistical noise. This gives them more of a window to get used to the fight, learn the mechanics, and up their game.
However, the pitfall is that it also can make it harder for a player to tell if they are doing something wrong.

Player skill is kind of a non-problem though. There’s no such thing as a player that cannot become better.

About being lvl 80 for raiding:

I think that if the game were about raiding from the beginning, it would be logical to want to see that kind of content be available at different stages (like dungeons) of the progression. But the reality of GW2 is that it isn’t about raiding, it doesn’t even have raids yet.
Following that, we can assume that the metagame would never be completely around the idea of raiding, unless some unlikely things happen, like adding a new tier of gear tied to raids. So we should see raids as purely endgame content, available for you to enjoy after you have completed the other aspects of the game.

On some other note

I’ve been thinking about something that could be interesting. It’s partially related to raids.
What if players were able to join NPC guilds? appart from the 5 guilds you can join from other players, having the chance to join fictional guilds, that would be tied to the idea of raids? On this guilds:

• There will be a competition between this various fictional guilds for renown.
• Weekly, the state of the competition will be resetted.
• Members of different guilds/factions could join for jolly cooperation during raids.
• There will be a personal progress on each guild, where you advance in ranks(and titles) as you complete and do more raids.
• This fictional guilds will grant benefits similar to existing guilds, but different in effects (for example, instead of magic find, they could give you…extra chance to get a certain mat out of kills)
• Weekly, there will be a list of tasks that you can complete for your guild, this could be translated into a Reward Track.
• Since we are a bit short on progression-related rewards (against cosmetics), this idea could add to the overall fun and bragging rights. Being a renown monster hunter from a certain guild should require a lot of time, and having done a lot of raids for that particular guild/faction.
• There could be a possibility that raid groups compete against each other inside a raid, this could be dynamic too, having the political state between raid guilds/factions change from one week to another.

Ohoni.6057:

So, what if a part of the playerbase does not like the unique rewards released with the first raid? Does that mean the raid should not be made? Or should not have unique rewards for those who do like the skins? Of course not.

No to the first, yes to the second, raids should NOT have unique rewards to them. Problem solved.

Please, do not design raids around sparing the feelings of people who do not want to raid.. Make the raids, make them the best they can be, give them unique visual rewards. If some people who don’t want to raid would want these items.. well, then they better start raiding.

No. Sorry, but you have to share this game with the rest of us, and we’ve gotten along quite well without raids for two years now. If the choice is between having raids, but everyone needs to do them if they want the “cool new raid lewt,” or not having raids at all, then I vote no raids at all. If you want to have raids you have to get along with those players that don’t, this is NOT a raidista game and never should be. I’m fine with there being raids, so long as non-raider players have no reason to go there. If they put in mechanisms to “encourage” non-raiders to participate then they can burn in the pits.

It’s clear that we disagree on this. But try to look at it this way.
With the argument that you put forth, basically, if there’s something in the game that I want, but the only way I can get it is by doing something I don’t want to (or don’t like doing), those things should not be in the game.
I’m gonna apply this to Legendaries. A part of getting legendaries could be attributed to luck, but generally, getting a legendary is all about grinding. A long endless grind.
I don’t like grinding, I don’t care to waste my time grinding. So there should be no legendaries in the game.

That’s pretty much the argument you’re making, and to me, that just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Symph.8407:

Blaeys.3102:

..
I could get behind multiple raid tiers, even though, as Ive noted before, I think their should be three tiers – 8, 12 and 16 person raids. These numbers mean, regardless of how many people you have (as long as you have at least eight), you are never more than 3 people away from viable raid groups.
..

A question for you Blaeys:
How would you feel about it, if Anet started out by making the raid(s) for 12 man only, but then later introduced the two other sizes?
(Hereby giving them time to perfect the balance of each size)
Side question:
Would you have faith in them to follow through on delivering the (3) sizes over time?

Its a fair question -

I think they have to come out of the gate with the philosophy of inclusions (again, not talking about difficulty, just logistics).

My biggest issue would be choosing who in my guild gets to be part of those 12 party groups and who doesnt. If 26 qualified raiders showed up, I would have to leave 2 people out or find 10 additional raiders (which would be very difficult).

That first raid would be the most important (same as it was when WoW introduced new raiding tiers in that game). Leaving people out – not because of skill level, but because of math – is the thing that I cannot get past. I dont want to tell people they cannot come because of a mathmatics problem. If someone is ready to raid, I want to ensure they get to raid alongside friends. That is extremely important to me.

So, short answer, I would find this problematic. I think the effort needs to be made from day one to alleviate these logistics concerns (because logistics are what cause 80-90% of the hate in other raiding games, imo – moreso than elitism even).

Solve the logistics problem and content can be as hard as they can make it (and I think the 8-12-16 model would solve it). I’d be giddy with excitement over the prospects of those kinds of raids.

Its worth noting that they could do two tiers – 8 and 12 – and the math would work just as well, so if 3 adds too much development time, that would be an option.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder… will we get some dungeon rework too, with all the good suggestions here. I think it would be MUCH easier to try some of the suggested features in our current dungeons first, before we take a step up to raids.

Dungeons, especially explorable paths, should have been really challenging raid-like experiences, if I remember right. Cheap strategies like stacking and skipping made a lot of the content trivial though, if you know what you do.

My suggestion because of this: try to rethink combat on a smaller scale (dungeons) first and if it works well for 5man, it’s likely that it works well for 10-15 people as well.

I agree with you.
I would like to see some experimentation first being done around dungeons, also because I want that system to be further refined.
I really hope this gets some attention.

Ohoni.6057:

The whole idea of this CDI is to brainstorm about ideas to encourage people who have never been able to raid before to go inside a raid and experience it for themselves.

Look, if you want to figure out ways to make raids FUN for more people, that’s great. If you want to “encourage” people to raid by showing them how fun it is, then that’s fine. But if you try to “encourage” them to raid by bribing them with unique loot that they can’ get elsewhere, then no, full stop on that. Players should not have to be bribed into activities, they should do them because they want to do them, not because they’re being paid to do them. The rewards should be enough that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but never enough to draw people in from other activities.

