Guild Wars 2

Blaeys.3102:

Here are my thoughts on how raiding could work in GW2. Basically, I think there are three components –

• how we form/get into a raid
• what we do once were in, and
• how we are rewarded

Below is an overview of ideas around those three areas.

Forming/getting into a raid –

The general premise is to use existing maps and instances with triggers similar to those found in guild missions. The big difference would be that the person forming the raid would have control over who gets onto that map (much as the owner of a customized spvp map has control over the same factor).

Specifically, the interface (which, again, could mirror the custom sPvP interface) would include:

• Permissions: Would allow the guild leader to assign who has permission to trigger a guild raid/add people to the Invite list

• Raid Size: This would be to allow guilds of different sizes to complete content. Level 1 would be for 10+ people, Level 2 for 20+ and Level 3 for 30+ (they would, of course, be scalable)

• Map Used: Public (would spawn the boss or activity in a currently active map or instance open to anyone); Guild Only (would push the guild to a private map only members could access); and Invite Only (map would be accessible to guild member + other guilds/players specifically on the invite section)

• Invite List: would allow guild leaders/officers to create a list of non-guildees who could participate in “Invite Only” raid instances

Raid Content:

This would be the perfect place to resurrect past living story fights and activities, as well as brand new bosses and encounters. Below are several examples of what “raids” could look like:

• The Ancient Karka. This would be a scaled down (and much shorter) version of the first living story event GW2 ever did – the epic karka fight/race in Southsun (would be a great chance to redo that event without the lag issues). The fight would take place across the Southsun map (with the population determined by the settings outlined in the interface, above), culminating in the fight in the cave (basically, the exact same fight with the same mechanics, just scaled so guild sized groups could do it in about 20-30 minutes).

• The Tower of Nightmares. Basically, the tower of nightmares returns just as it was, on a copy of the Kessex Hills map – again scaled for guilds to complete in 20-30 minutes. At the top of the tower, the guild would encounter the boss from the mini instance from that event.

• The Marionette. Same fight, in a copy of Lornar’s Pass, only scaled for guild sized groups.

• The Breachmaker Battle. The final fight from the retaking of LA, fought aboard the Breachmaker – again, scaled for guild sized groups (this one would require adding the breachmaker fight map back in and giving us a way to get there).

• New Potential Raid: The Heart of Zhaitan. After the brave expedition downed Zhaitan in the Lost City of Arah, the original dragon (remember, he was a dragon made of dragons) that made up the “Heart of Zhaitan” is attempting to escape and go into hibernation. The raid would be an epic fight again that dragon, chasing it across a version of the Cursed Shores map, to ensure it doesn’t return for millennia to come. (the idea would be to combat the general feeling that the final fight with Zhaitan felt underwhelming and anticlimactic)

• Future Bosses: Any core large scale boss or open world content from future living story steps would be potential content. Raids would become yet another way ANet keeps the living story permanent – allowing them to change the world as needed without needing to completely remove large scale content from the game.

Rewards System:

• Rewards should be similar to guild missions, specifically a set number of guild commendations (3 or 4 seems about right) + a chest on par with a world boss chest (potentially with unique skins or minis – similar to Tequatl and Triple Worm). To make it more interesting, the introduction of raids would be a good time to introduce new rewards to the guild commendation vendor (mini versions of guild bounty bosses/new raid bosses, new weapon sets, guild armor sets, etc).

I know this exceeds 300 words and doesn’t really follow the format set forth. I didn’t feel I could convey this idea within those parameters.

That said, I am happy to see this conversation underway and look forward to many productive posts from the community. Even though we dont always agree, I think something good will come of this long term.

THIS!! ALLLLLLL OF THIS!!

I am fine with most of it but the most important thing.

• Make it instanced!!
  Not like the wurm, tequattle, world bosses and guild missions.
  It is either a pain to get all members in the same map due to the map system (If a map is full you get placed in another map = same as previous overflow in my eyes. If you dc you are not getting in if it is full.)
  Also Doing Guild missions isn’t challenging any more if there are 10 other guilds as well.

So again make raids instanced.
Maybe with the options:
- Guild only permission
- Free for all ( for smaller guild/groups?)

Possible options for rewards:

Use the existing system of dungeons to give players a certain number of Raid tokens for completing a Raid. Guild Commendations work for this purpose as well, but Raid tokens specific to a Raid would mean having unique rewards per Raid similar to Dungeons. Gold rewards are also ideal depending on how far into the Raid the group managed to get.

At the end of the Raid, or during, players have a chance to receive an Ascended armor or weapon box with a choice to receive one armor or weapon. These armor skins should be unique to the Raid – each Raid gives a different skin. To combat RNG, a certain number of Raid tokens and gold* can be exchanged for the Ascended armor or weapon box – the number would need to be balanced to provide sufficient time-gating to ensure crafted Ascended armor isn’t obsolete (1-2 months of doing Raids to get a full set of Armor/weapons).

An additional way to time-gate the reward would be determining the stats of the Ascended armor or weapon. Using commendations/tokens, and item can be purchased, which can then be combined with the armor or weapon to get the desired stat combination. The cost of the upgrade item should be low enough that you can get 1-2 items per week.

The other option for determining stats is giving players a one-time option to select the stats on the armor or weapon reward. Once selected, the stats cannot be changed until the player gets a second armor or weapon set.

Ascended weapons/armor makes the most sense, as currently, the only way to get them is crafting (costly) or RNG (which doesn’t guarantee the stat combinations you want). This allows for an additional source of Ascended gear with different appearances, allowing players the choice of what they want their Ascended armor to look like (current crafted/dropped armor only has one skin with dyes as the only customization).

*Adding gold into the purchase cost would balance it out with spending gold on ascended crafting. Someone who crafts Ascended gear would end up spending a lot of time on time-gated ingredients and gold obtaining the materials for said time-gated ingredients.

I just want to drop a few videos from raids in Wildstar (Anets sister company).

World first kill of some boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKAFrQFCcI
Some trash/base population in the raids which actually cause some death! And actually did drop some usefull stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAKsiLhjtng
Video from Pax with devs talking and showing different bosses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te1O4bgzlTA

Somebody in this thread was talking about bosses from Wildstar a few days ago, and I decided to watch some stream and videos of groups doing some boss attempts.
What I like about the boss design of those are, there is so much to do!
The first link I posted shows a boss that has adds/things spawning around the room, some people have to go though a teleporter to get to the top floor and kill some mobs there for a reason I dont know and so much more (It looks like that to me, I dont know the fight at all)
Their combat system is very simmilar to gw2 combat, and if we want a challenging raid smaller size ofc, we can learn from some of those encounters!
I will post a boss fight tomorrow when I have an idea for one xD Still trying to think of something that forces you to dodge alot, be aware of your surroundings, use interrupts, have adds come in that makes huge aoe if not killed and much more.
Really, watch atleast one video (link 1 and 3 is best) and see just how much is going on with effects on the ground, mobs and more!
Sorry for involving another game into this discussion.

Hello all. I wish I had more time to write my ideas up, but RL workload is… kinda bad.

