Different Raid Difficulty Would Satisfy Most
Again – about degrees. I’m not saying it was completely stamped out, just that with raids, they really have deviated from their typical approach to community and content accessibility – resulting in a much higher level of this kind of thing.
Literally and patently false.
Nothing they’ve done has changed or removed your ability to get into the content. Nothing they’ve done has removed your tools to form your own groups.
Again, this is your opinion, just as what I have said is my opinion. It is why I stress this conversation isn’t about absolutes – its about degrees.
This is all based on the perspective we bring to the situation.
There is a actually a great book about this from Umberto Eco entitled Kant and the Platypus. It talks about how our personal and cultural experiences/beliefs form our opinions and even our definitions of things around us – even those we hold to be sacrosanct (which you apparently do with the above).
In short, our personal perspectives define our personal realities. That is where our divergent opinions come from.
I respect that your opinion is different than mine. If you cannot find a way to respect the same of mine, then there is no point in the two of us continuing to contradict one another. It will just become a vicious circle with no end.
Sorry, there’s no reason to respect an opinion of you don’t put anything behind it.
Claim: Raids are not assessible because it’s hard to find a group to play with.
Response: It’s actually pretty easy if you make an lfg post or join a guild.
Reply: But it’s my opinion.
If all of your replies are just “it’s my opinion”, them it’s rational to dismiss them. It’s no longer a dialog — instead it’s a soapbox.
Debating the differences between our opinions is healthy – and what the forums should be all about.
As a good example, you and I have had some really good conversations about our differences of opinion, while still respecting that they are just that – our opinions.
But when the basis of someone’s argument is “what I say are the facts and thereby what you say is invalid – so now stop talking” over and over with no new argument or dialogue (which is what has happened here), then the process falls apart.
Mutual respect and a willingness to continue the dialogue. That is all I am asking for.
Again – about degrees. I’m not saying it was completely stamped out, just that with raids, they really have deviated from their typical approach to community and content accessibility – resulting in a much higher level of this kind of thing.
Literally and patently false.
Nothing they’ve done has changed or removed your ability to get into the content. Nothing they’ve done has removed your tools to form your own groups.
Again, this is your opinion, just as what I have said is my opinion. It is why I stress this conversation isn’t about absolutes – its about degrees.
This is all based on the perspective we bring to the situation.
There is a actually a great book about this from Umberto Eco entitled Kant and the Platypus. It talks about how our personal and cultural experiences/beliefs form our opinions and even our definitions of things around us – even those we hold to be sacrosanct (which you apparently do with the above).
In short, our personal perspectives define our personal realities. That is where our divergent opinions come from.
I respect that your opinion is different than mine. If you cannot find a way to respect the same of mine, then there is no point in the two of us continuing to contradict one another. It will just become a vicious circle with no end.
Sorry, there’s no reason to respect an opinion of you don’t put anything behind it.
Claim: Raids are not assessible because it’s hard to find a group to play with.
Response: It’s actually pretty easy if you make an lfg post or join a guild.
Reply: But it’s my opinion.
If all of your replies are just “it’s my opinion”, them it’s rational to dismiss them. It’s no longer a dialog — instead it’s a soapbox.
Debating the differences between our opinions is healthy – and what the forums should be all about.
As a good example, you and I have had some really good conversations about our differences of opinion, while still respecting that they are just that – our opinions.
But when the basis of someone’s argument is “what I say are the facts and thereby what you say is invalid – so now stop talking” over and over with no new argument or dialogue (which is what has happened here), then the process falls apart.
Mutual respect and a willingness to continue the dialogue. That is all I am asking for.
When you dismiss facts as opinion you’re shutting down any chance at civil discourse.
Fact, nothing Anet has done has changed your ability to create a group. This is irrefutable.
It’s your choice not to use the tools available to you which is putting you in your perceived state of inaccessibility.
This is due to your misuse and false equivocation of the term “accessible”. You view it as plug and play. That is not what raids are about and thus you view is grossly going to be distorted when it comes to what is and is not accessible.
