Guild Wars 2

Taurok.6708:

How are you supposed to learn anything when failure SEEMS random and unpredictable?

By first learning that there’s very little random, let alone unpredictable actions in raids.
Everything has a pattern and mostly everything can be avoided or mitigated.

The issue with this stance here is that you absolutely need to apply this to every other content in the game. Every piece of content in this game has a set of rules of which dictate success or failure. PvP, WvW, PvE, Metas, Jumping Puzzles, Adventures, anything you can think of.

And yet, the rules of every piece of content in the game have been modified, sometimes several times. Some JPs have gliding now, many dungeons were overhauled to change up strategies, power balanced shifts, the entire way that Fractals work has been scrapped top to bottom twice.

I don’t dispute that in the present, a player has to play within the rules as they presently are, they can’t just pretend that the existing rules are not active, but my point is, if a player does not like the current rules, he’s well within his rights to press for a change to those rules that he believes would be beneficial to the game as a whole, and maybe Anet will do something about it. Or not, it’s up to them.

Accepting the rules for what they are now is not incompatible with hoping for better rules in the future, and that’s what I’m doing here. Too many people seem to fight back against this, not by saying “I like the current rules and would prefer they not change,” which would be a completely reasonable opinion to hold, but rather with “the rules are the rules, and always will be, deal with it,” which is just nonsense to anyone who’s been following this game for more than a few months. How’s that eternal Chrono Bunker meta working for you?

I already know you have had the stance of just making all the rewards everywhere, available anywhere but we’ve discussed how impractical and toxic that would be to GW2 implementing it now, and in the future. You are specifically picking on Raids as an easy target for your ire.

It is the most egregious outlier. It’s the most prestigious rewards, locked behind content that is above the skill levels of most of the players, AND is completely uninteresting to most of them as well. It’s the perfect storm of “unreasonable expectations to acquire a reward.”

Raids are specifically mentioned and defined around teamwork and coordination. Each encounter, rather any section of a raid wing has specific requirements before considering success. Not having these requirements covered is already setting yourself and your comrades for failure.

The requirements are not just things like build or skill either, you need to have the right mentality to work with others as well. Players who brashly rush into raids, forcing their way into groups running something that is not meshing with the team composition, or worse not paying attention or listening for call-outs and just being overall uncooperative this content was never intended to appease.

And yet “players who just started yesterday can go in and three-man it wearing only greens!,” or whatever it is they’re saying these days. I get how raids were designed and intended to work, and I get that some of you really LOVE that they were designed and intended for that purpose, I just think that you guys need to understand that a lot of players will NEVER enjoy that intended version, and that it makes sense for these players to feel left out by the process and want to see a version that does work for them, rather than a version that demands they work for It.

This is similar to the previous point, but the kicker is that the content itself with its current requirements don’t specifically state that said person couldn’t raid. In fact the content has been proven that it can be undermanned, meaning that in a way anyone could technically run through the content.

Anyone could be carried through the content, but spending half the fight on the ground is nowhere near as satisfying as actively participating through the end, and it’s pretty tricky to find a group that is actually happy to carry along a player who can’t significantly contribute, even if you’re honest with them about it. I would much rather carry my own weight to help a group through an easier version of the content than to have my corpse dragged through the existing one, or to drag anyone else’s corpse.

Having a proportional amount of compensation for what is likely days/weeks of effort is not unfair to the other players.

In principle, you’re right, but in practice, it really breaks down. If a player spends weeks and weeks practicing a raid, and then finally complete it, then he deserves to earn weeks and weeks worth of reward for that, sure. But then once people have the raid “on farm,” they really aren’t doing anything spectacular any more, and the rewards just continue to pile up, and not just better generic rewards than most content, but also content that can’t be found anywhere else.

I think it would be much more fair if they just gave out better rewards during the training process, so that if a player spends ten hours doing fruitless training runs, he feels that he’s been fairly compensated for ten hours of gameplay, rather than feeling his time’s been a complete waste until he eventually clears it and starts to see a return on that investment. And I feel that a player who puts in twenty hours doing not-raid content should be able to earn anything that a player can get from ten hours of raiding.

1) That GW2 is a casual MMO, it should never challenge the playerbase. Instead Arenanet should come up with interesting content that still retain the same easier difficulty I know since launch!

Definitely agree. They lost the hardcore players within the first six months. The people who stuck around, the people who made GW2 work, are the casuals. This is our mothership, OUR WoW. People who want hardcore challenge can find it in other games, this one is ours, and should always first and foremost be ours.

2) That because for years GW2 has been casual, it makes no sense to attempt to steadily increase the difficulty and change how players go into each area. I should never, EVER need to change any of my skills or traits around.

That one’s a bit more flexible. I think changing skills and traits around a bit is fine, although “needs” should be as flexible as possible to accommodate many builds. There can be a metabuild that is “best” for the content, but there should be several other builds that are “plenty good,” and if a player has more fun playing one of those alternatives, then he should still be able to clear the content that way and not drag down the party. I certainly do believe that if a player gears himself up in a certain way, and it is effective for most content, he should not be forced to buy an entirely new set of gear just to be competitive in the new content. In a sense that’s just a horizontal gear creep, where instead of having to buy a new set of level 83 armor to replace your level 80 armor, you have to buy a new set of Viper gear to replace your Rabid, when really Rabid should be fine.

3) I prefer this content, it’s fairly mindless but I don’t mind, it is what I like to do and it gets me a lot of money for almost everything. But I want more, and I am not going to leave this comfort zone of content because this is just a game, and I paid just like anyone else. In fact, if I don’t get what I want I’ll leave the game, Arenanet will lose a very good customer.

I’m not there yet, but I’m sure some have already been passed there. I’ve been playing this game about four times longer than any previous MMO, and plan to for a while yet, but I certainly wouldn’t have stuck around if they’d gone into raid progression mode within the first six months of the game like many MMOs do.

The difference is that your points about raids in general is irrelevant because raids exist as they are for a specific reason … whatever you are thinking of doesn’t. It’s a double standard? For sure, but it’s reality.

As I noted above, just because something doesn’t currently exist doesn’t mean that it can’t. There was a time when raids didn’t exist, and that didn’t stop people complaining about how raids didn’t exist, and then a year ago, hey, raids existed! Right now, an easy mode raid doesn’t exist, so I’m hoping for the same attention in future. The fact that something exists now does not mean that it has any more right to continue existing unchanged than anything else, past, present, or future. It’s not a virtuous position to say “it is how it is, deal with it.” Defending the status quo is still taking a position, no inherently superior to pushing for a change.

Dungeons and Fractals aren’t irrelevant; they are exactly the content you claim to be after, except you’re not telling us what you are really after here, which is just an easy path to raid loot in a Dungeon/Fractal-like setting and access level.

You’ll have to go back a few pages, because I already address that statement exactly. Here’s a link:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/An-issue-raids-and-their-accesibility/6384774

Of course it could be, as I said earlier. But it is not the goal of the content. I’m not sure why you aren’t willing to accept that.

But it could be.

I can’t imagine you played at the start of the game and thought that people did not want to do dungeons — they did. They just couldn’t do it without training and a lot of help. The same conversations about elitism and build discrimination took place. People thought dungeons were inaccessible and top players thought they didn’t have time or room in their party for newbies.

If you say so. I was too busy for dungeons at launch, but did most of my dungeoneering about six months in and almost never had any difficulties. It’s been more than six months since raids launched, and here we still are.

That isn’t an accurate portrayal of people’s skills. I guarantee you that I couldn’t do even the easiest JPs at launch; I had to learn them. And I have friends who won’t do them now — that’s an entire set of content designed for someone else.

Again, I’m not saying that everyone can solo them, just that everyone can complete them due to the availability of Mesmers. And before you equate that to being carried through a raid, remember that it’s much less effort for a single Mesmer to carry numerous people to the end of a JP, than for a raid group to carry a single person through a raid, and you only need to complete the JP once, usually for negligible rewards, while Raids have to be completed dozens of times for the best rewards, so comparing the two activities is pretty nonsense.

And again, you think that everyone is able to do Tier 1 — that’s just not so.

Perhaps not everyone, but I think you’d agree that T1 Fractals are much easier than any Raid Wing. I mean I can’t think of a single T1 Fractal that I’ve ever failed to complete within an hour, usually much less. And this was even at the beginning when they weren’t fully mapped out. They can be trickier than some other content, but they aren’t even on the same scale.

The game already includes niche content, but for some reason you only want to pin that label on raids.

No, you want to pin on me that I’m only pinning that label on Raids. I’m only talking about raids here because this is a discussion about raids, but I am by no means satisfied with ANY rewards in the game that can only be accessed through a single, niche source. If they opened up more avenues towards earning various niche rewards, I would be the first to cheer it. But pointing out that niche content and niche rewards exist is not an argument in favor of them. It’s just pointing out two wrongs, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

It’s not the size of the audience, it’s the homogeneity. Targeting content towards one type of player is far, far easier than targeting towards every type of player.

Not especially, you just take what they already have, and loosen the belt a bit. Make it so that the tolerances aren’t as tight, so that weaker team comps with less skill can achieve the same results. The actual design of the content doesn’t need to change at all.

There’s an interesting argument about whether ANet should have locked an entire tier of armor behind raids, whether general rewards and lore should be gated by raids… but the topic of the thread is about accessibility, not about what they gate.

It’s all part of the same thing. The more reasons players have to care about whether they’re “inside” or not, the more it matters whether they can comfortably get inside. People who argue about trying to get into a place where they have no rational reason to be there are just causing trouble for trouble’s sake, but if people have a perfectly valid reason to want to be included, then they should be included.