Inclusion is a great attitude to have, but understand that some people just don’t like green eggs and ham, and never will, and you don’t want to make those people feel left out of getting cool skins just because they don’t enjoy raiding in any form, no matter how inclusive it may be.

So the idea of there being a ‘raider’ and ‘non-raider’ already is anathema to one of the goals. We should get raids to a point where everyone is either a ‘raider’ or ‘raider-to-be’.

Ok, fair enough. But what would you call “someone who enjoys large scale, pre-organized events in which you have to spend long periods of time engaged with a single large group through complex content,” verses “someone who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing in any sense?” Personally I find “raider” and “non-raider” work pretty well. If your dream is to design a raid that everyone would enjoy, then I’m sorry, that just doesn’t take human nature into account. It’s like saying that you dream of inventing a chocolate cake that everyone would love, even people that hate chocolate.

You cannot create content for people that by default are not your target audience. It’s like this already in the game.
For example: I am not a PvP player. sPvP is really not my thing.
sPvP does have unique rewards, and I will never get them unless I go and play sPvP. I may not like sPvP much, or at all, so I can:
A) Suck it up and do it anyway. Maybe it’ll grow on me, or maybe I’ll hate every second of it. I don’t know.
B) Accept it and move on. There’s plenty of stuff to do that I do enjoy and that also gives unique rewards.

So really, saying raids shouldn’t have unique rewards because some players do not like raids, is kind of a weird thing to say. Let them have their rewards, just like the sPvP, WvW, dungeon, open world roamers, farmers, etc. already have.
If it’s not for you, it’s just not for you.
But it sounds to me your issue is more with other people than with the game structure of raids in general. That’s not something the devs can fix, ever. Only you can. MMO’s are social games. Other people will happen.

Raids can be a lot of fun. Making them more fun should always be paramount.

Ohoni.6057:

No. Sorry, but you have to share this game with the rest of us, and we’ve gotten along quite well without raids for two years now. If the choice is between having raids, but everyone needs to do them if they want the “cool new raid lewt,” or not having raids at all, then I vote no raids at all. If you want to have raids you have to get along with those players that don’t, this is NOT a raidista game and never should be. I’m fine with there being raids, so long as non-raider players have no reason to go there. If they put in mechanisms to “encourage” non-raiders to participate then they can burn in the pits.

I’m sorry to say but if you looked around you’d figure out that there are rewards that are tied to just a specific activity in any part of the game.
These rewards “encourage” people to do those activities so sadly what you’re saying is not only wrong it doesn’t even hold true in the game now.

You have WvW unique rewards in the form of Hero and Mistforged Hero weapons which you can only get with WvW tournament rewards.

You have the Glorious Armor set that you can only get through sPVP.

You have unique weapon skins in Fractals of the Mist.

Both Tequatl and Wurm have unique drops that can only be obtained there.

In short – there are in the game now a wide variety of items that are tied to one specific area of content and that area alone.
To say that adding this to raids would be a mistake is nonsensical since we already have this and the game hasn’t imploded nor has anything happened because of it.

On some related note:
About the discussion around “being able to do the content with less than the required people”. I don’t think we should assume that “people can challenge themselves if they want”, where in the game you get no reward at all for doing so.
Two years of the game running have to teach us that players will do and try to perfect the most efficient way of doing things, against challenging themselves by giving up efficiency. And this should be looked at for dungeons too. Dungeons get a lot more interesting, and imo, on the level of difficulty we seek, when you do them with less people than recommended.

Ohoni.6057:

Look, if you want to figure out ways to make raids FUN for more people, that’s great. If you want to “encourage” people to raid by showing them how fun it is, then that’s fine. But if you try to “encourage” them to raid by bribing them with unique loot that they can’ get elsewhere, then no, full stop on that. Players should not have to be bribed into activities, they should do them because they want to do them, not because they’re being paid to do them. The rewards should be enough that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but never enough to draw people in from other activities.

Do you remember WvW season 1? They basically baited people into doing their meta by promising a “super secret awesome reward” and then massive numbers of PVE players who absolutely hated WvW flooded the WvW maps in order to farm their achievements.

Also see the post I made above.

Encouraging people with some reward to get them to try new content is not a bad thing. I didn’t even WvW before the first season but got into it for a while because after a while it became somewhat fun.

So what did they achieve? They got me out of my comfort zone and at the end of the day it was not a bad thing. If they had not added those chievos I doubt I would have ever set foot seriously in WvW.

What about sPVP ? Before dungeon tracks and the PvP reward revamp I rarely did it. When I did I was decent at it but didn’t really care for it.
With the reworked system I’ve been playing a few matches per day every day and find it enjoyable.

So yes- saying that it’s an absolute no for them to add unique rewards to create incentive for players to at least try the content is not wrong. It’s actually a viable solution.

Naetell.3815:

Ohoni.6057:

The whole idea of this CDI is to brainstorm about ideas to encourage people who have never been able to raid before to go inside a raid and experience it for themselves.

Look, if you want to figure out ways to make raids FUN for more people, that’s great. If you want to “encourage” people to raid by showing them how fun it is, then that’s fine. But if you try to “encourage” them to raid by bribing them with unique loot that they can’ get elsewhere, then no, full stop on that. Players should not have to be bribed into activities, they should do them because they want to do them, not because they’re being paid to do them. The rewards should be enough that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but never enough to draw people in from other activities.

Inclusion is a great attitude to have, but understand that some people just don’t like green eggs and ham, and never will, and you don’t want to make those people feel left out of getting cool skins just because they don’t enjoy raiding in any form, no matter how inclusive it may be.

So the idea of there being a ‘raider’ and ‘non-raider’ already is anathema to one of the goals. We should get raids to a point where everyone is either a ‘raider’ or ‘raider-to-be’.

