Guild Wars 2

Back in the days, people desperately tried to taxi into a TTS map to get their wurm loots and achievements. I’m sure if any guilds cannot solve their “our only limit is our number”, TTS is their practical solution.

Jerus.4350:

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?)

Oh, you! Don’t you start

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

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

But lets be real some one is going to beat the content day 1 and that someone is going to have people in his party wearing PTV/Clerics gear.

I sure hope no one can beat the content out of the box. If Clerics or PVT gear finds its way into successful runs, I hope it is because it is a necessary component of the success and not because they’re bad players using training-wheels-gear.

I am totally okay with tankier gear being necessary for success. Imagine a boss with an attack phase where it hits everyone in the raid who’s visible with a beam of energy that does a crapton of sustained damage and pretty much murders anyone in glass gear, but not everyone can stealth or else the boss resets. The one successful strategy might be 9 of the 10 people stealthing the entire phase while 1 cleric’s Guardian tanks, invuls, and blocks through the attack. Maybe it should be so much damage that there’d need to be two of these cleric’s Guardians that switch back and forth during this phase, moving into/out of the stealth blasts.

I’d call that kind of strategy awesome, especially because it would incorporate some tanking without killing the active gameplay of GW2. Hell, if we saw that exact strategy come to pass, I’d love every second of it.

Here’s to hoping.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Back in the days, people desperately tried to taxi into a TTS map to get their wurm loots and achievements.

Even further back in the day when Black Gate/Attuned were the only NA wurm killers TTS took an extra week or two to get their first wurm kill. Probably for the same reason that BG/Att took so long after Deso did it on EU: getting people to change their builds to actually contribute to the task at hand is a big leap when your guilds have literally no barrier of entry.

I would definitely agree that TTS or Attuned and whoever the world boss EU zerg guild is could probably put together a team of 8-15 really skilled players who would be just as good as any dungeon guild, but the question is can they do that and survive the ego related drama that comes with it? While dungeon guild players definitely have bigger egos on average, they are a bit more used to the “get your job done or gtfo” mentality.

And Ecori is right, it’s almost certain that in whatever content they introduce basic survival will be much more important than optimizing DPS, and the world first (assuming its actually challenging) will likely go to the team willing to adapt to that whether it means ranging bosses or wearing tanky gear.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I sure hope no one can beat the content out of the box. If Clerics or PVT gear finds its way into successful runs, I hope it is because it is a necessary component of the success and not because they’re bad players using training-wheels-gear.

I am totally okay with tankier gear being necessary for success. Imagine a boss with an attack phase where it hits everyone in the raid who’s visible with a beam of energy that does a crapton of sustained damage and pretty much murders anyone in glass gear, but not everyone can stealth or else the boss resets. The one successful strategy might be 9 of the 10 people stealthing the entire phase while 1 cleric’s Guardian tanks, invuls, and blocks through the attack. Maybe it should be so much damage that there’d need to be two of these cleric’s Guardians that switch back and forth during this phase, moving into/out of the stealth blasts.

I’d call that kind of strategy awesome, especially because it would incorporate some tanking without killing the active gameplay of GW2. Hell, if we saw that exact strategy come to pass, I’d love every second of it.

Here’s to hoping.

Oh, man! That’s gonna be so much fun! I can’t wait to spam “LF2 Cleric Guard then gtg” for an hour before I get frustrated and go back to SW!

Rising Dusk.2408:

I sure hope no one can beat the content out of the box. If Clerics or PVT gear finds its way into successful runs, I hope it is because it is a necessary component of the success and not because they’re bad players using training-wheels-gear.

I am totally okay with tankier gear being necessary for success. Imagine a boss with an attack phase where it hits everyone in the raid who’s visible with a beam of energy that does a crapton of sustained damage and pretty much murders anyone in glass gear, but not everyone can stealth or else the boss resets. The one successful strategy might be 9 of the 10 people stealthing the entire phase while 1 cleric’s Guardian tanks, invuls, and blocks through the attack. Maybe it should be so much damage that there’d need to be two of these cleric’s Guardians that switch back and forth during this phase, moving into/out of the stealth blasts.

I’d call that kind of strategy awesome, especially because it would incorporate some tanking without killing the active gameplay of GW2. Hell, if we saw that exact strategy come to pass, I’d love every second of it.

Here’s to hoping.

It’s probably going to be “meta” for the first few months as I believe it is meant as a crutch. When people figure out all the details of said raid, berserker/dps gear will slowly transition itself back to meta. Unless of course they nerf the kitten out of the base heal on water field blasts and made it scale incredibly well with healing power and force wipe potential party wide degen mechanics. Then again, this makes no sense as the blaster’s healing power will account for the heal, and let’s be real Cleric’s/Zealot thief sounds lame.

cthaeh.2168:

Oh, man! That’s gonna be so much fun! I can’t wait to spam “LF2 Cleric Guard then gtg” for an hour before I get frustrated and go back to SW!