Taurok.6708:

It just looks like a bunch of craziness all over the screen. How are you supposed
To learn anything when failure SEEMS random and unpredictable?

search for patterns and when they break itself. the ai of enemies is always the same, the cooldown of their skills are the same and the attack speed is the same.
the only thing that ever break a pattern is aggro change and interrupts.
interrupts @ bosses in terms of: the boss is locked in a animation and you have control over that (like a cc bar…when are u going to break his bar).
another example is sabetha flamewall. if you phase her away, normally when she comes back she is doing a flamewall instantly starting at a certain spot. if the flamewall is still on cooldown she will cast it when it comes off cooldown and then it will start at the targeted player spot.

same thing was back in dungeons…every boss had their attack pattern and when he was doing it. like lupicus…if he never broke out of his pattern it was basically kick, lucusts, kick, grub, kick, locusts and so on….if he changed aggro it got rupted. if he had aggro on somebody who could not be kicked because the player was too far away, he waited out a bit longer and only did the locust attack + grub…but on the other hand could change aggro pretty fast. in case u got aggro on him and he did the locust / grub attack, you could run into him without a problem…but if he didn’t and he was in his “waiting” phase and you run into him…he would instantly start a kick.

i could basically tell you nearly all attack of the bosses and when they happen in case that everything works perfectly out. if not, well, in case u got knowledge and observed right, you can still figure out what probably happens next.

so to what comes it down: anet said they made a game where u don’t watch the ui, thats why its simple.
they want you to hear the sounds and they want you to spectate the enemy.

once you learn on how to observe you can be the baddest player with the slowest reactions of all times…you will still be able to dodge stuff in pve since you don’t have to bet on fast reactions…you can bet on the pattern.

the 10% where you go down because your bet was wrong…well, i guess you have teammates who will pick you up.

so, the only thing that a player has to understand is to observe and learn from it. dogeing circles when they appear on the ground is sometimes already too late, but you could have seen it coming if you don’t stare at your skill or hp or hp of the boss…look at what the boss itself is doing and how to counter that.

one of the famous things with slow hitting attacks is running in the back of the boss, so the swing doesn’t hit you. applys in raids nearly at every boss. so you can start from there.

Taurok.6708:

you only hit a brick wall there when you reached content that required you show up for the raid on time and devote 7-8 hours. That is also a huge accessibility issue- scheduling. If we are even using that word, then accessibility is worth talking about. I think the issue arises from the meta the game mechanics encourage and they have just never found a way around it.

depends on how fast you and the group is learning, and if they are all already a bit more experienced in observing and reacting.
when w2 came out i couldn’t raid the first day. so when the weekend hit me i startet raiding with a group wich didn’t get the kill yet and they did not get far yet, since they also had not much time on their hand. neverless, this evening we had time and in the end we only took 1 hour to figure everything out and kill him.

but yeah, i also had that sloth experience with another group wich got the kill after 20 hours of raiding (not raiding through tho, over the course of a week).
some people didn’t get the concept fast and kept on wiping, also the dmg was not that good. so it took some time to nail everything down.

so, in the end it depends on the group and on yourself.
right now, time should not be a problem if you start with experienced people who are willing to take you in.

but this is also something you have to work on. telling them they are elitist scrubs because they tell you on how to play or wich build to use will be probably give you the boot. :P
but thats how it is…its a team efford so in the end you have to play with the groupbuild and not some solo kitten…except it is okay for them and also the builds is good enough and does the job it is expected to do.

edit: did you ignore my post on page 3 completly ohoni? watcha saying to that?

edit: did you ignore my post on page 3 completly ohoni? watcha saying to that?

The “tips” were all common knowledge that I knew before setting foot in a raid. The “questions” have all been answered already.

Just show up with some decent food and a decent build and decent gear to a training run and you’ll be fine.

I’ve showed up to a few training runs, in many cases advertised as having “experienced players” on board, rarely get halfway through phase 2.

The part where people die and the group wipes. I got tired of that bit.

Where exactly?

And I disagreed with your example.

And you didn’t provide ANY valid arguments against it. Your make believe “let’s play pretend” is not an argument. Try again.

Again though, I’m not talking about changing how the skill works, just the impact it has.

And again though. You are talking about changing how the skill works completely. We already discussed this and you’ve been proven wrong. Get over this already and move on.

The part where people die and the group wipes. I got tired of that bit.

Where exactly?

Where don’t they die? Corpses everywhere.

And you didn’t provide ANY valid arguments against it. Your make believe “let’s play pretend” is not an argument. Try again.

Like I said, I’ve become convinced that you’re either willfully rejecting the core concept at play here, or have some deep psychological blindspot to it, in any case I have become convinced that I stand a better chance of soloing Sabetha than getting you to admit that I have a point there, so why bother trying? I’ve made the case as best I can, you’ve provided no better response than “nu-uuuuh,” and anyone else reading this understands that, whether they agree that what I’m asking for would be worthwhile or not.

And again though. You are talking about changing how the skill works completely. We already discussed this and you’ve been proven wrong. Get over this already and move on.

You’re entitled to your own opinions, not to your own facts.

Where don’t they die? Corpses everywhere.

I’m inclined to believe you’ve never actually been to a Raid and you are just trolling now.

You are like those politicians who bring a law and instead of allowing approving on individual articles you make others approve or disapprove the whole thing. Even if you agree with a few of the articles, but disagree with others, you must agree or disagree with everything.

You are adept at generalizing in that exact same way. And funny how in my question about where you find issues in VG you respond in the same way. Can’t you ever be more specific and discuss individual points and arguments instead of generalizing and going for the whole thing? Just for once.

You’re entitled to your own opinions, not to your own facts.

You say you don’t want to change a skill completely and then proceed to change it completely. Your make believe pretend won’t be used for training, that’s hardly a point of discussion. If you want to train and you have to pretend something kills you, you do the real thing so it does kill you.

It’s like when practicing fencing you use tiny daggers instead of swords and “pretend” that the length of it would’ve hit you in the actual thing, while the dagger is too short to even reach you.

There are numerous examples of where your make-believe pretend is absolutely pointless. If you change how things work that’s what happens. For training to be valid, the mechanics must be the same, you can’t practice and get better at football by playing basketball.

Just admit all you want is to get the Envoy Armor in an easy way and forget the whole training issue. At least you’d be honest.

Of course it could be, as I said earlier. But it is not the goal of the content. I’m not sure why you aren’t willing to accept that.

Ohoni.6057:

But it could be.

Or you could accept that it ANet didn’t design Raids the way you might have.

I can’t imagine you played at the start of the game and thought that people did not want to do dungeons — they did. They just couldn’t do it without training and a lot of help. The same conversations about elitism and build discrimination took place. People thought dungeons were inaccessible and top players thought they didn’t have time or room in their party for newbies.

Ohoni.6057:

If you say so. I was too busy for dungeons at launch, but did most of my dungeoneering about six months in and almost never had any difficulties. It’s been more than six months since raids launched, and here we still are.

Do you not see the contradiction? You’re completely unsympathetic to the people who struggled with dungeons while you almost never had any difficulty. Your words above mean the same as “git gud”, i.e. many of the people I “dungeoneered” with weren’t, in your estimation, good enough.

Can you not imagine that’s exactly how experienced Raiders see your posts? From their viewpoint, it took them less than six months to learn how to do raids and if they can do it, then why can’t you?

I’m inclined to believe you’ve never actually been to a Raid and you are just trolling now.

No, I’m being completely serious. There’s no one location where people die, they just flop over whenever they feel like it. I have no control over that.

You are adept at generalizing in that exact same way. And funny how in my question about where you find issues in VG you respond in the same way. Can’t you ever be more specific and discuss individual points and arguments instead of generalizing and going for the whole thing? Just for once.

I’m sorry if I didn’t bring my little yellow crime scene markers with me raiding to take careful note over where each party member died. All I know is, they weren’t all on their feet by the middle of the fight, at which point it all sort of implodes.

You say you don’t want to change a skill completely and then proceed to change it completely.

Name one case. And no, reducing the damage on an attack is not “changing it completely.” Making a OHKO attack into a “high damage” attack is not “changing it completely.”

“Changing it completely” would be to alter the speed of Sabetha’s spin so that it’s easier to stay ahead of, or shortening it to half the width of the stage so you can just hug the edge, or other things that would make it easier to avoid than the default version. “Changing it completely” would be to take the VG lightning drop and making the tell count down slower or require fewer members to enter it, or make the floor tiles cycle more slowly. I do not approve of any plans along those line.

Again, my goal would be that the change system would behave identically to the live version, and players would have to dodge and move at the same pace if they wanted to clear it “clean,” there would just be more leeway where if they failed to clear it “clean,” that wouldn’t result in devastation.

It’s like when practicing fencing you use tiny daggers instead of swords and “pretend” that the length of it would’ve hit you in the actual thing, while the dagger is too short to even reach you.

No, it’d be more like practicing fencing with metal nubs over the sword-tips and padded armor on, so that when your opponent gets a hit in on your heart, it doesn’t actually pierce your heart and kill you. Which is basically how everyone fences. And fencing is a great example, because if you fence, and your opponent slips your guard and lands a “killing” blow, then you survive where you would have died had he used a live blade. Meanwhile, if you manage to deflect that hit, then it passes by you harmlessly, just as it would against live steel. Thus it trains you to avoid getting killed by live steel, with far fewer injuries.

Just admit all you want is to get the Envoy Armor in an easy way and forget the whole training issue. At least you’d be honest.

No, that would be lying to appease you, which I won’t do. I want both things.

Or you could accept that it ANet didn’t design Raids the way you might have.

I know they didn’t, but that doesn’t mean they can;’t evolve the system in future, just as they have overhauled numerous elements of the game over time.

Do you not see the contradiction? You’re completely unsympathetic to the people who struggled with dungeons while you almost never had any difficulty. Your words above mean the same as “git gud”, i.e. many of the people I “dungeoneered” with weren’t, in your estimation, good enough.