Ok, fair enough. But what would you call “someone who enjoys large scale, pre-organized events in which you have to spend long periods of time engaged with a single large group through complex content,” verses “someone who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing in any sense?” Personally I find “raider” and “non-raider” work pretty well. If your dream is to design a raid that everyone would enjoy, then I’m sorry, that just doesn’t take human nature into account. It’s like saying that you dream of inventing a chocolate cake that everyone would love, even people that hate chocolate.

You cannot create content for people that by default are not your target audience. It’s like this already in the game.
For example: I am not a PvP player. sPvP is really not my thing.
sPvP does have unique rewards, and I will never get them unless I go and play sPvP. I may not like sPvP much, or at all, so I can:
A) Suck it up and do it anyway. Maybe it’ll grow on me, or maybe I’ll hate every second of it. I don’t know.
B) Accept it and move on. There’s plenty of stuff to do that I do enjoy and that also gives unique rewards.

So really, saying raids shouldn’t have unique rewards because some players do not like raids, is kind of a weird thing to say. Let them have their rewards, just like the sPvP, WvW, dungeon, open world roamers, farmers, etc. already have.
If it’s not for you, it’s just not for you.
But it sounds to me your issue is more with other people than with the game structure of raids in general. That’s not something the devs can fix, ever. Only you can. MMO’s are social games. Other people will happen.

Raids can be a lot of fun. Making them more fun should always be paramount.

I agree with you on this.
Players adapt, I don’t think we should take the role of “defending the rights of the uninterested/less skilled/low leveled/less experienced players”. A fact about those groups is, they can change (and will, in most cases). People get better, people get interested.
A new gamemode that offers nothing new, or unique, and is there “just for those who are already interested on it”, won’t just not help the game grow, but will contribute to further divide the player base.

Your last sentence should be a motto carved in stone on the room where design happens. But applied to every aspect of the game.

I’m just going to throw something out that I think might shake up the entire thread…. Super Adventure Box Raid.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Iason Evan.3806:

I think a lot of the discussions so far have been really cookie cutter and not outside the box. I understand wanting to take raiding that you love and just plop it wholesale into GW2. Let’s brainstorm though.

• Make raiding gear uniform—when you start the raid you get to pick gear at a vendor from various stat selections—

• Players can side kick up to 80 in Raids so that anyone can do them at whatever level. The level cap in this game isn’t going anywhere so why do Raids need to be considered only playable by level 80 characters?

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

• Can we make Control classes mean something more in Raids? Support? Maybe doing DPS to a Raid Boss in a certain situation isn’t even possible. You have to do other things in order to bring the boss down.

Let’s spend a few pages of this CDI getting away from traditional notions of what Raids are and spend some time coming up with things that have never been done.

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

Hey Chris, is my idea about integrating guilds with a competition around raids even feasible? I don’t know if people agree with it or not, but I’m curious to know if the guild system could handle something like that without much reworking.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/15#post4529264

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

In fairness, you brought the scaling issue to the forefront when you told us to assume a set raid size as part of our feedback. If we can abandon that assumption (with the understanding that the topic will be part of a later discussion), then it would open the conversation to other topics.

The logistics of how raids are formed – especially among guilds of diverse numbers – is a very important topic that will affect how players – and definitely guilds – experience raiding should it ever become a thing. That topic cannot be pushed aside. It goes to the heart of how we play the game.

wwwes.1398:

I’m just going to throw something out that I think might shake up the entire thread…. Super Adventure Box Raid.

<3
Something like that would make me very happy.

Before even start thinking how to make a Raid encounter developers have to turn their eyes on the squad sytem and rethink how it is working.

Noobix.3958:

Proposal Overview – More UI assistance for organisers + Metaevent Information
I personally feel the UI doesn’t assist players enough with the more technical detail’s of the ‘mega-organised’ events. We need to UI to give us more information in a concise and clear manner. How many players are on each wurm ‘stack’? What is the role of these players? Is amber Wurm burning right now? How many turrets are manned at Tequatl? How many are defending the Vigil Megalaser?

Proposal 1 functionality – Expand Squad Functionality
The commander’s need advanced functionality to designate roles to players that all players map-wide can see. Think of WoW-style raid icons. For GW2, im thinking of a buffs commanders can apply, (self-removable by the player if they want of course) so players can see “Ok, this guy is a Condition Dealer and he kills husks”. “This guy is the turreter”. We can restrict this ability to players only within the commanders squad. Also, put the number of players in the squad inside the commander pin icon. This number is readable by all players not just the commander.

Additionaly, think of commander placeable in-game markers, for example, to show players where to stand or where to put their damage. There are currently basic map markers but in-world markers would be so much more useful and immediately apparent. Green arrow – Move here. Red arrow – Attack here. I think WvW commanders should be excited about this. These icons would be visible and contrasting enough to stand out amongst a large group of players.

@Noobix.3958,
His ideas are spot on.I will give my thoughts about it too.There are a few things that are need for a raid/squad group:

• Raid leader is the most important thing.
• A UI for the whole squad must be created.On it you can see every member that is in the squad.Where is that player at the current moment and what class is playing.
• The class must have a specific colour and an icon next to the name in the UI panel.
• On the Raid UI must be seen how many members are in the group.
• RL and assistance must be able to move players from one party frame to another.1 squad is made of 50 people.8 groups * 5 people make that number.RL must be able to move freely members for instance from group 1 to group 6.That way specific roles can be assigned more easily.
• Ground markers like these.Only RL and assistants can put them.
  http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2010/november/markers2.jpg
  Combine the current squad marks with those.That way they can be seen on the map,mini map and open world.
• Character markers like these.Only seen in Open world
  http://media-curse.cursecdn.com/attachments/84/260/scanner-zoom.png
  Only RL and assistants can mark and unmark people.
• Improve the current squad comands.Let RL and assistants know what their squad supplies are without the need to stack the whole squad.
• Add Ready check comand.Let RL and assitance to see who is ready and who isn’t.(accept/decline-tick/cross)
• Also must be revamped the kick sytem.The current one must be gone and replaced.

