Hello.
Recently I’ve had a discussion with a few of my guild members about the current state of Raids and how it could be improved to reach out to a larger group of the player-base. This resulted in me writing this post and sharing the ideas we came up with.
First of all let me make clear that I don’t think Raids are wrong in how they are as of today, but I do believe that there’s more potential in the amazing content that only a handful of developers were able to develop for only a handful of the player-base. With that being said let me continue to the topic…
‘’How would you improve the availability of Raids to more players?’’
To improve this problem you must first identify what the cause is of the problem. And the cause is that most players who casually play GW2 often feel intimidated to give Raids a try because there’s this large bias going around that Raids are impossible and can only be completed with a group of 10 elite players who know exactly what to do. As a comparison I would like to take Fractals of the Mists.
Fractals of the Mists can be quite challenging and tedious work if you’re playing it on the high-tier levels, but because of the availability of lower tiers (which need no AR) people who are new to it feel more comfortable to give Fractals a try and slowly climb the ladder until they reach the top-tiers.
Thus you might wonder… If it works good like that with Fractals, would it also work to have a tier scale with Raids?
‘’How would a tier scale fit in Raids?’’
In order to understand this idea we must first divide Raids into specific tiers; and we can use 3 tiers as an example of how this would work. The first tier could be as difficult as the Vanilla Dungeons and serve as an introduction to Raids for people that are completely new. The second tier could be as difficult as T3 or T4 Fractals and could serve as the daily-running for rewards by casual, but comfortable people. The third tier would then have the original difficulty and would serve as the weekly run with full rewards and progression towards Legendary armor.
‘’In what other ways would the tiers be distinguished from eachother?’’
Tiers could be distinguished not only in difficulty but also in the rewards and progression you get to specific things. For an example, doing Tier 1 would give you a certain currency that you can convert into a currency of Tier 2 and so forth. The weekly cap from Tier 3 would not apply on the lower tiers, giving more room for advanced players to farm Raids more often and still get all the rewards they want. And this would also motivate people who try it out on Tier 1 to try to go even higher and on a more consistent amount. One other important thing to distinguish the tiers from eachother is by locking the LFG into specific tiers just the same as with Fractals. This would keep the division of advanced players and new players but still keep every kind of player satisfied that they are able to delve into this large chunk of content.
’’Wouldn’t that just require alot of resources of Anet to make a bunch of changes?’’
In my opinion this is not necessarily the case. The length and design of all the Raids should be exactly the same; but tweaking the HP of bosses and their output damage could already be a big change for people. Reducing the amount of times an encounter could potentially wipe an entire party is also given for the lower tiers and would only be good as a practice for people who want to climb up the tiers of Raids slowly. And making a few changes to an already existing content so that more people can enjoy it and feel less intimidated by it is only a bonus for both Anet and the entire player-base.
‘’How would this be beneficial to Anet?’’
This would be good for Anet because if they increase the player-base for raids they will have more reason to develop this quality content for both advanced and casual players. More resources could be put into it and as a result a larger majority of the people will be satisfied with the work of Anet. The advanced community wouldn’t get hurt because they can still organize their own groups and look for players in a locked group of the LFG section according to what tier will be played.
This is, and maybe always will be, just an idea that passed the minds of maybe more people than just me and a few of my guildies. It might not fit Raids, it might be utterly wrong, but ideas are never bad to be suggested and that is why this suggestion should be taken seriously. If you have come this far I thank you for reading. Any opinions, whether for or against, are always welcome in the comments below, but provide your reasoning as to why this is a good or a bad idea.
o/