First I would like to stress that with any discussion of raids in GW2 the first question should be: shall we go for exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake.

To clarify: some people WANT exclusivity, and if the result is not exclusive, all issues of gameplay, difficulty and rewards are unimportant. They are motivated strongly by being able to stand out of the crowd. There are some such, and their viewpoints are valid – there should be games around for everyone.

But I must say I oppose the viewpoint strongly, preferring inclusive game elements. I would also argue that there are already many games out there for such people, take Wildstar for example, and that a strong point in favour of GW2 is that it is not such a game, that much work was done to implement elements promoting cooperation, content for everyone, during development.

It’s up to the devs to decide who they should target with future content. Raids sound like a LOT of work, that would come at the expense of new dungeons, living story and similar. If these immense resources were devoted to exclusive content, I would personally not see it as the end of the world, unless it indicated a massive shift in the GW2 paradigm, but it would make for content I would enjoy less, or wouldn’t be able to enjoy at all. For example, it would be content I couldn’t enjoy together with my casual GF.

So, for me, and any who share my views, exclusivity is bad and work should be done to make content inclusive.

However, I also see many ways to make for INCLUSIVE RAIDS.

Key elements I would propose:

1) avoid punishing the weakest link.

The biggest problem with the otherwise excellent Marionette was that the hard work of all platforms was staked on not one platform failing. If one platform alone failed, it meant all the work of the others was lost, leading to much frustration. However, what if instead of keeping the successful platforms locked, instead they got to rush to the aid of the slowest platforms. This changes the dynamic. Instead of all the world resting on the player, he can also see it as “Just need to hold out a few seconds more!” “Here comes the cavalry!” “Heroes to the rescue!”. Sentiments that the core GW2 experience was aimed at.

2) Hard content vs. Content that makes you work

While many complain about the content being too easy, I’m not sure that HARDER content is the only countermeasure. The problem is possibly content being effortless. Now, if that is so, perhaps it is enough to make content that forces the players to do more than just stand still and stick to the autoattack. The Dry top bosses were already a step in the right direction – they moved. This alone made them much less susceptible to “AFK autoattack”.

Ideas:
-make enemies that need to be chased, rather than grinded down
-if enemy area denial skills (Clockwork Oakheart gears, for example) are implemented, don’t just punish ranged attackers with them – make the melee guys move too

Continued:

3) I have a bad team here, what CAN they still do?"

Have the developers not only think “the players need to learn to do this, this and this to pass”. Have them also think “suppose I’m the sergeant of a washout squad. What can I still get them to do that will make a difference?”
-can they remove annoyances? kill spread out adds, keep some defensive mechanism interrupted? man some turrets that provide boons to the “heroes”?

4) Find the ways to make different gearsets have a place

Currently, Glass cannon berserkers rule all. Which is surprising, aren’t the glass cannons supposed to be fragile, requiring protection or forced to go Hit and Run? Well no, not really – the offensive gearsets hardly lose any defensive abilities since everyone, even berserkers, gets their full endurance alottment, granting them two dodges that are worth more than +3000 toughness.
So, I’d propose differing damage profiles that make different gearsets valuable.
-force Berserkers to go hit and run by implementing non-condition damage over time attacks – many many small hits
-make places where a Nomad can go in, get something done in one run, but that berserkers will have to do in several runs

5) Have an element of the content that will let everyone say “I was THERE!”
-the introductory “infiltrate disguised as a slave” quests of GW1 Sorrow’s Furnace was a nice way that let everyone get into Sorrow’s furnace, look around, experience the “feeling” of the place. Everyone could go and “Be part of it all”.

6) Implement multiple ways to achieve objectives

Imagine having the party at a point where they face, say, a very tough gate guard. Now, we can make the guard do all the work of the challenge through AI and skills…. or, perhaps, we can implement three solutions: a short jumping puzzle to pass around him (mesmers, bring the portals!), direct confrontation with the guard (zerkers zhis way, please), or activating a nearby superweapon that takes out the guard… and the chest with loot he’s guarding (oh, just skip it). This leaves space for three different skill sets, all with meaning, and allows the party to choose their own difficulty.

Proposal Overview
A boss that lasts days

Goal of Proposal
For there to be content that doesn’t force guildies to join at a certain time to partake in a raid and doesn’t force them to play a certain way (meta), while still being content that can be “worked on” as a guild. This could also provide some mild competition amongst guilds, with a leaderboard for record times.

Proposal Functionality
Inspired from Dragon’s Dogma Ur-Dragon : http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Ur-Dragon
Dragon’s Dogma is a solo game and the Ur-Dragon is an online boss with an insane amount of health. Players around the world contribute to damaging the same Ur-Dragon over several 10 minutes solo encounters. Once the Ur-Dragon is dead, players receive rewards according to how much damage they have done.

In Guild Wars 2, each guild would have their own instanced boss and people would contribute damage to it over several timed encounters. Entering the fight would be done using a system similar to the Mad King’s Clock Tower to make it so everyone enters the fight at the same time. The population cap would be 150 and there would be no scaling (see further below). The fight could have several different phases either through a single encounter or through the fight as a whole or both. Similarly to Dragon’s Dogma, the rewards would be given when the boss dies and would vary according to how much damage was done. There could also be additional rewards given through repeatable achievements.
The HP of the boss could be tiered the same way guild bounties are tiered. This would allow smaller guilds to beat the boss in a reasonable time, but they would receive smaller rewards. Since this would require build time, large guilds couldn’t just farm tier 1 bosses and reap large amounts of loot.
There would be a guild leaderboard with record times. No tangible reward would be associated to beating the record, but there could be a title given to the people who participated in the record breaking fight. That title would be taken away when a new record is established.

It would be nice if the boss had multiple targets, like arms, legs, wings, tentacles, tail and each could be individually taken down, progressively disabling the boss. To keep the challenge up during the whole fight so it doesn’t become easier as it becomes progressively disabled, the remaining attacks could become gradually stronger or the boss could fall back to different attacks as is gets progressively disabled. As it progressively becomes disabled, different parts of the boss would become accessible to melee damage. For example, it would become possible to melee the tail if both hind legs are disabled, as it would get into a different position. To save you some work, the boss could get its body parts disabled between encounters once the health bar for that part reaches 0 rather than handling inflicted disabilities live as they happen. By doing this, there would be no need to make animations for when a boss gets something disabled and it would allow you to (more simply?) load different boss states corresponding to their disabilities at each encounter rather than having the whole thing loaded to handle inflicted disabilities live.
Other ideas that have popped in my mind : Having to take down a flying boss by shooting its wings from a ring platform while its launching all kinds of attacks. Having to pick a bundle to spread a slippery liquid on the ground that makes a boss’ legs vulnerable to CC and CC’ing the legs at the same time causes the boss to slip and expose points that can be attacked (and if you stand behind the boss when it falls, you get crushed!).

Associated Risks
Whining from small guilds because they wouldn’t be able to get the higher amount of loot associated with beating a higher tier boss.
Whining from casual players that the content is too hard.