Ok then, maybe there was reason for them to add alternate options. Maybe there still are, I just don’t have any basis to make that claim at the moment. I’m not denying that it’s possible, and whether it is possible or not means nothing so far as whether or not they should add easy mode raiding. If people genuinely want to campaign for easier dungeons, I support them, as I suspect you would agree we should have easier raids.

Nefarius.9702:

As the topic title says, I think the accessibility to raids really is an issue.

You probably know it yourself if you’ve ever checked the lfg-tool for raids:
LFP experienced [insert class here] with X LI and TS³

Nearly any request looks similar to this, implying inexperienced raid players likely have no chance to join.

Also, these without wanting to use TS (I’m personally not too keen talking with foreign people about a certain game content) are somewhat excluded.

I myself did VG when the raids where somewhat new, it took me really long (several days) to find a group picking me up without “exp and li”, and even afterwards several of the groups I found didn’t succeed, because people were too inexperienced – a doom loop.

Sure, that’s not bad for gaining experience; but still – you gotta lie when you’re entering a group that requires more experience (and even they usually require a gear check of your LI).

Anyways, after what seemed like ages with different (inexperienced) groups and tries we managed to get the VG down.

That was pretty much my only goal yet, until the legendary armor was previewed.
It simply shouldn’t be that top tier content is limited to a small percentage of players.

And that really is the case – I’m in a large guild and roughly 5-10% are successfully, experienced raiders.

Other people (and I think that’s reflecting in the rest of the gw2 community) simply don’t get into raids – cause of the reasons mentioned above.

You’d have to join a somewhat professional raid guild to be really succesful.

Sure – some of the really ambitioned players will likely pop up now and prove me wrong, telling me their story of becoming a good raid player on their own, but that’s a minority.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m neither blaming the community (cause raids are challening) nor do I criticize the severity – All I would like is to make the start, the access easier for players new to raids – even without guild.
To allow a larger group access to a crucial (and now with the legendary armor even more) part of the game.

Raids are very accessible if you have a nice guild. Even if you do not have a guild you can set up your own squad. The problem is inexperienced players expecting complete strangers that are veterans to carry them.

No, I’m being completely serious. There’s no one location where people die, they just flop over whenever they feel like it. I have no control over that.

You could be more specific, which phase, which part. But if you can’t do that you probably don’t pay much attention on when and why they die. Sometimes you do have control on when people die, it depends on your role.

Name one case. And no, reducing the damage on an attack is not “changing it completely.” Making a OHKO attack into a “high damage” attack is not “changing it completely.”

All the mechanics we already discussed so far? If you reduce the damage of an attack that is NOT dealing damage then yes you are changing it completely. If you change how the attack can be dealt with then it’s completely changing it. It’s as simple as that. If an attack deals damage and you lower that damage then it’s a different case.

No, it’d be more like practicing fencing with metal nubs over the sword-tips and padded armor on, so that when your opponent gets a hit in on your heart, it doesn’t actually pierce your heart and kill you.

Not really. It’s like practicing with a dagger instead of a sword exactly as I said, a completely different mechanic. How lethal the attack is (in real life) in this case is completely irrelevant.

If a group of soldiers decides to go play paintball for practice instead of using live ammunition, then when hit, the result is the exact same (they are removed from the game) although they don’t die nor get injured.

In the sword training example, if it was actual combat training between groups of people, as is raiding a group exercise, the one who got hit in training would be quickly removed from combat and not able to participate anymore until the combat is over (but obviously not dead).

In all situations, how lethal (on humans) the attack is, is irrelevant. The end result is the same whether you use paint instead of bullets, or dull swords instead of sharp blades. In all cases you are REMOVED from the encounter.

In your raiding example that’s not the case. If you get hit you are not removed from the encounter, as you should if the mechanic was the same, but instead can continue playing and say “next time I’ll avoid it”, which makes it completely different.

Do you want 1hit KO attacks to work like Hearts and Minds when on death they teleport you to a distant platform to watch the fight from above? That’s the equivalent here. But look on the bright side: you won’t be dead. As if that matters in the game.

No, that would be lying to appease you, which I won’t do. I want both things.

It would be interesting if ever there was a discussion over the rewards part of easy mode raiding. Still not tackled it anywhere.

You could be more specific, which phase, which part. But if you can’t do that you probably don’t pay much attention on when and why they die. Sometimes you do have control on when people die, it depends on your role.

Sure, but I was just general DPS, and obviously not the leader of the group, so I wasn’t micromanaging everyone else. I was just doing my job as best I could and expecting them to do theirs.

All the mechanics we already discussed so far? If you reduce the damage of an attack that is NOT dealing damage then yes you are changing it completely. If you change how the attack can be dealt with then it’s completely changing it. It’s as simple as that. If an attack deals damage and you lower that damage then it’s a different case.

A OHKO is essentially “infinite damage,” I’m just toning that down to a level below infinity. Again, I’m not changing the behavior of the attack in any way, just the outcome of failure. Success would look identical between both versions, failure would have the same cause in either version, the only difference is what happens next.

Now if you want to play semantics games and call that “totally different,” then I can’t stop you, just accept that I will never view it that way, and so for the purposes of my discussion, I mean that the circumstances of the moves, the conditions you need to pass to clear them, the conditions under which you would “fail” them, would remain 100% identical, and all that would change is a reduction in the consequences of a failure.

Not really. It’s like practicing with a dagger instead of a sword exactly as I said, a completely different mechanic. How lethal the attack is (in real life) in this case is completely irrelevant.

No, it is NOTHING like that. If someone swings at you with a dagger, and you take a slight step back, it will miss you. If you practice that move constantly until you master it and can dodge the dagger 100% of the time, then if he changes it to a sword, you will dodge perfectly. . . and the sword will still hit you because it has a longer reach. That is exactly the situation I do not want.

The situation I do want is exactly as I described it, that you practice with a tipped sword, so that a failed evasion will not kill you, and once you’ve mastered dodging that attack successfully, if the opponent switched to an untipped sword, you perform the evasion perfectly and. . . the attack misses, exactly like in training, and you can continue the fight. That is what I want, now please stop telling me that “I want” what I have made clear in no uncertain terms I do not want. You can want whatever you want, accept when I am telling you what I want.

That would make sense if they were training as a group to take on the entire encounter in a single shot. But, if the point of their training is to build individual skills against the enemy, then perhaps they don’t drop out after taking a single hit. Perhaps they try to avoid getting hit as best they can, but continue fighting regardless, because how they would gauge their success is in how few times they get shot per encounter.

Maybe the first time they take a dozen hits, but they keep going, keep trying to improve their avoidance. Then maybe the next time they only take eight hits. Then the next time only four, only two, and eventually they get to the point where most of the time they don’t get hit at all. Sure, they could learn that by dropping out after the first hit, but it would take dozens of complete rounds to reach that same level of personal skill.

Again, this would not be a training mode focused on taking a single focused team and building them as a unit to move into the hard mode raid. This would more likely be used by pugs, where the membership is completely random each week, and they aren’t learning to work with each other as a single unit, they are learning to master the timing of attacks, the various roles available, the things they can be doing in a hard mode battle.

Then, when they’re ready for hard mode, they will be able to slot themselves into pretty much any team, find a role that needs filling and that they have practiced, and do some work.

Do you want 1hit KO attacks to work like Hearts and Minds when on death they teleport you to a distant platform to watch the fight from above? That’s the equivalent here. But look on the bright side: you won’t be dead. As if that matters in the game.

No, the whole point is that you keep going, so that instead of spending the rest of the fight on the ground, or the whole fight has to restart from scratch, you can continue to learn new things until the end of the fight, in a much lower pressure environment than the current raids.

It would be interesting if ever there was a discussion over the rewards part of easy mode raiding. Still not tackled it anywhere.

Feel free to start a thread, or start the discussion here if you feel it would be on topic (seems to stray a bit to me, but whatever).

Just admit all you want is to get the Envoy Armor in an easy way and forget the whole training issue. At least you’d be honest.

No, that would be lying to appease you, which I won’t do. I want both things.

Funny, why don’t you talk about how having legendary armor in easy mode raid? maybe because you’re part of the tiny minority that want both, and you know your ideas would be unfair to all actual raiders…

Funny, why don’t you talk about how having legendary armor in easy mode raid?

Because that’s not really the topic of discussion, but yeah, obviously it should be there. It should take longer to acquire it that way, lower weight, more reps, but why wouldn’t there be progress? It’s not at all unfair to the raiders, because not only will they have at least a year’s head start on the process, but also will require less actual effort than getting it through easy mode. For Raiders to complain about it now is a bit like how people were complaining that they bought GW2 in 2012 for $60, and suddenly, three years later, that content was made Free to Play. The horror!

Sure, but I was just general DPS, and obviously not the leader of the group, so I wasn’t micromanaging everyone else. I was just doing my job as best I could and expecting them to do theirs.

Fair enough. Probably your group was bad then.

Again, I’m not changing the behavior of the attack in any way, just the outcome of failure.

You are also changing how players can respond to it, not just the outcome. You are adding lots of ways to mitigate the effects of the skill other than the intended way. Just watch a Vale Guardian low man attempt and notice how different it is from a 10-man attempt. They are different and not exactly the same. A no-updraft Gorseval is also different to a “normal” Gorseval. Mechanics can be cheesed, you want it to be easier to cheese them and avoid them.

No, it is NOTHING like that.

Yes I admit it was a crude example. But you will pretend it hits you. Let’s “pretend” it hits you is what you said earlier in the thread.

That would make sense if they were training as a group to take on the entire encounter in a single shot. But, if the point of their training is to build individual skills against the enemy, then perhaps they don’t drop out after taking a single hit. Perhaps they try to avoid getting hit as best they can, but continue fighting regardless, because how they would gauge their success is in how few times they get shot per encounter.

Raids are not about individual skills, it’s about teamwork and composition. In any group situation, getting hit will result in removal from the encounter, now you are just making up terrible excuses. Although you don’t die or get injured, you are not allowed to continue but in your Raid example, they won’t be removed, instead they will continue playing.