Now i will talk a little about NPC,defiance,CC and DOT:

• Revamp the defiance buff.First thing first remove the possibility bosses to be stun locked to death.
  The Second most important thing is how and what defiance does.Make an attack that can’t be dodged/blocked/parried/reflected or using a spell that will save you from the hit.The only possible way to stop it is by having a player who will interrupt it.Make the attack really visible.
  After that the rest of the group has to remove defiance stacks before they are hitted by the same attack again.At this moment almost 90% of the bosses don’t need to be CCed at all,because you can avoid every their spell with active mitigation.That way bosses’s attacks are negated easily and people focus only on DPS.Which is wrong.
• Make boss’s animations more visible and telegraphed.
• Add more mechanics for CC.
• Add boon removal from buffed NPCs and more condition cleansing from the group when players are affected with it.
• Revamp the dodge.Instead of mobs hitting instantly like it is now give time to press 2 buttons atleast(W+dodge/S+dodge/D+dodge/A+dodge) so i can move in the direction that i want.

Baltzenger, that could be interesting as long as it doesn’t turn into a straight up rep grind “do this many things for this specific guild/faction in order to get access to X rewards from that faction.” What about a tweak where a raid offers the choice of “mission style” for the three Orders, with different objectives and benefits for the raiders depending on which Order they choose to run the mission for?

Donari.5237:

Baltzenger, that could be interesting as long as it doesn’t turn into a straight up rep grind “do this many things for this specific guild/faction in order to get access to X rewards from that faction.” What about a tweak where a raid offers the choice of “mission style” for the three Orders, with different objectives and benefits for the raiders depending on which Order they choose to run the mission for?

That could work, as long as you can have a record of your progress for each of this factions, and they have long term goals for the players.
Good take on it, thanks!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

I couldn’t agree more. Honestly, if I wanted a traditional raid, I would play a trinity game and calculate the “objectively optimal” build on a spreadsheet. Traditional raiding is built for Trinity Minmaxing games, and if GW2 tries to run that kind of content, it will always be overshadowed by other MMOs.

GW2’s strength comes from breaking down these level/gear/class/build/group comp limitations. Instead of going backward, raiding in GW2 needs to leverage this advantage! That is the idea behind the proposal I made.

In the end, I don’t care what the final product looks like, so long as it improves upon what makes GW2 great, instead of trying to make it into a traditional MMO.

spoj.9672:

Roybe.5896:

*Because frankly you cant create epic difficult raids without causing exclusion. Its impossible from a logical standpoint. And with exclusion comes elitism. So I will repeat they are non avoidable issues.

Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by trying so hard to be inclusive to everyone. If you go down that route we wont be getting epic difficult content. We will be getting more bland easy stuff with poor rewards.*

THIS needs to be talked about. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic rewards is another way to look at this. However, keep those emotions in check. THIS is a very important issue and needs to be focused on. This is my next concern past the issue of rewards.

How do we create inclusive raid material? Is it possible? Our reward discussion has been interesting and shows we can do this. Why is exclusivity so important?

Can you come up with any suggestions? Because ive thought about it a lot. And whatever solution I came up with either doesnt solve the issue or it hurts the content. Which is exactly why I said its impossible to solve and the issues are non avoidable.

Id be curious to see if anyone has any ideas. Because i seriously doubt its something you can find a compromise on.

I honestly have never raided. I have heard so many discussions on them that I know what I do not want. However, the problem we are facing in this discussion is that those that want raids already have preconceived notions on what raids are and need to tell us why it’s so important to split a community up into raiders and non-raiders. If the only reason the rewards are wanted is to segregate the community, then I agree. This task is impossible in this game. However, if raiders come to the table with suggestions on how to be rewarded that doesn’t split up the community, that scratches their itch for recognition, I want to hear it.

This is why my suggestion of in game toys is important to me. If you got the Unholy bubble maker of joy that is placed for all others to use and enjoy, it (in my world) solves the issue of exclusivity (only raiders have it) and diminishes the poor behavior that accompanies exclusion. Everyone would have fun in the end because of the raiders dedication. It could have the bonus effect of creating desire in people to play that content.

Dalanor.5387:

Control and support comes from every other source like skills and traits. Content should be able to finished both in full offensive builds (aka “zerkers”) and in full defensive ones and ofc everything in between IF the group is coordinated enough.

I disagree – the ability for content to be finished with any amalgamation of builds has led to nothing but a single build.

Yes, you can play the game with other builds, but most players at 80 don’t; I’d love to see the data on zerk vs non-zerk builds at 80. I’m confident that zerk is overwhelmingly dominant at present.

So you force the player’s hand. The reason WoW, for instance, uses Healer/Tank/DPS is because otherwise everyone would just go Rogue and stealth+ambush enemies and bosses in seconds. Players will naturally gravitate towards the largest dps and/or the shortest time content can be completed.

I am absolutely not saying that GW2 should switch to strict healer/tank/dps, but I think that we need more defined combat roles. The GW2 combat system is more than flexible enough to make this very diverse and fun. Yes there probably will be people who heal, people who tank, and people who dps (those are archetypes, trying to eliminate them is as dumb as making them the only choices) but other archetypes could also be created.

For example: what if a raid boss had rotating vulnerability to a single type of damage, rotating between a total of 3-6 types, and immunity to everything else? One minute he’s immune to greatsword, next minute he’s immune to all blunt weapons, next he’s only vulnerable to fire, etc… People would know what 3-6 types of damage to bring ahead of time, and would need to both carry and use a variety of weapon sets.

Additionally you get roles such as the Ele summoning weapons to be an equipment supplier to someone not currently equipped for the existing weakness. This also lets other classes have roles beyond “generic DPS” because it forces them to stop fighting at certain times, so the natural conclusion would be they become support. “Oh my Warrior can’t hit this boss now, let me pick up my Battle Standard and bring it to that group over there that is hitting him right now” etc

Yes this would take coordination beforehand but raids are always going to take coordination. If the raid doesn’t take at least some degree of coordination then it’s not really a raid, it’s just a lot of people that happen to be attacking the same target together. Raids are fun because you have to work as a team, IMO – the most fun part is in forming a plan and using those tactics effectively, not just because there happens to be other players around.