This is due to your misuse and false equivocation of the term “accessible”. You view it as plug and play. That is not what raids are about and thus you view is grossly going to be distorted when it comes to what is and is not accessible.
Your constant sentences about true and only definitions of various subjects are quite amusing. Are you Anet employee, or maybe you have a vote in their management council? Because otherwise all your sentences are opinions and can be regarded only as such. And they are not more important than opinions of other people here.
Kiijna, Xast, Satis Ironwail, Sekhaina, Shira Forgesparkle, Sfeno, Nasibi, Tegeira, Rhonwe…
25 charracters
25 charracters
This is due to your misuse and false equivocation of the term “accessible”. You view it as plug and play. That is not what raids are about and thus you view is grossly going to be distorted when it comes to what is and is not accessible.
Your constant sentences about true and only definitions of various subjects are quite amusing. Are you Anet employee, or maybe you have a vote in their management council? Because otherwise all your sentences are opinions and can be regarded only as such. And they are not more important than opinions of other people here.
The sign you have nothing more to say – ad hominems.
I guess it really is hard for you to dispute the fact presented.
Fact, nothing Anet has done has changed your ability to create a group. This is irrefutable.
I’m on the “raids are accessible already” side of this argument, but this statement is pretty unfair. While you are technically right that it is just as easy to create a group as it has always been, it is harder to actually fill that group simply because of the jump from five to ten man squads.
The resources are definitely out there for newer players to get into raiding, but there’s no point in pretending that it’s super easy and you can just log on any time and start learning. It takes a certain (not unreasonable) amount of time and effort.
Fact, nothing Anet has done has changed your ability to create a group. This is irrefutable.
I’m on the “raids are accessible already” side of this argument, but this statement is pretty unfair. While you are technically right that it is just as easy to create a group as it has always been, it is harder to actually fill that group simply because of the jump from five to ten man squads.
The resources are definitely out there for newer players to get into raiding, but there’s no point in pretending that it’s super easy and you can just log on any time and start learning. It takes a certain (not unreasonable) amount of time and effort.
To which i’d say raids aren’t aimed at newer players. This is where the socializing aspect comes into play. You should aim to find players with a like mind early on during your gameplay get into a guild / add friends etc. Such that when you’re actually ready all you have to do is get 4-5 friends/ guildmates and start pugging with the most basic of lfg request.
Alternatively use the already existing setups for raid teaching guilds. A special note for those in EU who are going to complain about a lack of these, start forming your own, nothing is stopping you from doing so.
Fact, nothing Anet has done has changed your ability to create a group. This is irrefutable.
I’m on the “raids are accessible already” side of this argument, but this statement is pretty unfair. While you are technically right that it is just as easy to create a group as it has always been, it is harder to actually fill that group simply because of the jump from five to ten man squads.
The resources are definitely out there for newer players to get into raiding, but there’s no point in pretending that it’s super easy and you can just log on any time and start learning. It takes a certain (not unreasonable) amount of time and effort.
To which i’d say raids aren’t aimed at newer players. This is where the socializing aspect comes into play. You should aim to find players with a like mind early on during your gameplay get into a guild / add friends etc. Such that when you’re actually ready all you have to do is get 4-5 friends/ guildmates and start pugging with the most basic of lfg request.
Alternatively use the already existing setups for raid teaching guilds. A special note for those in EU who are going to complain about a lack of these, start forming your own, nothing is stopping you from doing so.
I would agree with all of that, I even wrote that I thought the amount of effort required was fair. I was only suggesting that your statement about anet doing nothing to affect players’ ability to get a group was misleading, because it is obviously harder to find nine players than it is to find four.
Raids in this game are a joke, they’re cleared 1-3 days after they come out compared to the months it takes other games.\
And you want them easier?
Let’s be honest here, what people are concealing is their dislike for a need to organize 10 people into a group to manage a raid kill, so they want a raid format where coordination is utterly unnecessary to get a loot pinata.
Raids in this game are a joke, they’re cleared 1-3 days after they come out compared to the months it takes other games.\
And you want them easier?