Walhalla.5473 in the post below added another reason of why adding a completely different mechanic is bad for the Raids: it teaches bad behavior.

If you want to train that you get hit fewer times, that’s what solo practice is for. If you want to train your individual skill against Sabetha’s flamethrower alone, a golem in the training area that does that same attack would be much more useful. There is also a dodge golem in the heart of the mists if you want to practice dodging. You can go try it.

Have fun.

No, the whole point is that you keep going, so that instead of spending the rest of the fight on the ground, or the whole fight has to restart from scratch, you can continue to learn new things until the end of the fight, in a much lower pressure environment than the current raids.

You do understand that fights start easy and get progressively harder right? If the players of the team cannot avoid getting teleported or not run to the greens on time in phase 1, no amount of training in the next phases will help them achieve that because in the next phases they will be under considerable more pressure.

In that case, resetting the encounter once messing up is the best way to train. Master the easier phase first then move on to the next, harder one. Unless for some magical reason you believe if a group completely fails in Phase 1, they have a chance of winning and not messing up in the next Phases, which is ridiculous to even consider.

You seem to be incapable of understanding what a multi-phase encounter is about and why every Raid encounter works like that. It’s because the developers themselves want a way to teach players the mechanics little by little, it’s the easy mode right there. Sure some bosses are absolutely horrible in doing that (looking at Slothasor) but VG for example is the perfect training boss with an easy mode built-in.

TexZero.7910:

Taurok.6708:

How are you supposed to learn anything when failure SEEMS random and unpredictable?

By first learning that there’s very little random, let alone unpredictable actions in raids.
Everything has a pattern and mostly everything can be avoided or mitigated.

In dungeons this was difficult to learn and put into practice when a lot is happening at once. It was very easy to attempt the dungeon many times
And not know how to improve. You can get a guide for the path, but you cannot get a guide to learn to dodge/mitigate a bunch of stuff at the same time. At least I never found such a guide. That is why I emphasized that it can ‘seem’ random, and therefore frustrating and unintuitive. I have never done a raid myself to know how they compare. Of course I know it is possible to confidently mitigate damage in dungeons. I saw plenty of players do it. But I would not call it intuitive, easy to learn through practice, or accessible. And part of this is just baked in to the mechanics of the game, like I’m talking about. Dodge is all. I don’t know if they can make this style of play more intuitive and accessible, but I think they should.

Comparisons like this always break down under scrutiny, but take platformer games. They are often difficult games that beginners can’t master easily. But they are also very intuitive, owing in part to their simplicity. A player can get better through practice and it’s pretty clear how to do that. If you are banging your head against a
wall, at least you know why.

Ohoni.6057:

You could be more specific, which phase, which part. But if you can’t do that you probably don’t pay much attention on when and why they die. Sometimes you do have control on when people die, it depends on your role.

Sure, but I was just general DPS, and obviously not the leader of the group, so I wasn’t micromanaging everyone else. I was just doing my job as best I could and expecting them to do theirs.

Even as a DPS you should start watching when People fall down like crazy to see what is hitting them. It is very clear where the Damage comes from in the Fight, so you don’t need to be super crazy observant, just start watching for your surroundings and you’ll see what hits them and then you can tell these People.

Everyone can do something to make the Team itself better.

And with nerfing the Damage in Easy Mode. Let’s say we get an Easy Mode and every One Shot Mechanic is doing normal Damage now. For Example Sabethas Flamewall. Instead of killing someone she just deals 50% of the Maximum Health as Damage. What would People do? Avoid the Flamewall by any means neccesary? Nope just walk or dodge through it. And People in Easy Mode would then learn to do this in a different Way than Players in Normal Mode.
And now lets say People go from Easy Mode to Normal Mode after knowing the Fight in Easy Mode by heart. They go into a Fight saying that they are Exp and start dying on the Flamewall. They react to the Flamewall by walking or dodging through them which is detrimental for the entire Group.
The Moment Things are too different between normal and Easy Mode is gonna be the Moment PuG Groups will raise the Entrance Bar even further, to keep People out who learned the wrong Stuff for the Normal Fight ( It is harder to break bad Habits than to learn new ones )

In an Easy Mode. Deadly Stuff should still be deadly but it should be easier to avoid it, like giving them more Time to react to the Stuff. Flamewall again as an Example. When the Arrow is becomes visible you have 2 Seconds to relocate yourself so you don’t get hit by the Flamewall. Make it 3 or 4 Seconds in Easy Mode for Example and People have much more Time to react and relocate but they still learn. " Flamewall One Shots me, don’t every get hit by it." They get the knowledge that its deadly and it will stay deadly in Normal Mode. They just need to react a bit faster but they didn’t learn the wrong Stuff or get bad Habit, since the Core of this Mechanic is the same.

Taurok.6708:

In dungeons this was difficult to learn and put into practice when a lot is happening at once. It was very easy to attempt the dungeon many times
And not know how to improve. You can get a guide for the path, but you cannot get a guide to learn to dodge/mitigate a bunch of stuff at the same time. At least I never found such a guide. That is why I emphasized that it can ‘seem’ random, and therefore frustrating and unintuitive. I have never done a raid myself to know how they compare. Of course I know it is possible to confidently mitigate damage in dungeons. I saw plenty of players do it. But I would not call it intuitive, easy to learn through practice, or accessible. And part of this is just baked in to the mechanics of the game, like I’m talking about. Dodge is all. I don’t know if they can make this style of play more intuitive and accessible, but I think they should.

I don’t know why your having so much trouble with this bro. Dungeons are mostly easy mode by now and if you’re frustrated with the req of ‘dodge being all’, there are two options u can choose: u can either go through the tutorial for beginners on how to dodge (which I don’t get the point of tbh), or you can play a heavy class that’s more forgiving as well as having more easy access to block and invuln, which will defeat ur argument of ‘dodge being all’. Dodge is afaik a mechanic that when this game was still in its early days a mechanic exclusive to this game, I’m not sure that u could even dodge in games like WoW from what I remember. If you’re getting frustrated over it, realise that it’s a core mechanic of this game that’s likely not ever going to change. Again, there’s tutorials for this sort of stuff even.

You have yet to elaborate further and give some examples of what exactly you’re finding random in dungeons (that are most times scripted and definitely not random), or at least give the name of the path or dungeon ur having so much trouble with, like CoF path 1 which is so easy and intuitive that it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.

Again, u cannot get a guide that can tell you when to dodge/mitigate dmg at the right time. That’s the entire point of learning to practice and get better. If you had a message on the screen pop up ‘Dodge!’ at the exact time u were supposed to dodge, it would defeat the purpose of that mechanic as well as making the game lackluster and not enjoyable anymore. If you’re having problems learning when to dodge in dungeons then sadly your going to have a tougher time with raids as they are now.

There are very very few random deaths in raids. When we are first learning the fight people would die all the time and say “oh that was bad rng”or some other excuse. AS we mastered the fight those random deaths disappeared. Did anet tweak the rng or nerf the mechanics? No, we just learned the fight better and learned how to compensate for the difficulties.

Saying that people are randomly dying and you don’t understand why is part of the process of raid progression. OVERCOMING it and learning is the fun part.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Of course it could be, as I said earlier. But it is not the goal of the content. I’m not sure why you aren’t willing to accept that.

Ohoni.6057:

But it could be.

Or you could accept that it ANet didn’t design Raids the way you might have.

The raids are there because people asking for them didn’t accept that Anet had no intention of doing them. If raiders could lobby at changing the direction of the game, i don’t see a reason why i can’t do that as well.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Can you not imagine that’s exactly how experienced Raiders see your posts? From their viewpoint, it took them less than six months to learn how to do raids and if they can do it, then why can’t you?

Well, then people not being able to do dungeons was mostly the case of them still getting used to the game, being undergeared and underleveled. When Raids started, situation was significantly different.

Still, dungeons were nerfed after that 6 months. Partly because of people that couldn’t run them. I see absolutely no problem with the same happening to Raids.

Astralporing.1957:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Of course it could be, as I said earlier. But it is not the goal of the content. I’m not sure why you aren’t willing to accept that.

Ohoni.6057:

But it could be.

Or you could accept that it ANet didn’t design Raids the way you might have.

The raids are there because people asking for them didn’t accept that Anet had no intention of doing them. If raiders could lobby at changing the direction of the game, i don’t see a reason why i can’t do that as well.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Can you not imagine that’s exactly how experienced Raiders see your posts? From their viewpoint, it took them less than six months to learn how to do raids and if they can do it, then why can’t you?

Well, then people not being able to do dungeons was mostly the case of them still getting used to the game, being undergeared and underleveled. When Raids started, situation was significantly different.

Still, dungeons were nerfed after that 6 months. Partly because of people that couldn’t run them. I see absolutely no problem with the same happening to Raids.

There is a big difference The people that asked for raids wasn’t trying to change any existing content into something that suited them, they asked for new instanced content that wouldn’t affect anyone that did not want to do them, you are wanting to take something and turn it into something that it wasn’t intended to be for people that it was never intended for, didn’t want it or do not care for it.

And it was only asked for because whenever we were given content that was said to be for everyone yet stated to provide challenge people complained and got them nerfed i.e. Dungeons and Fractals, Raids were not advertised or designed for Everyone so it shouldn’t be changed to cater to everyone.

maddoctor.2738:

Stop arguing that and stop generalizing like a broken jukebox. I even provided an EXAMPLE of how the EASY MODE AS YOU EXPECT IT WON’T BE USED FOR TRAINING. Notice the AS YOU EXPECT IT part. Notice the SPECIFIC EXAMPLE I GAVE. I’m not saying that an EASIER mode for Raids cannot be used for training. I’m saying that changing how the most important mechanic based abilities of bosses work will make it USELESS for training. And I even GAVE AN EXAMPLE about it. Want to lower the boss HP? Want to lower their attack damage? The number of adds? The damage they deal? Their hit points? Lower the enrage timer? FINE. Want to change how fundamentally a skill works then it’s not FINE. It’s not the same encounter anymore, it has zero value for any kind of training outside your let’s “play pretend make-believe”.

