Guild Wars 2

Proposal Overview
A revamp of the current squad system for a unified raiding, world boss, and WvW large party system experience.

Proposal Functionality
Revamping the currently very lackluster squad system would be extremely useful for managing raid instances as well as benefiting the rest of the game.

We should have a squad management menu that allows for options like public/private squad settings, organizing squad members into 5 man groups, and assigning people as assistants for running multiple tags in squad.

We should have a new squad sidebar like the current party sidebar but compressed and we should be able to toggle between party and squad view. Maybe have something like 60 person max squads, sorted into 12 5 man groups, and in the squad view you’ll have 2 columns of 3 parties, groups 1-6 and 7-12 can see eachother on squad view. This would allow for a massive amount of utility in building organized squads in nearly every situation in the game and present the ability for the devs to create an easy to learn and fairly unintrusive GUI element.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Lots of great concepts here already, great job folks. I’ll echo that this discussion is most helpful if we consider what the concept of guild raids in Guild Wars 2 could be, rather than attempting to limit to what “raids” in other games have been.

Think outside the box and ask yourself what other “raid” type systems don’t do well, and consider proposals that you think both make best use of what Guild Wars does well; it’s a similar process we use when evaluating any system or feature for Gw2 in general.

Look forward to reading more of your ideas!

Well…. if your only seeking to go down Guild Raiding then due consideration needs to be made around size of guilds because not every guild seeks to be the biggest possible, some prefer being small and just as hard working.
GW2 allows guilds to be 1,2,…. 500, therefore any raiding needs to accommodate a suitable scaling system combined with the ability for guilds to call up outside help, potentially via the LFG tools.
IMO raids have no real need to be limited to Guild Raiding. By having instanced raids that are either stand alone or that are unlocked by completion of a series of chained events enroute means that the community can organise their own raiding throughout the day and not have to rely on trying to catch a TTS run event or such.

For me one of the biggest de-motivators in GW2 is the "turn up 1 hr early, plug headset in and play the WP lottery when a map IP is announced to try and get into the organised event… and then hope you don’t get DC’ed and loose all chances of getting back into the correct map to complete the event you spent the best part of 2hrs supporting…. this makes the content far to hit and miss for many.
Instanced raiding offers the ability to control these kind of issues and will likely motivate others to open up their own instances regardless of map caps etc… guilds can then effectively raid within their own organised instances and have the flexibility to offer spots if they need, but at the same time PUGS can also organise their own attempts.. sure it may not be as smooth, it may not always succeed but it gives valauable content training, it allows everyone to sample the content and it gives choice.

From this platform ANET could perhaps look to implement a more specific RAID Grouping function.. more controllable LFG if you like where the raid leaders set the requirements and only those that meet the criteria (class reqd, lvl, AP’s etc) get through the filter. The current LFG is far to open with no group leader control, often leading to anyone of any level/class joining and then being kicked…

Regarding Raid Levels.. not all raids need to be lvl 80 endgame .. other MMO’s have introduced raids at other lower levels, much like smaller dungeons.. this gives players an early eyeshot of what to expect at higher levels and the challenges expected.. it would work well with the current “NPE” drive within the game and offers new players valuable raid training if you like.

Raid content.. please not more ball up, buff and spank the boss who has a gazillion HP’s… make the raids more interesting – add puzzles, co-op actions, mix up what certain encounters within the raid require.. give condi builds a role, give zerks their job, bring in the need for certain classes to perform certain tasks and skills (stealth etc etc)… raids need to have variance and challenge that make raid leader consider who/what they take into the instance… this is why Openworld raiding really struggles tobe more than just a numbers game imo.

Just my 2 cents.

I love raiding.. but Openworld really doesn’t offer the same challenges that instanced raids do.

Issues with GW2 core systems and raiding

Agro: While agro is based upon dps in other games, GW2 largely seems to fix targets based on stat distributions (some mobs go after squishies, some after heavies). And agro changes are often based on a mix of proximity and randomness.

This makes the control mechanic that is given to the ‘main tank’ non-existant and things very chaotic to the point of meaninglessness when large numbers of players are doing the same thing.

Example: Triple Wurm/Teq, the only way to counter this was with fixed position bosses who employ mostly AE skills. But alternatives exist, such as the Aetherpath Duo mechanic of people purposefully debuffing themselves to draw agro.

Humanoid graphics spam: Even with 5 people humanoid bosses become a mass of flashes and smoke. Telegraphs are meaningless if they cannot be seen. Even worse is that even if you manage to see through the fire the damage numbers will often block enemies even with single targets, multiple targets make watching for telegraphs pointless.

Example: Any humanoid dungeon boss as a ranged character. This is an issue with the UI.

Condition cap: Taking more than 1 condition specced person to a 5 man dungeon will test the condi cap, essentially turning them in to dead weight. If the cap was unchangable, then encounters would need to include multiple targets so the per unit cap wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Advantages of GW2 core systems and raiding

Mobility: Since characters can move and cast encounters can be far more dynamic and fun for all participants. The trinity meant nothing much more than 1,2,3,4,5 spam for dps, and only the tank had any real impact on survival- while healers played reverse-whack-a-mole.

Example: Aetherpath Duo.

Dodges: Clutch avoidance is good to keep encounters from being too unforgiving, and allow for long telegraphed instant kills to be put in. But the balance between challenging and unfair is easy to trip over if encounters are balanced with too many required dodges in mind. Encounters that do require it would need a clear indicator that dodges shouldn’t be wasted.

Example: I really cannot think of an encounter that actually targets the dodge mechanic well. In CoF P1 the last boss becomes trivialized because of it, other encounters seem to ignore it at best. I’m sure I’ll kick myself for forgetting one, but since TA/Arah don’t have any I’m not sure where they’d be.

Deadeye could actually be a good example of dodging done right. But the boss becomes even more exceptional with the zero vigor debuff (forcing players to really push their invulnerabilities and pull skills), so it’d be strange to use as a baseline.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On scaling: it is true that we have a certain amount of “magic” scaling in the game, commonly seen in dynamic events. The intent of that system is to keep difficulty consistent across a variety of player counts. The sticking point for myself on raids and scaling is that while we can scale enemies, it is far more difficult to meaningfully scale objectives.

To elaborate, in a 10-player raid, each player is responsible for approximately 1/10 of challenge. As you add players, that challenge share diminishes, so in a 20-player raid, the individual role is about half as important as it would have been with 10 players (challenges of coordination aside).

Of course, group content is rarely so singular and for a good reason. If we have 3 objectives, we divide the focus of the group and your ownership of a 20-player challenge goes from 1/20 to 1/6ish.

Is it possible, then, to just scale objectives along with the player counts? Perhaps. But it seems that would equate to just making many tiers of the content which, to me, sounds like a good way to diminish the total amount of content we could build. What do you guys think?

I prefer the kind of tack you’re taking now, where the best way to proceed is to split into smaller groups – but it’s preferable to restrict min/max player counts than diminish the amount of content by making several versions of it. If you can find a way to scale the number of objectives without hitting development time too hard, then go for it.

If all the objectives are already there, but the number activated depends on population, it might work. Consider the Marionette battle – the number of active platforms might scale from 1 to the full 5 depending on the population at each gate.

Retro.6831:

Some thoughts to consider as we dig into this CDI that I thought were worth sharing;

All of this post. Every ounce of it.

Thia.4891:

My only hope for raiding is that it doesn’t come with a gear treadmill. Ascended gear should remain the highest tier. New skins should be the rewards, not new stats.

This as well.

Conski Deshan.2057:

This is not about excluding people,

I disagree, it is absolutely about excluding people.

