Guild Wars 2

Seeing this discussion is focussing towards instanced content, I would like to say that to me open world encounters were still alot of fun. To me there is a way to retain the accessibility of open world content while also somehow limiting access more or less.

The perfect example is the marionette. Where the separate bosses were being handled by smaller groups of players, focussing alot on their skill to take out the champions.
This was great. The problem here was that only one had to fail and the whole thing fell apart. So I think, that with open world content, or semi open semi locked world encounters could be a thing, but would take alot of design time.
I’ll list a few ideas previously used as well as strong/weak points of the game where raids could be built around, with either open or instanced play in mind.

+Events

• Events are a great way to split people, divert tasks, bring focus points to players’ attention.
• Chaotic when overlapped, hard to keep track of across a map, don’t communicate when they are being played, or how many are playing there, what scale they are set as, or don’t scale very well.
  • Tequatl batteries seem to have this last effect less (people can react, switch batteries etc), but tripple trouble seems to have this more, marionette had this even worse.)

Open world Ideas/problems.

• Parties, guilds, aren’t taken into account, people can’t take a role, position when it’s full, get randomly distributed, randomly joined, scaling doesn’t work perfectly.
• Personally would like semi instanced, less randomly distributed, easier to organize apply, or some sort of multi-layered multi-task dungeon.
  • Otherwise, fully instanced takes away alot of the troubles, or makes them more controlled (like scaling).
• Ideas for “join this task/event/role with your party” pop-ups like you do for entering a dungeon, except for a small role.
• Meaning Open world would need tasks for different people that naturally occur or are hard capped.
  • Let’s say such an event could scale to the number of parties (3-5), solo people, and guilds. These groups would all need room to do there seperate tasks, as well as not feeling unnecessary, useless, or otherwise. As well as taking into account for different (task specific) roles per group.
  • On Triple Trouble: small condi group (3-5) soloers (mainly in the zerg), Guilds (absent unless guild started, or main organisers, either per wurm or full event)
  • On Marionette: parties/soloers: everywhere in between, guilds take a lane (get mixed with "soloers, groups of 3-5 take out a champion, are a mix of guild/soloers/parties. → creates call for instanced version for obvious reasons, regardless of the more fun encounter.

A very ambitious idea:

• A mega event where different tasks open to be taken up by players, parties, commander groups, guilds, excluding other players/groups once the task is assigned. Leaving space for smaller tasks, filler players. difficulty tied to group type/size etc.

Bundles and tonics and such.

• Items, turrets, player handled event/instance specific items are generally awesome and give every player a equal playing ground.
  • Sometimes takes away profession identity and tactics that otherwise could’ve been expanded on, or enhanced. (an item you pick up has different things for each profession. (think rock → meteor skill on ele) Such details are fun, potentially tactical and very interesting.
    • Let’s say you have a stick, a rogue could polevault with it (movement), a warrior would smash a shockwave with it (CC/knockdown), a ele would turn it into an elemental spear(damage/condi/cc), mesmer uses it to create a illusionary wall of sticks(reflect), etc (yay for random brainstorming).
  • Creates roles that need to be taken care of. (Tequatl turrets, keg/pheromone/speargun running at triple trouble, siege weapons at marionette,
  • Great puzzle elements, (matrix key, various content specific heart tasks, provide light, zephyre skills)

Professions

• Profession combat system either highly prefers a very select set of skills or it feel like certain classes can’t bring as much to the table as well as others, in my opinion.
  • Either use this as a strength, further diversifying profession with profession specific solutions, and a multiple solution to a problem (or set of problems) approach. (As in, you can either use stealth on path 1 reflection buffs on path 2 and conidtion damage on path 3, while ending up at more or less the same next stage.
  • Could diversify routes through a raid environment, according to party compositions, where different solutions in different parties would have a different outcome. Basically a complex way of a multiple routed dungeon where one route/task would be ideal for projectile reflect (but a challenge), another route would be great for condition removal/damage, etc.

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

Well I hope a trait build option is ready by then. Switching all the time is a pain. At least trait wise. Utilities are quick and easy. Also, any boss needing something a bit more specialized, profession wise, can have an environmental object in the area that will perform some attack/move similar to what the profession could do. Something that puts down reflect or puddles of cripple. That might reduce the “need” for a specific class in a particular encounter. I can’t see it being a huge problem, since our professions are a bit more alike than classes in other games, but it could arise.

I agree with you Blaeys.3102 i will also add a few things:

• Interrupt
• Coundition cleansing from the raid
• Boons applying to the raid
• Reflects

Those things must be part of the raid.

Bosses should have a range abilities like players. Some of them should have enrage attacks for when a group fails to prevent it. They should have heals which you can interrupt. They should have boons (not permanently refreshing boons). They should have boon stealing abilities, debuffs and unique utilities. But the key thing to remember is every attack should be avoidable or counterable.

Blaeys.3102:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

This was the point of my idea of introducing randomness into the equation. If events cannot be completely planned for, you have, in my way of seeing it, a much more dynamic, difficult, and engaging event. It doesn’t become a LFG needs condi warrior or LFG needs bomb Engi. It becomes a dance of ‘CC that mob so I can get my sword out’ or ‘hang on while I switch out my bleed skill for an interrupt skill’. This type of gameplay works towards this games strengths, rather than knowing every event and bringing prebuilt meta’s.

This is breaking the molds of other games raids based on the above issues. It appears that many do not agree, or think there are other ways to accomplish this goal. Great. I can help find the edge of the box. This is one of them. How to do you get past the box to something new and different that allows for greater flexibility, while allowing raiders to become their own ‘special snowflakes’.

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

This was the point of my idea of introducing randomness into the equation. If events cannot be completely planned for, you have, in my way of seeing it, a much more dynamic, difficult, and engaging event. It doesn’t become a LFG needs condi warrior or LFG needs bomb Engi. It becomes a dance of ‘CC that mob so I can get my sword out’ or ‘hang on while I switch out my bleed skill for an interrupt skill’. This type of gameplay works towards this games strengths, rather than knowing every event and bringing prebuilt meta’s.