Except that it already works just like that in WoW, and works fine. I don’t know why people here are trying to oppose against proven and working raid models with empty theories straight out of their heads.

Rednik.3809:

maddoctor.2738:

Stop arguing that and stop generalizing like a broken jukebox. I even provided an EXAMPLE of how the EASY MODE AS YOU EXPECT IT WON’T BE USED FOR TRAINING. Notice the AS YOU EXPECT IT part. Notice the SPECIFIC EXAMPLE I GAVE. I’m not saying that an EASIER mode for Raids cannot be used for training. I’m saying that changing how the most important mechanic based abilities of bosses work will make it USELESS for training. And I even GAVE AN EXAMPLE about it. Want to lower the boss HP? Want to lower their attack damage? The number of adds? The damage they deal? Their hit points? Lower the enrage timer? FINE. Want to change how fundamentally a skill works then it’s not FINE. It’s not the same encounter anymore, it has zero value for any kind of training outside your let’s “play pretend make-believe”.

Except that it already works just like that in WoW, and works fine. I don’t know why people here are trying to oppose against proven and working raid models with empty theories straight out of their heads.

Maybe because people have proven to you a lot of times that it didn’t work but you just refuse to acknowledge it? and you keep saying the same thing over and over without new arguments?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

There is a big difference The people that asked for raids wasn’t trying to change any existing content into something that suited them, they asked for new instanced content that wouldn’t affect anyone that did not want to do them, you are wanting to take something and turn it into something that it wasn’t intended to be for people that it was never intended for, didn’t want it or do not care for it.

I am not asking to change existing raids at all. What i want is a separate content, the easy mode raids, that is just based on already existing ones. Normal mode raids can stay as they are. This is exactly what was happening then.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And it was only asked for because whenever we were given content that was said to be for everyone yet stated to provide challenge people complained and got them nerfed i.e. Dungeons and Fractals, Raids were not advertised or designed for Everyone so it shouldn’t be changed to cater to everyone.

As i said, i wouldn’t mind current Raids getting nerfed too. I am asking for easy mode specifically to avoid that, though.

Hypairion.9210:

Maybe because people have proven to you a lot of times that it didn’t work but you just refuse to acknowledge it?

People refuse to acknowledge it, because it hasn’t been proven at all. It was all just pure claims with no substance behind them.

Rednik.3809:

Except that it already works just like that in WoW, and works fine. I don’t know why people here are trying to oppose against proven and working raid models with empty theories straight out of their heads.

You should read a guide or two about those WoW raid difficulties before posting again.

Unless the wow guides and the wow wiki that I found by random googling are completely wrong, which might be I don’t know and don’t care, there are a couple of things to note:

First: older Raids did not get additional difficulty levels, only raids going forward were using the new systems. Pre Wrath of the Lich King Raids did not get split in Heroic/Normal versions, pre Warlords of Draenor Raids did not get the Flex difficulty. Which makes your entire post moot for Spirit Vale. Open for debate for any future Raids, but does not apply to Spirit Vale.

Second: I take some bosses from one of the WoW raids, that also have a guide. Most WoW guides have a very nice sector called “Differences From Normal Mode”. It’s eye opening to this!

For those who do not want to read any, the differences between Normal and Heroic versions usually are:
A) Bosses in Heroic do more damage and have more HP
B) Bosses in Heroic have completely NEW abilities

Some rare bosses have improved abilities so players can’t “cheese” them, as in ignore the mechanics of the fight by various means, including a soft enrage timer if things aren’t done properly. But those are very very few indeed. The vast majority is an HP/damage scale and some EXTRA abilities. No changes to existing abilities whatsoever, no faster projectiles, no more people required to touch certain areas, no increase in attack speed, no nothing else.

I only checked some raid bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar in a random guide. Feel free to check some other Raids and find an encounter in which the actual skills and abilities of the bosses are changed. I won’t bother to check every single boss of every single raid, checking a few is enough to prove how bosses Scale in WoW

Rednik.3809:

Except that it already works just like that in WoW, and works fine. I don’t know why people here are trying to oppose against proven and working raid models with empty theories straight out of their heads.

Except that GC, the game director during the time that LFR was implemented, said that it was probably the biggest design mistake that he’d made on WoW- and that’s the only mode that actually has any quantitative difference to the other raid modes at the time.

Astralporing.1957:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

There is a big difference The people that asked for raids wasn’t trying to change any existing content into something that suited them, they asked for new instanced content that wouldn’t affect anyone that did not want to do them, you are wanting to take something and turn it into something that it wasn’t intended to be for people that it was never intended for, didn’t want it or do not care for it.

I am not asking to change existing raids at all. What i want is a separate content, the easy mode raids, that is just based on already existing ones. Normal mode raids can stay as they are. This is exactly what was happening then.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And it was only asked for because whenever we were given content that was said to be for everyone yet stated to provide challenge people complained and got them nerfed i.e. Dungeons and Fractals, Raids were not advertised or designed for Everyone so it shouldn’t be changed to cater to everyone.

As i said, i wouldn’t mind current Raids getting nerfed too. I am asking for easy mode specifically to avoid that, though.

Making easy mode content based on existing raids is changing existing content, it is making them easier which is what raids were never supposed to be. Again you were never the target audience for Raids you just want them to cater to you because of a shiny, I bet if Raids didn’t have the allure of legendary armor you would have no issue with them being as difficult as they currently are.

Making easy mode content based on existing raids is changing existing content, it is making them easier which is what raids were never supposed to be. Again you were never the target audience for Raids you just want them to cater to you because of a shiny, I bet if Raids didn’t have the allure of legendary armor you would have no issue with them being as difficult as they currently are.

and, yes, the shinies are, for some people (but not all) what is driving them to easy mode raid (but they won’t admit it ^^)

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Making easy mode content based on existing raids is changing existing content

Nope. Easy mode would be separate.The existing content would not change even the tiniest bit.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

it is making them easier which is what raids were never supposed to be.

Well, easy mode would obviously have different design goals than raids (because otherwise there’d be no point to them)

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Again you were never the target audience for Raids you just want them to cater to you because of a shiny, I bet if Raids didn’t have the allure of legendary armor you would have no issue with them being as difficult as they currently are.

It’s more complicated than that. While i would like the current exclusives to be available also through different avenues, and while originally it would have solved 90% of the problems i had with raids, that has changed since that.

At this very point of time, the main problem is that Raids are the group content to run. Everyone that can run them, will want to (anet took care of that very well indeed). Which poses a problem to all people that used to group with those people that are raiding now. My guild, for example, ended up dead because of this. Those that can raid, do so, but usually don’t have time to do anything else besides that. Those that couldn’t cut it, for one reason or another (of which there are many) kept logging in only to see that everyone else is either raiding, or not there. Eventually they stopped logging in at all. Which i can hardly blame them for.

No, i don’t believe that easy mode will bring them back. I do believe, that, if it existed, it might have stopped the situation from happening, and if implemented, may help any future players. It might stop the rift growing between raiding and casual parts of the community from becoming even bigger than it is now.
And it is already pretty wide.

TL/DR; The main problem with raids is that they are designed to divide the community. Easy mode might be a bridge over that gap.
Yes, i do know that many raiders are pretty happy with the division existing, and some would even want it to be bigger. I find that to be part of the problem.

Hypairion

and, yes, the shinies are, for some people (but not all) what is driving them to easy mode raid (but they won’t admit it ^^)

of course^^
its easier to mimimi on the forums than putting some effort into getting a better player

Astralporing.1957

Nope. Easy mode would be separate.The existing content would not change even the tiniest bit.

how exactly the existence of a seperate easy mode would not change the existing content?^^

though, i admit to 100% with you, that for those who do not like a challenge there is no repeatable content besides fractals to play which feels rewarding (besides having fun) at the moment.

even the existent raids are not rewarding you after playing it the first time a week (the “having-fun-reward” excluded). but i would just give it some time. while there is already much beautiful content in gw2, im sure the future will reveal beautiful new adventures for all of us

If the main complaint is “I want easier content,” then why don’t you pester anet for more open world or fractals? Seems odd (or disingenuous) that you focus on raids.

Astralporing.1957:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Making easy mode content based on existing raids is changing existing content

Nope. Easy mode would be separate.The existing content would not change even the tiniest bit.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

it is making them easier which is what raids were never supposed to be.

Well, easy mode would obviously have different design goals than raids (because otherwise there’d be no point to them)

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Again you were never the target audience for Raids you just want them to cater to you because of a shiny, I bet if Raids didn’t have the allure of legendary armor you would have no issue with them being as difficult as they currently are.

It’s more complicated than that. While i would like the current exclusives to be available also through different avenues, and while originally it would have solved 90% of the problems i had with raids, that has changed since that.

At this very point of time, the main problem is that Raids are the group content to run. Everyone that can run them, will want to (anet took care of that very well indeed). Which poses a problem to all people that used to group with those people that are raiding now. My guild, for example, ended up dead because of this. Those that can raid, do so, but usually don’t have time to do anything else besides that. Those that couldn’t cut it, for one reason or another (of which there are many) kept logging in only to see that everyone else is either raiding, or not there. Eventually they stopped logging in at all. Which i can hardly blame them for.

No, i don’t believe that easy mode will bring them back. I do believe, that, if it existed, it might have stopped the situation from happening, and if implemented, may help any future players. It might stop the rift growing between raiding and casual parts of the community from becoming even bigger than it is now.
And it is already pretty wide.