Jure Simich.6154:

To clarify: some people WANT exclusivity, and if the result is not exclusive, all issues of gameplay, difficulty and rewards are unimportant. They are motivated strongly by being able to stand out of the crowd. There are some such, and their viewpoints are valid – there should be games around for everyone.

Sometimes, people just want to do their own thing with a group of people they know. You are very wrong to assume that people who want exclusivity just want to stand out in a crowd. The GW2 community is big, too big. It is very impersonal, especially with megaservers. Guild raids would bring back their purpose to guilds and allow smaller and more personal communities to build and to have a goal.

My 2 coppers:

I’m coming from the perspective that the Marionette was and is still the best boss battle Anet has made in GW2. It has interesting mechanics, involves some pretty heads up team work, could be done by any group dedicated to it and was on a pretty darn short timer to try again.

No gating: I STILL have nightmares over getting Onyxia attuned on Horde back in the day. It is a relic of the sub model of gaming that is there to be a time sink. GW2 gates literally none of the content, why start now?

Difficulty: There should be a range of difficulty depending on the raid. I think the Marionette is a good start as it was possible to complete it with a good group of casuals that worked well together. If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

Guardian’s ideas were closest to the best in terms of how the raid is activated. Should be an instance of a zone for the guild… then fill the ranks with the public through the LFG tool. This can be attempted once per day by the guild through the guild missions. In parallel to that, these raid bosses spawn separately on a timer in the open world in their respective zones once per few hours. This gives everyone the opportunity to try it without hoping to either join a large successful guild, or being at the mercy of the LFG tool. Can only get the ascended gear box once per day though. This will help stretch out the replayability a bit so people aren’t just putting the Raid on complete farm mode. Speaking of rewards…

Rewards
1 Ascended gear box with a guaranteed piece of ascended gear. A small chance at a unique skin and some gold. If you’ve already received your ascended gear box for the day, you get an exotic loot box with a guaranteed exotic item. With the amount of professions and builds, I can see raid bosses being rewarding for a very long time. Could even set a loot table for specific raid bosses (ie: Dragon X only drops ascended gloves, boots, daggers and swords, Dragon Y drops ascended chest, legs, greatsword and staves, etc.).

Group Size: Should be designed for open world in mind FIRST… because of this, it needs to be catered to the 60-150 amount of people.The guild controlled versions are the same, the difference is that the guild can at least get their whole guild into the zone first, then fill out the ranks with the LFG tool. Obviously the bosses that spawn in the open world are a free for all like they are today. Having Anet spend all their time on 8-15 man content locked away in an instance is just not what this game is about, as it could quickly devolve into a more elitist splintered community.

*How would you like to see Raiding function if this activity were part of GW2?

I don’t want to see raiding in GW2. The sentiment expressed by Massively writer Eliot Lefebvre says it best.

“- we as a community are going to look at hardcore raiding the same way we currently look at Ultima Online’s open PvP, as something that MMOs survived in spite of rather than because of.”
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/08/11/the-nexus-telegraph-addictions-that-wildstar-must-kick/

WoW had to constantly tweak and twist their raids until they finally implemented a raiding tool that allows PUGs. WoW has always been the exception of MMOs, and companies that tried to copy WoW have failed. Hardcore raiding did not work in Wildstar, I do not think it will do any better in GW2.

But the comments from Anet developers say that they want to make raids accessible. That is the antithesis to the fundamental function of raids which is a timesink meant to impact large groups of people rather than single players. Now ArenaNet has tried to innovate in various areas, perhaps they can do it with raids.

If they do manage to make raids “accessible” then whatever is created will bear NO resemblance to what has been seen in other games of the past. It will have to be something completely original that throws away the host of flawed mechanics that traditional raiding brings (forcing players to schedule their lives for a video game, time-gating content, gear-requirements, tedious mechanics, etcetcetc)

Best of luck going this route. Personally I would rather see ArenasNet expend their resources on any other content or system.

Since a request for ideas was made, here is the following:

Proposal Overview
Raids without bosses

Goal of Proposal
Traditional raid bosses involve “heroes” whacking the boss on their feet or knees. Very epic imagery. Instead players take on an army.

Proposal Functionality
Just as players in the Tequatl fight have to form groups for the turrets or turret/boat guards, set up a front line with multiple barracks that need to be held against the invading army. Players need to divide up between the barracks and fight off the opposing mob horde. There is no zerg stack, there is no standing in one place hitting a boss in the toe.

Response teams can act as reserves, with a commander needing to monitor which barracks are being held and send in reinforcements.

A visual cue of could show many waves are left. To reduce number of NPCs being rendered, use transport vessels waiting in rows to disgorge their troops in Space Invader like columns. This could serve as a visual cue to the commander for which barracks are killing mobs and which are having problems based on the number of transports left in each column.

All barracks could face equal difficulty mobs or the barracks near the center could face harder mobs. New players would be told to man the flank barracks, perhaps achievements are needed to be able to move to the center barracks.

Variety could be added by mixing up the NPC troops that attack the barracks. Providing siege weapons etc.

Associated Risks
No idea whether this would be feasible. There are large numbers of mobs in the Mad King’s Labyrinth and the game seems to function. I don’t know if spreading out players over a larger front line would help.

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

This whole argument is a false dilemma. Adding hardcore raiding wouldn’t somehow diminish the quality or the value of the rest of the game as you imply it would. I don’t do Arah because I find it too hardcore. Yet, I’m still playing GW2.

People aren’t going to rage quit the game if Anet decides to ADD content that caters to its hardcore gamers. The non-hardcore content isn’t going to just disappear.

Dimglow.5489:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal Overview
Potential Raid Mechanics: Part 6 Profession specific interactions

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

Proposal Functionality
I see two levels of functionality:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Specifically:

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

Chris

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

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

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

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

problem is you generally cant make tanks and healing roles, without forcing the whole situation.
I like your boss getting exhausted, or say take more damage if you take his big hits, however,
how do you have a tank without a provoke type skill?
What happens once you have a predictable guaranteed target? The whole system starts to require tanks.

Healers, they are only useful if you force people to take damage. While the healer has fun, you have to create situations where people either cant avoid damage, or its optimal for them to take damage, which is the opposite of good play 9/10 times.

Anyhow, some of your mechanics suggested might be interesting in small doses, but it doesnt fit in well with the general combat, and i would do it only in small doses, and never as the absolute best option

As an aside, i really despised the everywhere poison in tower of nightmares.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Evening All,

Relics of Orr podcast about the CDI below:

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

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

Chris

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

Since this CDI is moving very fast and their might be people who missed it or are new to the CDI and haven’t read through all the pages (understandable lol) i’d like to bump this podcast one last time. Personally I enjoyed the discussion and think their were some very cool ideas that we might be able to continue to discussing here in the CDI.

Kasima.8143:

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

This whole argument is a false dilemma. Adding hardcore raiding wouldn’t somehow diminish the quality or the value of the rest of the game as you imply it would. I don’t do Arah because I find it too hardcore. Yet, I’m still playing GW2.