Just remember kids, if you can beat the “challenging group content” with any group composition, then it’s not challenging. This content is not for the casuals who farm SW to buy shiny skins, this content is to challenge people to really put head-to-paper to figure out optimal compositions, optimal load-outs, and optimal strategies.

Honestly, if ANet does this right, the very idea of pubbing this “challenging group content” will be laughable unless you get some seriously epic pubs.

EcoRI.9273:

It’s probably going to be “meta” for the first few months as I believe it is meant as a crutch. When people figure out all the details of said raid, berserker/dps gear will slowly transition itself back to meta. Unless of course they nerf the kitten out of the base heal on water field blasts and made it scale incredibly well with healing power and force party wide degen mechanics.

Maybe! It’s hard to say. Short of a toughness or vitality check (ie. Boss does exactly 30k damage at some point and its fully unavoidable), there may not be a way to “force” the efficacy of tanky gear. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind some mechanics that at a minimum make us think of using it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Maybe! It’s hard to say. Short of a toughness or vitality check (ie. Boss does exactly 30k damage at some point and its fully unavoidable), there may not be a way to “force” the efficacy of tanky gear. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind some mechanics that at a minimum make us think of using it.

I don’t think you can really do a toughness/vitality check in this game as ele literally has about 1/2 the effective HP of a warrior. This is a huge gap for a stat check.
So if you do a tank check; Warrior will have so much head room to spec into DPS that other classes that fail the tank check will not see the light of day due to them speccing heavily into tank stats and losing a kitten ton of DPS.

Dude that picture is fake and gay

Kordash.2197:

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

If you wanted to main a ranger you’d be like deSade too!

All my HoM points with excitement waiting for my black moa and white raven….

Ooops, your class is garbage and so are those HoM pets.

EcoRI.9273:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Maybe! It’s hard to say. Short of a toughness or vitality check (ie. Boss does exactly 30k damage at some point and its fully unavoidable), there may not be a way to “force” the efficacy of tanky gear. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind some mechanics that at a minimum make us think of using it.

I don’t think you can really do a toughness/vitality check in this game as ele literally has about 1/2 the effective HP of a warrior. This is a huge gap for a stat check.
So if you do a tank check; Warrior will have so much head room to spec into DPS that other classes that fail the tank check will not see the light of day due to them speccing heavily into tank stats and losing a kitten ton of DPS.

It can still be a stat check, just make it so if you don’t pass the stat check it does a lethal % of your hp in damage, and if you do it does, say, 70% of your HP.

If they want, they can even shorten the gap for PvE, making it a 3k hp difference from light to heavy or whatever value.

They have the tools to go in and revamp their pve system. The question is whether they actually will.

And given how long it has taken them to release new pve content, and class damage balance is still horrendously bad, I’m willing to bet the answer is no.

It’s a F2P/B2P game. They only care for frontloaded sales. You want a MMO where classes are remotely balanced and the PvE content is maintained, you go play a subscription based game.

Rising Dusk.2408:

cthaeh.2168:

Oh, man! That’s gonna be so much fun! I can’t wait to spam “LF2 Cleric Guard then gtg” for an hour before I get frustrated and go back to SW!

Just remember kids, if you can beat the “challenging group content” with any group composition, then it’s not challenging. This content is not for the casuals who farm SW to buy shiny skins, this content is to challenge people to really put head-to-paper to figure out optimal compositions, optimal load-outs, and optimal strategies.

Honestly, if ANet does this right, the very idea of pubbing this “challenging group content” will be laughable unless you get some seriously epic pubs.

EcoRI.9273:

It’s probably going to be “meta” for the first few months as I believe it is meant as a crutch. When people figure out all the details of said raid, berserker/dps gear will slowly transition itself back to meta. Unless of course they nerf the kitten out of the base heal on water field blasts and made it scale incredibly well with healing power and force party wide degen mechanics.

Maybe! It’s hard to say. Short of a toughness or vitality check (ie. Boss does exactly 30k damage at some point and its fully unavoidable), there may not be a way to “force” the efficacy of tanky gear. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind some mechanics that at a minimum make us think of using it.

If anything that forces a frontline/midline/backline composition, it would be cool to see the challenge brings organization to the next level. I agree with you that if it’s raid, don’t expect to pug it and we have to fully invest in a certain role to make it work. However people are geared for this role is an entirely different thing.

Be it Nomad or Cleric or Soldier, or Shout Heal, or Altrustic Healing or Boon Share, or soft CC or Vampirism Tank or what not. Everything is on the table so why not using them.