Another possible mechanic I can see as interesting, at least for ele’s is the idea that if two ele’s are present neither can be in the same attunement. If they are damage from both are negated. It can be an environmental effect or an effect from an AoE with timer.

Another idea on raids and positive influence, allow the raiders to benefit the world, in similar way as WvW, their activities provide everyone with buffs. Announcing the raid group/players/guild “Thanks X.Y.Z for killing big bad monster!” Your world recieves 30 minutes of x % of magic find. This provides recognition, allows for skins, and possibly garner thanks to those recognized for the effort! Allow whipers in game to go those named..I know in GW1 I always was whispering people thanks for buffs and related goodies for their efforts.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

Chris

Guildwars 2 has three key mechanic differences that already would set it completely apart from a traditional raid.
-A dodge mechanic that completely negates all damage.
-No healing role/Tanking role.
-A downed state

Building on this would involve taking these mechanics and doing interesting things with them.

On the dodge:
-High damage “gear check” attacks are useless in gw2 since they can be negated, so we could have attacks do interesting things aside from damage. I like the idea of messing with the dodge itself (reversing the control scheme after a confusion attack) . Other possibilities for mechanics could be:
– Panels that break if dodged over but not if walked over/vice versa.
-Barriers (mobile or stationary) that can be dodged through but not walked through (similar to the lab fight in the Aetherblade hideout).
– Dodge use building up on the boss and when it hits 25 stacks causes some effect.

On Role division
This effectively frees up players, rather than letting them all dps the boss an interesting mechanic would be adding tasks that can be assigned to groups of players to add complexity and verity. Something traditional raids don’t do.
-Boss only takes damage when 3 oozes are within a certain area, this gives you a control team whos job it is to heard the oozes in.
-A secondary team could have to split off and get to a cannon, charge it and fire it while a primary team prevents the boss firing off its shot first.

On Downed state
Not entirely sure what you can do with this:
-Potentially ignore it by giving enemies the ability to execute finishers
-Have allies / opponents modify their behavior based on people in the downed state.

Lian Olsam.9541:

Harper.4173:

Lian Olsam.9541:

hi harper

i dont wanna “destroy zerker” i just wanna have a content with multi gear and multi purpose…. inside the game there is alot of stats, but u will choose only zerk and ptv for other contents… non offence for anet, but i think they wrong something when they had develop dungeons and pve, otherwise why create alot of stats? i never saw all that stats combo in a game, but i will use only 2 (or 3)…

Because no matter how much “variety” there is in the game the bottom line is people will always use what’s best. Because they care about efficiency and getting good rewards fast.

There are many sets in the game and many of them see use in sPVP, WvW and niche areas of PVE.
But for general usage people go with whatever works best. Replacing zerker with something else is the only thing you can achieve by “changing the zerker meta” because in all honesty “multi gear and multi purpose” sounds good in theory but in reality you only want the gear that allows you to get the loot in the easiest and fastest way.

You can’t have multi-purpose in an environment where the only purpose is to obtain rewards.

so why use zerker? use nomad and go to do dungeon in gw2 the gear “support” your build/skills, there is no way to use a full dps weapon and traits with nomad,rabbid,soldier etc etc stats, because it will not work properly….

Nomad is perfectly fine for dungeons – you can run dungeons in nomad and complete just fine.
The issue is that I don’t run nomad in dungeons because I don’t want them to take long. I want my dungeons quick and easy so I can get my rewards. So naturally I’ll use whatever gear gets me that.

It’s not about the gear not being viable – it’s about my choice as a player.

if no one will give you a powerfull support, maybe one of zerk will go for a support builds+support weapon+support gear, changing his role and his purpose in a full support man

So basically you want the encounter to force someone into the “healer” role but simply didn’t explain it like that.

A full zerker player with traits and skills built for support isn’t a DPS with some support. It’s a full support player that can also keep himself alive without requiring gear that helps him do it.

Full support / Half Support / No Support in this game is determined only by traits and skills.

Also the condi thing exists in the game already – but the CC thing – you have people using CC in the game already.

there is not only players who love speed run, there is not only players who love farming, there is also players like me, who wanna challenging content but wanna also have a fun, and more choice you have more fun u can have, and on top of all you can make happy more ppl, because if u love to do max dps, after this, u can keep your role, no one will force you to play differently, but now others ppl can do it if they want…

Who’s stopping you? Go do dungeons – in whatever gear you want. CC mobs all you want. Go full healing power. Nobody is stopping anyone and the game allows almost any party to complete dungeons.

What I feel you want is to force other people to need certain “roles” so you and like minded individuals feel “needed” or “wanted”. That’s just selfish.

“You can’t have multi-purpose in an environment where the only purpose is to obtain rewards.”

my only purpose with a game is have fun, if i wanna reward i go work

this is gw2 for me, i’ve chose this game because you are not forced to do something 24/24 7/7 for dont be a “looser” and imho they done it really good, but it miss some things other games have… you wrote alot of things and i have the answer for ALL of this but i dont wanna push the topic on this way, will be a neverending discussion i have my ideas and u have yours i dont wanna change yours, difference is ever good, that’s why i’d like to promote it also on gameplay, so EVERYONE can play what they really want, now isnt possible, alot of player say that in game and with alot of topics, so isnt only my feelings, maybe this guys played like me also to other mmo and they know how difference and funny is can play really different with a real different purpose

raids have to be developed by 0, lets try to give to all gw2 players what they want, ppl like u already have the entire game with this mechanics could we hope to have something different for the others?

YES! someone else like me, having fun/ content being fun comes first, rewards are just an extra.

Since GW2 doesn’t have a gear-treadmill, the rewards are what skins? to play barbie? I do like the skins, but having fun comes first.