This is breaking the molds of other games raids based on the above issues. It appears that many do not agree, or think there are other ways to accomplish this goal. Great. I can help find the edge of the box. This is one of them. How to do you get past the box to something new and different that allows for greater flexibility, while allowing raiders to become their own ‘special snowflakes’.

You are misunderstanding. Whether you introduce randomness or not there will be a meta composition. But the meta will involve switching skills out more. Thats something we are all for. But randomness for the sake of randomness will just irritate a large portion of the playerbase. And something you should keep in mind. No matter how random or adaptive you make AI it will always be predictable after a certain point. You cannot change that.

Its best to create challenge through range of abilities and coordination required. Not randomness. You can make mobs and bosses spawn in different locations. That kind of randomness is fine. But when you start making groups engage fights not knowing what abilities it will have especially when those abilities require coordination to be countered. Thats bad design.

Mizenhauer.6713:

Well I hope a trait build option is ready by then. Switching all the time is a pain. At least trait wise. Utilities are quick and easy. Also, any boss needing something a bit more specialized, profession wise, can have an environmental object in the area that will perform some attack/move similar to what the profession could do. Something that puts down reflect or puddles of cripple. That might reduce the “need” for a specific class in a particular encounter. I can’t see it being a huge problem, since our professions are a bit more alike than classes in other games, but it could arise.

Alternatively, if they find that groups are frequently lacking in a given need/mechanic, they could look at some of those less common mechanics and explore new traits that give additional professions access to that functionality (for example, a trait that turns a profession’s light fields into water fields instead). They have to be careful, however, to maintain diversity/value between professions.

Truth is, I think, given the list we compiled a few pages back, there are very few capabilities that wouldnt be present in groups of 8 or more players – so I think were in a pretty good place for this kind of approach/design.

The only truly unique mechanics I can think of are mesmer portal and thief basilisk venom. As long as they stay away from making those mandatory (or provide environmental items to accomodate) I think they’ll be fine.

To the topic of environmental weapons, I think they are fine (and even fun in alot of situations), but like you said, they have to be used sparingly or you risk devaluing certain professions. I remember when WoW added the mind control stations to the Instructor Razuvious (sic) fight in 10 man Naxxramas (but not in 25) because raid groups didnt have enough shadow priests. I always thought it would have been better to give mind control to other classes instead.

spoj.9672:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

This was the point of my idea of introducing randomness into the equation. If events cannot be completely planned for, you have, in my way of seeing it, a much more dynamic, difficult, and engaging event. It doesn’t become a LFG needs condi warrior or LFG needs bomb Engi. It becomes a dance of ‘CC that mob so I can get my sword out’ or ‘hang on while I switch out my bleed skill for an interrupt skill’. This type of gameplay works towards this games strengths, rather than knowing every event and bringing prebuilt meta’s.

This is breaking the molds of other games raids based on the above issues. It appears that many do not agree, or think there are other ways to accomplish this goal. Great. I can help find the edge of the box. This is one of them. How to do you get past the box to something new and different that allows for greater flexibility, while allowing raiders to become their own ‘special snowflakes’.

Its best to create challenge through range of abilities and coordination required. Not randomness. You can make mobs and bosses spawn in different locations. That kind of randomness is fine. But when you start making groups engage fights not knowing what abilities it will have especially when those abilities require coordination to be countered. Thats bad design.

Wouldn’t randomness increase the need for coordination and communication. I understand that ‘metas happen’, but, are they necessary? Can a meta be claimed when it’s aim is to ‘be prepared in general’ rather than ‘this is the most efficient way to run this’? More interestingly, are these activities acting as a reward? Can those rewards be attained in a different manner? Can metas be minimized in some way and make the game more interesting overall?

Why is chaos and randomness within an encounter ‘bad design’, but ok in mob placement? What is rewarding about ‘set piece’ fights being scripted?

I remember large content within GW1. Metas in that game eventually trivialized the content. Much of the content became soloable so that min max rewards were obtained to the detriment of the content. We currently have many dungeon paths, content made to be hard enough for 5 man teams, is now soloable to increase the rewards. The answer to these problems have lead many games, this one included, to make uninspiring content (i.e. damage sponges, one shot kills, etc.) for many that enjoy this type of content, or poorly designed content that with ‘proper’ metas, can be beaten with fewer people than originally designed, increasing rewards for those that can and excluding more people from the content because fewer are needed.

I have no problems with smaller groups running, good for them for finding a way…however it does hurt the overall game in the long run..either by concentrating wealth, excluding more people actually running the content, and injecting more goods into the economy devaluing the rewards to a degree ( if these smaller groups are more efficient than larger groups).

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

I’m not saying it is necessarily better, however it is something that can be easily implemented and can be interesting.

Let’s be honest I am (and most of the people I play with) bored to no end to switch my trait/skills/weapons between every encounter. This is the reason why I stick to a polyvalent build all the time.

This is also the reason why people asked for metabolic primers and prefer to get an ascended armour rather than consumming a sharpening stone before each dungeon when pugging.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

I agree, I just hope they come out with the build template (save your builds) to make switching a lot simpler once you built them once. Specially if they go this way.

Roybe.5896:

Wouldn’t randomness increase the need for coordination and communication. I understand that ‘metas happen’, but, are they necessary? Can a meta be claimed when it’s aim is to ‘be prepared in general’ rather than ‘this is the most efficient way to run this’? More interestingly, are these activities acting as a reward? Can those rewards be attained in a different manner? Can metas be minimized in some way and make the game more interesting overall?

Why is chaos and randomness within an encounter ‘bad design’, but ok in mob placement? What is rewarding about ‘set piece’ fights being scripted?

I remember large content within GW1. Metas in that game eventually trivialized the content. Much of the content became soloable so that min max rewards were obtained to the detriment of the content. We currently have many dungeon paths, content made to be hard enough for 5 man teams, is now soloable to increase the rewards. The answer to these problems have lead many games, this one included, to make uninspiring content (i.e. damage sponges, one shot kills, etc.) for many that enjoy this type of content, or poorly designed content that with ‘proper’ metas, can be beaten with fewer people than originally designed, increasing rewards for those that can and excluding more people from the content because fewer are needed.