People aren’t going to rage quit the game if Anet decides to ADD content that caters to its hardcore gamers. The non-hardcore content isn’t going to just disappear.

That depends on how much emphasis is placed on the raids. If they become the focus of the endgame content, lore and rewards then that is heading down the path of Wildstar.

If raids are truly optional and ALL raid rewards (aside from cosmetic items) are available through other means, then that may not be an issue.

To get more mileage out of raiding art assets and content, perhaps there could be Story Mode versions offered where players could a toned down version of the raid without getting the same rewards of course. Even solo versions could be possible which would allow all types of players to see the art assets and content rather than hiding it away in instances.

Basically I am talking about a difficulty scale with the players in control of how hard is the content (and thus what kind of rewards/achievements they get) You know, the kind of thing that they have been doing for decades in single player games, yet never sees implementation in MMOs even when there scaling systems in place.

THAT is the kind of thing that will keep casual players engaged. Not focusing on producing content for a tiny fraction of the playerbase which other players know they will never see.

Well we already know that there is not going to be higher tier gear than ascended (stats wise) so even if raids offer exclusive desirable rewards its not going to diminish the rest of the game. Theres so much focus on open world and living story its probably impossible to do so anyway. Meanwhile dungeons and fractals are festering.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Basically I am talking about a difficulty scale with the players in control of how hard is the content (and thus what kind of rewards/achievements they get) You know, the kind of thing that they have been doing for decades in single player games, yet never sees implementation in MMOs even when there scaling systems in place.

THAT is the kind of thing that will keep casual players engaged. Not focusing on producing content for a tiny fraction of the playerbase which other players know they will never see.

Difficulty scaling is starting to be implemented in some MMO’s GW1 had hard mode and normal, FFXIV has (Normal, Hard, extreme) Warframe has the difficulty scaler which increases the longer a mission is run in endless missions.
There are some difficulties with implementing that sort of thing in MMO’s since all the players are playing together so should be held to a similar standard in most cases.
It also requires careful balancing of rewards/ time /effort and other considerations or it will upset some groups of players. (I.E if bob can play on easy and get the exact same item drops as John who plays on hard then John is loosing out and his time/skill is not being valued or respected.)

I don’t see the lower playtime sections of the playerbase needing to go into raids they generally still have a ton of content to process through its also a boon for them. New content is nearly always good and in this case something for the playergroup currently with little to do to sink their teeth into (I.e the typical going on a break statements “Fractal 50, pvp 40, WvW 500 , 8 level 80’s world completion /story completion 4 legendaries nothing to do”).

EDIT:

If they do manage to make raids “accessible” then whatever is created will bear NO resemblance to what has been seen in other games of the past. It will have to be something completely original that throws away the host of flawed mechanics that traditional raiding brings (forcing players to schedule their lives for a video game, time-gating content, gear-requirements, tedious mechanics, etcetcetc)

Most of your concerns here were discussed and adressed, The combination of ideas here shouldn’t time lock a raid or require a formal raiding shedule, there are no higher tiers of gear so no gear grind, Tedious mechanics, I’m not too sure what you mean , if you mean annoying fights I don’t think that’s going away as gimmicks and difficult to deal with mechanics are part of how games implement difficulty.

WoW has scaled raids now, and Rift has scaled events / raid events much better than GW2s.

Zanthrax.6538:

Instanced Cons

• Lose broader sense of community

I’m not sure where this argument comes from, but I think it’s crap. I stopped feeling a sense of community the day megaservers went live. I don’t exactly feel a sense of community from playing with a bunch of strangers.

Guilds are where the sense of community lied and it has been killed off with megaservers making guilds irrelevant. Before megaservers, we had to rely on guilds to do things like world bosses. Now? Not anymore. Everyhting can be zerged with randoms. There is no sense of belonging anymore.

Kasima.8143:

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

This whole argument is a false dilemma. Adding hardcore raiding wouldn’t somehow diminish the quality or the value of the rest of the game as you imply it would. I don’t do Arah because I find it too hardcore. Yet, I’m still playing GW2.

People aren’t going to rage quit the game if Anet decides to ADD content that caters to its hardcore gamers. The non-hardcore content isn’t going to just disappear.

Actually, it COULD diminish the value of the rest of the game simply due to the scarcity of resources available at Arena Net or any other game company. If they go full bore on hardcore raiding, other aspects of the game will get pushed to the wayside for a significant amount of time. If only a small percentage of the GW2 playerbase will actually enjoy that type of encounter, then the larger majority will ask: where’s MY content? The vast majority of GW2 players are casual gamers/hardcore-turned-casual-gamer that enjoy PvE and a decent sized niche that likes to play WvW (sadly, sPvP is a pretty small group due to lack of game modes and team size dynamics). These are the majority of customers playing this game, and they are the main base that Arena Net is catering to. To make raid encounters as difficult and time consuming as many here are suggesting will be a foolish move that goes against the overall game design of GW2 and caters only to a select minority of customers.

The question of hardcore vesus casual is moot. There can be both types of raids. Harder raids would give better rewards.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think we should really take time to discuss what rewards people want to see from the raid and how they should be obtained, because this was the reason which a lot of other hard content barely see any play (TA Aether, JPs, Arah P4 etc).

Personally, I think the raid shouldn’t just have cosmetic items. Cosmetic items are a bit of an ‘niche’ in the sense that not everyone wants them, and the first challenge with raids is filling up the rooster, cos you can’t raid if you don’t have enough people to raid.
So ideally, I think you need something which everyone would want.

Now, we don’t want a gear treadmill, so I think a good option is to add items which allows more horizontal progression and character costumisation to the game. Items with their own unitue effects, which are good for certain playstyles and builds, but not BiS over everything else.

For example, you can have an amulet (Gaze of Primordius, to make it sound cool) with exotic stats but extra direct damage whenever you inflict burn. It would be good for a build that has alot of burn inflicts (e.g. d/f eles with burning precision), but it won’t be BiS for the majority of cases. People will always want at least one of those drops because unlike clothing, you don’t really ever find yourself with the perfect build for all game modes and you can always try something new, unlike clothing.

That would still be considered vertical by some if it became a meta build item.
Alternative possibilities that are not traditional skins per say would be:

Cosmetic Infusions
-*Weapon infusions change the graphical appearance of your attacks, On a non-legendary item it adds a secondary effect I.E An Orrian infused staff fireball now leaves a trail of flies. On a legendary weapon the effect combines, I.E A bifrost projective is now a corrosive/greeny acid texture with the trail of flies.
Could be split into two component types: Trail and Core with each type effecting their respective part.

-Armor infusions: Add a glow/effect to the armor, would not leave a trail, I.E Necrotic infusion adds flies or miasma around the player. Could effect profession specific effects, elementalist auras, Guardians Aegis , Mesmers clones etc.*

Mini’s and tonics
The standard fare, Minis of the bosses, tonics of the mobs and bosses.

Rarity upgrade component
-Bumps the rarity of an item up by one along with its stats (I.e converts an exotic celestial helm to a WupWup helm) maxes out at Ascended tier. (Basically an alternative to Ascended chests that give you slightly more control).