Let’s be honest here, what people are concealing is their dislike for a need to organize 10 people into a group to manage a raid kill, so they want a raid format where coordination is utterly unnecessary to get a loot pinata.
You have to consider we all have varying thresholds for ‘difficult’. Some people still struggle with T3 fractals. Some will never clear Arah. Others still will clear a raid wing on the first day without getting downed even once.
The entire point of tiered difficulty allows for more people to clear the raids at a level they personally find challenging.
Of course, this is extremely unlikely. At best we’re going to see a continuation of the current trend – encounters varying from the quick and simple to more complex and gruelling.
Raids in this game are a joke, they’re cleared 1-3 days after they come out compared to the months it takes other games.\
And you want them easier?
Let’s be honest here, what people are concealing is their dislike for a need to organize 10 people into a group to manage a raid kill, so they want a raid format where coordination is utterly unnecessary to get a loot pinata.
You have to consider we all have varying thresholds for ‘difficult’. Some people still struggle with T3 fractals. Some will never clear Arah. Others still will clear a raid wing on the first day without getting downed even once.
The entire point of tiered difficulty allows for more people to clear the raids at a level they personally find challenging.
Of course, this is extremely unlikely. At best we’re going to see a continuation of the current trend – encounters varying from the quick and simple to more complex and gruelling.
Well, yeah. But if they can’t clear Arah or T3 fractals, they should spend their time honing their skills on those before trying to raid.
There is absolutely needed at least an easier mode for raids. If a new player wants to start raiding, they just can’t since the player community made it impossible for begginers to play it (in any other mmo the only requirment is the item lvl of your gear… here that’s not enough anymore with this stupid LI what the player base found out). This way they can’t learn the basic mechanics. This way they can’t play the hard(er) raids and can’t make the legendary armor set.
It is not sadistic to create an incentive to get a player to play something they very well might not enjoy, it adds icing to the cake for those who like it, and there’s always the possibility that it will create interest in those who originally thought they might dislike it, in fact turn around to like the content. This incentive is weighed against incentives of other content, and has been the driving force behind why we have seen rewards go from fluid to map specific.
I addressed that later in the post you’re quoting from. The tr;dr of it is that no, it is not sadistic for them to offer incentives to get players to TRY new modes, but by necessity these rewards should be relatively quick and easy to acquire, because there is nothing to be gained by encouraging players to continue in a mode that the player has already learned they do not enjoy.
It would also take a monumental overhaul of just about every single reward system in place. The precarious balancing of how some rewards would be rewarded faster in this method of gameplay, versus another would drive up overhead on content deployment. Every single new reward to come out from now on, would have to be gauged against every prior system.
They already have to do this to come degree, since the majority of rewards are in gold, or something that can be converted into gold, and an excessively generous or stingy gold reward can cause the content to be over/underplayed relative to genuine interest.
Besides, while I agree it would be difficult to balance things perfectly, it is not necessary to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Basically, I agree that the “original” method should always be objectively superior to alternatives. The PvP backpiece is a simple example, it should always be easiest to acquire it by completing Path to Ascension I-IV in their current forms. Any alternate methods should take more time, more effort to complete, such that there should be no ambiguity. “If you enjoy PvP, by all means, PvP for it, nothing else would be anywhere near as efficient.” But, if you really don’t enjoy PvP, alternatives should be available, such that you can earn the vast majority of the components without having to PvP for them.
So say there are methods A, B, and C for earning an item. The goal would be to have option A take 75% of the time/effort of B or C, and clearly be better for anyone that enjoys that activity at all. Then the second goal would be to keep B and C to within at least 10% difference, maybe B is slightly more efficient than C, to the point that more players would pick B than C, but still if you really enjoyed C, it might take you slightly longer that way, but not so much longer that you’d give up on it entirely.
They’ve shown that they are capable of this when they put their mind to it, although obviously they sometimes just choose not to address such imbalances.
…There would be damage beyond repair, I don’t believe the players that genuinely enjoy a kind of content, would like these ‘locusts’ abusing their gameplay, creating a toxic environment through harassment of ‘You aren’t killing Vinewrath fast enough! Everyone report her!’ kind of mentality.
