Guild Wars 2

Announcement is on the 29th, so not too long until we find out what their “Challenging Group Content” is.
https://i.imgur.com/8QT8Bno.png

PS: What kind of content do you want to see?

10-12 man non-linear raids please.

Prisoner.2419:

10-12 man non-linear raids please.

just anything non linear splits are fun!

Possible Spoiler: New world bosses. Thought 1111ing Teq was fun? We’ve got new world bosses with mildly challenging mechanics that nearly every open world map will eventually be able to complete with some basic organization even 5 minutes before the event starts. Don’t worry, you’ll still get rewards even if you die near immediately and sit there dead for the rest of the fight.

Possible Spoiler: Extremely linear instanced raid type content that any random party of N members can eventually complete for the same rewards as organized groups get. Some sort of time gate on rewards so that organized groups can’t get more just due to ability to repeat more in the same amount of time. Ideally N should be very large so that the contribution of any individual skill is minimized, and the ‘difficulty’ is merely basic coordination. Lots of cutscenes that cannot be skipped, dialog that cannot be skipped, and extremely simple and boring puzzles that involve no combat or anything else that’s interesting once you’ve solved them the first time.

Prove me wrong, ANET. Please prove me wrong.

Actually, that was more or less sarcasm. I sincerely hope ANET doesn’t disappoint us like that, and instead has something amazing to announce.

If you quit after the announcement, canihazyourstuffpl0x ?

On a more serious note i’m really curious of what they’ll come with.

Even if ‘challenging group content’ is extremely disappointing, I doubt I’ll be quitting the game. The fractal changes are probably enough to keep me interested, along with solos/duos/trios of existing instanced content.

With that said, I have hope that the announcement will be great. ANET might crush that hope again like they did when they said ‘no new dungeons’, but I hope not.

I think what zui said was right, they haven’t even announced the number of player able to play the challenging content so it may be open ended number, imagine a Lupicus like boss getting killed by like 100 people, you wouldn’t have to worry about anything because there’s literally too many people that his skills reach the maximum number of targets and you don’t even need to dodge. That would just be really sad and I hope they don’t do something like that. I also hope they take into account the personal contributions from each player and reward them appropriately, if someone dies like 100 times during an instance they shouldn’t qualify for a reward imo.

I know that you won’t be quitting, i just like silly jokes :P

Many changes where unexpected to me, like the recent PvP anouncement that i found very good and promising. The trick is not to expect something in particular, there is many ways to get some “challenging content”. But coming from a team that got me entertained for more than 5500 hours during the past 9 years, even if it doesn’t meet my expectation i think it will at least be fun to do for a little while. Let’s wait and see

You can always research stuff and make guides when you get bored with the actual game.

After almost 8 months of build up it better be good.

hope it will be realy challenging, so ppl, who wanna do it need to know how to play their class and communicate, so it wont ent like fractals, where you get pugs on 50 thats neither know mechanics nor know how to play their class (dont even talk bout communication).

also i hope it will realy be “group” content, so 5ppl. noticed it’s realy hard to even get 5 decent player together if you wont set up fixed times.
on the other hand a size of 9 would be great when you could (or need to) take one of every class.

And hopefully they make it worth to repeat more than once!

will there be a beta where we can test it pre release? I remember they opened ac at a beta for a dungeon impression.

UW/FoW based or similarly segmented, non linear instances. Probablywon’tbethough

- Zergable, open-world “raids” on a static timer.
- No party control/kicking, just ‘luck of the draw’ RNG based on who’s in your map instance.
- kitten support and maintenance support for the first few months after HoT launch, shortly followed by complete abandonment and neglect.
- Nonsensical reward structures that are disproportionate to the contents’ difficulty levels.
- Complete lack of community involvement in shaping the iterations of the content (if iterations even occur).

Wait, was the question what we want to see, or what we expect?

Well, i dont have a link or so, but didn’t Colin say that the challenging group content will NOT be open world?

He said something that was widely interpreted that way. But the quote was more: “This content is not the CGC, and takes place in the open-world” which doesn’t really rule out open-world CGC. He was describing a different piece of content, not making a statement about CGC.

Honestly, I’m just being a dong in my post above. I’d like to think that their CGC is nothing like the content I described. But, considering what we’ve seen and heard from them since launch, I do somewhat expect my description to be spot-on.