What I liked with e.g. marionette was that there was the chance that it was you in person who saved the encounter, being the last man standing on the last remaining platform and finishing that boss, everyone’s eyes on you, last lane, epic.

That’s the type of experience I personally liked most up to now. It isn’t bound to something being extremely challenging for everybody, it isn’t bound to specific loot or rewards, the experience itself was rewarding. I personally would be more than glad if raiding would focus on epic moments – this needs not necessarily be bound to hardmode content.

Harper.4173:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Harper.4173:

Lian Olsam.9541:

my only purpose with a game is have fun, if i wanna reward i go work

this is gw2 for me, i’ve chose this game because you are not forced to do something 24/24 7/7 for dont be a “looser” and imho they done it really good, but it miss some things other games have… you wrote alot of things and i have the answer for ALL of this but i dont wanna push the topic on this way, will be a neverending discussion i have my ideas and u have yours i dont wanna change yours, difference is ever good, that’s why i’d like to promote it also on gameplay, so EVERYONE can play what they really want, now isnt possible, alot of player say that in game and with alot of topics, so isnt only my feelings, maybe this guys played like me also to other mmo and they know how difference and funny is can play really different with a real different purpose

raids have to be developed by 0, lets try to give to all gw2 players what they want, ppl like u already have the entire game with this mechanics could we hope to have something different for the others?

Great! and you can do that -find people that have fun the same way you do and have at it.

For the majority of players in this game as far as I’ve seen fun= rewards fast.
Or better rewards. Or more rewards. That’s what people want in an MMO.

There’s absolutely nothing in this game preventing you from playing exactly how you want except your own vision and ideas.

i dont wanna waste my time using 2x time doing a content with the wrong builds… u dont understant my point of view, i’m not a dumb wanna play something wrong, ofc i wanna use the better stuff for do it properly, but NOW the FULL zerk meta is the faster and i’d like more deeper content than dps everything… btw like someone told (and me in the last post) dont push this topic in the zerker discussion, i just hope devs will take the right decision changing the meta into the raids allowing ppl to play differently as the best choice u can make…

The problem is – as you’ve nicely put it – you want to have your cake and eat it.

You want to play the gear and build that you like even though it’s not what is best for the encounter but still clear the encounter just as fast or nearly as fast as those who are specifically playing in order to do it as fast as possible.

If you play for the “challenge” then taking longer shouldn’t be considered a “waste of time” since it’s what you like and want.

Ultimately you just proved you want the same rewards speed clear people get with less work while roleplaying your favorite set-up.

There’s no right or wrong way to play the game- it’s the way you enjoy it more.

You can’t really expect the game to change and make what you like to play the meta now can you?

problem is, you have the cake and u dont wanna give it to others

my english isnt too good, so maybe i doesent explain properly my idea or maybe we just enjoy different stuff, i feel your suggestion as the game should be like COD go and kill everything… i love gw2 and i wanna more (because gw2 is more), you already have your COD mode in all dungeons and fractals…. give us a slice of your cake pls

i just suggest to make the raids focussed on more mecanics as the example i’ve made some posts ago, so with this mecanics you can play berserker, condition, nomad etc etc, i really doesent understant why u wanna ppl play zerk only or give them a choice to do it as they want doing the same content in the triple of time you wanna punish ppl doesent have your cake… what i’m asking for is a game mode allow players to go deeper with classes and gameplay, as other games do, discovering all the professions faces…

with a new kind of mechanism for example (as i already suggested) some boss or mobs could take a max of direct dmg so be everyone full zerk will be useless, and someone should go for condi (with a different condi stack system) for example some condi like bleeding, burning cannot be applyed on some bosses/mb if your condi dmg is lower than X, so the man who will play condi doesent have to “fight” with the actual bad staking system, and if the new mechanics doesent allow player to be sustained only by his healing but will need someone healing oriented the party will be more various and the gameplay will be various too, during this fight someone with alot of cc could distract other mobs, or someone else can kite them etc etc or other bosses will take less dmg when melee (like a mesmer weapon skills) or when u r not running etc etc…. this is a game i’d like to play, more mechanics, more variety, not just go inside pack and kill, use some reflect and aegis ed win… this is COD not a complete mmo, imho its pretty sad to have a new game like gw2 with less mechanics than older game like others…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Iason Evan.3806:

I think a lot of the discussions so far have been really cookie cutter and not outside the box. I understand wanting to take raiding that you love and just plop it wholesale into GW2. Let’s brainstorm though.

• Make raiding gear uniform—when you start the raid you get to pick gear at a vendor from various stat selections—

• Players can side kick up to 80 in Raids so that anyone can do them at whatever level. The level cap in this game isn’t going anywhere so why do Raids need to be considered only playable by level 80 characters?

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

• Can we make Control classes mean something more in Raids? Support? Maybe doing DPS to a Raid Boss in a certain situation isn’t even possible. You have to do other things in order to bring the boss down.

Let’s spend a few pages of this CDI getting away from traditional notions of what Raids are and spend some time coming up with things that have never been done.

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

I agree…more out of the box ideas are needed. The suggestions made above are awesome!

Especially these ideas:

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

You may want to also look at the new Fable game in development. Merge aspects of PvE and PvP. The most gratifying experience is defeating another human mind.

Rewards seem to be a bone of contention for most. I suggest GW2 only offers Gold for a reward upon completion of a very long raid. LOTS of Gold!

Raids should be at least four hours long to complete if done successfully the first time through without wiping.

Zephyron.7081:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Iason Evan.3806:

I think a lot of the discussions so far have been really cookie cutter and not outside the box. I understand wanting to take raiding that you love and just plop it wholesale into GW2. Let’s brainstorm though.

• Make raiding gear uniform—when you start the raid you get to pick gear at a vendor from various stat selections—

• Players can side kick up to 80 in Raids so that anyone can do them at whatever level. The level cap in this game isn’t going anywhere so why do Raids need to be considered only playable by level 80 characters?