But this has always been a factor in the game. I’m sure people who love PvP don’t enjoy having so many disinterested players just grinding out their Ascensions either. Allowing alternate methods would DECREASE these behaviors, not increase them, since a player wouldn’t have to pursue any given path to an item, they would have options.
This has never been a game in which the ONLY people doing an activity are the ones who find that particular activity to be the most fun, but my recommendation would move us closer to that, rather than further way.
This isn’t actually a bad idea, which they could incorporate into some sort of Achievements for doing certain activities during the release of this new content, and it is only temporarily. A kind of head-start achievement where you can get a fairly unique skin that would later start seeing rare drops come from monsters a month later or something along those lines as an example.
I don’t see any reason to time gate it. You’d want people who show up six months after the event launches to have some reason to try it as much as people who were there at the launch (assuming it’s designed as viable content). The idea isn’t to gate it via time, but rather via effort. To again use PvP as an example, the full Ascension chain is a huge pain that takes a lot of time and effort, and is not something non-PvPers should be expected to complete if they want the Ascension.
But to earn one of the ingredients, the Wings of the Recruit, all that is required is that you complete the Amber tier once, something that any player is capable of within a dozen rounds or so (likely less). So my recommendation there would be to make it so that these wings can ONLY be acquired via this method, forcing players to play at least that much PvP, but then allowing them to acquire all other pieces via other means. Full PvP would still be the fastest method, but only that small amount of PvP would be necessary to it. Of course, you could clear this requirement any time that the leagues are open.
…But this achievement incentive could not be the main goal of the content. Something bigger and shinier or whatever would have to be the main goal.
No. You’re missing the point entirely. Yes, you would have big, shiny, long term goals, but you wouldn’t bind them to specific methods. Players may choose to continue doing that specific content until they get the big shiny long term goal, and if they enjoy that content, then that’s exactly what they would do, but if they don’t enjoy the content, then they should be free to go without abandoning that long term goal entirely.
ANet has nothing to gain by, encouraging players to play PvP or Raids or moa farming for long amounts of time if that’s not what the player wants to be doing. ANet benefits only by having players playing the game for long periods of time, regardless of the specific activity, so long as the player is engaged and enjoying himself. So you set those long term goals, but in a way where the player’s tastes determine which activities he’s doing, rather than his desire for specific rewards.
Of course, there’s also developer pride in and love for their creations. ANet doesn’t think about your supposed hordes of players who want what you want, they think that what they’ve built is some good stuff, and that people will like it if they would only try it — thus the carrot.
Either they already think they’re doing what’s best for them, and the players, or they’re seriously deluded. So, who is right, you or them? Al least they’ve got metrics. While metrics don’t always tell the tale, what is it that you’ve got?
I think it’s relatively safe to say that the developers have drastically different ideas of what the players actually want than the players do. Need I mention eSports?
As others have noted, compromise indicates some give and take. When they incorporate variable difficulty into raiding (and they do need to), they will need to compromise the rewards players receive as well – that just makes sense.
Agreed, and I think most players are prepared for that. The real point of contention is that some raiders insist that any easier mode should have NO rewards, which I believe is as ridiculous as the imagined strawmen that are asking for 100% equal rewards between the modes, and then there is the second argument, between those asking that the easier mode offer a reduced quantity of the raid-specific rewards, vs. those who insist that the easier mode cannot offer any amount of raid-specific rewards(ie a path to Legendary armor). I think this disagreement is a more reasonable one for both sides, but my position is still firmly in the camp that both should offer a path to Legendary armor, just that the easier mode should take longer.
When you give magnitite shards as a reward for easy mode, nothing of the raids would be exclusive anymore, since you can buy everything (skin, mini) with these.
You do realize that you can still earn Magnetite shards just by FAILING at the hard mode bosses, right? I think that when it comes to collecting these, clearing the easy mode versions should not be terribly more efficient than just wiping constantly at hard mode bosses, and of course failing the easy mode bosses should gain you nothing.