TL/DR; The main problem with raids is that they are designed to divide the community. Easy mode might be a bridge over that gap.
Yes, i do know that many raiders are pretty happy with the division existing, and some would even want it to be bigger. I find that to be part of the problem.

The core raiding community has been doing their best to make raiding easier for everyone new players included, especially Guilds like qT and DnT who publish very in depth guides that show the current best strategies, as well abs giving in depth class comparisons effectively saving all other players a lot of time, gold and headache from theorycrafting and making strategies if they do not want too.

A lot of raiding guilds will take new players and run training raids to get them kills and experience on all wings. The actual raiding community strives to include as many people as possible without ruining the integrity of Raids and their concept of being challenging content, it falls on the individual player to accept the help/input/teamwork/effort.

Let’s talk about the shiny for a second. I understand that my opinion is very strong and others may greatly disagree, but I’d bet that there are some people we agree with me.

Due to my experience, I am slightly considering going for the legendary armor. The only reason I’m hesitant is because it still costs WAY too much gold. The only “challenge” of all of the original legendaries is deciding which characters to NOT play the game and park at material farming locations, or how much money/gold you want to spend to buy it. This is poor design IMO.

There are folks who have suggested that adding slight legendary progress on an “easy mode” raid would increase the desire for more players to strive for legendary armor. While that may be true, it will also pull certain players, like myself, away from going for the legendary armor. The fact of the matter is that the only reason I am considering it at all is because if you cannot get 150 LI in the current state, you cannot get legendary armor. That prestige and exclusivity is the only reason I’m interested in it at all. I know that is harsh but I also know I am not alone. You can’t get into enough raids that clear content for whatever reason that may be? Sorry but just like Thor’s hammer “you are not worthy.”

IMO, the only legendaries that are even close to being on the right path to “good design” are the armor, the fractal back piece, and the pvp back piece. Why? Read above, they actually require you to do something remotely challenging. IMO the average player, if they remain in the average state, should NEVER get a legendary item even if they put infinite hours into the game. They should have to strive to be better and improve. Why gate the most prestigious items in the game around things that don’t require any prestige/challenge/accomplishments to do? The original legendaries should have included a similar item. For example, you want Twlight? Well then one step could require to solo X amount of dungeons with all characters that can use a GS.

Are these 3 legendaries perfect? No absolutely not, they are still too expensive IMO. I also wish the challenge promoted skill play even more. This could also prevent selling raids to get LI. You die at the first flamewall at Sabetha? Do you really deserve an LI? IMO no, there should be some sort of equation that determines if you were effective in participating in the groups success. Now I understand this will never happen because the implications of getting it wrong/buggy are too high.

I hope that when they add WvW specific legendary items that I cannot get them in my current state of gameplay. I do not WvW enough to deserve this progress. But, if I were to strive to improve and participate, maybe then I could work towards that progress. That improvement could look like the following:
1. Joining a specific WvW guild
2. Reading and watching specific tactics on advanced WvW play
3. Asking questions and opinions of my wvw guild
4. Wiping them a few times
5. Continue to show desire to improve
6. Make myself available and not put my own restrictions on the game play
7. Not complain that Edge of the Mists (i.e. easy mode) doesn’t contain progress towards the theoretical WvW legendary.

Sound familiar?

Again I know some folks will disagree, that’s okay too! But I also know that I’m not alone.

Astralporing.1957:

At this very point of time, the main problem is that Raids are the group content to run. Everyone that can run them, will want to (anet took care of that very well indeed). Which poses a problem to all people that used to group with those people that are raiding now. My guild, for example, ended up dead because of this. Those that can raid, do so, but usually don’t have time to do anything else besides that. Those that couldn’t cut it, for one reason or another (of which there are many) kept logging in only to see that everyone else is either raiding, or not there. Eventually they stopped logging in at all. Which i can hardly blame them for.

No, i don’t believe that easy mode will bring them back. I do believe, that, if it existed, it might have stopped the situation from happening, and if implemented, may help any future players. It might stop the rift growing between raiding and casual parts of the community from becoming even bigger than it is now.

The problem in your guild example is that the people who organize and drive instanced content runs have moved to raiding, and no longer drive dungeon/FotM runs. That leaves the people who won’t raid but would dungeon with the burden to step up and fill that role. That they don’t is a main reason that accessibility complaints are a thing.

See, either there are enough players who would dungeon but don’t raid to make one or more groups or there aren’t. If there aren’t, then they would have to accept the burden of seeking a different guild or consolidating. Either that’s happening and you didn’t get the memo, or people don’t want to be bothered. If there are, then apparently no one is stepping up to fill the organizer void. Either way, odds are that people just don’t want the responsibility role.

Given that responsibility avoidance is a human tendency, what would happen with a split tier raid? Who would step up? Would it be those players who’d rather stop logging in than organize a dungeon? Not likely. The organizers would stay with the current tier unless the easier tier allowed for similar reward acquisition at a comparable rate. Then, they’d migrate to the easier tier along with most other raiders, bringing with them the same requirements used now, just because “efficiency.”

The alternative would be an LFR set-up with no choices available other than queue/don’t queue. Ten people queue, you’ve got a raid party. Then, there’d have to be consequences for kicking/leaving, or we’d still see people left out. Given that open world “raids” already provide a similar experience, I wonder whether the effort to produce an LFR raid would add that much to the game.

LFR where you randomly get thrown together would be the worst idea due to potentially horrible comps which might even lack vital classes/utilities/etc.
Also the bullkitten happening in there would be through the roof

Technically, the pro raid group is right. raids are accesible.
You just have to people that are willing to include you in their schedule, which means you have to change your schedule, habits, maybe style of play and watch you tube videos. If you do all of this and are not afraid to ask strangers for a social place in thier group there is probably indeed a place for you.

Despite me being an adamant opponent of raids, I was asked multiple times to come along and was actually dragged kicking and screaming into them a few time by friends who raid, from VG to escort. Even when it quite bugs me that I won´t get the armor, the effort is just not worth the gain for me, but I think if you really are persistent, you will get the raid achievements one day.

Why are there 2 seperated Threads about raid accessiblity?

And yet, the rules of every piece of content in the game have been modified, sometimes several times….

Many of the changes weren’t for the sake of lowering the floor for a matter of skill, overhauls occurred because they were ‘inconsistent’ with the prospect of Horizontal Progression, SPvP was probably the biggest issue at release with its own independent skins yet being unable to show off skins earned on either side. Dungeons had path skipping that allowed you to double up on ‘must-have’ tokens at the time.

These are not flagrant reductions in the quality of the content, rather instead what we saw as you pointed out was that some of the content described, fell victim to time and new releases. There was simply no way or reason to re-balance the old content for combat changes and balancing, there would be an insane amount of overhaul that new content would be further pushed back in development.

I don’t dispute that in the present, a player has to play within the rules as they presently are…

It’s a bit more than simply pressing for a change. It’s still way too early to call for any raid changes when we are still in the first year, and the ‘solutions’ being tossed out aren’t considering the future of the content in question. Or practical observations based on player behavior at this very moment. I agree with your point that it is up to Arenanet however.

Accepting the rules for what they are now is not incompatible with hoping for better rules in the future, and that’s what I’m doing here…

What’s to say that your rules are better than the status quo? How do you know better than the creators?

It is the most egregious outlier. It’s the most prestigious rewards…

So Legendary Weapons and Backpieces, all which consist of doing various other content which can include alienable Adventures, WvW, currency grinding, etc. Those legendary rewards aren’t as prestigious? There’s plenty of unreasonable things you need to do for Legendaries right now, but those are reasons why people will do the content for them. Legendary Armor is not an outlier, it is falling directly in line with other Legendaries. It’s not on Arenanet to change the content to give access to rewards here.

And yet “players who just started yesterday can go in and three-man it wearing only greens!,” or whatever it is they’re saying these days. I get how raids were designed and intended to work…

Then they can just not worry about it. Much like how players won’t build Legendary Weapons if they absolutely cannot do map completion, POI searching kills them on the inside. They don’t have to worry about aiming for The Ascension if they dislike SPvP, it’s their choice.

If they don’t like the Authentic Raid Experience, they certainly won’t want a lesser version of it. They would rather want a similar reward in content they currently enjoy. I disagree heavily with your assessment that these players are prevalent, or else they would be continuing to try raiding, joining a guild, joining a good set of friends and doing it right now.

Arenanet just needs to release Legendary Quality Armor outside of raids, somewhere. It’s that simple.

Anyone could be carried through the content, but spending half the fight on the ground is nowhere near as satisfying as actively participating through the end…

Is this some sort of ego issue here? I don’t see any reason why you should be upset about truly working with others when you can’t quite make it all the way through the fight. That’s a large part of the appeal of raiding, getting better at it! Raiding is demanding and expects failure or death, that’s not by accident but design of raiding at its very core. That’s why you improve, work with others, find out what you are doing wrong. Maybe you need to come up with a slightly better personal strategy that no one else does, but only to help you live through a certain mechanic that seems to kill just you.

I know we have said it before, and I do not expect you to understand, but introducing the prospect of an easier difficulty does diminish the raiding experience. It would be similar to spending WvW development resources recreating the borderlands, to a single-person instance where you can lead NPC armies around on your own and attack objectives and other NPC armies. It would not be close to the same experience as WvW right now, and it would be another thing to balance for the devs. It would be a waste of time and resources, which could have been used to improve the current experience for the players that are interested in the real thing.

In principle, you’re right, but in practice, it really breaks down. If a player spends weeks and weeks practicing a raid, and then finally complete it, then he deserves to earn weeks and weeks worth of reward for that, sure. But then once people have the raid “on farm,” they really aren’t doing anything spectacular any more, and the rewards just continue to pile up, and not just better generic rewards than most content, but also content that can’t be found anywhere else.

You’re thinking about it a bit backwards, the weeks of training are definitely for first kills, but also to improve and eventually make the rewards farm-able. That’s a design choice, which is why Arenanet implemented Weekly Rewards and a Currency Cap.