Fun/Unique equips
This could be unique costume brawl weapons /Kites / Interact-able stations.

you can have all my yes when it comes to the bolded parts, however I also like the other ones!!

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

it would be nice if people like you would get their facts straight.
the people who left wildstar didnt leave because “the raid content is too frustrating”. they left because of bad design decisions outside of raids.
you probably havent even touched the game and yet you are trying to judge, thats not ok.

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.
GW2 could make it even better. but not if people are constantly crying because they want to faceroll through the content and get loot handed out for free.

this guy speaks the truth:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/29173s/getting_epics_is_too_hard/cignw1g

Bhima.9518:

If only a small percentage of the GW2 playerbase will actually enjoy that type of encounter, then the larger majority will ask: where’s MY content? The vast majority of GW2 players are casual gamers/hardcore-turned-casual-gamer

people who dont want to faceroll through content are asking “where is my content” for 2 years now. but that doesnt count right?
and who tells you that casual gamers cannot enjoy raid content?

hardcore players arent hardcore because they spend 8 hours a day to play dress up wars 2. they are hardcore because they spend it in combat.

the hardcore content vs casual content discussion is a complete waste of time.

My only comment, because I’m generally not into raids, is re: the people that have asked for some kind of ground mission to find and kill Zhaitan. This should never happen. People the personal story ends with the death of Zhaitan and I don’t think anyone should be “forced” to raid to finish the job. It would be very discouraging to people who want not to raid. Hell there are already people complaining about having to do a story mode dungeon. And one of the reasons I left Rift early on was because the only quest chain in the game forced you to raid…and I didn’t want to. It annoyed the hell out of me.

However all is not lost. There could very well be a ground mission to verify Zhaitan’s death…and find his body (which would mean he is dead) and various unexpected things can happen on the way to that body both to get to it and after it’s found.

That way you could still have your raid, but not kitten off a percentage of the population.

Concern: “Raids” will end up just like dungeons, ie, dps is the only viable spec and build.

Proposal Goal: To make raids challenging, to require teamwork and puzzle-solving through well executed organization. To avoid dps-only, zerg only combat.

Proposal Overview: “Raids” will be set in the Mists. Raids will be instanced. All gear will be equalized and picked from the pvp lockers. Raids will be for story and cosmetics skins and for the sheer challenge of beating them with your friends.

Proposal Functionality: Raids will be set in the mists. In order to avoid the pitfall of dps only dungeons (faster boss deaths is less player damage taken) and wvw (big zerker mobs to simply outnumber bosses and using your most damaging #1 autoattacking weapon), raids will likely need to be roll/build specific. There will be a team make up that the devs tune the raid too, such as you have 4 slots that need to be condition cleansers, the rest can be dps. The encounters will require this and the instance will check this from the party before the raid can be entered.

Associated Risks:
1- Puts Guardians that have tons of protection granting skills and lots of bonus healing in an overpowered and overdesired support position.

2- Many people wont like the requirements for roles to be filled. I don’t see how this can be avoided and not turn into dps/zerg playstyles, however.

3- People will eventually start min-maxing which classes specced as what will be optimal. Counter this by ensuring that each raid has different bosses that lend itself to different classes being present. This way, even if one class is better at one fight, you have to consider the entire raid (of course this means you cant swap people out mid-raid and would require a lock to the raid).

petespri.6548:

Concern: “Raids” will end up just like dungeons, ie, dps is the only viable spec and build.

Proposal Goal: To make raids challenging, to require teamwork and puzzle-solving through well executed organization. To avoid dps-only, zerg only combat.

Proposal Overview: “Raids” will be set in the Mists. Raids will be instanced. All gear will be equalized and picked from the pvp lockers. Raids will be for story and cosmetics skins and for the sheer challenge of beating them with your friends.

Proposal Functionality: Raids will be set in the mists. In order to avoid the pitfall of dps only dungeons (faster boss deaths is less player damage taken) and wvw (big zerker mobs to simply outnumber bosses and using your most damaging #1 autoattacking weapon), raids will likely need to be roll/build specific. There will be a team make up that the devs tune the raid too, such as you have 4 slots that need to be condition cleansers, the rest can be dps. The encounters will require this and the instance will check this from the party before the raid can be entered.

Associated Risks:
1- Puts Guardians that have tons of protection granting skills and lots of bonus healing in an overpowered and overdesired support position.

2- Many people wont like the requirements for roles to be filled. I don’t see how this can be avoided and not turn into dps/zerg playstyles, however.

3- People will eventually start min-maxing which classes specced as what will be optimal. Counter this by ensuring that each raid has different bosses that lend itself to different classes being present. This way, even if one class is better at one fight, you have to consider the entire raid (of course this means you cant swap people out mid-raid and would require a lock to the raid).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4534796

and in dungeons everything is viable, and the play how you want builds are completely out of control and overpowered as you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

Right, that’s why I’m saying devs have to assign role slots to raids, whatever that makeup/percentage may be of support, damage,control.

petespri.6548:

Right, that’s why I’m saying devs have to assign role slots to raids, whatever that makeup/percentage may be of support, damage,control.

No, no they do not have to. In fact I’d rather they didn’t.

petespri.6548:

2- Many people wont like the requirements for roles to be filled. I don’t see how this can be avoided and not turn into dps/zerg playstyles, however.

That is just a part of challenging content across all games. Even in GW2 current raids, you need people to roll specific builds for certain things to make life easier for all. It is also the reason people want more raids in GW2. People like the idea of the logistics side of raiding like putting together group compositions and ensuring maximum buffs/debuffs coverage. If it is truly challenging then this will take place. It isn’t a risk, its a necessity for the people that want challenging content. The risk comes into play when Raid leaders realize they have no way of inspecting peoples builds to ensure they even have any traits equipped at all, let alone the proper ones.

I don’t mind either way because other MMO’s have burned me out completely on building raid parties and teaching/leading them.

Manifibel.8420:

I just want to drop a few videos from raids in Wildstar (Anets sister company).

World first kill of some boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKAFrQFCcI
Some trash/base population in the raids which actually cause some death! And actually did drop some usefull stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAKsiLhjtng
Video from Pax with devs talking and showing different bosses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te1O4bgzlTA

Somebody in this thread was talking about bosses from Wildstar a few days ago, and I decided to watch some stream and videos of groups doing some boss attempts.
What I like about the boss design of those are, there is so much to do!
The first link I posted shows a boss that has adds/things spawning around the room, some people have to go though a teleporter to get to the top floor and kill some mobs there for a reason I dont know and so much more (It looks like that to me, I dont know the fight at all)
Their combat system is very simmilar to gw2 combat, and if we want a challenging raid smaller size ofc, we can learn from some of those encounters!
I will post a boss fight tomorrow when I have an idea for one xD Still trying to think of something that forces you to dodge alot, be aware of your surroundings, use interrupts, have adds come in that makes huge aoe if not killed and much more.
Really, watch atleast one video (link 1 and 3 is best) and see just how much is going on with effects on the ground, mobs and more!
Sorry for involving another game into this discussion.