On vale guardian would you only require 1-3 people to enter the green circle for it to not explode? Would there be only 1 red orb active at a time and have its movement speed slowed down? Less blue AoE? More time between floor lighting up? Far fewer green circle spawns during the fight? A general damage reduction on all ablities so you can heal through green circle explosions and red orbs? That fight would look like a complete joke.
There are plenty of ways to do it and everyone has their preferences. My own is to leave in every mechanic, but make the failures less punishing. Require 3 people to catch the green circles, but reduce the damage if you fail so that most players would stay on their feet. You’d feel it, but be unlikely to wipe. Same with red orbs, still around, just less damage if you don’t clear them. Allow too many failure to stack up and wiping would still be possible, it would just be less likely.
The only reason raids are good is because of it’s unforgiving nature.
That is your personal opinion and if you feel that way then easy mode would not be for you and you should stick to hard mode. But not everyone feels like you do, and easy mode would exist for these players to enjoy as well.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
There is absolutely needed at least an easier mode for raids. If a new player wants to start raiding, they just can’t since the player community made it impossible for begginers to play it (in any other mmo the only requirment is the item lvl of your gear… here that’s not enough anymore with this stupid LI what the player base found out). This way they can’t learn the basic mechanics. This way they can’t play the hard(er) raids and can’t make the legendary armor set.
Nope, please, read the thread. Accessibility without bigger requirements is given by looking for teaching guilds via forum, via reddit and even in the lfg are enough “training” or “teaching runs”, right now at this moment.
Took me 3 runs of the dungeon to get the bug.
I addressed that later in the post you’re quoting from. The tr;dr of it is that no, it is not sadistic for them to offer incentives to get players to TRY new modes, but by necessity these rewards should be relatively quick and easy to acquire, because there is nothing to be gained by encouraging players to continue in a mode that the player has already learned they do not enjoy.
Because the content dies out quicker? The moment you bring in the prospect that rewards have to be rewarded quicker is the moment you are going into territory that will never happen. You want to have players participate at least a decent amount of time in new modes or content to help with the starting life-span or else you start having some very upset players wanting new content a week after the new content released, and they have an awesome few months to deal with nothing.
Also fyi, at this point is where everything you have requested thus far begins to fall apart, and I will start from here:
They already have to do this to come degree, since the majority of rewards are in gold, or something that can be converted into gold, and an excessively generous or stingy gold reward can cause the content to be over/underplayed relative to genuine interest.
And we have seen Arenanet steadily move away from the universal gold standard because of this. We cannot afford universal currencies or rewards that you can farm because it can trivialize content or make some content obscenely long to get done.
Besides, while I agree it would be difficult to balance things perfectly, it is not necessary to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Basically, I agree that the “original” method should always be objectively superior to alternatives. The PvP backpiece is a simple example, it should always be easiest to acquire it by completing Path to Ascension I-IV in their current forms. Any alternate methods should take more time, more effort to complete, such that there should be no ambiguity. “If you enjoy PvP, by all means, PvP for it, nothing else would be anywhere near as efficient.” But, if you really don’t enjoy PvP, alternatives should be available, such that you can earn the vast majority of the components without having to PvP for them.
And now you are playing the hypocrite here. Remember, your position has always been that regardless of the content you enjoy you should be able to earn every single reward in the game. That has been your position for a long time now, and that everything should be balanced to achieve everything. In fact you threw out some numbers to me a long time ago that if it took something like 10 weeks to get some Legendary Armor, it should be something about 90% as effective for a task like farming bandit crests in Silverwastes (I believe I likely jumbled up those values, but you sincerely disagreed with my proposal that it should be 5 times longer due to the effort/time ratio).
Now you say you want the main path to be the most effective means?
…Let’s continue.
So say there are methods A, B, and C for earning an item. The goal would be to have option A take 75% of the time/effort of B or C, and clearly be better for anyone that enjoys that activity at all. Then the second goal would be to keep B and C to within at least 10% difference, maybe B is slightly more efficient than C, to the point that more players would pick B than C, but still if you really enjoyed C, it might take you slightly longer that way, but not so much longer that you’d give up on it entirely.