It is fully anticipated that raiders will continue to raid the old content, especially when you are never guaranteed to get a particular drop from a boss. Raid Rewards 101, well at least in GW2 Arenanet is more generous with the consolation shards on wipes.

Definitely agree. They lost the hardcore players within the first six months. The people who stuck around, the people who made GW2 work, are the casuals. This is our mothership, OUR WoW. People who want hardcore challenge can find it in other games, this one is ours, and should always first and foremost be ours.

That’s a pretty big statement you made. I don’t know if you are ignoring it but when you say the hardcore players left in the first year, that’s a pretty big lie. Quite a lot stayed, Dungeons were still exceptionally hard back then, Fractals had come out some time after launch, and “hardcore” players were involved in the end-game of creating Legendaries (the rush), WvW, SPvP, or speedrunning dungeons. The hardcore never left, they’ve been here the whole time, not just casuals have continued to play this game. And it is not a small number either…

That one’s a bit more flexible. I think changing skills and traits around a bit is fine, although “needs” should be as flexible as possible to accommodate many builds. There can be a metabuild that is “best” for the content, but there should be several other builds that are “plenty good,” and if a player has more fun playing one of those alternatives, then he should still be able to clear the content that way and not drag down the party. I certainly do believe that if a player gears himself up in a certain way, and it is effective for most content, he should not be forced to buy an entirely new set of gear just to be competitive in the new content. In a sense that’s just a horizontal gear creep, where instead of having to buy a new set of level 83 armor to replace your level 80 armor, you have to buy a new set of Viper gear to replace your Rabid, when really Rabid should be fine.

You are giving a mixed bag here. Some alternative builds are going to be simply outmatched by a large margin compared to the better options, yet the content has to be flexible to accommodate all these alternatives so the player running the ‘OK’ build isn’t going to be feeling like he is dragging everyone down? If this were the case then effective immediately the following mechanics from enemies would have to be removed:

- Breakbars (Not everyone runs CC, making CC a prime mechanic to dealing with an enemy would be imposing too much on players)
- Condition-Susceptible only (Not everyone runs conditions, power builds would be isolated and again, pose too much of an issue with players)
- Condition-Layering (Not everyone runs decent condi-clear in their builds, it would be too hard to heal up from)
- Unblockable attacks (Blocking is an excellent way for some builds to survive, this would render some alternatives moot)

I could go on more, but I believe you catch my drift. What enemies could do against you, the player, would be sharply reduced or ignored to keep most builds from falling from viability.

I’m not there yet, but I’m sure some have already been passed there. I’ve been playing this game about four times longer than any previous MMO, and plan to for a while yet, but I certainly wouldn’t have stuck around if they’d gone into raid progression mode within the first six months of the game like many MMOs do.

It wasn’t on the table at the time, the content needs change over time. The community demanded difficult instanced content with unique rewards, they got it. And now you want to take part of it away?

Fair enough. Probably your group was bad then.

Certainly possible, but in at least two of the cases, the leaders were supposedly skilled raid leaders. This is still part of the problem, that you have no way of knowing going into a pug raid session whether the rest of the group is any good, and if they aren’t, then you can waste hours of precious life on nothing. This is why easy mode raids are better, because even if it turns out the group kinda sucks, you’ll still at least get through it eventually.

You are also changing how players can respond to it, not just the outcome.

I fully accept that it changes the way a person can respond to it, but they don’t have to. If you’re fighting with fencing foils, sure, you can choose to just take a hit to a vital organ and go berserk on the opponent, knowing that since the swords are tipped you won’t actually die, but what is the point of that if you’re training to fight well?

I fully accept that if a OHKO attack is turned into a “significant damage” attack, then some players will choose to just eat it and move forward, and that some groups will embrace that playstyle and go for the maximum speedclears of the easy mode. That is not a bug, that is a feature. But my maintaining the same timing, shape, etc., players that DO want to use the easy mode to drill their personal skills for the hard mode can choose to use it to do so, they can attempt to dodge the attack properly, so that they can get that reflex down.

That would not be the case if the actual mechanics changed, if the timing was different, or size/shape of the attack was different (ie dagger instead of sword).

A no-updraft Gorseval is also different to a “normal” Gorseval. Mechanics can be cheesed, you want it to be easier to cheese them and avoid them.

Sure, but you wouldn’t have to do that. Basically, if a tactic would work in easy mode, but would never work in hard mode, players would know that, because they’d have hard mode videos to use as reference. So if their goal is to practice the skills they’d need in hard mode, then they would know not to use tactics that would not be useful to them in hard mode. It’s entirely up to them though, and I’m certain that there would be groups that would do it both ways, just as there are “no draft” groups and “yeah, drafts” groups, or back in the dungeon days, “zerk warrior” groups and “whoever” groups.

Yes I admit it was a crude example. But you will pretend it hits you. Let’s “pretend” it hits you is what you said earlier in the thread.

I don’t believe I ever said anything about “pretending” it would hit you. The way I see it, a hit would be a hit and a miss would be a miss, and the player would “pretend” nothing. It’s just that if a OHKO skill “hits” you in hard mode, you die, while if it “hits” you in easy mode, you don’t die, and you don’t pretend you die either, you just continue playing, but you know that you got hit, and you know that you shouldn’t have gotten hit, and that you’ll have to do better before you’re ready for the real thing.

Another example, how about practice tests for school? You take a practice test, and you fail it, you don’t flunk out of the class, because it was just practice and doesn’t actually count, but you know you failed it, and will have to do better on the real thing, and can use the lessons learned to move forward.

Raids are not about individual skills, it’s about teamwork and composition.

Eventually, yes, but if you have great teamwork and composition, but none of the players know what they’re supposed to be doing themselves, then it all falls apart. You can only have a successful team when at least most of the players involved are confident in the roles they’re meant to perform and how to accomplish those goals well. One foot before the other.

Teamwork is all fine and good if you’re making a guild team, or a regular group, but if you’re pugging, if the people on the team are different every single time you play, then what matters more is that everyone knows what they are meant to be doing, and has the skills to carry that load.

Walhalla.5473 in the post below added another reason of why adding a completely different mechanic is bad for the Raids: it teaches bad behavior.

It only builds bad behaviors in people who don’t know what the good behavior is. Any player training to play Sabetha would know that the hard mode version’s firewall is lethal, so if they are aiming to challenge that version, then they would not get in the habit of ignoring it. It’s all about intention.

If you want to train that you get hit fewer times, that’s what solo practice is for. If you want to train your individual skill against Sabetha’s flamethrower alone, a golem in the training area that does that same attack would be much more useful.

The point though is to have the entire encounter, start to finish, so that you can get used to the sequence of moves, how other players would move around you, how you move from one phase to another.

You do understand that fights start easy and get progressively harder right? If the players of the team cannot avoid getting teleported or not run to the greens on time in phase 1, no amount of training in the next phases will help them achieve that because in the next phases they will be under considerable more pressure.

But that’s the thing, in easy mode, there’s not nearly as much pressure, since failing a mechanic is less likely to lead to a wipe. Phase 3 of an easy mode boss fight would be less stressful than phase 1 of a hard mode one. Missing one green circle in phase one doesn’t mean you’ll always miss the green circles, it just means you made a mistake. You could miss one green circle in phase one, and so long as that doesn’t cause a wipe, you could go on to hit every single subsequent one, even through phase 3.

In that case, resetting the encounter once messing up is the best way to train. Master the easier phase first then move on to the next, harder one.

Again, if you learn best that way, that’s great, and you can just skip straight to hard mode and train that way, but it’s not a learning technique that works well for all players. I know from plenty of experience that playing that way only leads to me being frustrated and tense, more likely to make mistakes as the rounds increase rather than less, and ultimately learning a lot less from the encounter than I could be. I know this FOR A FACT, as it applies to myself, at least. Again, your mileage may vary.

Sure some bosses are absolutely horrible in doing that (looking at Slothasor) but VG for example is the perfect training boss with an easy mode built-in.

Not for me.

Even as a DPS you should start watching when People fall down like crazy to see what is hitting them.

I’m too busy not letting it hit me to pay too close attention to what other people are doing. Again, if it were an easy mode where there was less pressure, maybe I could spend more time smelling the roses.

What would People do? Avoid the Flamewall by any means neccesary? Nope just walk or dodge through it. And People in Easy Mode would then learn to do this in a different Way than Players in Normal Mode.

I addressed this in the post above, but short answer is, players who are training for hard mode would know better than to do this, and players who just want to speedclear easy mode can do this, and that’s fine too. Either option is fine.

And as for players coming from easy to hard, the group should make clear when forming whether their “experience” comes form easy or hard mode, and of course people can always lie as they can today, so nothing changes there. If on the first attempt, people start dying to the flame wall, all it would take is a simple reminder for the next attempt “you can’t walk or dodge through the wall, it will kill you regardless.”

In an Easy Mode. Deadly Stuff should still be deadly but it should be easier to avoid it, like giving them more Time to react to the Stuff.

No, see that’s the opposite of good, because the whole point of practice is muscle memory, of “feeling” the moves you need to make so that you can do it on autopilot, and focus your active brain on more important things. If the timing is even slightly different between the two modes that would be horrible for muscle memory of the encounter.

Saying that people are randomly dying and you don’t understand why is part of the process of raid progression. OVERCOMING it and learning is the fun part.

You forgot the absolutely vital “for me” part at the end there. For you that is the fun part of raiding. For plenty of other players that is not fun at all. Ever.

they asked for new instanced content that wouldn’t affect anyone that did not want to do them,

But raids DO affect people who don’t want to do them, because they gate off the Forsaken Thicket content, and gate off Legendary armor that people want regardless of raids. Now if they did neither of those things, you would have a point, but as it stands, you do not.