This is a game for casual players who don’t like having to improve their skills in order to progress — players who are looking for a challenge (other than staying awake in a zerg or overcoming boredom long enough to grind out some shiney) have been routinely disappointed by the game. I’d like to think that can change, but I’m certainly not expecting it to.

I can’t promise it won’t be linear to some extent, but I can promise that what they’re announcing here isn’t new world bosses. Beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. Let’s hope they’re actually challenging, though, with dynamic content; that’s the real key IMO.

dlonie.6547:

- Zergable, open-world “raids” on a static timer.
- No party control/kicking, just ‘luck of the draw’ RNG based on who’s in your map instance.
- kitten support and maintenance support for the first few months after HoT launch, shortly followed by complete abandonment and neglect.
- Nonsensical reward structures that are disproportionate to the contents’ difficulty levels.
- Complete lack of community involvement in shaping the iterations of the content (if iterations even occur).

Wait, was the question what we want to see, or what we expect?

For the first two points I still have high hopes, especially since they insist a lot on that feature for some time now. They know that there is an audience in the game for raid-like content (or call it hard mode dungeon). I don’t know the format and I hope it will at least worth to give it a try.

On the last points I am forced to admit that the past of the game makes your assumptions probable….

I still have faith though, the company is always surprising with nice new concepts.

You guys are so pessimistics, it looks like deSade took over your brains !

Pessimism is the only way to survive in the bitter wasteland known as dungeon forums.

Taku.6352:

Pessimism is the only way to survive in the bitter wasteland known as dungeon forums.

“Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 never changes.”

dlonie.6547:

- Zergable, open-world “raids” on a static timer.
- No party control/kicking, just ‘luck of the draw’ RNG based on who’s in your map instance.
- kitten support and maintenance support for the first few months after HoT launch, shortly followed by complete abandonment and neglect.
- Nonsensical reward structures that are disproportionate to the contents’ difficulty levels.
- Complete lack of community involvement in shaping the iterations of the content (if iterations even occur).

Wait, was the question what we want to see, or what we expect?

You’re more optimistic than I am.

What I’d like to see is Open World Events that promote some sort of PvP. Sort of what would happen in Niflhel when both teams try to kill the same beast, where you have to fight over objectives. But I highly doubt this will happen, the game is too “softcore” and the whole philosophy is not to fight over anything.

Perhaps something along the lines of Guild mission challenges, where you need to defend/attack several posts (kinda like CoF p1 at the Gate right before final boss, only on a larger scale, with more complex mechanics).

I’m afraid to ask though, is this CGC pictured as something like what Triple Trouble is now?

If so, I feel most people will opt out, unless there’s some level of progression to it, like if you do it daily for a period of time you could get some sort of unlock, or perhaps specific gear, or some sort of token.

What? I just… what?

You mean the bosses that only matter about the killshot? yeah… that’s great design.

And PVP for challenging group content, kitten off. What you describe is WvW, want to do it, join up in there.

the most challenging content would be bosses that react to player’s actions to break monotony.
Things like “this guy has huge DPS then challenge him with more attacks to see if he brought enough blocks/vigor” or " oh this player brought a lot of armor… then focus him with conditions to challenge his abilities and team coordination to manage condi removals" …. so depending on your team, your mood and other stuff the encounter would never be the same and you couldn’t solely rely on a skill rotation.
But that’d require bosses that don’t die in less than 3 minutes, and this wouldn’t please people and I’m not sure such programming is easy to do.

Don’t know about you but I’ll be scavenger hunting them precursors in the open world. I won’t have time for this challenging group content for a long while.

Anyways I hope they don’t force people to do these contents as part of the precursor hunt. Because casuals will complain that they can’t get the shinies and then anet will have to dumb down the “raid.”

Solution: normal and hard mode, you get tokens, in hard mode you get more than in easy. And maybe some additional fluff or just more reward.

I hope they make bosses where different gear stats has a meaning and not everything can be burned down with zerker. DPS has it’s meaning too, but I want to see some different roles.

make the content really hard , then add completing it a requirement for crafting the new precursors. Maybe then legendaries would carry some relevance

ProtoGunner.4953:

Solution: normal and hard mode, you get tokens, in hard mode you get more than in easy. And maybe some additional fluff or just more reward.