They’ve shown that they are capable of this when they put their mind to it, although obviously they sometimes just choose not to address such imbalances.
And this is a nice analogy, but the realistic model would be not something like A to C, we have to balance around everything here if we want to cater to your model. Try kitten , where we have to evaluate how fast Jumping Puzzle enthusiasts get their Ascalonian Catacomb Weapons compared to the Auric Basin Lump farmers. But what if farming Karma in Orr needs to be faster, because the Risen are so much more difficult? No, that’s not right, that’s too elitist for the World Boss Train crew who are farming Ectos. You are not balancing a few things here Ohoni, you have to balance All of it. And if you don’t balance all of it, then someone ELSE is going to complain about why they can’t get the same rewards as everyone else.
There’s no middle-ground here, and I am being completely serious about those groups, or at the very least you have to look only in your Wallet and see the different currencies in play. Those don’t even include future currencies.
But this has always been a factor in the game. I’m sure people who love PvP don’t enjoy having so many disinterested players just grinding out their Ascensions either. Allowing alternate methods would DECREASE these behaviors, not increase them, since a player wouldn’t have to pursue any given path to an item, they would have options.
This has never been a game in which the ONLY people doing an activity are the ones who find that particular activity to be the most fun, but my recommendation would move us closer to that, rather than further way.
It does not matter, the factor would be escalated because there would be one method that could innocently enough be too fast at the rate of getting a particular reward, and all hell will break loose for that particular content.
The scale you are seeing today where maybe an occasional Event Map of Vinewrath has a sour apple complaining and everyone else dismisses him or just ignores it, would not be the case here. Try quite a few more, constant rage whispers, just overall worse toxicity. They would NOT take the alternative, because the reward would be earned far too slow for any normal player. These kinds of things would happen far more often than you think, on many more maps.
I don’t see any reason to time gate it. You’d want people who show up six months after the event launches to have some reason to try it as much as people who were there at the launch (assuming it’s designed as viable content). The idea isn’t to gate it via time, but rather via effort. To again use PvP as an example, the full Ascension chain is a huge pain that takes a lot of time and effort, and is not something non-PvPers should be expected to complete if they want the Ascension.
I was more projecting a sort of hype for the new content with the preemptive reward, but in this regard I suppose it wouldn’t be terribly wrong for it not to be time-gated. ‘Getting feet wet’ kind of thing works too.
But to earn one of the ingredients, the Wings of the Recruit, all that is required is that you complete the Amber tier once, something that any player is capable of within a dozen rounds or so (likely less). So my recommendation there would be to make it so that these wings can ONLY be acquired via this method, forcing players to play at least that much PvP, but then allowing them to acquire all other pieces via other means. Full PvP would still be the fastest method, but only that small amount of PvP would be necessary to it. Of course, you could clear this requirement any time that the leagues are open.
Just see my argument above, you have to balance it across at least all the currencies (save the ones you cannot get anymore, WvW tickets /ahem )
No. You’re missing the point entirely. Yes, you would have big, shiny, long term goals, but you wouldn’t bind them to specific methods. Players may choose to continue doing that specific content until they get the big shiny long term goal, and if they enjoy that content, then that’s exactly what they would do, but if they don’t enjoy the content, then they should be free to go without abandoning that long term goal entirely.
As long as you realize the truth of what I said above was.
ANet has nothing to gain by, encouraging players to play PvP or Raids or moa farming for long amounts of time if that’s not what the player wants to be doing. ANet benefits only by having players playing the game for long periods of time, regardless of the specific activity, so long as the player is engaged and enjoying himself. So you set those long term goals, but in a way where the player’s tastes determine which activities he’s doing, rather than his desire for specific rewards.
Idealistic, but cannot ever be set in reality. Everyone should be able to get the rewards, you don’t want to leave out the daily farmers right? The achievement point hunters? Dry Top Enthusiasts? Tangled Depths…Masochists? (Hey don’t look at me like that, Chak are annoying little pests.)
All or none but the content the reward is made for, take your pick.
Suicidal Warrior.
Putting Perspective on Zerg Sizes since 2012. Common Suffixes for 40+ include ~Zilla and ~Train
“Seriously, just dodge.”