This is the very reason I disagree with raids existing in this game at all. Players claim they want challenging content, but they don’t. They want -exclusive- content with -exclusive- rewards.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here you go:

‘…instanced co-operative group based ‘challenging’ content…’

Chris

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. That’s an incredibly satisfying definition, thank goodness.
It is instanced. It is cooperative group based. It is challenging.
No additional baggage, those are the core principles to work on and branch out from, it’s perfect.
I don’t have a cohesive proposal on how raids should be, but I do have a few things I feel they should abide by:
Static group size – since it’s challenging content, it needs to be carefully tuned. A variable group size unnecessarily complicates that. This is not to the exclusion of multiple static group sizes (for example, a 15person version of the raid & a 30 person version).
No barriers to entry – pugging (for those who wish to brave it) should be readily available, the raids shouldn’t be locked behind guild upgrades and the like. Something like a short “story lead-in” attunement that is account wide would be acceptable though.
No progressive gear tiers – sticking with GW2’s core philosophy, we shouldn’t be grinding it out for stronger gear with each new raid. It causes stat-creep and renders old content irrelevant when new content comes out. A FotM style solution (either with raid levels, or with something akin to the agony infusion system[non-combat stat that’s require for progress within the specific format) would be good in the case that some form of progression is desired. Ascended should remain the highest gear tier, and we shouldn’t be made to replace it because of raids.
Consider multiple difficulties – I’m not convinced that multiple difficulties is the best way to go, but an “easy” and “hard” mode could be a good way to keep everyone involved while still offering greater depth and challenge to those who desire it. Alternatively, fractals style (but more limited, like 5 or 10 levels at most, so that tuning can be more carefully done) level progression could work.

Edit:
Consider progress saving – These raids are supposed to be challenging, which can inherently be time consuming (not a bad thing), but will they be long? a part of raiding for many people is a feeling of group progression, but we don’t all have the time of day to kill multiple bosses in a single night. Consider giving players the tools they need to stop, leave, and later come back and resume from where they left off.

As im not English, I’m sorry about grammar and spelling murders i did in the following message.

Proposal Overview

Create kind of ‘key/pass’ to access raids .

Goal of Proposal

Raids should be an hard challenge for large groups. If there is kind of costs or consequences when a raid is in preparation/progress/fail, each actions inside of the raid is much more thoughtful.
-“Its our last key, lets focus !”
It look like a constraint, but it involve the player in the action. Anyways, its a raid isnt it?

Associated Risks

• If keys are too difficult to craft/find, it can discourages smaller parties.
• If keys are too expensive, they’ll have the same effect as above.
• The potential key farming can frustrate players. (But it worth ! )

Suggested approach

• They can be obtained via a treasure hunt. Only easy hints (But without map pointers please !), i also suggest to design a short hunt, to counterpart the fact we need a pass to enter the raid.
• They could be crafted (With specific professions via a discover, or mystic forge), not necessary a recipe that we have to buy.
• They could be traded from an npc, but i’ve no idea which kind of item will needed Also this npc could spawn after an event linked to the raid entrance.
• Trading to a NPC that move weekly to an unknow location across Tyria. This npc could trade any raid keys among other valuable items.

I’ve so many ideas for the raid itself, but it seems the players here have very good ideas and args, so i wont jump in this thread again

Dreamcaller.

My only real contribution here is regarding Rewards. It seems like people have mostly been asking for cosmetic rewards (skins, achievements, titles), which is good. However, if there do end up being any raid exclusive consumables, or runes/sigils, or anything else of that nature that is not so much more powerful as it is different (but still has an effect on gameplay, please please please disable it completely in WvW. Cosmetic rewards I have no issue with, but raiding needs to provide no unique benefits in other areas of the game.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On scaling: it is true that we have a certain amount of “magic” scaling in the game, commonly seen in dynamic events. The intent of that system is to keep difficulty consistent across a variety of player counts. The sticking point for myself on raids and scaling is that while we can scale enemies, it is far more difficult to meaningfully scale objectives.

To elaborate, in a 10-player raid, each player is responsible for approximately 1/10 of challenge. As you add players, that challenge share diminishes, so in a 20-player raid, the individual role is about half as important as it would have been with 10 players (challenges of coordination aside).

Of course, group content is rarely so singular and for a good reason. If we have 3 objectives, we divide the focus of the group and your ownership of a 20-player challenge goes from 1/20 to 1/6ish.

Is it possible, then, to just scale objectives along with the player counts? Perhaps. But it seems that would equate to just making many tiers of the content which, to me, sounds like a good way to diminish the total amount of content we could build. What do you guys think?

I have a very strong opinion regarding scaling.

I understand your points, but I also know from experience (leading 25 man hardcore progression raids for 6+ years in WoW) that the most toxic part of a raid is the hard set numbers. What happens when 11/12/13/14 people are interested in raiding? Decisions have to be made to leave friends behind – and that leads to nastiness I personally never want to see in a game again.

To me, scaling is what can set raiding apart in Gw2, even if it does affect the difficulty a little (and I still believe you can design fights that require some coordination even with flexible sized groups).

This issue doesnt exist to the same degree in dungeons because if you have 12 people, you just need to find 3 more to form 3 groups, versus finding another 7 to form 2 ten man groups.

Please, I beg you guys, think really hard about the atmosphere rigid sized groups would create in the game. This is the number one reason I stopped raiding in WoW and that I was so excited for GW2 – not having to make decisions about leaving friends out of large scale activities. Please dont make me go back to that in GW2.

And to clarify, Im not against harder content, just rigid numbers in raids. It is the number one reason people find raiding such a toxic environment. You can do better than that.

Addendum: reading some of the other posts, Ive seen the idea of raid scaling floating between two numbers. If they could make the math right, I could get behind that – say scaling from 8-16 people (meaning that 11 person group would be fine. it would unlikely you would need to leave anyone out of a raid night)

guardian.6489:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Thanks TTS for your first proposal. Looking forward to chatting with you guys.

By the way, recently I was kicked from your guild (-: Would love a re-invite (-:

Chris

Thanks Chris. I personally look forward to this discussion as well and I can say a lot of our members and leaders are too. Off-topic but you can apply again at our website if you want to get back into the Guild, we’re almost always open to recuit new members. Also I’m speaking more personally, I think Merforga will swing by here to give TTS’s general thoughts on things.

I’m also glad, I’m not the only one who thinks the old Living story events should be converted into raids! It’s prime Raid content just lying on the table being unused!

We’d love to have you back! They really only require you to attend one raid a month, hopefully you have enough time in your schedule to come relax once a month.
Http://ttsgamers.com/apply

Boss Mechanics, Roles, and “Why am I here?”

Guild Wars 2 faces a unique problem because of the fact that it does not adhere to the traditional trope of the Holy Trinity in MMO’s because of this a non-traditional approach to designing engaging and fun boss fights is; for all intents and purposes, mandatory.

Early on boss design (particularly in dungeons) was pretty basic. Dodge this or die, kill it before it kills you; and while that is a good base for designing any boss as the game has evolved so have the many boss fights that have been introduced since then.

Raid bosses should be no different, a further evolution on the current trends of mob/boss design in GW2.

Making a boss engaging for large groups is no easy task however and as a fight introduces more mechanics in order to accomplish this goal it is very easy to fall into trap of requiring players to bring assets to a raid group that they do not actually enjoy (I.E a guardian for wall of reflection)

My suggestion in order to not fall into this trap would be to focus mechanical design on overall concepts, and when falling into specifics to make sure it can be completed with a wide variety of tools.

Examples of some good mechanics for bosses.

Platforming segments in order to hit a singular or small number of switches. Something like this can be completed by any player regardless of profession or gear.

A boss with adds that have to be managed somehow in a way other than simply killing them. Boss adds have been a staple for some time for a reason, they are an easy way to add to the dynamics of group play into a fight. Having an add that is immune to damage sources from players directly but is susceptible to things that are widely available like bleeds and blinds is a good way to get players to strategize how best to deal with the situation. For further complexity this particular add can be made susceptible to the attacks of the main boss. Now the goal is to not only to blind the add to mitigate its damage but to work together to kite/control it so it can be dealt with.

Then there’s the bundle system already in game, this has already been used somewhat for bosses (cliffside fractal as an example) this is a great way to introduce mechanics that have to be executed by a single player (even if it is with the aid of others, only one person is pushing that button) without requiring they be a certain profession.