Wildstar has great raid and dungeon encounters,bosses.Killing the trash is actually quite rewarding..The animations are well telegraphed and seen.Special boss attacks are not instant hits and are perfectly shown.GW2 developers should learn something from Wildstar raids.Their developers did an awesome job with the different fights and encounters.

petespri.6548:

Right, that’s why I’m saying devs have to assign role slots to raids, whatever that makeup/percentage may be of support, damage,control.

As much as i’d love to have roles added with the raid I see why that won’t happen.Aggro in GW2 is non-existent.In other MMOs ther is a tank who can hold te aggro.In GW2 bunkers can’t hold the aggro at all.Saying that more toughness will guarantee the aggro to be on you is just a myth.

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.Anet has 1st to revamp how are working the condition builds.Then they have to make bunkers and healing builds more viable.

Why i like Tequatl so much?Because he is not critable.So bringing zerker is pointless.But having healer in the group is actually nice.

About a month ago there was a thread on an endless dungeon.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Designer-s-viewpoint-Endless-Mode-in-GW2/first#post4460095

The gist of it was there would be a procedurally generated dungeon for 1-5 players. The longer you played it the harder the mobs became and the better the loot got. There would be no access to banks, storage, repair stations, etc. Just you and what you bring with you. You play as long as you can, when you leave the dungeon resets.

Logistics would be a larger problem with 15+ people if you wanted to allow pauses/saves, but the core concept could remain the same. No mega boss, just regular mobs and lots of them, maybe some traps/puzzles/jumping to spice it up a bit, and let the players run a marathon.

Maybe something like a procedurally generated guild puzzle mission scaled for 15 people with some more mobs thrown in?

Would this answer any of the questions about raid/reward progression? Would it help solve the issue of staleness after repeated play throughs?

NoTrigger.8396:

the hardcore content vs casual content discussion is a complete waste of time.

It is, but for a completely different reason.

The only ones to decide if and how raid content is going to come into this game are the decision makers at ANet. They have to run a business and they have to decide, where they must spend their expensive and valuable development time in order to get the best result in terms of player satisfaction and therefore potential future income per work hour spent.

And they will make up their minds about this most likely very independently from a few player posting in this forums about their likes or dislikes. I am sure they have better data sources.

Torsailr.8456:

About a month ago there was a thread on an endless dungeon.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Designer-s-viewpoint-Endless-Mode-in-GW2/first#post4460095

The gist of it was there would be a procedurally generated dungeon for 1-5 players. The longer you played it the harder the mobs became and the better the loot got. There would be no access to banks, storage, repair stations, etc. Just you and what you bring with you. You play as long as you can, when you leave the dungeon resets.

Logistics would be a larger problem with 15+ people if you wanted to allow pauses/saves, but the core concept could remain the same. No mega boss, just regular mobs and lots of them, maybe some traps/puzzles/jumping to spice it up a bit, and let the players run a marathon.

Maybe something like a procedurally generated guild puzzle mission scaled for 15 people with some more mobs thrown in?

Would this answer any of the questions about raid/reward progression? Would it help solve the issue of staleness after repeated play throughs?

Zombie survival mode?:D Could be similar to Glints Baby Defense Elite Mission in GW1 except on the move? Could force a team to utilize choke points, corners, etc… to burn them down to prevent the numbers from swelling around them too greatly. The map spawns patterns randomly so that you can’t learn the layout so you could be unlucky at times and get caught in a long dead end. Chests could spawn at random locations but there would be no in-dungeon map, only the compass in the top right hand corner gives you a general direction to the nearest chest. Occasionally, a champ or legendary boss spawns that you have to fight while still contending with the increasing hordes of zombies.

Although, I wouldnt use zombies. I think after Zhaitan, we are all zombied out. Maybe a Branded theme or maybe the dungeon randomly spawns different themes based on the different Elder Dragons.

Anet dont need to assign roles for raids. They are already there. They just need to create content which encourages specialisation in different areas. For example. A boss that requires a lot of interrupts to avoid an op enrage attack. Or a boss that spawns adds which are weak to condition damage but resistant to direct damage. These things dont force anyone but they do force the raid group to change their strategy and maybe change parts of their builds to suit each encounter.

All classes can do all roles (more or less). So theres no need for defining roles. Just give us reasons to alter our specialisations a bit more or force us to change our utilities more. And just to make it clear. This has nothing to do with gear type. Gear is irrelevant in roles except from when switching to condition damage from direct damage.

moiraine.2753:

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.

thats wrong. every optimal build brings as much support and cc as possible and sacrifices dps to achieve that.

spoj.9672:

Anet dont need to assign roles for raids. They are already there. They just need to create content which encourages specialisation in different areas. For example. A boss that requires a lot of interrupts to avoid an op enrage attack. Or a boss that spawns adds which are weak to condition damage but resistant to direct damage. These things dont force anyone but they do force the raid group to change their strategy and maybe change parts of their builds to suit each encounter.

All classes can do all roles (more or less). So theres no need for defining roles. Just give us reasons to alter our specialisations a bit more or force us to change our utilities more. And just to make it clear. This has nothing to do with gear type. Gear is irrelevant in roles except from when switching to condition damage from direct damage.

I agree with this.Tequatl is perfect example.

NoTrigger.8396:

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.

Noone is saying Wildstar failed because it’s raiding content was bad. It started having problems, because that raiding content turned out to be not as important to the players as devs expected. They decided to devote too much effort to those raids, and as a result the rest of the game suffered – and as it turned out, it was the rest of the game, not raids, that players really cared about.
That’s an important lesson for GW2 as well – while making raids don’t forget, that only a tiny minority of players cares about them, and that they should not pretend to be more important than they are (which is – not much). Because if you put too much emphasis on raids, gw2 as a whole will suffer for it.

NoTrigger.8396:

moiraine.2753:

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.

thats wrong. every optimal build brings as much support and cc as possible and sacrifices dps to achieve that.

But that’s not how it works at all… Currently all your dps comes from your gear, and all your support/cc comes from your utilities. They are completely separate. There is no support gear or CC gear. I can do 100% dps and 100% support if I am capable of dodging. Or I can do 50% dps and 100% support. The only difference is what gear I am wearing.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.

Noone is saying Wildstar failed because it’s raiding content was bad. It started having problems, because that raiding content turned out to be not as important to the players as devs expected. They decided to devote too much effort to those raids, and as a result the rest of the game suffered – and as it turned out, it was the rest of the game, not raids, that players really cared about.
That’s an important lesson for GW2 as well – while making raids don’t forget, that only a tiny minority of players cares about them, and that they should not pretend to be more important than they are (which is – not much). Because if you put too much emphasis on raids, gw2 as a whole will suffer for it.

We already have the rest of gw2. Ill repeat. Its not going anywhere. Also with regular living story updates i dont think you need to worry about less content for casual players. The fact is anet have been neglecting endgame instanced content for a long time. Its about time they change that. Which is why me and many other hardcore players are so passionate about this CDI. Unfortunately there still seems to be a lot of arguements and misinformation which is drowning out the good posts in this thread.