I have no problems with smaller groups running, good for them for finding a way…however it does hurt the overall game in the long run..either by concentrating wealth, excluding more people actually running the content, and injecting more goods into the economy devaluing the rewards to a degree ( if these smaller groups are more efficient than larger groups).

Can we avoid putting the blame on solo’ers for hurting the game please. Your last paragraph is completely unjustified and full of incorrect assumptions. The average solo’er makes a lot less gold per hour than your average open worlder. And almost all the gold the solo’er earns is taken from other players, its not generated from nothing.

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

VodCom.6924:

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Is that fun? I know that aspect of the weapons test is rather annoying.

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

It seems weird to implement gear swapping, utility swapping and trait swapping in instances and then eliminate those things later. I’m not saying that they can’t take their game design in a different direction, only that it would be a puzzling choice given the direction the game has been going, which is greater freedom of builds.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

This is raiding, not lazy dungeon or open world farms. I expect to be challenged.

spoj.9672:

Bosses should have a range abilities like players. Some of them should have enrage attacks for when a group fails to prevent it. They should have heals which you can interrupt. They should have boons (not permanently refreshing boons). They should have boon stealing abilities, debuffs and unique utilities. But the key thing to remember is every attack should be avoidable or counterable.

Something like this. One of my favourite mobs was at the beggining is the cave troll in Queensdale. Slow telegraphed attack, regular auto attacks with bleeds and a ranged attack to stun ranged players. Bosses (and mobs in general) should have plenty of tools to deal with different situation and force players to react accordingly.
For example a boss can have a room wide unblockable but dodgeable attack which burns up your dodges so you are forced to use active mitigation or keep distance until your endurance is back. Or just eat it in tanky gear and heal back.

VodCom.6924:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

I’m not saying it is necessarily better, however it is something that can be easily implemented and can be interesting.

Let’s be honest I am (and most of the people I play with) bored to no end to switch my trait/skills/weapons between every encounter. This is the reason why I stick to a polyvalent build all the time.

This is also the reason why people asked for metabolic primers and prefer to get an ascended armour rather than consumming a sharpening stone before each dungeon when pugging.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

Hell no. The second this gets implemented raids become a waste of development time.
Micromanagement is a really fun part of GW2 dungeons and while i say it shouldn’t be encouraged that much i wouldn’t even consider to remove the option of this. PHIW’s have enough content in the open world and dungeons works as well with one build.

The biggest issue with random boss abilities is that it would then become nearly impossible to design/develop an interesting encounter.

Boss abilities should synergize with one another to create a puzzle type feel to beating them. A simplistic example – if a boss cripples a players and then starts to attack that player with single target pistol shots, it really doesn’t mean anything – dodge counters it either way. However, if a boss cripples a player and then drops a fire field under the player, things are bit more dire and require more reactive thought from the player.

Again, a really simplistic example, but I think it illustrates how planned attacks fit into a bigger picture. the devs need to be able to piece the different attacks/mechanics together into more complex encounters. That simply isnt possible with random chaotic design.

Blaeys.3102:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

Well we could establish a hard limit for what we would tolerate as a “hard” requirement, as in where do you draw the line for how much a certain profession has access to a tool? I think we’ve talked a lot about reflects and condition damage and most other tools absolutely everyone has access to (condi-removal, interupts, crowd control, etc.). Let’s focus on 2 edge cases, Boon Striping and Stealth.

Here’s the wiki page for everything that can remove boons: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon. Now as I listed earlier, Mesmers, Nercomancers, Engineers, thieves and Guardians (we got one trait that actually works well) all have access to boon removal. It should be noted that all professions technically can access boon removal with the Superior Sigil of Nullification which removes a boon on crit.

So with that in mind, could you develop an encounter which requires boon removal? Like a Boss is applying Stability to himself and you need to remove it and push him into a certain spot with Crowd control skills?

I think it’s fine since I doubt you’ll be in a situation where out of 15 people, nobody is a Mesmer, Nerco, Engineer, thief or Guardian or has a Sigil of Superior Nullification. You’d have to be a 15 man group of pure Warrior, Elementalist and rangers.

Stealth is a lot less widespread wiki page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth. Effectivelty only Thieves, Engineers and mesmer have access to it (rangers have it but it’s short and doesn’t last very long) and mesmer stealth only lasts 6 seconds at the most.

So with that in mind would a section where you have to quickly stealth by an enemy be unfair in it’s class spread? Now in theory you could get around this dilemna by offering a “smoke bomb” item nearby which creates a smoke field you can blast for stealth. But what are your guy’s opinions?

hybrid.5027:

VodCom.6924:

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Is that fun? I know that aspect of the weapons test is rather annoying.

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

It seems weird to implement gear swapping, utility swapping and trait swapping in instances and then eliminate those things later. I’m not saying that they can’t take their game design in a different direction, only that it would be a puzzling choice given the direction the game has been going, which is greater freedom of builds.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

This is raiding, not lazy dungeon or open world farms. I expect to be challenged.

All your points are reasonable except one :
“I expect to be challenged.”

Tell me, is switching gear in a middle of a raid really challenging ?

I called this micromanaging for a reason : it’s just open a window and double click. Because I’m not a theory crafter, I’ll just copycat the builds DnT will design, buy the required aquipment and be done with it.

Respec’ing after each encounter is neither fun nor challenging. It’s common practice in the dungeon meta but this is not what makes the actual meta interesting.

The interesting bit of the actual meta lies in the rotations and coordination and timed dodges.

Proposal

Procedurally Generated Raiding

There are some games now that are implementing procedurally generated content. What that means is the game is created to create content. You never see the same thing twice is really what it does. With a game like GW2 not using the trinity and therefore not having raiding in a traditional sense, why not turn the whole thing over on its head?

I think that the bosses should remain a constant(i.e. – not procedurally generated) in raids, but why not have a big pool of bosses to draw from to keep it from feeling static? Let’s say there are 7 big boss fights in a raid, but a 20 boss pool to draw from?

The trash fights could be the part that is procedural. You never know what kinds of enemies you will fight in any given room. I also really loved the idea of patrols in raids. I think really what I would like to see most from raiding is that it doesn’t become this consume and throwaway content.