Another idea is to implement mechanics that allow for a wide variety of solutions. As an example the boss could have an attack that charges and attacks a single player that must be mitigated or avoided somehow. It’s important there is a charge time so there is time for player to work together to deal with the situation. As to how to deal with it in multiple ways here are some examples; a thief can stealth their ally and the boss will lose targeting, guardians could put aegis on their ally (or themselves), a mesmer could portal the targeted ally out of the attacks range, a warrior could block the attack himself with a shield by standing in the way of it, really it’s just a matter of getting creative. The most important thing is to allow for multiple ways of dealing with any singular problem. Variety is the spice of life.

Lastly while boss fights should obviously not be done in less than a minute, excessive health pools and overly long phases are tiring and even worse; boring so it is crucial to avoid this at all costs.

A Guild Wars 2 Raid
__________________________________________________________________

Cost

• Guild Merit: 1,000
• Guild Influence: 100,000
• Time: 1 Month

Raid Duration

• A week to a month (reason below at the bottom why the raid is long )

Difficulty

• Hard to Nightmare

Total Number of Bosses

• 25-30

Enemy themes
Bandits/White Mantle/Mursaat
Krytan Centaurs
Inquest
Svanir
Ascalonians
Risen
Mordrem

Terrain (epic in scale)

• Multiple floors (8-10)
• Jumping puzzles
• Mazes
• Traps
• Levers / switch
• Pressure plates

Mechanics

• Boss and minions
• Tower defense (camps)
• Supply management: logs, ores, etc. (this will come up as whether the guild is ready and have enough resources to move on to the next boss)
• Profession abilities will be needed, such as Leap, Stealth, Portals, etc. to navigate the raid instance

Accessibility

• Guild instanced raid
• Guild members can go in and out of the raid to bring resources to the raid through the course of a month (month long open instance)

Raid

1. A Raid Guild must bring crafting resources such as logs, and ores to the raid. They will use the resources throughout the raid.

2. Specific profession abilities will be used to navigate the raid. Some levers are unreachable with a simple jump, one raid member must use Leap to reach the lever and activate a door. Stealth buff will be used by a raid member to active a switch surrounded by traps that will trigger if a player was detected heading to the switch. Mesmer portals will be used mostly since the raid has jumping puzzles and mazes.

3. Players build siege weapons using resources they brought such as ballistas to remove a defensive skill that stacks overtime – boss becomes invulnerable at 25 stacks and will have Quickness buff for 1 minute. Waves of minions will attack siege weapons.

4. Bosses will deal extra damage on a cluster of players and have multiple, random phases. The boss event circles will scale based on the number of players inside.

5. After killing a boss, a waypoint will spawn, this will provide as a spawn point for players so they do not have to re-navigate through the jumping puzzles and areas that can only be unlocked by specific professions/abilities.

6. Players must use their resources/supplies they brought to the raid to build a camp (barricades, and automatic ballistas and arrowcarts) around the waypoint. Enemies will spawn continuously at the start of the unlocked paths (start of a new maze), they will come in waves to destroy the waypoint, and will try to revive the dead boss of that particular area. Siege weapons such as arrow carts and ballistas are automated in the camp (Tower Defense). Players can also revisit the camp to upgrade and fix defenses as the barricades, and towers’ health will be attacked. The waypoint will not be contested despite the waves of monsters.

7. 2-6 raid feature will repeat until the raid group reaches the final boss.

8. During the final boss – a colossal boss and extremely difficult to kill. Players must climb the boss (jumping puzzle) and use melee weapons to attack weak spots to stun it. Once the boss is stunned players below can attack.

Rewards after completing the entire raid. Guild Leader or Guild Officer must be present to claim them

• 1 precursor of choice (Soulbound on Use; can be given to another guild member)
• 10 dungeon gift of choice (Soulbound on Use; can be given to another guild member)
• 1 full armor set specific only from the raid (Soulbound on Use; can be given to another guild member)
• 100,000 Guild Influence
• 1,000 Guild Merit

Notes
The rewards could cause a guild drama because of the Loot Council. This, however, is better than RNG, and better than completing the raid within a few hours and repeat it over and over again hoping to get lucky from RNG. Also, this is a week to a month long epic raid so the raiders deserve the grand reward. Guilds also can repeat the raid because the cost is the same as the rewards (Guild Merit and Guild Influence).

I chose add to some mechanics like tower defense, jumping puzzles, profession specific abilities, and supply management because Guild Wars 2’s raids deserve to be completely unique from the traditional MMORPG.

First day and already three pages. This is going to be one you have to follow if not GLHF catching up lol.

Hello all,

Merf here, Head of TTS in Guild Wars 2. For a bit of background, I was a hardcore raider in WoW for 4 years. I joined TTS in the first few weeks of its inception and have been in it since.

Jack has touched on our views already regarding the tools for raiding and to make it successful, so I won’t rehash his points. After some discussions with other leaders, I’ll talk more about the ideal raid might look like (though it might be a bit more skewed to my personal opinion =)).

Goal of Proposal

Create multipath instanced raids that groups as small as 15 to as large as 150 can participate in. This will allow small guilds as well as large guild participate, make progress and all experience the same content while shooting for unique rewards (skins, titles)

Proposal Functionality
- Instanced raids. Who and how this is accessed has been addressed in earlier posts. My main point here would be, anyone can join, but the instance owner is able to control and remove people where necessary (in the event of trolls or whatnot)
- The instanced raids would have numerous paths, similar to DnT’s proposal. However with a slight twist.
- Each path would be capped with a set number of players (say 15-20).
- Each path however, could be run simultaneously. Therefore, a small guild can take their time to clear all paths at their own pace, while larger guilds are also able to clear the raid and rotate each day.
- Each path would be of sufficient length culminating to a final boss fight at the end of each path.
- Once all paths are cleared, a final boss area would appear with a boss that is scalable (this might be a bit more tricky)
- As a checkpoint initiative, you could receive a special item at the end of each path to tell the instance that you’ve completed it.
- Mechanics I feel should be on par with TT at the easier end of the scale. The fundamental concepts should be easy to understand, but execution and most importantly coordination will be where the difficulty lies.

Associated Risks
- Abuse of kicking powers (exploiting by kicking and getting someone in for rewards)
- Checkpoint system might be “abused” for farming
- Could be overly promoting the advantage of being in a large guild because you can clear the final boss every day compared to a smaller guild which would be focused more on progression.

All in all, I think even having a discussion about this is a step in the right direction. Due to lack of trinity, the difficulty in end game content therefore lies in mechanics that require coordination and this is where I would like to see raiding in GW2 focus on from a raiding point of view.

Proposal Overview
Raiding Zones, explorable instanced areas with linking events/plot, roughly half the size of current open-world zones.

Proposal Goal
Give a unique raiding experience that is in line with the most challenging content currently in the game.

Proposal Functionality (Basically extended description, right?)
For those who played GW1, think Underworld/Fissure of Woe, and you are pretty much there.

For those who haven’t, Raid Zones would been an instanced area that share more in common of open world areas than dungeons; they would have regions within the zone with their own events/plot/bosses etc that the raid can tackle in any order, almost like explore mode paths in a dungeon. There should be some leway to if the raid wants to tackle on region at a time, or split into groups to tackle multiple events or bosses at onces (perhaps with increased rewards, like how the number of Anguish gems increased with each successive boss killed in a single trip into the Domain of Anguish back in GW1) These areas should also have challenges that promote specific groups/build, especially support builds (like the enemies in one might be weak to conditions, another might use lots of boons, requiring boon removal, etc)

Once all the major events/paths have been completed, the final challenge begins; a massive world boss and/or timed multi-tier event that requires coordination with multiple groups of players. In essence, you’re doing the pre events and boss of a world event, only in your own instance, with the challenges/fail state set much higher than what’s found in the open world.

Associated Risk (At least the one I can think of)
If the first part on the raid is based on splitting the raid, it might make it preferable to complete only part of the instance, depending on what the players are doing the instance for (and how the rewards are distributed) I don’t think this is a necessarily bad thing, especially for guilds/groups who are trying to learn the content, but it does bring a risk of the content “never being done” if it becomes preferable to do only part of it.