Putting Perspective on Zerg Sizes since 2012. Common Suffixes for 40+ include ~Zilla and ~Train
“Seriously, just dodge.”
NSPride <3
this is also relevant ohoni:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rovutU4XnE
did you watch it? if not, you definitly should.
@skyper: u are godkitten right!
Because the content dies out quicker? The moment you bring in the prospect that rewards have to be rewarded quicker is the moment you are going into territory that will never happen.
But remember, the long term goals STAY long term, they are just more flexible. I’m in no way saying “instead of The Ascension requiring you to complete Paths I-IV, you should be able to get the whole thing by just clearing Amber once.” It still should take just as long to complete, all I would change is to offer alternate methods of doing so. Only the first step of a long process would be locked into a single mode, so that you have to do that single mode at least long enough to earn that first step, but then you would be free to do some other mode. The entire process of earning that reward would take just as long as it does now, longer if they pursued it outside the default area, the only change being made is in which activities you were earning them from.
The content would only “die out quicker” if nobody actually wanted to do that content in the first place, in which case it would deserve to die out quickly, so that ANet no longer throws resources after it and they can focus on content that players do enjoy.
Now you say you want the main path to be the most effective means?
…Let’s continue.
That’s always been my position, I’m sorry if you misunderstood it. Let me be clear right now, when it comes to earning Envoy armor, completing the existing versions of raids and using the existing methods should ALWAYS provide you with the armor in less total time, and with less total repetitions of the content than any alternative method.
The default should always remain the default, and if you can stomach it, it should always be the objectively “best” option. The only change I would want to see is for OTHER options to be on the table, taking longer and more effort, but still available. They have done this in the past with various rewards that were relatively cheap and simple to earn in a certain event, but then became more expensive or complicated to earn after that event ended.
This is also a factor in the HoT maps, where the “best” way to earn certain map reward currencies is clearly to farm that specific map, but if you really dislike one map, like Tangled Depths early on, you can earn currencies in one map and convert them to currencies for another. It’s lossy enough to be very inefficient, but useful enough to provide a safety net.
And this is a nice analogy, but the realistic model would be not something like A to C, we have to balance around everything here if we want to cater to your model. Try kitten , where we have to evaluate how fast Jumping Puzzle enthusiasts get their Ascalonian Catacomb Weapons compared to the Auric Basin Lump farmers. But what if farming Karma in Orr needs to be faster, because the Risen are so much more difficult? No, that’s not right, that’s too elitist for the World Boss Train crew who are farming Ectos. You are not balancing a few things here Ohoni, you have to balance All of it. And if you don’t balance all of it, then someone ELSE is going to complain about why they can’t get the same rewards as everyone else.
Again, they already do this, no major change involved. And even though there ARE “most efficient” ways of earning gold in the game, or earning karma, or whatever, that doesn’t mean that these are the methods that EVERY player uses. Many players are just content playing in the ways that they enjoy, and earning whatever gold or karma happens to result from that. Same thing here.
It does not matter, the factor would be escalated because there would be one method that could innocently enough be too fast at the rate of getting a particular reward, and all hell will break loose for that particular content.
Maybe, but all resolving that would take would be for them to behave proactively to correct such issues. They have adjusted reward payouts in the past, and can do so again. Most “broken” events in the game, from a reward standpoint, are broken only being ANet chooses to allow it, not because it would be difficult to correct. If an event pays out 5 tokens per cycle, and this turns out to make it too efficient, then they can drop it to 4, or even 3. No problem. And even if it is too efficient, who cares?
Just see my argument above, you have to balance it across at least all the currencies (save the ones you cannot get anymore, WvW tickets /ahem )
Perhaps, but again, you already have to do this. All rewards already need to be balanced across all currencies. This is not adding an extra burden. Also, it wouldn’t have to be a token system, it could perhaps be a collection, in which each item has several ways of earning it but you need to get one of each. Basically we know the recipe for The Ascension, so just have each piece acquirable through several means, each balanced in terms of effort and difficulty with what it would take to earn it via the PvP track.