One area I think the development team could improve in is improving upon existing permanent content in the game to keep it fresh. We haven’t really gotten a lot of new permanent content in this game from a traditional MMO standpoint. With Procedural Generation, the raid would truly be dynamic. Every time you go in it would be different. Fights would happen in different places with patrols and boss pools would mean not knowing what you were up against until you got there.

guardian.6489:

Well we could establish a hard limit for what we would tolerate as a “hard” requirement, as in where do you draw the line for how much a certain profession has access to a tool? I think we’ve talked a lot about reflects and condition damage and most other tools absolutely everyone has access to (condi-removal, interupts, crowd control, etc.). Let’s focus on 2 edge cases, Boon Striping and Stealth.

Here’s the wiki page for everything that can remove boons: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon. Now as I listed earlier, Mesmers, Nercomancers, Engineers, thieves and Guardians (we got one trait that actually works well) all have access to boon removal. It should be noted that all professions technically can access boon removal with the Superior Sigil of Nullification which removes a boon on crit.

So with that in mind, could you develop an encounter which requires boon removal? Like a Boss is applying Stability to himself and you need to remove it and push him into a certain spot with Crowd control skills?

I think it’s fine since I doubt you’ll be in a situation where out of 15 people, nobody is a Mesmer, Nerco, Engineer, thief or Guardian or has a Sigil of Superior Nullification. You’d have to be a 15 man group of pure Warrior, Elementalist and rangers.

Stealth is a lot less widespread wiki page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth. Effectivelty only Thieves, Engineers and mesmer have access to it (rangers have it but it’s short and doesn’t last very long) and mesmer stealth only lasts 6 seconds at the most.

So with that in mind would a section where you have to quickly stealth by an enemy be unfair in it’s class spread? Now in theory you could get around this dilemna by offering a “smoke bomb” item nearby which creates a smoke field you can blast for stealth. But what are your guy’s opinions?

I think thats fine. As you said give environmental weapons to compensate for a possible groups shortcoming. But only in extremes such as stealth, portal or required active defence. For example necros dont have any damage avoidance other than dodge. So while a group could definately help them cope. Some more extreme encounters should maybe provide a few environmental weapons which give the player a block or invuln.

there is one thing i dont understand when people make suggestions here.

ill give you guys an example.
imagine the amber head was instanced for 15 players.
lets say the amber head has boons now that you have to remove.
2 people in your party will use weapons or traits to remove the boons. does that make the fight more interesting?
or lets say the amber head spawns adds that can only be killed with condition damage.
does that make the fight more interesting?
are these cool “mechanics” ?

ok ok, now imagine…
8 people will be eaten, 8 people have to pick up the harpoon gun, and exactly 8 people have to use them to shoot the wurm head in order to prevent the wurm from using his one hit ability which will wipe the entire raid regardless of what you are doing or how tanky you are.
when the wurm spews the 8 players out, they will be transformed into wurm eggs and the other players have to free the 8 players by destroying the eggs in a set amount of time so the 8 players can use the harpoon gun and shoot the wurm before the wurm will use his one hit attack, while dodging aoes and using reflects/projectile absorbance.

this fits the gw2 combat system much more, is more challenging and more interesting than stuff from 2005.
and thats why i said

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.

the encounters should be designed without special builds in mind.

in wow that was required, because in wow you cannot really challenge your players except with spreadsheet fights or making the fights so you have to grind gear before you are strong enough to beat the encounter.

in gw2 however, you can challenge your players in a different, and much more fun way, because the combat system is action based and encounters should be build around this.

NoTrigger.8396:

there is one thing i dont understand when people make suggestions here.

ill give you guys an example.
imagine the amber head was instanced for 15 players.
lets say the amber head has boons now that you have to remove.
2 people in your party will use weapons or traits to remove the boons. does that make the fight more interesting?
or lets say the amber head spawns adds that can only be killed with condition damage.
does that make the fight more interesting?
are these cool “mechanics” ?

ok ok, now imagine…
8 people will be eaten, 8 people have to pick up the harpoon gun, and exactly 8 people have to use them to shoot the wurm head in order to prevent the wurm from using his one hit ability which will wipe the entire raid regardless of what you are doing or how tanky you are.
when the wurm spews the 8 players out, they will be transformed into wurm eggs and the other players have to free the 8 players by destroying the eggs in a set amount of time so the 8 players can use the harpoon gun and shoot the wurm before the wurm will use his one hit attack, while dodging aoes and using reflects/projectile absorbance.

this fits the gw2 combat system much more, is more challenging and more interesting than stuff from 2005.
and thats why i said

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.

the encounters should be designed without special builds in mind.

in wow that was required, because in wow you cannot really challenge your players except with spreadsheet fights or making the fights so you have to grind gear before you are strong enough to beat the encounter.

in gw2 however, you can challenge your players in a different, and much more fun way, because the combat system is action based and encounters should be build around this.

I think the key is to combine both forms. You increase build variety by using more semi passive abilities which simply keep the players on their toes. While also making abilities which require high coordination as you just described.

Blaeys.3102:

The biggest issue with random boss abilities is that it would then become nearly impossible to design/develop an interesting encounter.

Boss abilities should synergize with one another to create a puzzle type feel to beating them. A simplistic example – if a boss cripples a players and then starts to attack that player with single target pistol shots, it really doesn’t mean anything – dodge counters it either way. However, if a boss cripples a player and then drops a fire field under the player, things are bit more dire and require more reactive thought from the player.

Again, a really simplistic example, but I think it illustrates how planned attacks fit into a bigger picture. the devs need to be able to piece the different attacks/mechanics together into more complex encounters. That simply isnt possible with random chaotic design.

I’ll agree that boss abilities that synergize are definitely cool, but its not a must have.

Example: Ragnaros(cataclysm) in WoW. Bouncing the meteor balls back and forth between the two groups has zero synergy to anything else going on.

as an FYI…at one point during the fight you split up into two groups on either side of the boss. Two meteors that travel slowly spawn and will wipe a group if it touches down. You assign one player from each side to dps the meteor a bit here and there to keep bouncing it back and forth like ping pong while the rest of the raid dps the boss.

Thats a fantastically interesting mechanic, but no synergy.

The rest of the fight involves randomly placed lines of badfloor as well as adds that need to be dps’d down.