Blaeys.3102:

I have a very strong opinion regarding scaling.

I understand your points, but I also know from experience (leading 25 man hardcore progression raids for 6+ years in WoW) that the most toxic part of a raid is the hard set numbers. What happens when 11/12/13/14 people are interested in raiding? Decisions have to be made to leave friends behind – and that leads to nastiness I personally never want to see in a game again.

To me, scaling is what can set raiding apart in Gw2, even if it does affect the difficulty a little (and I still believe you can design fights that require some coordination even with flexible sized groups).

This issue doesnt exist to the same degree in dungeons because if you have 12 people, you just need to find 3 more to form 3 groups, versus finding another 7 to form 2 ten man groups.

Please, I beg you guys, think really hard about the atmosphere rigid sized groups would create in the game. This is the number one reason I stopped raiding in WoW and that I was so excited for GW2 – not having to make decisions about leaving friends out of large scale activities. Please dont make me go back to that in GW2.

And to clarify, Im not against harder content, just rigid numbers in raids. It is the number one reason people find raiding such a toxic environment. You can do better than that.

Addendum: reading some of the other posts, Ive seen the idea of raid scaling floating between two numbers. If they could make the math right, I could get behind that – say scaling from 8-16 people (meaning that 11 person group would be fine. it would unlikely you would need to leave anyone out of a raid night)

GW2 already suffers greatly in many places because of scaling. Scaling is a great thing, and I really love it and wish more games would do it, but it also makes tuning the encounters inherently imprecise, sloppy. I also raided in WoW for many years, raid leading for a time as a GM, and had to deal with the numbers game. Despite that, my willingness to give up quality for the sake of number flexibility is incredibly limited, and I wouldn’t go any farther then +-1 (e.g. a 10person raid will scale for as few as 9 people, and as many as 11 people). Even that’s questionable though.

Proposal Overview
Zhaitan Raid

Goal of Proposal
Arah Storymode is very underwhelming.

Proposal Functionality
When the players shoot down Zhaitan aka finish the dungeon, you get to unlock a raid that lets you go on a raid mission to kill Zhaitan. It will be a ground mission. Design it however you want. I am not happy with the conclusion.

Associated Risks
No idea.

Please try to be as concise as feasible with your proposal.

Risingashes.8694:

Issues with GW2 core systems and raiding

Agro: While agro is based upon dps in other games, GW2 largely seems to fix targets based on stat distributions (some mobs go after squishies, some after heavies). And agro changes are often based on a mix of proximity and randomness.

This makes the control mechanic that is given to the ‘main tank’ non-existant and things very chaotic to the point of meaninglessness when large numbers of players are doing the same thing.

Example: Triple Wurm/Teq, the only way to counter this was with fixed position bosses who employ mostly AE skills. But alternatives exist, such as the Aetherpath Duo mechanic of people purposefully debuffing themselves to draw agro.

Humanoid graphics spam: Even with 5 people humanoid bosses become a mass of flashes and smoke. Telegraphs are meaningless if they cannot be seen. Even worse is that even if you manage to see through the fire the damage numbers will often block enemies even with single targets, multiple targets make watching for telegraphs pointless.

Example: Any humanoid dungeon boss as a ranged character. This is an issue with the UI.

Condition cap: Taking more than 1 condition specced person to a 5 man dungeon will test the condi cap, essentially turning them in to dead weight. If the cap was unchangable, then encounters would need to include multiple targets so the per unit cap wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Advantages of GW2 core systems and raiding

Mobility: Since characters can move and cast encounters can be far more dynamic and fun for all participants. The trinity meant nothing much more than 1,2,3,4,5 spam for dps, and only the tank had any real impact on survival- while healers played reverse-whack-a-mole.

Example: Aetherpath Duo.

Dodges: Clutch avoidance is good to keep encounters from being too unforgiving, and allow for long telegraphed instant kills to be put in. But the balance between challenging and unfair is easy to trip over if encounters are balanced with too many required dodges in mind. Encounters that do require it would need a clear indicator that dodges shouldn’t be wasted.

Example: I really cannot think of an encounter that actually targets the dodge mechanic well. In CoF P1 the last boss becomes trivialized because of it, other encounters seem to ignore it at best. I’m sure I’ll kick myself for forgetting one, but since TA/Arah don’t have any I’m not sure where they’d be.

Deadeye could actually be a good example of dodging done right. But the boss becomes even more exceptional with the zero vigor debuff (forcing players to really push their invulnerabilities and pull skills), so it’d be strange to use as a baseline.

I think structured raiding would work in GW2 best if ANET approached it not as “X groups of players tackling a single boss/encounter” but “X groups of players tackling X or X/2 number of ecounters/bosses at once.” I think it fixes the second and third problem (or at least makes it no worse than what it is in dungeons) and brings a kind of experience that you don’t normally see in MMO raids, which is usually 20-40 players whacking on the same thing.

Please don’t include Defiance in raids. Make “Control” mean something.

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

I have a very strong opinion regarding scaling.

I understand your points, but I also know from experience (leading 25 man hardcore progression raids for 6+ years in WoW) that the most toxic part of a raid is the hard set numbers. What happens when 11/12/13/14 people are interested in raiding? Decisions have to be made to leave friends behind – and that leads to nastiness I personally never want to see in a game again.

To me, scaling is what can set raiding apart in Gw2, even if it does affect the difficulty a little (and I still believe you can design fights that require some coordination even with flexible sized groups).

This issue doesnt exist to the same degree in dungeons because if you have 12 people, you just need to find 3 more to form 3 groups, versus finding another 7 to form 2 ten man groups.

Please, I beg you guys, think really hard about the atmosphere rigid sized groups would create in the game. This is the number one reason I stopped raiding in WoW and that I was so excited for GW2 – not having to make decisions about leaving friends out of large scale activities. Please dont make me go back to that in GW2.

And to clarify, Im not against harder content, just rigid numbers in raids. It is the number one reason people find raiding such a toxic environment. You can do better than that.

Addendum: reading some of the other posts, Ive seen the idea of raid scaling floating between two numbers. If they could make the math right, I could get behind that – say scaling from 8-16 people (meaning that 11 person group would be fine. it would unlikely you would need to leave anyone out of a raid night)

GW2 already suffers greatly in many places because of scaling. Scaling is a great thing, and I really love it and wish more games would do it, but it also makes tuning the encounters inherently imprecise, sloppy. I also raided in WoW for many years, raid leading for a time as a GM, and had to deal with the numbers game. Despite that, my willingness to give up quality for the sake of number flexibility is incredibly limited, and I wouldn’t go any farther then +-1 (e.g. a 10person raid will scale for as few as 9 people, and as many as 11 people). Even that’s questionable though.

I hate to belabor it, but I strongly believe strict numbers for raids are just as much of a blight as gear requirements and treadmills.

If they cant do large scale content in a way that lets us play with all of our friends, I would rather it not be in the game at all. Many of us came to this game to get away from those kinds of things.

I still think raiding could be something much different without sacrificing fun. They may not be as complex and challenging as those found in other MMOs, but that doesnt mean they would be pushover content either.

Something like the Marionette or Breachmaker with scaling from 8 to as high as 30 would be something my guild, and many others, would enjoy immensely.

I also still believe the best use of raids would be to keep large scale Living Story events (like Marionette, Breachmaker, Ancient Karka, Tower of Nightmares) alive after they leave the living story. That is content Anet has proven they can do well (with the exception of Ancient Karka, but I do believe it would be fun without the lag from the first one) and that would make some really fun large group instanced content.

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

Proposal Overview
Raid scaling

Goal
Improve accessibility while still maintaining difficulty without just scaling straight health/numbers

Implementation
Participation number tiers that are select-able at the start of the instance. There tiers should be: (pick the numbers, just an example)
-10 players
-20 players
-30 players (the higher the max tier, fewer groups will be able to attempt)

This is achieved with less development effort by adding mechanics to the fights in each tier to keep it relevant. Thus, a 10 person raid might face off against a single legendary enemy. When you have 20 people, that enemy will now have a friend that introduces additional support mechanics between the two. When you go up to 30 there are additional mechanics in the fight like more adds that require sub-teams to handle or armor that must be shot-off like in teq, plus added difficulty from negative effects such as fractal instabilities applied to your group (could even be proximity based to discourage zerging, so if more than 10 are in-range of the boss they all get debuffed). Because the larger group has greater coordination difficulty, there are greater loot roll probabilities or token rewards at the end. Thus, smaller guilds may not proceed as quickly if they don’t team up with someone, but they can still reach their final goal.