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

• Can we make Control classes mean something more in Raids? Support? Maybe doing DPS to a Raid Boss in a certain situation isn’t even possible. You have to do other things in order to bring the boss down.

Let’s spend a few pages of this CDI getting away from traditional notions of what Raids are and spend some time coming up with things that have never been done.

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

I agree…more out of the box ideas are needed. The suggestions made above are awesome!

Especially these ideas:

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

You may want to also look at the new Fable game in development. Merge aspects of PvE and PvP. The most gratifying experience is defeating another human mind.

Rewards seem to be a bone of contention for most. I suggest GW2 only offers Gold for a reward upon completion of a very long raid. LOTS of Gold!

Raids should be at least four hours long to complete if done successfully the first time through without wiping.

Note for those who haven’t played any raids ever before:
Four hours sounds like a huge time commitment, but the idea behind raiding is kind of like a huge dungeon you don’t have to finish in one day. You can do a part now, and then another tomorrow.
They often reset on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Roybe.5896:

Another possible mechanic I can see as interesting, at least for ele’s is the idea that if two ele’s are present neither can be in the same attunement. If they are damage from both are negated. It can be an environmental effect or an effect from an AoE with timer.

What if you have to actually hold an enemy inside a water field or fire field? Or execute a specific blast finisher? Maybe force you to shadowstep/blink/lightning flash to something? What if an enemy was invulnerable to damage without a certain condition being maintained, or if they built up a deadly deadly stacking buff that had to be wiped away every so often by causing confusion or fear?

I think raids that make certain classes and skills all but essential to different encounters are a good idea and a good way to prevent the usual metas that form.

I also really really like the idea of using things like toys and unlimited tonics as rewards, provided they’re cool enough and not tradeable (though they should probably be an ingredient in mystic forge to get other stuff once you already have it). Varying the types of rewards you get in the game is a fun way to shake things up, it doesn’t have to be a new weapon/armor skin. One of the most exclusive and prestigious pieces of headgear in the game is a baseball cap.

Zephyron.7081:

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

As I said before, I really don’t think PvP has any place in raids. If you want to PvP, go do PvP, that’s what I do when I feel like PvPing.

Zephyron.7081:

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

Again, this just screams exploit issues.. Think about it.

Zephyron.7081:

Rewards seem to be a bone of contention for most. I suggest GW2 only offers Gold for a reward upon completion of a very long raid. LOTS of Gold!

I really don’t want this. Raids should not be another gold farming place, we have too much of that already.
Raids should be a place to put your skills to the test, and you should get something to show for it, if you beat it. Something unique, untradeable and not available anywhere else. This is a must!
They should still reward significant amounts of gold after each boss though (it should be worthwhile in gold).

So if we’re going to reexamine the raid as a concept, as Chris suggested, we first need to look at what a raid is: a bunch of players organized into a large team, to accomplish goals that individual players cannot accomplish: kill the super huge thing.

But what if we start expanding the goals beyond just “kill the boss”?

• A raid where players have to work together to get through a maze or an obstacle course?
• Random (or specific) raid conditions (sort of like Mistlock Instability) where players can only use/wield X weapon type(s), for example. Throw a bundle giving NPC in who gives a generic L80 version of those weapons in case a player is missing them, for example
• Dark raid – the entire dungeon is pitch black and some of the players need to carry torches (bundle only) to lead the other players through, while the other players have to keep the torchbearers alive/safe since the torch disappears when that person is downed.
• Asymmetric raids – half the raid can see the enemies but can’t attack, the other half can attack them but can’t see them, so everyone has to work in a 2 person team with one “spotter” and one “attacker”

I love the idea of taking raids beyond just “a bunch of people all hitting the same thing/things together” into a more creative and diverse space. Raids should be about teamwork, yes, and combat, yes, but there are a lot of ways to make that more engaging than just bigger/more health sponges

Be prepared this will be long!

To start, GW2 CAN’T be the same raiding model as other games. Other games strongly rely on the group engine (trinity system) to perform. And while we can replicate that in ways using water fields and frontline groups and all that stuff it’ll never be the same kind of controlled situation as other games. So, to me, that leaves raids as something that should be viewed as a Dungeon+

Something more than a dungeon, less than a world event. Requiring tight teamwork from a limited force.

Now, while these have to be approached very differently than standard raids in MMOs I think some of the mechanics and ideas behind those raids in other games would translate well.

Bane items:
something I LOVED from my old EQ raiding days. Throughout the raid or even just when doing content outside in preparation for the raids (I prefered the ones from inside though) you’d get items that would give bonus damage or effects that would make later bosses easier. This was an interesting idea because it allowed you to choose who got these, and where/when to use them, whether you wanted to skip some stuff or kill it for more bane items, etc.

How I imagine this working in GW2: Lets just take Arah as an example of the raid for now. Every Hunter would have a chance of dropping a consumable that would give a conjured “Legendary orrian longbow” this would hit for a lot more damage and have some special skills that your normal weapons would not. Illusionists would drop a “legendary orrian scepter” again having special skills, Mage = staff, Berseker = axe, and Elementalist = dagger.

These would make it so you could choose to farm the trash to stockpile these to make later encounters easier, or just get a couple or even skip all together depending on how you wanted to handle the raid as a whole. It creates a difficulty scaling where spending more time can lead to an easier clear but allowing it to be more difficult initially so those who want an extra difficulty can do it without these. In other words, built in hard mode. The difficulty in this would be making them useful, but not so useful that they are required, as not only will people want to do it without these for extra difficulty, but also people won’t want to be stuck using these on every boss encounter, So there’s a concern there.

Another mechanic

Boss Progression:
This is something I saw perfected IMO in DCUO’s Paradox Wave raid. Basically it’s the idea that choices you make earlier in the raid will change the later encounters. In that raid we had a big room with 4 offshoots, in each was a boss. You initially would kill the bosses in each tunnel, then kill the final boss in the main room alone. This was however the easy mode option. You handled them each with individual mechanics. However if you decided not to kill things in the tunnels the final boss would release them into the main fight at different intervals. So you’d be dealing with multiple bosses at once. And on top of that if you killed the main boss first all the side bosses would be released at once at about 35% of the main bosses health leading to fighting 5 bosses at once. Ohh man was it intense.