Simplistic in that there are only a few mechanics, but mind-smashingly difficult to complete without a group of at least semi-elitists. My guild was far from it, so they had issues.

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

If directed at my post, then yes I’m quite aware. But also quite aware that not every class is as good as the other. I was literally thinking of extreme challenges for those specific roles, where simply switching out skills might be needed, and where certain compositions generally would be better than others at certain tasks (ranging from encounters, to traps, to puzzles. I’m willing to admit that condi damage isn’t a good idea, but let’s say you need the burning condition in order to burn an object or set fire to something or something creative, even though that’s a very specific example which might have it’s problems here and there. Either way, at the very least I expect raid content to be fairly difficult and perhaps unforgiving when lacking certain things.

I generally think quite broadly, and not into the specifics, as that’s more a task for the devs themselves. Aimed to inspire/think about stuff etc. So I might have named a few crazy examples. :p

But yeah switching out skills traits etc is also a thing to keep in mind. While most people take it as the thing to do and even enhance, then difficulty might become who comes up with the most effective build, rather than who is good enough to come up with a team composition that gets past the encounters and such.

Coming from a gw1 perspective, gw2 is an extremely forgiving game regarding builds, which makes the game fairly straightforward as well. I would almost say it doesn’t matter all that much what you bring these days, unless you want speed, making dungeons fairly bland, and less unique experiences, unless certain mechanics are added. Most of the gameplay comes from the mechanics of the encounters, not from what you bring.

NoTrigger.8396:

there is one thing i dont understand when people make suggestions here.

ill give you guys an example.
imagine the amber head was instanced for 15 players.
lets say the amber head has boons now that you have to remove.
2 people in your party will use weapons or traits to remove the boons. does that make the fight more interesting?
or lets say the amber head spawns adds that can only be killed with condition damage.
does that make the fight more interesting?
are these cool “mechanics” ?

ok ok, now imagine…
8 people will be eaten, 8 people have to pick up the harpoon gun, and exactly 8 people have to use them to shoot the wurm head in order to prevent the wurm from using his one hit ability which will wipe the entire raid regardless of what you are doing or how tanky you are.
when the wurm spews the 8 players out, they will be transformed into wurm eggs and the other players have to free the 8 players by destroying the eggs in a set amount of time so the 8 players can use the harpoon gun and shoot the wurm before the wurm will use his one hit attack, while dodging aoes and using reflects/projectile absorbance.

this fits the gw2 combat system much more, is more challenging and more interesting than stuff from 2005.
and thats why i said

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.

the encounters should be designed without special builds in mind.

in wow that was required, because in wow you cannot really challenge your players except with spreadsheet fights or making the fights so you have to grind gear before you are strong enough to beat the encounter.

in gw2 however, you can challenge your players in a different, and much more fun way, because the combat system is action based and encounters should be build around this.

I think you add an interesting dimension to the discussion here, but I dont see a contradiction with the toolkit discussion.

Both styles should be implemented/included to a degree. Yes, stay away from forcing people into highly specialized builds, but fights should be technically challenging (your egg example) while requiring us to dip into our toolkit and reactively choose the best ones to deal with the situation.

I see a productive conversation progressing down two lanes:

1. What tools (capabilities) should raids be expected to have when entering an encounter, and

2. What tools/mechanics can developers use to challenge us in the raids.

The two topics are synergistic and should both be considered when looking at fight design.

So, yes, your first example would not be as excited as your second, but your second is going to be more interesting and challenging if it encourages players to dip into a wider set of abilities in order to defeat the challenge.

In your worm example – what if, instead of being encased in eggs, the players spewed forth were now under enemy control with five stacks of defiance and could only be returned to player control through an interrupt. Instead of breaking the eggs open with dps, the goal would be to use ccs to break defiance without damaging (and potentially killing) your teammate, while negating the damage they might do to the party – and geting out a final cc to bring them back to their senses (back to player control).

In other words, I think they can (should) design fights with both in mind, not one or the other.

So, lets do both – lets talk about the toolkits/soft roles players can fill, but – to your points – lets also talk about the toolkits/soft roles the enemies can fill as well.

NOTE: Spoj beat me to it – and in a more concise post.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

snip

I think you add an interesting dimension to the discussion here, but I dont see a contradiction with the toolkit discussion.

Both styles should be implemented/included to a degree. Yes, stay away from forcing people into highly specialized builds, but fights should be technically challenging (your egg example) while requiring us to dip into our toolkit and reactively choose the best ones to deal with the situation.

I see a productive conversation progressing down two lanes:

1. What tools (capabilities) should raids be expected to have when entering an encounter, and

2. What tools/mechanics can developers use to challenge us in the raids.

The two topics are synergistic and should both be considered when looking at fight design.

So, yes, your first example would not be as excited as your second, but your second is going to be more interesting and challenging if it encourages players to dip into a wider set of abilities in order to defeat the challenge.

In your worm example – what if, instead of being encased in eggs, the players spewed forth were now under enemy control with five stacks of defiance and could only be returned to player control through an interrupt. Instead of breaking the eggs open with dps, the goal would be to uses ccs to break defiance without damaging (and potentially killing) your teammate, while negating the damage they might do to the party – and geting out a final cc to bring them back to their senses (back to player control).

In other words, I think they can (should) design fights with both in mind, not one or the other.

So, lets do both – lets talk about the toolkits/soft roles players can fill, but – to your points – lets also talk about the toolkits/soft roles the enemies can fill as well.

This was kind of what i was trying to say. Only better worded and in more detail. We can have both and we should have both.

On the topic of swapping gear, utilities, etc. mid fight:

This reminds me a bit about pvp. In gw1 pvp there was a lot of focus on UI for example with managing several weapon sets as a monk (high energy, low energy, shields with different resistances against various elemental damages, etc.). I remember an Anet dev stating (I think it was Izzy during a potcast) that they deliberately stepped away from a focus on UI for their second game while still trying to provide room for build wars. Arguments I can remember include:
- less UI → more imsersive experience
- transparency: it is apparent what you did wrong when you get outplayed, but not so much when your oponent beat you because you did not utilised a counterintuitive UI technique you were not even aware of → better learning courve
- it is easier to feel satisfied if you outplay the enemy on screen than if you generated a lot of small advantages via UI manipulation

In a raid context this would speak for content which reinfoces optimising your build before you engage the encounter as opposed to swapping your build while already in an epic battle against the meleficent Overlord of Darkness with six arms and burning eyes.