Risks
More development work and harder to balance each tier. This does have the capability of being more well tuned than a complete sliding-scale that allows any composition between 10-30 however. It also allows the raid to be built upon “break into specific sub-teams with important roles to support each other” mentality. As mentioned earlier it can be tough with uneven sized groups, but that is why we have an LFG tool. You could also make the “tiers” on a slightly sliding (numerical) scale for a range of party sizes, but that has risks of becoming too easy by just going for the largest or smallest party size.

Proposal Overview
Leaderboards for Raiding Guilds

Goal of Proposal
Although rewards are important as a motivational tool, recognition is also a very strong driving force to support a competitive raiding scene. An official leaderboard would put the guild’s name in lights thereby providing them with the recognition of completing the most challenging content and a way to compare themselves against their peers.

Proposal Functionality
As each new raid is released, it would be accompanied by a section of the Leaderboard which would list the guilds in order of their completion of the raid. This section would remain prominent until the next raid is released at which time a new section would roll up.

Associated Risks
Costs for programming and maintenance of the leaderboards. May require additional staff time to field objections or protests of leaderboard rankings.

Alternate idea
Raid completion data could be included in the API, thereby shifting the cost of setting up and maintaining leaderboards to the community, similar to mos.millenium or gw2score.com for WvW tracking.

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

Proposal Overview

• Engaging Boss fights

Goal of Proposal

• Pretty self-explanatory, really

Proposal Functionality

• Multi-phased fights that require different player groups doing different things at different phases – for an example, in a fight against a stationary giant death golem which is very resistant to damage (but not conditions), after 25% health is burned, the golem activates it’s megalaser and starts dealing MASSIVE DAMAGE with it. However, an NPC ally sees an opportunity to portal a limited number of players (say, 5) to a path leading to the external power core of the golem. The power core is protected by layers of force fields, but as the megalaser is fired, power is diverted to it, which momentarily disables the force fields. So, the five man detachment has to make their way to the power core, while fighting adds, while the remaining group has to hold out against the megalaser while luring the golem to use it. Once the power core is destroyed, the megalaser is disabled, and the golem becomes more vulnerable to damage and moves on to the next phase after a brief period of being stunned during which the players can inflict MASSIVE DAMAGE.

Associated Risks

• New players becoming too confused, ha.

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Simple – make ranged mobs attempt to stay out of melee. Give melee enemies more access to crippled. There you have it, mobs no longer stack (well, except for full melee enemy groups, that’s why you don’t use full melee enemy groups.).

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Bouncing projectiles that do more damage with each bounce. NPC condition which deals damage to nearby allies whenever you do something (kinda like an AOE confuse or GW1’s Spiteful Spirit) that Nova thing that the Volcanic fractal boss does, environmental effects that keep the party moving like the Aetherblade fractal boss, all can work to promote keeping the group apart without having to resort to the mobs becoming unkillable one-shoters just because they group together, which is a kinda terrible idea in a game with no real means to control aggro (and therefore, how mobs group up).

Tuomir.1830:

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Simple – make ranged mobs attempt to stay out of melee. Give melee enemies more access to crippled. There you have it, mobs no longer stack (well, except for full melee enemy groups, that’s why you don’t use full melee enemy groups.).

It is simple to counter that, find a corner, LoS.

Range mobs come in to melee to die from corner stacking.

Foefaller.1082:

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Bouncing projectiles that do more damage with each bounce. NPC condition which deals damage to nearby allies whenever you do something (kinda like an AOE confuse or GW1’s Spiteful Spirit) that Nova thing that the Volcanic fractal boss does, environmental effects that keep the party moving like the Aetherblade fractal boss, all can work to promote keeping the group apart without having to resort to the mobs becoming unkillable one-shoters just because they group together, which is a kinda terrible idea in a game with no real means to control aggro (and therefore, how mobs group up).

That can also be added to the list of countering stacking instead. It is dull to have all mobs in every raid dungeons to using bouncing projectiles. Variety is key to keep it fun.

runeblade.7514:

Tuomir.1830:

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Simple – make ranged mobs attempt to stay out of melee. Give melee enemies more access to crippled. There you have it, mobs no longer stack (well, except for full melee enemy groups, that’s why you don’t use full melee enemy groups.).

It is simple to counter that, find a corner, LoS.

Range mobs come in to melee to die from corner stacking.

Bolded the key part. Make them attempt to stay out of melee, as in, give them a minimum range, and if their target is closer than that, they’ll try to get away until the target is out of their minimum range.

Tuomir.1830:

runeblade.7514:

Tuomir.1830:

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

Proposal Overview
No stacking

Goal of Proposal
Dungeons content suffers from stacking. I am worried that raiding will simply be 20 people stacking together in a corner to dps.

Proposal Functionality
If players become stronger when together, so do mobs. Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing.

• +10000 toughness when reviving + near 10 allies.
• All mobs can revive each other just like mobs.
• All mobs do 10,000 damage while near 10 of their allies.
• Tons of AoE damage.

Stackfest should be a wipefest.

Associated Risks
Casuals won’t be able to enjoy raiding.

too complicated.

you can simply give bosses a fix position or make them only move in a set area.

That is just bosses, what about mobs?

Simple – make ranged mobs attempt to stay out of melee. Give melee enemies more access to crippled. There you have it, mobs no longer stack (well, except for full melee enemy groups, that’s why you don’t use full melee enemy groups.).

It is simple to counter that, find a corner, LoS.

Range mobs come in to melee to die from corner stacking.

Bolded the key part. Make them attempt to stay out of melee, as in, give them a minimum range, and if their target is closer than that, they’ll try to get away until the target is out of their minimum range.

• LoSing will group the ranged mobs together right up to the minimum range and then the players come out and destroy them. It’ll just be zerging.
• I can make safe spots with LoSing. if all mobs follow that pattern, I would just hide in the corner because mobs won’t dare come close.
• It doesn’t solve stacking for melee mobs. Cripple isn’t dangerous when you do not have to move. It encourages more stacking instead.

However, minimum range can be added to the list of countering stacking. Alone isn’t enough to work.

I have trouble typing anything that stays under 200 words, but I’ll try to put a brief spin on this.

Suppose that raids were instanced (and I think they should be specifically for guilds), but they also had an effect in the open world that everyone else can notice and benefit from. For example, a guild does some super challenging raid and kills the end boss. But in doing so, they have unlocked a particular area of the open world that only stays open for x-time (1hr at least) after the boss is defeated.

There would be a global / zone announcement telling everyone this special thing is now available because SuperDuperGuild has defeated BigBadMonster. In addition, you will see the guild crest / name advertised in the area for the duration it’s open. If multiple guilds do it in the same time frame, the time gets added together and they share credit. Obviously there should be some interesting content in the area people would appreciate.

Something is only “hard” until it’s mastered. Static challenge is always fleeting. Then it’s just time consuming work. But there should be more reason for doing this than having it just be another loot farm (and the loot definitely shouldn’t be better than current activities, and absolutely no vertical gear treadmill).

I think public recognition and making a difference in the world for yourself and others ..these are good reasons to do things. Also maybe there could be a leader board in the area tracking how many times each guild has done it (probably capped at 1-2x / day). Also maybe a ranking for how quickly it’s been done, done with no deaths, etc. The more players have to look at and feel good about themselves, or be in awe of others, the better right?

I still advocate meaningful open world content over instances, but either way, the point of difficult large scale content, for me, boils down to public recognition and achieving an actual effect in the area that matters (to everyone).