The thing I loved about it is it offered a faster option that was much more intense but also a slower easier option.

Now, these two suggestions are very much hard mode type options but I think that’s something REALLY important to do in this situation. Something tuned to be fun for me as I’d say an above average but nothing great player would bore some of those who make me look like a bad, and make those worse than me cry. That’s why a scaling system is so important. And these two are natural built in hard modes that make it more interesting while doing the job.

Split teams:
Something important to think of is that large scale combat can be really hard to make challenging and still not overboard annoyingly hard. If you have something that can one shot everyone there it’s going to be very annoying. If it only one shots 5 people on a team of 30+ then they pick them up and keep going making it arguably too easy. So it’s a concern. While I think a raid will have to have some stuff on that scale I think much of it would benefit from asking players to split up a bit and send “special forces” to different areas. Send a condi team to objective A, a bunkery team to objective B, a full zerk squad to objective C, and then the main squad stays at objective D.

So each objective would have different mechanics that call for different approaches giving pepole reasons to do different things. I think Wurm does this well with it’s Husks requiring Condi. Teq does this well with teq not being critable but you still want some zerkers for the defense teams. A bunker team could be needed if it was simply a “survival” area where you can’t really kill them but have to survive.

I think building upon that idea would be great and let people play these alternate PVE roles that have in many cases been dismissed due to the mechanics of what we have right now.

Puzzles:
Something I love is puzzles, good interesting puzzles. Something that requires thought and strategy every time you do it, not necessarily hard, but something that isn’t the same answer every time.

In a raid setting it also shouldn’t require full participation, some simply don’t like puzzles, let it be a “puzzle team” that deals with it while others play other parts that they enjoy, with that the other key to puzzles is keeping everyone doing something. Waiting on a teammate to finish a puzzle isn’t fun, it’s boring. So if say squadA is doing puzzles, then there should be waves of adds or a boss that everyone else is dealing with while squadA finishes their puzzle.

My favorite puzzle raid was in EQ we had a raid where we had a main force in the middle dealing with waves of trash mobs with different mechanics(not the cool part but they were fun to deal with too). Then we had a main console in the center, and 3 tunnels with a console at each. These consoles were controlled to play a game of Simon, you know, red red green green, yellow green red blue, etc. Everyone would have to do it correctly to move to the next stage. Then a game of mastermind, everyone would input a color (all 4) and then it’d say 1 right color, 1 right spot or whatever, and you’d play until you got all the right colors in the right spots. Then on to phase 3 blackout. Basically you had a screen in the middle for the main person to watch and tell people to move. you’d have to turn on and off lights, each area would be a row, and have 4 buttons creating a 4X4 grid. The leader would command people to turn on and off whatever was needed till he could blackout that main screen. Then you’d move to the final phase which was to fight the final boss.

I had SOOO much fun doing that raid. We actually had to have defense teams for the puzzlers too because there was trash that would try to kill them, making the puzzler have to work fast and sometimes help his team out with the defense when necessary.

It was a lot of fun.

Those 4 things are things I absolutely loved in raids and I think would be great things to keep in mind and possibly implement in any raids that came to GW2.

I’ll make another post later with an example of what I’d have in mind for a GW2 raid, but I think it could be very interesting and fun.

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

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

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

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

Cheers.

Heck. Think of any co-op platformer.

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

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.

Yes, Illuminerdi, yes! Or perhaps the “kill the boss” isn’t done by dps’ing the boss, or not entirely. In one CoE path you have to have people simultaneously firing lasers to take a shield down, then hustling to get some dps in.

What if the “boss” (or other objective, doesn’t even have to be an individual being) is beaten by the raid coordinating action in a number of locations? It could get positively Rube Goldberg. The “boss” could be a Divinity’s Reach destroying bomb that teams have to go acquire various items and intel to figure out the deactivation method before the city is wrecked, for instance. Combat can come into it as the bomb-planter sets up traps and assault teams (and the latter can be fought, or perhaps, persuaded to give up because omg the bomb will kill them too!).

Though that’s just a sample idea, as we might want the raids to be tied into the world’s story so if a failed raid destroys the city and it’s not destroyed in the general PvE world there’d be some dissonance.

Symph.8407:

But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

You dont have to exclude the rewards , but that doesnt mean that the reward must be ’’beautiful’’ :P

PPl WILL BE FORCED to play the raid if the reward is visually beeautiful , and they will moan that encounter to be nerfed afterwards .
But if the lesser-easier bosses throw those ’’beautifuls’’ rewards they wont whine at all … and the other ‘’ugly-prestigious’’ gear can be be looted by the dificult bosses for the pro players :P

Edit : Ah , i didnt see the ’’red’’ post … sorry

Zok.4956:

Sytherek.7689:

Why don’t I join a big raiding guild? Been there, done that, hate seeing stupid egos clash in guild chat and watching people fight over the guild bank. I’m not interested in petty politics in a game; I’m here to relax and have fun.

No thanks, I can have fun without the aggravation.

I was raiding a lot in an other game (not WoW but Rift) too, and have seen this negative behaviour of people there, too. Because of that experience I was so happy in GW2 when I came to GW2, that here was no need to join a “large guild” to play the game and all the content of the game and I could “just have fun” with some friends.

My small proposal for this: Please make the raiding-system so (maybe improve the LFG tool, not only for guilds, etc..) that raiding can be a fun experience for people that do not want to stress themselfes with a “big guild” and all the negative social interactions, that often can happen there.

Greetings.

All I can say is “Yup!”

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.

SNIP

I would stay clear of Hard-mechanics, although I think there’s a lot of possibility, what you mention in your risk is a big Negative

But Soft-Mechanics, when you have a couple of classes that can fill the roles, now we’re talking. They could spice things up, and make the player playing said classes feel more useful to the full raid.