Devs should take into consideration every skill the classes have and utilize it in some way at certain fights however they should take into account other issues too. As spoj pointed out a few times necro lacks other proper damage mitigation unlike other classes so in some cases they may fall into a disadvantageous situation.

Also movement, situation awareness is what used in most fights and class mechanics of course. GW2 can use their own stuff on top of that, like enviromental weapons, bundles, transformations, consumables etc. as we previously mentioned.

The rest is performance, UI and design issue. And please improve the visibility against bosses since if i need to bet not every one of them will be huge as Lupi.

spoj.9672:

Roybe.5896:

Wouldn’t randomness increase the need for coordination and communication. I understand that ‘metas happen’, but, are they necessary? Can a meta be claimed when it’s aim is to ‘be prepared in general’ rather than ‘this is the most efficient way to run this’? More interestingly, are these activities acting as a reward? Can those rewards be attained in a different manner? Can metas be minimized in some way and make the game more interesting overall?

Why is chaos and randomness within an encounter ‘bad design’, but ok in mob placement? What is rewarding about ‘set piece’ fights being scripted?

I remember large content within GW1. Metas in that game eventually trivialized the content. Much of the content became soloable so that min max rewards were obtained to the detriment of the content. We currently have many dungeon paths, content made to be hard enough for 5 man teams, is now soloable to increase the rewards. The answer to these problems have lead many games, this one included, to make uninspiring content (i.e. damage sponges, one shot kills, etc.) for many that enjoy this type of content, or poorly designed content that with ‘proper’ metas, can be beaten with fewer people than originally designed, increasing rewards for those that can and excluding more people from the content because fewer are needed.

I have no problems with smaller groups running, good for them for finding a way…however it does hurt the overall game in the long run..either by concentrating wealth, excluding more people actually running the content, and injecting more goods into the economy devaluing the rewards to a degree ( if these smaller groups are more efficient than larger groups).

Can we avoid putting the blame on solo’ers for hurting the game please. Your last paragraph is completely unjustified and full of incorrect assumptions.

Not the point I was trying to make, however, I will abandon this.

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

Actually, no I don’t. Seems a legit problem to overcome under pressure. All plans in life are like this. Perfect until engagement commences. This just seems to be requiring raids to be a logic puzzle than a fight.

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

This is my definition of a static fight. The challenge is in figuring it out, one and done kind of content.

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

Again, your assumption. I do not hate speedruns. What I’m trying to do is get people to help come up with other ideas that are outside the general consideration of repetition for the sake of efficiency. To switch this up, why should speed running be considered the ‘gold standard’ since you apparently are unimpressed with ideas that might not be as controllable thus decreasing your efficiency?

Roybe.5896:

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

Actually, no I don’t. Seems a legit problem to overcome under pressure. All plans in life are like this. Perfect until engagement commences. This just seems to be requiring raids to be a logic puzzle than a fight.

Once you have engaged you cannot switch skills. If you do not have the tools available to defeat the boss then you are forced to disengage. This might be acceptible on your first few playthroughs. But after that its just silly and annoying.

Roybe.5896:

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

This is my definition of a static fight. The challenge is in figuring it out, one and done kind of content.

All AI results in this in the end. AI is predictable after all. They key is to make a fight fun and challenging even when you know exactly what to do. Many fractal bosses pull this off rather well despite being relatively simply. And there is always room for new innovative strategies.

Roybe.5896:

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

Again, your assumption. I do not hate speedruns. What I’m trying to do is get people to help come up with other ideas that are outside the general consideration of repetition for the sake of efficiency. To switch this up, why should speed running be considered the ‘gold standard’ since you apparently are unimpressed with ideas that might not be as controllable thus decreasing your efficiency?

I didnt say you hate speedruns. I was merely explaining my reasoning for disliking excessive randomness. There is a competative side to PvE. And that is speedrunning. If things are too random then it works against that community. As a speedrunner myself I would have loved to compete for fractal records. Unfortunately the RNG nature of how instances are selected makes that completely unrealistic to achieve any real competition.

spoj.9672:

Roybe.5896:

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

Actually, no I don’t. Seems a legit problem to overcome under pressure. All plans in life are like this. Perfect until engagement commences. This just seems to be requiring raids to be a logic puzzle than a fight.

Once you have engaged you cannot switch skills. If you do not have the tools available to defeat the boss then you are forced to disengage. This might be acceptible on your first few playthroughs. But after that its just silly and annoying.

Roybe.5896:

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

This is my definition of a static fight. The challenge is in figuring it out, one and done kind of content.

All AI results in this in the end. AI is predictable after all. They key is to make a fight fun and challenging even when you know exactly what to do. Many fractal bosses pull this off rather well despite being relatively simply. And there is always room for new innovative strategies.

Roybe.5896:

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

Again, your assumption. I do not hate speedruns. What I’m trying to do is get people to help come up with other ideas that are outside the general consideration of repetition for the sake of efficiency. To switch this up, why should speed running be considered the ‘gold standard’ since you apparently are unimpressed with ideas that might not be as controllable thus decreasing your efficiency?

I didnt say you hate speedruns. I was merely explaining my reasoning for disliking excessive randomness. There is a competative side to PvE. And that is speedrunning. If things are too random then it works against that community. As a speedrunner myself I would have loved to compete for fractal records. Unfortunately the RNG nature of how instances are selected makes that completely unrealistic to achieve any real competition.

Good points all! Anyone else speaking up thanks for the input.

Yes, I do agree…fighting the UI is not an acceptable issue.

I find myself in most of this content figuring out the puzzle and being satisfied knowing. Once I see the answer the fun is really over, it just becomes a matter of getting past the puzzle and figuring out the next one.

Crystal Reid.2481:

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

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

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

No to raid-unique armors. I cannot possibly stress that even remotely enough. If that were to occur, I could go out and buy a special table specifically for flipping. No. That is not why I came to GW2. If I wanted that sort of raidista BS, there are dozens of other MMOs I could get it from, and I’m not playing those BECAUSE they do that. I came to GW2 for a more casual, inclusive gaming experience, and would consider the inclusion of raid-exclusive armors to be a betrayal of the years I’ve invested in this game.