I hope they make bosses where different gear stats has a meaning and not everything can be burned down with zerker. DPS has it’s meaning too, but I want to see some different roles.

pretty easy to do. Husks = condi builds, some survival mechanics with attrition damage = sustain, shouldn’t be too hard to do. I’ve outlined it before on how I could see it done, not going to spend the time again, but if they are at all as creative as I think they can be they should be able to do it. Takes some calculations to make it right on that line of possible with anything but encouraging something, but it’s very very doable.

I think we all truthfully know in one word what we’re getting but afraid to get our hopes up. :P

The biggest question I have is: will it be 8 or 10 player?

NikeEU.7690:

The biggest question I have is: will it be 8 or 10 player?

Or 15. The leak on reddit suggested 10 or 15-mans.

I hope it won’t be 15 mans. Between 8 and 12 it can be manageable by most guild, but 15 start to be harder.

Well, then you need to practice hard so that 8 or 12 can make up the work of 15. It’s not like we have never lowmanned a content before.

What I’m more curious about is the cut off after which the boss starts to scale up. So far, open world bosses only start to scale up when more than 5 players engage them. Living story bosses/mechanics scale up when more than 1 player engage them… Things like that would identify whether the boss is difficult mechanically or artificially.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Well, then you need to practice hard so that 8 or 12 can make up the work of 15. It’s not like we have never lowmanned a content before.

True, but we never had content with dps check enrage timers either.

Like High Priest of Arah? Or Breach bosses? Or Vinewrath?

NikeEU.7690:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Well, then you need to practice hard so that 8 or 12 can make up the work of 15. It’s not like we have never lowmanned a content before.

True, but we never had content with dps check enrage timers either.

If they add enrage timers that actually stress 15 players who are used to blasting the spider queen out of existance before she exists at all, well, it’ll be the first game I’ve seen do that. I think they’ll make stuff the forces most players in this subforum to be very active, but not stressing them to the point that they’re going to fail in a full group. I’d expect such mechanics to require 60-80% efficiency most likely.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Like High Priest of Arah? Or Breach bosses? Or Vinewrath?

I’ve never seen those events go to time, except breach bosses when SW was new. It all depends on the tuning. If it’s actually “challenging” it will be challenging for 15 to bring enough DPS without dying. If 12 people can do it, at least initially, it will be a failure if the goal is “challenging.”

Jerus: if you can blast raid bosses out of existence before they spawn then the content is a failure.

That’s not what I said at all. My point was simply that I’ve never seen an enrage timer tuned to the type of people that are in this subforum. They give much more breathing room to those who actually optimize as they’re tuned to stress the average player not the top players.

NikeEU.7690:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Like High Priest of Arah? Or Breach bosses? Or Vinewrath?

If 12 people can do it, at least initially, it will be a failure if the goal is “challenging.”

History proves that it always happens after a challenge is learned – or nerfed, for all that matter.

Edit, even a guild of 20-30 people can do Teq comfortably now without the need of filling the whole map. Then ANet never explicitly tells for how many people was that boss designed. Is he still a challenging world boss? Perhaps, to several new players who have never fought him hundreds of times.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Well, then you need to practice hard so that 8 or 12 can make up the work of 15. It’s not like we have never lowmanned a content before.

True. But it doesn’t mean it’s a good design. At the expansion, I will probably be able to get 12 good players to do that with me in my guild. 6-8 months after the expansion? I probably won’t be able to do any day of the week, or I’ll have to train some new people to get better. And I’m in a 500 person guild.

Imagine what will be the situation for most guild. Most of them don’t have access to either 15 decent players or 8-12 good players.

I’m want the content to be hard, not that the creation of a party or team be hard. Again. Personally, I don’t think this will be much of an obstacle since I’m in a big guild. But that’s not the case for everybody.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

History proves that it always happens after a challenge is learned – or nerfed, for all that matter.

Edit, even a guild of 20-30 people can do Teq comfortably now without the need of filling the whole map. Then ANet never explicitly tells for how many people was that boss designed. Is he still a challenging world boss? Perhaps, to several new players who have never fought him hundreds of times.

Not really. Teq was never really challenging. Spreading basic knowledge was the difficult part. Soloing Lupi legit is still a good challenge, same with Liadri legit. If the difficulty of a content is just to have some knowledge of it, it’s not really challenging. If it’s the execution that is challenging, then it will stay challenging over time.