I DO think we should have more challenging content in general. This game is pretty faceroll compared to GW1. Just “stack”, DPS, and death has no consequence. Everyone can rez, and otherwise there’s always a WP 30 seconds away. Too easy to succeed and too hard to fail.

But whatever it is you’re doing, after it’s finished, ask yourself ..what have I actually done besides get a little richer? Have I actually changed anything, and would anybody even notice if I had? If the answer is no, then how was it really of any significance?

Out of a quick thought: What if “tough mobs” (not necessarily bosses, but who knows), could have a different version of the Unshakable Buff, that allows coordinated crowd control. Removing the defiance stacks is too random, because many skills (and traits) bring crowd control effects with them.

My suggestion is this: Suppose a mob should stay in a specific area (because maybe he’s vulnerable there) now you could immobilize it with a skill, but instead of an immobilization, the mob gets 1 stack of a debuff. Each of these stacks could hold approximately as long as the original immobilization would – but only if a specific number of stacks is reached (say, 10), the next immobilization that goes through actually chains the mob where it is.

In such a way you could bring crowd control with masses of players into the game, but with the need of coordination. So instead of one CC skill that randomly goes through, you need a number of people executing the same CC at approximately the same time.

One could also think of mobs that receive a huge amount of damage once they’re ignited, but that receives a huge effort of many players putting the burning condition on them at once.

I actually made a post some time ago about possible improvements to mobs, I’ll quote it here, as it applies nicely to mobs in raid content.

I feel the mordrem and the karka are actually quite well designed, and provide the right amount of challenge in high level open world content. That said, what you wrote is true. Most of the mobs are bland, have bad AI and are as vicious as a bean bag. Especially in dungeons, mob AI should be more group oriented, and well, smarter – as it is, it feels as if their AI consists of the aggro formula and then just getting in range for attacks and using them on cooldown.

Some examples of what the AI could do:

1. After receiving a lot of damage in a short time, switch to defensive measures that vary by the mob – boons, evasive movements, blocks, what not.
2. When an ally of a mob is heavily damaged, the mob switches to use more control on players.
3. Mobs (not all, but many) get an active, telegraphed condition cleanse skill that can be interrupted, that they won’t waste on stuff like a stack of less than five bleeds or vulnerability.
4. If an ally of a mob is targeting a player, the player receives bonus aggro from the mob, that way the mobs are more likely to naturally focus on single targets.
5. Give mobs simple combos (like a skill that immobilizes, and a guardian symbol type AoE attack that’s scripted to be used on immobilized targets), both within the skill sets of single mobs, and to be used across multiple mobs in a group.
6. If a mob is attacking a low-toughness target and is not subject to heavy damage (that would switch it to defensive set), it switches to offensive measures, attacking aggressively with highly damaging attacks.
7. Mobs with ranged weapons should attempt to stay at their optimal range and not stand in melee range at a corner. If a mob finds itself too close to the target, it will attempt to make distance.

As for some other changes to mobs…

1. Give them less HP, and way more toughness. I know, some people like to see big numbers, but let’s put good game design before that.

Yeah, I guess that’s the biggest thing besides the combat AI.

Blaeys.3102:

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

I have a very strong opinion regarding scaling.

I understand your points, but I also know from experience (leading 25 man hardcore progression raids for 6+ years in WoW) that the most toxic part of a raid is the hard set numbers. What happens when 11/12/13/14 people are interested in raiding? Decisions have to be made to leave friends behind – and that leads to nastiness I personally never want to see in a game again.

To me, scaling is what can set raiding apart in Gw2, even if it does affect the difficulty a little (and I still believe you can design fights that require some coordination even with flexible sized groups).

This issue doesnt exist to the same degree in dungeons because if you have 12 people, you just need to find 3 more to form 3 groups, versus finding another 7 to form 2 ten man groups.

Please, I beg you guys, think really hard about the atmosphere rigid sized groups would create in the game. This is the number one reason I stopped raiding in WoW and that I was so excited for GW2 – not having to make decisions about leaving friends out of large scale activities. Please dont make me go back to that in GW2.

And to clarify, Im not against harder content, just rigid numbers in raids. It is the number one reason people find raiding such a toxic environment. You can do better than that.

Addendum: reading some of the other posts, Ive seen the idea of raid scaling floating between two numbers. If they could make the math right, I could get behind that – say scaling from 8-16 people (meaning that 11 person group would be fine. it would unlikely you would need to leave anyone out of a raid night)

GW2 already suffers greatly in many places because of scaling. Scaling is a great thing, and I really love it and wish more games would do it, but it also makes tuning the encounters inherently imprecise, sloppy. I also raided in WoW for many years, raid leading for a time as a GM, and had to deal with the numbers game. Despite that, my willingness to give up quality for the sake of number flexibility is incredibly limited, and I wouldn’t go any farther then +-1 (e.g. a 10person raid will scale for as few as 9 people, and as many as 11 people). Even that’s questionable though.

I hate to belabor it, but I strongly believe strict numbers for raids are just as much of a blight as gear requirements and treadmills.

If they cant do large scale content in a way that lets us play with all of our friends, I would rather it not be in the game at all. Many of us came to this game to get away from those kinds of things.

I still think raiding could be something much different without sacrificing fun. They may not be as complex and challenging as those found in other MMOs, but that doesnt mean they would be pushover content either.

Something like the Marionette or Breachmaker with scaling from 8 to as high as 30 would be something my guild, and many others, would enjoy immensely.

I also still believe the best use of raids would be to keep large scale Living Story events (like Marionette, Breachmaker, Ancient Karka, Tower of Nightmares) alive after they leave the living story. That is content Anet has proven they can do well (with the exception of Ancient Karka, but I do believe it would be fun without the lag from the first one) and that would make some really fun large group instanced content.

I think if we’re adding scaling to raids there should be 3 tools for the devs to use:

1. The Ceiling (a.k.a max Raid size) Self Explanatory.

2. Dynamic Scaling: Basically the Dynamic scaling we know from events.

3. Hard Scaling: This is where “objectives” would go. The Devs should decide 3 or so player counts along a scale they think most players will play and tune the objective for that. So for example: Let’s say we’re designing a raid that has the raiders split up to defeat multiple bosses along a path while meeting up at the end to defeat a main raid at the end this is how hard scale would change:

1-10: Defeat 2 bosses/paths at a time

11-15: Defeat 3 bosses/paths at a time

16-20: Defeat 4 bosses/paths at a time.

This basically allows the Devs to tune an encounter to only a few player counts while still allowing players to attempt the same raid with around 8-20 players and have it be doable even though clearly ideally you want either 10, 15 or 20 people.

Scale & Challenge:

Small Scale Raids: 10-15 person instances – Style of instances that are a fusion of Guild Challenge & Puzzle combined. No living story content currently has this feel, in my recollection. Examples: Guild Challenges & Puzzles, or one of the Battle of the Breachmaker’s three sides?

Large Scale Raids: 150 (or whatever the current map population cap is) person instances – Similar to open world boss encounters. Examples: Battle of Southsun (1st GW2 Living Story Event), Marionette, Battle of the Breachmaker.

Both should be organizationally difficult by forcefully splitting into smaller groups to accomplish complex tasks, or achieve goals in parallel / part of a decision tree structure.

Random encounters should be more commonplace. This would cause the raid group to react to, and be challenged, by the environment, rather than working through a linear environment. For example, if the troll encounter in Ascalonian Catacombs had a trade-off, either you encounter it to gain something (different path/reward), or avoid it to gain something else, instead of just going around it and missing a trivial champ bag. Or otherwise, the X factor could be unavoidable and an unexpected obstacle.
Diversity of boss strengths/nerfs should greater. To extend the suggestion of “unexpectedness” of instances to create greater challenge, the range of what to expect should be greater. One example, how about a memorable mob/boss that you have to use knockdown/stuns to damage or is immune to melee damage and favors melee combat. I’m a big fan of the Battle of the Breachmaker on this point, as it had some of this, so more Breachmaker please.