To answer your bullet points though,

• No, presumably it would at most be like current Legendaries, Ascended stats, but with the benefit that you can change the stats at will. This makes them technically “better”, but also means that a player in full Legendary Zerker is not stronger than one in Ascended Zerker.
• It’s kitten well better be. Players should NEVER have to raid to get the best gear, and while raiding might be one avenue for getting Legendary armor, it should not be easier than through other means.
• Use ascended armor as an optional crafting component. Have a variable recipe where you can EITHER use some fancy dropped armor as a base mat, OR you can use Ascended armors in the recipe instead. This means that someone with full Ascended is already well on their way. This same philosophy would be well applied to Legendary Weapons as well, allowing players to sub in Ascended weapons for the ridiculously overpriced Precursors.
• Both would probably be a good idea, as well as other options for non-raiders.

My general opinion of your posts here are that you want to drag everyone down to your level. Someone else used the example I would use on you already but I second it. You don’t want some Olympic athlete level player to have nice rewards/unique medals for their achievement because you can’t have it despite them putting more time and effort in and objectively showing more skill.

This has nothing to do with “levels.” We aren’t talking about dragging “superior” people down to “mediocre” level here, we’re talking about raids, and there’s nothing “superior” about raids. I’m just saying that raids should not get unique gear that only people who raid can get, it has nothing to do with “superiority.”

You would have to be incredibly naive to think that if you made all items accessible through any content that the single optimal method wouldn’t be found in a day and many people would farm that till their eyes bleed making the game significantly less fun than the hunt for an item.

If that’s what they want to do then that’s fine. To each his own. It’s better than to have the item only be available through a single method that many players would not enjoy.

I disagree. It’s not a fluke that some of the most valued skins in GW2 right now are acquired by completing specific content. Fractal skins, Sunless weapons, SAB (especially green or yellow) weapons all mean more to me than legendaries because they actually say something about the type of content that a player has completed.

Anyone who actually believes that is a vainglorious fool. Some of those items are valued, in most cases because they look particularly cool (like Fractal weapons), or they offer superior stats (like Sunless Weapons, if you don’t have ascended crafting mastered yet), sometimes both. Anyone who equips those items because they believe they’re “WoWing” the other players is just an emperor with no clothes.

Prestige should not be attached to gear, no. But some gear should be attached to prestige. What I mean by this is: it’s not the gear that makes it prestige, it’s your achievement. The gear is just the visual representation of your achievement. It’s your way of showing the community that you beat something hard. Why do you want to take that away from people?

Because some people JUST want that gear, and don’t care about the prestige. Achievements are for prestige. Titles are for prestige. Jackets should not be for prestige, they should be for looking good. Being able to get the skins that you want should not be locked behind barriers of activities that you don’t enjoy participating in.

And no, titles are not enough. I think maybe once a month I notice someone’s title, and that’s only when I’m actually playing with them and standing/running near them for longer periods of time. That’s visual enough.

It’s not the title that makes it prestige, it’s your achievement. The title is just the visual representation of your achievement. It’s your way of showing the community that you beat something hard. Why do you want to take that away from people?

In that case, you’d argue in favour of making all gear unbounded, so everything can be bought on the trading post.

I would if the gold chase weren’t so horribly skewed in this game by trading schemes. It would have to be trading for something other than gold, something that you could not gain through market trading or gem selling.

Anyone who actually believes that is a vainglorious fool. Some of those items are valued, in most cases because they look particularly cool (like Fractal weapons), or they offer superior stats (like Sunless Weapons, if you don’t have ascended crafting mastered yet), sometimes both. Anyone who equips those items because they believe they’re “WoWing” the other players is just an emperor with no clothes.

Please don’t put words in my mouth. Those items are valued because they can only be acquired though doing specific content, which lends them a degree of rarity. Many BL weapons look pretty cool but they don’t mean a thing about how you spend your time in-game. And I don’t know what game you’re playing if you think that people do Tequatl for a chance at a Rabid weapon, a stat set which has no use for anything outside of specific WvW builds.

It’s not the title that makes it prestige, it’s your achievement. The title is just the visual representation of your achievement. It’s your way of showing the community that you beat something hard. Why do you want to take that away from people?

Anyone who equips those titles because they believe they’re “WoWing” the other players is just an emperor with no clothes.

Please don’t put words in my mouth. Those items are valued because they can only be acquired though doing specific content, which lends them a degree of rarity.

Again, they’re valued because people like the way they look. If they were super rare but looked really stupid then people wouldn’t bother. If they were super common but still looked cool then people would still use them. The whole “they’re special because they’re hard to get” argument is nonsense.

Ohoni, it sounds like you’re opposed to any sort of unique rewards for raiding. It also sounds like you’re opposed to raiding in a general sense.

So now that we have established that you disagree with the concept of raiding in guild wars 2, could you kindly exit the discussion so people who wish to be constructive and topical can continue on with the Raid CDI?

spoj.9672:

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.

Support should be independant of gear, control should be independant of gear. Those are fine sentiments to have, but then why insist on having DPS roles tied to gear?
Looking at it from an action game perspective, DPS is the problem role here atm, not support or control.

NoTrigger.8396:

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.

By what metric do you determine what should and shouldn’t be in a game with or without trinity?
Would action-based combat suffer under removing such imbalance?

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

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.

By what metric do you determine what should and shouldn’t be in a game with or without trinity?
Would action-based combat suffer under removing such imbalance?

are you talking about the imbalance that every single encounter in this game can be facetanked without a single dodge needed and therefore tanky and healing gear is ridiculously overpowered to the point that players are able to ignore even the key of the combat system, dodge?

you dont need metrics, you just have to look at the combat system and how professions are designed. this is not world of warcraft. we dont have tanks and healers. accept it please

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

By what metric do you determine what should and shouldn’t be in a game with or without trinity?
Would action-based combat suffer under removing such imbalance?

are you talking about the imbalance that every single encounter in this game can be facetanked without a single dodge needed and therefore tanky and healing gear is ridiculously overpowered to the point that players are able to ignore even the key of the combat system, dodge?

you dont need metrics, you just have to look at the combat system and how professions are designed. this is not world of warcraft. we dont have tanks and healers. accept it please

You say you can facetank it all, then say there are no tanks.
That’s quite the conundrum. How can you tank without being a tank?