Zenith.7301:

Kordash.2197:

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

If you wanted to main a ranger you’d be like deSade too!

All my HoM points with excitement waiting for my black moa and white raven….

Ooops, your class is garbage and so are those HoM pets.

A black moa ? And… and antoher withey bird ? Why not a chocobo ! Dude, serisouly, look at that bear ! So much better !

Rising Dusk.2408:

cthaeh.2168:

Oh, man! That’s gonna be so much fun! I can’t wait to spam “LF2 Cleric Guard then gtg” for an hour before I get frustrated and go back to SW!

Just remember kids, if you can beat the “challenging group content” with any group composition, then it’s not challenging. This content is not for the casuals who farm SW to buy shiny skins, this content is to challenge people to really put head-to-paper to figure out optimal compositions, optimal load-outs, and optimal strategies.

I partially disagree with what you say. The challenge is not necessary to be able to find the optimal comp/rotation on a paper but rather to challenge people skill playing their build optimally, (almost) independently of their build. That GW2 philosophy from the beginning I think : play what you want but play it well then !

That why I think challenging content is something that you can’t predict totally. Say you have a basic strat that is easy to learn, but you have to perform it well to succeed.

Just an example : imagine a boss in a small circular room with 5 posts around. When the posts turn red, there must be one player at each post in the next 4 seconds. If blue, nobody should be around, if green, one post should be occupied by at least 2 players.

If the conditions are not met : big damage from the boss. Now you can have this basics rules drawn on the wall of the room so that everybody knows. The trick is then to have a post illumination every 15-25 seconds but the colour is random each time. Now you set the boss HP to something like the best DPS output needs 2 to 3 minutes to kill it and the failure damage so that a leather armour with no additional vitality dies.

You then have an encounter for everyone : high DPS comps needs to perform extremely well on each post phase or they ll die (ofc you can negate big damages with aegis/block/dodge) and high sustain comps have space for errors but they need to be able to follow the rythm longer (which at some point open for more and more errors). But whatever the team, each time you have to be aware of what the boss does and not see it automatic. Plus since you have to move, ranged weapons may find a use.

To me the most challenging thing you can add to video game is the need of rapid adaptation to a situation you cannot predict 100%. You can also think about daily gambits on a monthly rotation or as I said in a previous post boss skills activated depending on team composition/playstyle.
Working on team / rotation on paper is not challenging after the guides are edited on the web.

Ranael.6423:

I partially disagree with what you say. The challenge is not necessary to be able to find the optimal comp/rotation on a paper but rather to challenge people skill playing their build optimally, (almost) independently of their build. That GW2 philosophy from the beginning I think : play what you want but play it well then !

I agree, but it should be about both things. It should have high demands on a player’s mechanical skill and ability to react, but it should also require strict planning of what classes are the best to fill what role for a particular encounter so that other classes can better perform their role. A lot of classes might be able to fill a lot of roles, but never with equal efficacy or ease; you will need to find the best class for the job so that other requirements of the encounter can be met even easier.

Ranael.6423:

To me the most challenging thing you can add to video game is the need of rapid adaptation to a situation you cannot predict 100%. You can also think about daily gambits on a monthly rotation or as I said in a previous post boss skills activated depending on team composition/playstyle.
Working on team / rotation on paper is not challenging after the guides are edited on the web.

You have a good point. This is particularly why fractals started out how they did, and ANet knows that randomness is important. And while randomness is important, it’s also important to keep it reasonable. Too much randomness will—randomly—create situations that may not be beatable or may require class skills that no one anticipated. The result would be team compositions based around being jacks of all trades since you have no idea what to expect. A better way to do this is to incorporate some randomness into it, but not too much.

A good example might be if there were an Arah themed raid, you could have a particular boss summon a squad of 10 elite Arah enemies of any of the types available in the dungeon. This means you might get spawns of 5 Illusionists, or 5 Hunters. In this case, your team can plan to handle whatever combination you might get, while most of the rest of the encounter progresses in an orderly fashion.

Also, while randomness is very important for replayability, there’s a reason Arah is still so popular after ~3 years and it’s because it’s fun. Making even repetitive content enjoyable is going to do a lot more for replayability than just making it a perpetually changing experience.

tl;dr: You’re right, but randomness, like all things, must be tuned carefully to keep it meaningful

I’m convinced that challenging group content will be more VW. But if not, then looking at their most recent content, I’m guessing it’ll be a lot of gameplay based on mechanics that play independent of your character:

So either the forced usage pre-defined builds (like all those instances playing as Caithe in the Living Story), or vortex-crystal fragility mechanics like in Glint’s Lair.