To get back on topic.

I have a question for the devs. How do you feel about dungeons and elite zones in gw1? Would you be willing to use those as a base for future content? They are a unique form of endgame content in MMO’s and were a big success. They are unique to GW and could quite easily be adapted and still retain a GW/GW2 feel. Im not sure raids would be the correct term for them but they are also perfectly suited to fill the role raids should fill.

One of the major successes of GW2 is the open world and event system. I know i find it rather boring now. But back when i was a new player it was the opposite. I definately think you should strive to incorporate this feel into raids. And by that I mean make the maps large explorable zones with plenty of freedom in routes and create multiple dynamic event chains to guide progression.

You could also include temporary achievements which reset after completion and dont give any permanent reward. The idea would be if you complete these within the raid you get some bonus loot of some sort. So one example would be Vanquisher from GW1. Which for those that dont know is just to clear all mobs and bosses in the zone. Its an optional extra.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

NoTrigger.8396:

moiraine.2753:

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.

thats wrong. every optimal build brings as much support and cc as possible and sacrifices dps to achieve that.

But that’s not how it works at all… Currently all your dps comes from your gear, and all your support/cc comes from your utilities. They are completely separate. There is no support gear or CC gear. I can do 100% dps and 100% support if I am capable of dodging. Or I can do 50% dps and 100% support. The only difference is what gear I am wearing.

Thats what makes gw2 good. Theres no forced re-gearing. Support should be independant of gear. We dont have dedicated tanks or healers in this game so there is no need for gear to define a supportive role. If you change this you will cause more exclusivity which is what most people in this thread dont want.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.

Noone is saying Wildstar failed because it’s raiding content was bad. It started having problems, because that raiding content turned out to be not as important to the players as devs expected. They decided to devote too much effort to those raids, and as a result the rest of the game suffered – and as it turned out, it was the rest of the game, not raids, that players really cared about.

they have different teams for every single part of the game. the raiding content has nothing to do with everything else in the game.
its not because they focused too much on the raids.

Astralporing.1957:

That’s an important lesson for GW2 as well – while making raids don’t forget, that only a tiny minority of players cares about them, and that they should not pretend to be more important than they are (which is – not much). Because if you put too much emphasis on raids, gw2 as a whole will suffer for it.

they should not forget about the other parts of the game, thats true and they wont.
but i disagree with “tiny minority”. look at how big this thread already is. if the raiding content is good, many people will care about it. alot more people than you would expect.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

But that’s not how it works at all… Currently all your dps comes from your gear, and all your support/cc comes from your utilities. They are completely separate. There is no support gear or CC gear. I can do 100% dps and 100% support if I am capable of dodging. Or I can do 50% dps and 100% support. The only difference is what gear I am wearing.

thats how it should be in a game without a trinity and with an action based combat system.

Hi Chris great read so far and amzing u read all here. i must admit I hopeing for the result as a point of interest show.

Also the result / summary of this talk should be a sticky

keep going

Donari.5237:

One short comment on legendary armor, if it is introduced: However it is obtained, it should not take as long per piece as a legendary weapon does. After all, you need six pieces to make a set. The question becomes, what percentage of the player base do we want to have access to the armor after what period of time, given some work on their part to assemble it? Obviously 100% in 7 days is a Bad Idea. But 2% in a year could be just as bad.

I’d prefer that it not be completely raid-tied, either, though I can see raids being the prime source of armor components. While there should be some rewards that are raid-specific to show you’ve done well in that area, what people are saying about legendary armor leans it towards more general use, and thus pressures non-raiders to raid or feel left out of something highly useful.

I like legendary armor with stat swich and with up to so many different looks safed up as u can choose stats so that every time u change ur stats u also can change ur look for free after u once transmutet a certain look to a stat

spoj.9672:

If you start talking about large groups of players its not really a raid anymore. Its a zerg. And when you start talking about zergs it doesnt matter how challenging you make the content. It will be easy. Zergs trivialise everything.

So can we stick to discussing ideas around 10-20 player limits. Weve already got fully inclusive open world zerging. We dont really need more of that.

Agreed. Open world zergs have destroyed the fun of open world content for me in this game. They do not foster strategy or skill. Regardless of what Arenanet tries to do with encouraging us not to blob up…it is still mindless.

moiraine.2753:

Manifibel.8420:

I just want to drop a few videos from raids in Wildstar (Anets sister company).

World first kill of some boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKAFrQFCcI
Some trash/base population in the raids which actually cause some death! And actually did drop some usefull stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAKsiLhjtng
Video from Pax with devs talking and showing different bosses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te1O4bgzlTA

Somebody in this thread was talking about bosses from Wildstar a few days ago, and I decided to watch some stream and videos of groups doing some boss attempts.
What I like about the boss design of those are, there is so much to do!
The first link I posted shows a boss that has adds/things spawning around the room, some people have to go though a teleporter to get to the top floor and kill some mobs there for a reason I dont know and so much more (It looks like that to me, I dont know the fight at all)
Their combat system is very simmilar to gw2 combat, and if we want a challenging raid smaller size ofc, we can learn from some of those encounters!
I will post a boss fight tomorrow when I have an idea for one xD Still trying to think of something that forces you to dodge alot, be aware of your surroundings, use interrupts, have adds come in that makes huge aoe if not killed and much more.
Really, watch atleast one video (link 1 and 3 is best) and see just how much is going on with effects on the ground, mobs and more!
Sorry for involving another game into this discussion.

Wildstar has great raid and dungeon encounters,bosses ad trash.The animations are well telegraphed and seen.Special boss attacks are not instant hits and are seen.GW2 developers should learn something from Wildstar raids.

I completely agree. Wildstar dungeons and raids are what I wish would happen in GW2. They are fantastic. Very difficult, very engaging, and require a team effort. Using more than your spammer skill is required, unlike GW2 in most cases.

You guys want to talk about raids? Look at the games that have done it successfully(WoW and Wildstar).

And before you say that Wildstar is a failure…it isn’t having problems because their raids suck. They are having run of the mill new MMO start up issues, along with coming to grips that they shouldn’t have focused on the ~1% of hardcore raiding folk (which is something that arenanet needs to keep in mind, and Im sure they are).

Aside from that, Wildstar’s dungeon boss mechanics and raid mechanics are great.

Interrupt Armor/Defiant

Continuing on from my last post…

One thing that GW2 should look into is taking a page from Wildstar’s Interrupt armor / Moments of Opportunity(I have mentioned this previously).

Use your defiant system. Encourage players in a group to interrupt boss casting in succession and in unison in order to remove defiant and be able to be interrupted/stunned. This creates a moment of opportunity(MoO) where the target takes double damage.

Interrupt armor in Wildstar and MoO, I have to say, provide the most basic yet innovative and exciting group play mechanic. Say what you want about the game, interrupt armor and MoO changed the way dungeons are played, as well as raids. Very well done and I think it should be a standard going forward for MMO dungeons.