It don’t have a problem with there not being any tanks or healers. You seem to have a problem with the suggestion there might actually already be those though.

The imbalance is simple:
Berzerker’s and Assassin’s gear allows high DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.
Other gear allows medium to low DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.

How is that not imbalanced?

Edit: Added Assassin’s for completeness

Naetell.3815:

You say you can facetank it all, then say there are no tanks.
That’s quite the conundrum. How can you tank without being a tank?

Are you really that dense or just trolling?

Dalanor.5387:

Naetell.3815:

You say you can facetank it all, then say there are no tanks.
That’s quite the conundrum. How can you tank without being a tank?

Are you really that dense or just trolling?

Neither, but thanks for asking.

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

By what metric do you determine what should and shouldn’t be in a game with or without trinity?
Would action-based combat suffer under removing such imbalance?

are you talking about the imbalance that every single encounter in this game can be facetanked without a single dodge needed and therefore tanky and healing gear is ridiculously overpowered to the point that players are able to ignore even the key of the combat system, dodge?

you dont need metrics, you just have to look at the combat system and how professions are designed. this is not world of warcraft. we dont have tanks and healers. accept it please

You say you can facetank it all, then say there are no tanks.
That’s quite the conundrum. How can you tank without being a tank?

It don’t have a problem with there not being any tanks or healers. You seem to have a problem with the suggestion there might actually already be those though.

The imbalance is simple:
Berzerker gear allows high DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.
Other gear allows medium to low DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.

How is that not imbalanced?

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

dps gear = high dps, high risk, high reward
tanky healing gear = low dps, low risk (high survivability), high reward

option 2 is actually imbalanced because no player skill is needed.
and facetanking is far away from being a real tank.

again, this discussion is not about making play how you want builds king. its about designing content. stay on topic please and create a different topic if you would like to discuss play how you want builds and their negative impact on the community and the game as a whole.

thank you

I am very excited to see this up and very happy that the community is doing well to propose lots of good ideas. I’m at work so I did not read all of the suggestions nor am I up to date as I just skimmed the first page.

I would like to see raid content. I would very much like it to be instanced. I think it would be smart if the content was scalable to accomidate different size groups as I think it should be geared towards guilds.

I would like to see instanced raid content, scalable in sets of 5, from 10 to 40 people. That was large guilds can run multiple instances of a raid and smaller guilds can still do them, or get help from other guilds. This prevents the “I can’t get into that map” problem with open world raids.

I don’t think raids should effect wve, but perhaps give some wvw rewards that are comparable to the rewards in eve to encourage group place in pve and pvp.

I really hope we get raid content and its challenging yet fun and most importantly accessible

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Naetell.3815:

spoj.9672:

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.

Support should be independant of gear, control should be independant of gear. Those are fine sentiments to have, but then why insist on having DPS roles tied to gear?
Looking at it from an action game perspective, DPS is the problem role here atm, not support or control.

Im not sure i follow. You want to remove dps as a role? Are we going to CC and heal mobs to death?

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

By what metric do you determine what should and shouldn’t be in a game with or without trinity?
Would action-based combat suffer under removing such imbalance?

are you talking about the imbalance that every single encounter in this game can be facetanked without a single dodge needed and therefore tanky and healing gear is ridiculously overpowered to the point that players are able to ignore even the key of the combat system, dodge?

you dont need metrics, you just have to look at the combat system and how professions are designed. this is not world of warcraft. we dont have tanks and healers. accept it please

You say you can facetank it all, then say there are no tanks.
That’s quite the conundrum. How can you tank without being a tank?

It don’t have a problem with there not being any tanks or healers. You seem to have a problem with the suggestion there might actually already be those though.

The imbalance is simple:
Berzerker gear allows high DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.
Other gear allows medium to low DPS, high support, high control, 100% survivability.

How is that not imbalanced?

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

dps gear = high dps, high risk, high reward
tanky healing gear = low dps, low risk (high survivability), high reward

option 2 is actually imbalanced because no player skill is needed.
and facetanking is far away from being a real tank.

again, this discussion is not about making play how you want builds king. its about designing content. stay on topic please and create a different topic if you would like to discuss play how you want builds and their negative impact on the community and the game as a whole.

thank you

That all depends on how skillful you find the dodge mechanic. Sacrificing DPS for nothing is contraproductive game design, and in a topic such as raiding, it’s fair to question the existence of stats on gear to begin with when over 90% of the stat combinations serve no purpose.
Learning to dodge is something everyone can do.

There’s no need to fence with something as loaded as ‘play how you want builds’. I believe that has no constructivity to it whatsoever. Oh, and thanks for lumping me in with ‘the people’ defending undefendable builds, as if to suggest I ever said any of the sort.

My premise is simple:
DPS should not be tied to gear if Support and Control aren’t expected to be.
Support and Control should be tied to gear if DPS is expected to be.

How much challenge can we expect from a raid when the game at no point informs people of this choice of gear? I don’t think I, or anyone else for that matter, would be happy if we could do a raid all wearing soldier gear without anyone even getting downed because the boss can’t hit us hard enough.
Can we make it so that in raids everyone’s stats are normalised?

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Thats a problem with the content not the gear. Its something that should be discussed in this CDI. Many trash mobs are too easy and the mob groups dont have synergising attacks. The only exception to this is Arah trash mobs.

spoj.9672:

Naetell.3815:

spoj.9672:

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.

Support should be independant of gear, control should be independant of gear. Those are fine sentiments to have, but then why insist on having DPS roles tied to gear?
Looking at it from an action game perspective, DPS is the problem role here atm, not support or control.

Im not sure i follow. You want to remove dps as a role? Are we going to CC and heal mobs to death?

Remove it? No, that would be against my preferred playstyle to begin with.
I’m in favour of making the roles equal to each other.

It’s an interesting question though: is DPS the most important role in raiding?