And it was only asked for because whenever we were given content that was said to be for everyone yet stated to provide challenge people complained and got them nerfed i.e. Dungeons and Fractals, Raids were not advertised or designed for Everyone so it shouldn’t be changed to cater to everyone.

Dungeons were originally advertised exactly like raids, as a “hardcore challenging experience.” The players didn’t like that, so they got nerfed.

First: older Raids did not get additional difficulty levels, only raids going forward were using the new systems. Pre Wrath of the Lich King Raids did not get split in Heroic/Normal versions, pre Warlords of Draenor Raids did not get the Flex difficulty. Which makes your entire post moot for Spirit Vale. Open for debate for any future Raids, but does not apply to Spirit Vale.

Nonsense. Just because Blizzard decided to do something one way does not mean that ANet could not choose to do it another.

I bet if Raids didn’t have the allure of legendary armor you would have no issue with them being as difficult as they currently are.

I would still want a version where I could play through the Forsaken Thicket content without the current challenge level, but even so “you just want the shinies” is not an argument to do it, unless you’re willing to let people have those shinies without raiding, the idea of which seems to send you guys into fits.

Several of you seem to think that “you just want the shinies” is actually a compelling argument here. That if it were true, it would mean that they should not make an easier raid mode. Obviously that’s ridiculous. “I just want the shinies” is no less valid a reason for wanting easier raids than “I want to be challenged” is a valid reason for wanting hard raids. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the shinies, this is a game that is largely about shinies. Trying to insist that other players are interested in the rewards does not gain you anything.

There are folks who have suggested that adding slight legendary progress on an “easy mode” raid would increase the desire for more players to strive for legendary armor. While that may be true, it will also pull certain players, like myself, away from going for the legendary armor.

That’s fine. If certain players can only be happy at having things that other players do not, then I would always prefer that those latter players be happy having the things they want to have, rather than the former players being happy that those players do not have what they want. People should not be rewarded for schadenfreude.

If you can’t make everyone happy, then you should make the most people happy, not the least.

It’s a bit more than simply pressing for a change. It’s still way too early to call for any raid changes when we are still in the first year,

Nonsense. They modified dungeons several times within the first year, they modified PvP within the first year, they can modify anything whenever they want, there is absolutely no benefit to “hold off” on this, unless you’re of the mindset that no change should happen at all.

What’s to say that your rules are better than the status quo? How do you know better than the creators?

I am stating my opinion that they would be. Again, it’s up to ANet to decide whether they agree. And I’m not saying I do know better than the creators, just that I think I do, and it’s not like they’re infallible, they’ve completely overhauled the trait system twice already, and there’s still considerable room for improvement. They released Elite specs requiring almost every HP in the jungle, and quickly scaled that plan back. They make mistakes, even with the very best of intentions. My opinion is that this is one of them, and I hope they come to that realization themselves.

So Legendary Weapons and Backpieces, all which consist of doing various other content which can include alienable Adventures, WvW, currency grinding, etc. Those legendary rewards aren’t as prestigious?

Not “as,” no. But again, I fully support anyone who wants to campaign for improved access to ANY of those things. I personally have lobbied in the past for improved access to the Ascension and Legendary Weapons, and while I have not personally lobbied for increased access to the Fractal one, that isn’t because I’m against the idea, but just because I don’t like it enough to care personally. If anyone else did care, I certainly wouldn’t try to shut him up.

There’s plenty of unreasonable things you need to do for Legendaries right now, but those are reasons why people will do the content for them.

But again, the requirements for the Legendary Armor are currently the MOST unreasonable, and therefore the most concerning. I mean I hate PvP, I hated playing through the league seasons, but I still found doing so considerably more reasonable than the requirements to unlock the Envoy armor, and we’re still only halfway there on those!

Then they can just not worry about it. Much like how players won’t build Legendary Weapons if they absolutely cannot do map completion, POI searching kills them on the inside.

People choosing to abandon a goal because it’s not worth the effort should NEVER be taken as “working as intended.” No good developer would set out with the goal to crush souls. Any time a player expresses that they really want something, but that the current methods of earning them are just too painful to tolerate, the first reaction should not be “well good, that’s working out then,” it should be “well then how can we come up with alternate ways for getting there that might be fun for a broader range of players.”

That doesn’t mean lowering the bar to the absolute minimum, but it does mean bringing it more in line with the average player.

If they don’t like the Authentic Raid Experience, they certainly won’t want a lesser version of it.

How can you speak for them? If the thing that they don’t like raiding is the inconvenience and repeated failures, then why would they not enjoy a version that was more convenient and had less constant failure? That’s like arguing “well if they don’t like pizza with ham and pineapple, then surely there’s no way that they could enjoy it with only cheese.”

Arenanet just needs to release Legendary Quality Armor outside of raids, somewhere. It’s that simple.

And I’m not opposed to that, they definitely should, although I still see value in having an easier version of these exact raids. But careful with the hedging, “Legendary Quality Armor” implies that it would be a different skin, which would not be an acceptable solution. Armor skins are not fungible, players want the ones they want. If the alternate source provided a “legendary quality armor” with a completely different appearance, maybe some players would even like it more, but some would like it less, and still want the one locked behind raiding. And of course many players would want both, to mix and match the pieces they like. For example, if I were just handed access to the Envoy armor they’ve shown, I certainly wouldn’t wear all of it on all my heavy characters. I wouldn’t likely wear the shoulders at all, and maybe not the gloves, that would take some testing, but there are definitely bits I’d want on various characters. I imagine the same would be true of any alternative set.

There is no “separate, but equal” in armor.

That’s a large part of the appeal of raiding, getting better at it! Raiding is demanding and expects failure or death, that’s not by accident but design of raiding at its very core.

And that’s why I despise the very core of raiding, and want no part of any of that, but I do want what an easier mode could bring to the table, the parts of Forsaken Thicket that are fun and interesting, without that “core.”

You’re thinking about it a bit backwards, the weeks of training are definitely for first kills, but also to improve and eventually make the rewards farm-able. That’s a design choice, which is why Arenanet implemented Weekly Rewards and a Currency Cap.

Right, but again, spending weeks learning the raid doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to months of superior payouts. It’s an inherently unbalanced reward mechanism. Players should be rewarded directly for the time they spend, not indirectly on time it’s assumed they spent.

You’re thinking about it a bit backwards, the weeks of training are definitely for first kills, but also to improve and eventually make the rewards farm-able. That’s a design choice, which is why Arenanet implemented Weekly Rewards and a Currency Cap.

Again, I don’t think it should have to cover every build under the sun, but if you’ve got a solid generic DPS build or whatever, it should continue to work fine, they shouldn’t say “oh, if you’re a [class] then the only way you’ll be useful is if you change to this one metabuild.”

- Breakbars (Not everyone runs CC, making CC a prime mechanic to dealing with an enemy would be imposing too much on players)

Expecting a player to slot a specific utility or two to handle breakbars is fine. Expecting them to completely change their weapons, armor, or traiting for CC is a bit much (at the very least until we get trait loadouts).

It wasn’t on the table at the time, the content needs change over time. The community demanded difficult instanced content with unique rewards, they got it. And now you want to take part of it away?

No, I want to take none of it away. I want to add on easier versions. If you want to argue that me having an easier version would “take away” from your enjoyment of the current hard raids, then you’d obviously have to accept that you having those hard mode raids “takes away” from my enjoyment of the existing content. And there are more of me than of you.

Dungeons were originally advertised exactly like raids, as a “hardcore challenging experience.” The players didn’t like that, so they got nerfed.

no, not really.
they just got bugfixes because there was stuff wich wasn’t even working and some paths got an complete overhaul since they were this broken.

the only thing that ever got nerfed out of the game was twilight arbor path foward/up, because people were to dumb to play it.
and an “even harder” path got released into the game for that one.

tbh: go on olfd videos / threads on reddit / gw2forums and look some stuff up.

people claim content xyz is too hard and it needs to be toned down. they raged about warriors being such a high dmg class and literally every other class does no dmg.
most of them had zero idea about the game itself and while most of it is pretty much unchanged, people change over time, since they learned or they saw how others did it and suddenly realized: oh, its not as hard or class x is not the best dmg class.
…their horizon about it was just not far enough. they just had a wall infront of them on wich they stared, beliving in the stuff they wrote, even tho there was 0 truth in it.

right now the same happens with raids. the learn curve of most people is still the same.
the beliving in stuff they hear is still the same (i heard stuff even from members of “semi speedclear” guilds in terms of raids where i just had to bang my head against a wall since they didn’t understand a single thing of what they said or the concept behind it…from players where u think, okay, they might be not the very best, but at least they know their kitten an can play to a certain level at least).

so, anet should only do one thing: push out more raids (also other content ofc) and give most people way more time to catch up.

and i have faith in anet at least in this case, that they completly overlook the easymode forum warriors.
raids are already in a easymode state. make them harder is a option yes, but easier? for 10 man? hell naw.

if the pros can do all those lowmans (3 man vg by SC or all the other lowmans by other guilds, seen it?) or with kitten down gear, why should a organised group of 10 not being able to do it?

easymode for training is absoluty not necessary. as othes said, it would get abused. player would do the same in team content as they do in openworld wich is pressing 1.
…and thats a big concern about content which is called “team content”.

i absolutly don’t want to see content getting kittened over. just look at hot when it came out.
so many cool stuff, hard heropoints. the whole thing was a challenge if you were alone.
i had tons of fun doing all those challenges alone.
one to two weeks later everything was dumbed down and i completly lost interest in doing those maps. totally uncool.

and yes, for me it is a huge problem wenn people get a shortcut through raids.
not because i don’t want that they don’t get any rewards. because i want that every player has to go through the same thing to get to the goal.

i absolutly don’t care about forum warriors crying over getting no loot.
they deserve to get no loot.
you have time writing hours of wall of texts? k. in the same time you could have killed 3 bosses.

your own problem. go back so sw or whatever u did before raids came out.