Picture this:
Boss is beating on a “tank” or a support/protection guardian. He casts some some AoE that everyone needs to run away from. But when everyone runs back to the boss, we all know that we need to break 2 stacks of defiant via interrupts(interrupt armor) and cast a third in order to actually interrupt the boss and create a Moment of Opportunity. The boss takes 3-4 seconds of double damage. Burn him!!!!

Its an awesome mechanic. Thoughts?

hybrid.5027:

Roybe.5896:

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

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

What does this mean? Let me try to parse it a bit…

tl;dr: special snowflakes melt quite quickly in difficult raids.

So you want raids that can be memorized that leads to training so you can finish them faster and faster. How about a final boss that has a random mix of 15 different AI options and 15 different skill sets that randomly change at 3 different points in the fight. You could learn to recognize the various sets, but planning a build related to this boss would be near impossible. I believe this could make the fight very difficult and people would have to play the game rather than faceplant their keyboard. Anything that can add randomness to the overall raid itself would do the same. As I have seen so often this isn’t about fair or easy. This is about difficulty and pain. Randomness is perfect for this type of content. The more random the better.

Roybe.5896:

So you want raids that can be memorized that leads to training so you can finish them faster and faster.

that will happen no matter what you do. you want to learn, become better, kill the boss, and become even better and better and play more perfectly.
analyzing, memorizig, learning, adapting and becoming better is what leads to kills in a raid.
you cant do that vs bosses that are clowns.

Roybe.5896:

How about a final boss that has a random mix of 15 different AI options and 15 different skill sets that randomly change at 3 different points in the fight. You could learn to recognize the various sets, but planning a build related to this boss would be near impossible. I believe this could make the fight very difficult and people would have to play the game rather than faceplant their keyboard. Anything that can add randomness to the overall raid itself would do the same. As I have seen so often this isn’t about fair or easy. This is about difficulty and pain. Randomness is perfect for this type of content. The more random the better.

the randomness you describe here is actually bad game design.
the randomness that could be good is faceing a boss encounter that consists of 3 different bosses in one single room and one of the 3 bosses will be swapped each week with another boss from a pool of 10 different bosses.

and the “special snowflakes melt quite quickly in difficult raids” is aimed towards people who “play how they want” and want to be carried through the content instead of pulling their weight.

using optimal builds and rotations is part of every raid and leads to success.
you cannot change that no matter how much the “play how you want” crowd wants their suboptimal 2-2-2-2-2 builds to become meta.

so instead of “how can we design bosses that eliminate meta” it would be a better way to start with “how can we design bosses that require knowledge, skill, teamwork and coordination”
this is what raid content is for. not to make your unpopular build king.

NoTrigger.8396:

Roybe.5896:

So you want raids that can be memorized that leads to training so you can finish them faster and faster.

that will happen no matter what you do. you want to learn, become better, kill the boss, and become even better and better and play more perfectly.
analyzing, memorizig, learning, adapting and becoming better is what leads to kills in a raid.
you cant do that vs bosses that are clowns.

Roybe.5896:

How about a final boss that has a random mix of 15 different AI options and 15 different skill sets that randomly change at 3 different points in the fight. You could learn to recognize the various sets, but planning a build related to this boss would be near impossible. I believe this could make the fight very difficult and people would have to play the game rather than faceplant their keyboard. Anything that can add randomness to the overall raid itself would do the same. As I have seen so often this isn’t about fair or easy. This is about difficulty and pain. Randomness is perfect for this type of content. The more random the better.

the randomness you describe here is actually bad game design.
the randomness that could be good is faceing a boss encounter that consists of 3 different bosses in one single room and one of the 3 bosses will be swapped each week with another boss from a pool of 10 different bosses.

and the “special snowflakes melt quite quickly in difficult raids” is aimed towards people who “play how they want” and want to be carried through the content instead of pulling their weight.

using optimal builds and rotations is part of every raid and leads to success.
you cannot change that no matter how much the “play how you want” crowd wants their suboptimal 2-2-2-2-2 builds to become meta.

so instead of “how can we design bosses that eliminate meta” it would be a better way to start with “how can we design bosses that require knowledge, skill, teamwork and coordination”

So we have hit the edge of another desire of raiders. They do not want hard, punishing content that calls for constant analysis and changes during an event that allow for quick thinking and in depth knowledge of classes where, ultimately, those that can play on the fly would shine. They want puzzles and tricks to figure out AFTER they lose so they can improve and find the min/max way to do things.

So, in light of this, how does Arenanet create this content in GW2 without having it become stale? Once builds are set and the puzzle is solved, and rewards awarded, how do you get replayability? RNG?

NoTrigger.8396:

Roybe.5896:

So you want raids that can be memorized that leads to training so you can finish them faster and faster.

that will happen no matter what you do. you want to learn, become better, kill the boss, and become even better and better and play more perfectly.
analyzing, memorizig, learning, adapting and becoming better is what leads to kills in a raid.
you cant do that vs bosses that are clowns.

Roybe.5896:

How about a final boss that has a random mix of 15 different AI options and 15 different skill sets that randomly change at 3 different points in the fight. You could learn to recognize the various sets, but planning a build related to this boss would be near impossible. I believe this could make the fight very difficult and people would have to play the game rather than faceplant their keyboard. Anything that can add randomness to the overall raid itself would do the same. As I have seen so often this isn’t about fair or easy. This is about difficulty and pain. Randomness is perfect for this type of content. The more random the better.

the randomness you describe here is actually bad game design.
the randomness that could be good is faceing a boss encounter that consists of 3 different bosses in one single room and one of the 3 bosses will be swapped each week with another boss from a pool of 10 different bosses.

and the “special snowflakes melt quite quickly in difficult raids” is aimed towards people who “play how they want” and want to be carried through the content instead of pulling their weight.

using optimal builds and rotations is part of every raid and leads to success.
you cannot change that no matter how much the “play how you want” crowd wants their suboptimal 2-2-2-2-2 builds to become meta.

so instead of “how can we design bosses that eliminate meta” it would be a better way to start with “how can we design bosses that require knowledge, skill, teamwork and coordination”
this is what raid content is for. not to make your unpopular build king.

I agree with NoTrigger on this.

And, even if they did try something like this, there would still be “meta” builds – they would just be generic catchall builds designed to deal with as many diverse scenarios as possible. There will always be so called ideal builds – the fun is tweaking that ideal build to fit a balance of your group’s needs, your personal playstyle and the mechanics of the boss youre getting ready to fight (strategic awareness).

I think the original idea here was to add some variation between runs. ArenaNet definitely has the tools in place to do that without going full chaos on boss mechanics – through the use random encounters and events (think graveling mounds or troll in AC). I would fully expect that in raids.

Now, adaptive AI is another issue entirely and something I would love to see – as long as the reactionary abilities the boss exhibited followed some kind of logic and allowed for strategic group planning. However, that would require systems and mechanics that, I believe, arent currently in place in GW2 (also, that topic would transcend raids – it would affect the entire game).