Accessibility & Functionality:

1. Fractals System – Much of these could believably be brought back through the Fractals system in some capacity. Instead of being added to the fractals rotation, each raid instance would be its own thing accessed through the Fractals hub.
2. LFG System – Each instance would be available to gather a raid party for through the LFG system. For large scale raids, players would be able to join a queue, when that queue reaches a certain critical mass an instance could be created for that group. Those large-scale raids would permanently be available to join, there would be no de-listing the raid unless the instance was full.
3. Guild Unlocks – Guilds can unlock the ability to create these raids much like open-world boss encounters currently are summoned. Guilds members would have preference when joining those instances, but the instance wouldn’t be immune to the same listing rules as those “naturally” generated.

Possible Problems:

Would being lumped with Fractals mean agony would be involved?

We just need better AI. If the mobs tried to scatter when they took X damage per second within Y proximity of each other it partially solves the problem of trash mobs turning into just a LOS and stand there situation. If the mobs attempt to stay apart you put it on the players to keep them together using more control skills, which every class has access to. The mistake would be to have the mobs use knockback skills or something similar, all that would do is create yet another reliance on stability to burst.

Tuomir.1830:

I actually made a post some time ago about possible improvements to mobs, I’ll quote it here, as it applies nicely to mobs in raid content.

I feel the mordrem and the karka are actually quite well designed, and provide the right amount of challenge in high level open world content. That said, what you wrote is true. Most of the mobs are bland, have bad AI and are as vicious as a bean bag. Especially in dungeons, mob AI should be more group oriented, and well, smarter – as it is, it feels as if their AI consists of the aggro formula and then just getting in range for attacks and using them on cooldown.

Some examples of what the AI could do:

1. After receiving a lot of damage in a short time, switch to defensive measures that vary by the mob – boons, evasive movements, blocks, what not.
2. When an ally of a mob is heavily damaged, the mob switches to use more control on players.
3. Mobs (not all, but many) get an active, telegraphed condition cleanse skill that can be interrupted, that they won’t waste on stuff like a stack of less than five bleeds or vulnerability.
4. If an ally of a mob is targeting a player, the player receives bonus aggro from the mob, that way the mobs are more likely to naturally focus on single targets.
5. Give mobs simple combos (like a skill that immobilizes, and a guardian symbol type AoE attack that’s scripted to be used on immobilized targets), both within the skill sets of single mobs, and to be used across multiple mobs in a group.
6. If a mob is attacking a low-toughness target and is not subject to heavy damage (that would switch it to defensive set), it switches to offensive measures, attacking aggressively with highly damaging attacks.
7. Mobs with ranged weapons should attempt to stay at their optimal range and not stand in melee range at a corner. If a mob finds itself too close to the target, it will attempt to make distance.

As for some other changes to mobs…

1. Give them less HP, and way more toughness. I know, some people like to see big numbers, but let’s put good game design before that.

Yeah, I guess that’s the biggest thing besides the combat AI.

It’s good, but counter-stacking AI needs to be in there rather than mobs picking off individual players.

Some of these looks like I want to use stack tactics instead of spreading out which makes all these well-designed AI addition a waste of time.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

We just need better AI. If the mobs tried to scatter when they took X damage per second within Y proximity of each other it partially solves the problem of trash mobs turning into just a LOS and stand there situation. If the mobs attempt to stay apart you put it on the players to keep them together using more control skills, which every class has access to. The mistake would be to have the mobs use knockback skills or something similar, all that would do is create yet another reliance on stability to burst.

Better AI would definitely help, an I like this idea in particular for anti-stacking play. Some stacking is fine, but by and large it should be a tactic you put into play at key moments in an encounter, not something you stand around doing through the entire encounters duration.

Blaeys.3102:

I hate to belabor it, but I strongly believe strict numbers for raids are just as much of a blight as gear requirements and treadmills.

If they cant do large scale content in a way that lets us play with all of our friends, I would rather it not be in the game at all. Many of us came to this game to get away from those kinds of things.

I still think raiding could be something much different without sacrificing fun. They may not be as complex and challenging as those found in other MMOs, but that doesnt mean they would be pushover content either.

Something like the Marionette or Breachmaker with scaling from 8 to as high as 30 would be something my guild, and many others, would enjoy immensely.

I also still believe the best use of raids would be to keep large scale Living Story events (like Marionette, Breachmaker, Ancient Karka, Tower of Nightmares) alive after they leave the living story. That is content Anet has proven they can do well (with the exception of Ancient Karka, but I do believe it would be fun without the lag from the first one) and that would make some really fun large group instanced content.

Scaling, if used at all, needs to be very limited in scope. I understand perfectly well the desire for flexibility, but sometimes you need to limit yourself if you want something cohesive. I’m not interested in a guided tour the way Great Jungle Wurm, Tequatl, Marionette, etc are, and that’s what scaling can easily results in: Imprecise tuning of encounters and sloppy mechanics that try too hard to work for too wide a range of variables.
We already have world bosses and guild missions, were 8-30 people can go on a guided tour of boss attacks. We need raids to be something that provides challenging play, not more encounters where the biggest challenge is organizing your group.

Arewn.2368:

Dramen Maidria.1034:

We just need better AI. If the mobs tried to scatter when they took X damage per second within Y proximity of each other it partially solves the problem of trash mobs turning into just a LOS and stand there situation. If the mobs attempt to stay apart you put it on the players to keep them together using more control skills, which every class has access to. The mistake would be to have the mobs use knockback skills or something similar, all that would do is create yet another reliance on stability to burst.

Better AI would definitely help, an I like this idea in particular for anti-stacking play. Some stacking is fine, but by and large it should be a tactic you put into play at key moments in an encounter, not something you stand around doing through the entire encounters duration.

The problem with most of these Better AI suggestion is that it counters spreading out. It looks good, but it all goes to waste when stacking.

What ANet need to do is specifically research into counter stacking. No one here in this thread has any solution. I don’t have a solution, but I can theorize or give ANet some leads. This is a complicated matter that needs to be researched thoroughly. If ANet does bother researching to counter-stacking all the way, the end result will be very different than what any of us had put forth.

Without anti-stacking tactics, raids are another dungeon with more players.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

A few have asked what we should start with. To re-iterate we should start by discussing what raiding could be in GW2 with the foundation based on the core pillars of our game.

So think about accessibility, how our combat works, how our progression works, and so on.

Thanks,

Chris

This is a hard conversation to have because most players bring preconceived notions of what raiding should be to the discussion – based on other games which, bluntly, do not conform well with the core tenets of GW2.

So, let’s look at the three aspects you list.

To me, accessibility is the most important concern. It is why I am arguing so hard in favor of scaling. The idea of having to leave people out of a guild raid night because the math doesnt work turns my stomach, especially after doing missions, temple runs, open world, dry top, holidays, past living story fights (marionette, etc), WvW, etc alongside those people for years now. It would be a nightmare.

Regarding combat systems/encounters, I think you have designed some fun large scale encounters already. The marionette was one of the best received updates you ever put out, as was the Breachmaker fight (which only suffered because many servers simply didnt have enough people) and the Tower of Nightmares. Instead of reinventing the wheel, fall back on what you do well. Turn these encounters into raids (albeit non traditional raids) – and look at future living story content in the same light. Break away from the rigid model other games use and play to your strengths.

If you are talking about how raids should progress from one to the next, the answer is simple – and again, it goes back to not reinventing the wheel, but rather falling back on one of your current strengths – the Living Story. Raids should either tie into the LS or, as Ive proposed, be a way to keep open world events (like the Marrionette) alive permanently after its chapter in the LS is complete.

To the point of rewards/progression, you have to be careful. A core tenet of GW2 (at least I think it is) is the idea that you can play any content at end game without feeling like you have to do that particular content, or that others are getting a better reward than you are. Raiding shouldnt be seen as the pinnacle of end game content, but rather as content complimentary to open world, dungeons, pvp and wvw. The rewards should look the same in all three areas with none holding any prestige over the others. To me, the best system is the one already in place – a world boss reward chest (or multiple, like Tequatl) + a set number of guild merits (once again, not reinventing the wheel).