I’m not saying that people won’t have an easier time in the long run, but it will stay a challenge. Reacting quickly is challenging even if it’s been 100 times. Now if you can predict when you gonna need to react quickly, it’s another story.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

NikeEU.7690:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Like High Priest of Arah? Or Breach bosses? Or Vinewrath?

If 12 people can do it, at least initially, it will be a failure if the goal is “challenging.”

History proves that it always happens after a challenge is learned – or nerfed, for all that matter.

Edit, even a guild of 20-30 people can do Teq comfortably now without the need of filling the whole map. Then ANet never explicitly tells for how many people was that boss designed. Is he still a challenging world boss? Perhaps, to several new players who have never fought him hundreds of times.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/454437568

“You’re going to need like 80 players.”

Taku.6352:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

NikeEU.7690:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Like High Priest of Arah? Or Breach bosses? Or Vinewrath?

If 12 people can do it, at least initially, it will be a failure if the goal is “challenging.”

History proves that it always happens after a challenge is learned – or nerfed, for all that matter.

Edit, even a guild of 20-30 people can do Teq comfortably now without the need of filling the whole map. Then ANet never explicitly tells for how many people was that boss designed. Is he still a challenging world boss? Perhaps, to several new players who have never fought him hundreds of times.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/454437568

“You’re going to need like 80 players.”

What do you mean? and what is the time stamp of that twitch supposed to be relevant???

Thaddeus.4891:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Well, then you need to practice hard so that 8 or 12 can make up the work of 15. It’s not like we have never lowmanned a content before.

True. But it doesn’t mean it’s a good design. At the expansion, I will probably be able to get 12 good players to do that with me in my guild. 6-8 months after the expansion? I probably won’t be able to do any day of the week, or I’ll have to train some new people to get better. And I’m in a 500 person guild.

Imagine what will be the situation for most guild. Most of them don’t have access to either 15 decent players or 8-12 good players.

I’m want the content to be hard, not that the creation of a party or team be hard. Again. Personally, I don’t think this will be much of an obstacle since I’m in a big guild. But that’s not the case for everybody.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

History proves that it always happens after a challenge is learned – or nerfed, for all that matter.

Edit, even a guild of 20-30 people can do Teq comfortably now without the need of filling the whole map. Then ANet never explicitly tells for how many people was that boss designed. Is he still a challenging world boss? Perhaps, to several new players who have never fought him hundreds of times.

Not really. Teq was never really challenging. Spreading basic knowledge was the difficult part. Soloing Lupi legit is still a good challenge, same with Liadri legit. If the difficulty of a content is just to have some knowledge of it, it’s not really challenging. If it’s the execution that is challenging, then it will stay challenging over time.

I’m not saying that people won’t have an easier time in the long run, but it will stay a challenge. Reacting quickly is challenging even if it’s been 100 times. Now if you can predict when you gonna need to react quickly, it’s another story.

And Lupi is supposed to be a 5-man content >.>

IrisTheCasual.3742:

And Lupi is supposed to be a 5-man content >.>

Yes, but my point is that you can make challenging content that will stay challenging with fast pace actions that need some good reflexes. Which is not what most GW2 content is about right now. Right now it’s hard because you don’t know how to get by something, don’t know an attack or that the mob knowkback, etc.

But something like Lupi attacks need you to identify that an attack is coming and having only a small time to protect yourself. That’s is hard and need concentration even if you did it 100 times.

I’d put my money on it being 10, 15, or 20. 2,3 or 4 group content. As for having trouble getting people, if there is at all any trouble there’s going to be a guild (or two, or a dozen) forming up to tackle it and put it on farm status. Just like we have Zerkers of the Mists guild as a friends list for players like that.

@ Jer Jer: or… TTS

If guilds like TTS can beat the content out of the box then it won’t be challenging.

shots fired!

NikeEU.7690:

If guilds like TTS can beat the content out of the box then it won’t be challenging.

It they can beat it after 8 hours of hard work. Will you consider it challenging?

NikeEU.7690:

If guilds like TTS can beat the content out of the box then it won’t be challenging.

If DnT can beat the content out of the box then it won’t be challenging.

(we’re just repeating that comment and slotting random stuff in right?)