I know these ideas go counter to what raiding looks like in other games, but that is the point of GW2. To be something new.

tlsntr (too long, still need to read ): Instead of reinventing the wheel, use the talents and content you have already proven you are good at and that many of us enjoy(ed).

One of GW2’s main strength is it’s mobility and fluid combat system. I would like this to be used more in raids than it is currently being used in dungeons. Switching ranges and positioning should be important.

Is this what he was working on? He’s already done the work, so it must be something we haven’t seen yet.
http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

PROPOSAL
Description
Guild (boss) rallies, a proposal to bring instanced and open world to a medium with extra emphasis on Guilds and community involvement.

Goal
The general idea is to leverage existing, previous and future living story, open world, world boss style content, but to expand in games UI, tools, and capabilities to enhance the ability to organize, increase accessibility, and bring a renewed focused on the guilds, of Guild Wars 2, to all players even lone wolfs.

Problems being addressed
This proposal is not so much to address existing issues but is more of a suggestion to leverage existing ideologies evidenced in the type of content currently being produced and to enhance such content so that players can have a richer experience playing in a massively multiplayer community. There are, however, some areas where the games seems to have shortcomings and that this proposal would need to address to become successful. Namely, the absence features to allow even the basics of finding and grouping with players in game. The lacking incentivisation and tools for community learning and sharing of gameplay and tactics (in game). To address the challenge of making guilds important and crucial to the game’s community as a whole, and not simply insular sub-communities within the game. Finally, a potential benefit on Anet’s server by allowing greater predictability on player movement and server capacity needs and by reducing the occurrences of ‘dead’ maps.

Proposed functionality
Expansion of the guild open world boss functionality to enhance player organization, participation, and community engagement. All proposed functionality in the proposal intends to expand upon this base idea. Guilds can currently trigger world bosses at any time in open world maps. Some community oriented guilds will use this feature to hold community organized ‘raid’ events. Along with guild started bosses, the standard boss rotation, is accompanied with the prevalent practice of taxing in people using the LFG tool to promote player population and participation at such events. The proposed functionality involves multiple parts and enhancements to create a cohesive system that works to expand on the aforementioned practices.

Guild instances. in addition to being able to summon bosses, server resources permitting, guilds should be given the opportunity to generate a clean instance of the boss containing map, that is very much like any other instance, except it only contains event pertaining to the boss, and must can only be entered through a separate for which the intent to participate in the boss event is clear. The instance will have strict time constraints depending on the event being summoned, and will be terminated on a strict schedule to allow the server resources to be reallocated to further guild instances or other parts of the game demanding more resources. The guild instance has a short warm up time in which normal play can occur, including material gathering and mob kills, however no dynamic events will occur on the map except for the events pertaining to the boss battle, if there are pre-events. There is existing precedence for this in, existing game code with the code that allowed Scarlet to attack specific maps and suppress all dynamic events except for the ones relating to the attack. After the warm up time (or pre-event completion if there are such events), all players will be forcefully teleported to a waypoint specifically selected for the intended boss. The boss sequence will then begin, and hopefully organized play will commence. After the event completes, or the event times out, the map will enter the cool down phase to allow players time for discussion or to do any of the regular things people do. This will run until the instance’s scheduled closure.

Guild rally. The current incarnation of taxiing is a work around using the LFG that was never designed specifically for taxiing. Yet this work around is one of the biggest successes of the tool for helping with organizing open world content. The guild rally is a system that, on the one hand, allows guilds to control participation in their instance and tailor the participation structure to their needs. The guild rally is an interface that allows guilds to reserve space in a guild instance for guild members, or for specific invitees by the event coordinator. The guild rally then allows guilds to open public slots for the instance. Potentially the guild rally can allow the guild to customize the maximum participants to at or below the customary map cap for the zone in question. This may be dependent on how it can affect server utilization and the needs to optimize player served per server resources. More importantly the guild rally is a system designed specifically to build upon the idea of taxiing and to build a specific interface designed specifically for this practice. Guild members can have a specific interface to join on a guild rally and hud elements, such as guild controlled versions of other event advertisements that Anet has used in the past. This hud element can show the current participation rate for the event and should entice guild members to join events that need more players. For everybody else, there can be specific NPCs placed throughout the cities that allow access to an instance browser (like the pvp browser) except with the specific intent to allow players to join in on a guild rally. These interfaces exists with one goal in mind. To gather players, who intend to participate into a single map where the focus will be to complete the goal.

Guild right to command… within a guild instance. When a guild opens up an instance for itself, or to invite the community at large to participate. The primary intent for guild reserved slots in a guild instance is not only to benefit guild members, but also to allow the guild a reasonable population to set up strategic and command structures for the instance. Within a guild instance the coordinator, or the officer who ‘buys’ the instance will have the right to designate squad leaders and to enforce membership counts for squads to direct how players should be directing their attention. Individual squads can be structured by the guild or be backfilled by public slots. Public squads may be assigned to objectives or, areas where they should operate, and players in the squad will then be restricted to waypoints pertaining to the objective, and locations on the map around the squad’s objective or allowed areas. This would be handled much like instance restrictions, with red hashed out areas of the map, but failure to stay in an area will result in being force to rally at the appropriate waypoint instead of being kicked from the instance. Potentially there should be a way for the game to detect if a player is making their best effort to following their commander closely and for the guild to determine what, if any, kind of enforcement they will use to encourage players to stay in a squad. The intent of this system is to allow the guild some control of the strategic play and progression of the instance. This, not only allows the guild to control and direct content to their liking, but it also allows guilds to establish a brand and can be used to establish concrete ideology or quality with respect to how they want to play and interact with the community at large.

Instance and squad message of the day. A guild instance belongs to the guild, and to the selected commanders who want to lead the instance. To further the establishment of guild ownership and to provide alternate methods of communication beyond the often confusing and flooded map chat. Guild instance should provide the interface and or hud elements to allow guilds to relay information to the participants of the map. This can be anything from guild advertisements and guild branding to messages explaining on how they want to run the boss event, and instructions on event mechanics and class strategies. Sauad messages, given by squad commanders can contain the commander’s own flair or specific instructions about the events and strategies that the squad will participate in.

Guild standing and noteriety. This is the most vague discussion about functionality, just a bunch of random thoughts, but… Individual rewards will help encourage individuals to play, but a guild raid should be about enriching the guild as a whole and not just it’s individual members. Influence allows guilds to buy small things like banners and banquets or crafting stations. In WvW, guilds can claim structures. There is not much else that guilds can do to increase their notoriety in the game. By participating in and providing guild instances to the community, guilds should be rewarded with ways to enhance their standing and visibility in game. Perhaps there can be leaderboards and announcements based on what guilds are the most active in creating and completing boss instances. Perhaps they can receive currency and earn spots around the map to place banners representing their guild for extended periods of time. The banners can contain announcements from them. Instead of locking the banner to a specific server instance it could be made so that the banners exists to all players base on their home server, a guild required to purchase a spot for each home server. This would allow for guilds to build notoriety in specific servers and to provide some server identity for guilds, even if it is no longer mandated.

There are many expressed tenants to GW2 design and even more ideologies found within the game itself. The success of the open world bosses, and of difficult, objective based, open world content is one of the strongest points of the game in its current state. The stated objective of this proposal is to bring into systems and to involve Guilds in order to enhance this existing gameplay and hopefully bring it up to the next level. Accessibility is enhanced by including a guild rally system and a instance browser giving players the ability to review and join content that suits what they desire at the time. This also helps reinforce one’s ability to play as they desire. They can examine what guild is hosting an instance or examine the instances MOTD to determine if they will enjoy participating in an event with a specific coordinator. The other goal is to bring the games namesake squarely into focus. Allow guilds an environment to share their ideas and brand with the community at large.

Risks
Some parts of my suggestion are easier to implement than others. Some of them have precedence in game, but others are probably ridiculously hard. And, they are only ideas. I can’t provide evidence that these systems could and would work. I only offer this proposal as ideas that have NO professional or even experiential backing. I just think they might be cool. So not knowing how, and if any of the included proposal could be beneficial to the game is the risk.

And sorry.
Conciseness, is not something I do very well.