Idealistic, but cannot ever be set in reality. Everyone should be able to get the rewards, you don’t want to leave out the daily farmers right? The achievement point hunters? Dry Top Enthusiasts? Tangled Depths…Masochists? (Hey don’t look at me like that, Chak are annoying little pests.)
Look, ideally, sure, those would all be methods, but of course the lazier methods would take much longer, perhaps unrealistically long (like 2000 daily completions to get Envoy Armor or something). More realistically, I’d settle for just having MORE options, to have all the core gameplay styles covered, so while your very favorite activity might not provide direct access to the reward you want, changes are that something at least similar to your favorite would. Players should be expected to be at least a little ell rounded, but expecting all players who want Envoy Armor to “git gud” and run the existing raids is just an unreasonable expectation.
this is also relevant ohoni:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rovutU4XnE
I watched it, and as a frequent WP watcher and Patreon supporter, I understand where he is coming from, but where he is coming from and where I am coming from are very different places, and I definitely disagree with several of the points he made in it, but that’s an entirely separate discussion.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I dunno man,
There is some interesting points for both sides in this thread but I reckon the raids are the best content that has come out in a long long time and im happy with them as they are when there so much else they could be working on.
changing the raids now would feel like tweaking the reception on your TV when your whole house is on fire.
Your comparison between HoT meta currencies is a poor one. The maps are of similar difficulty to farm currency so a conversion with a loss is fine and is fair.
Having easy raid currency convert into hard raid currency or rewards isn’t going to be fair to the people doing the current “hard” raid unless you have a massive conversion rate of like 1:1000 or something and not giving any raid specific rewards like weapons/minis/etc.
Also I disagree with more options, if you want the RAID envoy armor, do RAIDS.
I mean, I want my golden fractal skins just doing raids plz ok? That’s dumb.
FOR THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEN
Your comparison between HoT meta currencies is a poor one. The maps are of similar difficulty to farm currency so a conversion with a loss is fine and is fair.
They really aren’t equivalent, especially back at launch. By this point most of them have been worked out, but there are still some easier than others. The point is, you’d never want to farm one to buy currency for another unless you really hate that other map, but if you do really hate that other map, your bases are covered.
Having easy raid currency convert into hard raid currency or rewards isn’t going to be fair to the people doing the current “hard” raid unless you have a massive conversion rate of like 1:1000 or something and not giving any raid specific rewards like weapons/minis/etc.
Raiders will ALWAYS overvalue how Very Important they are and how Very Important the “work” they do inside a videogame is, but rest assured, it is not, they are not, and any conversion rate they arrive at would be more than fair to them and their efforts, probably well less than 1:1000 though.
Also I disagree with more options, if you want the RAID envoy armor, do RAIDS.
But again, what if you don’t want to do raids? Let me speed things up a bit here:
“then you don’t get the armor.”
But what if you really want that armor?
“then do the raids.”
And as you can probably guess, that line of reasoning will just go around and around without ever reaching an end, but the entire time, that player is left completely unsatisfied. The fact remains that so long as the player can reasonably desire the armor while simultaneously holding ZERO interest in playing the current raids, he is not being satisfied as a customer, and if sufficient players fall into that category, then it is in ANet’s interests to do something that would satisfy them.
“Do the raid” is not a satisfactory solution.
“Do without the armor” is not a satisfactory solution.
Suggest a satisfactory solution or step out of the way.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I have only done Gors and VG so far but I have a good idea of what would be a sufficient easy mode for these that would allow players to beat it but also train to do normal mode.
VG – Reduce seeker damage by about 20%, reduce boss HP by about 10%.
Gors – Reduce boss HP by about 10%.
That really is it. Every failed run I have been on has been because of 2 primary factors. For VG its odd seeker positioning and somewhat slow dips.
For Gors… its entirely slow DPS.
Rewards would be, keep mag shards the same as they are only used for asc armor, but remove unique drops, LI, and unlocks.
When people are able to beat VG easy with like 1 min left on the clock, that would be more than enough exp to do VG normal. Same with Gors easy.
The bosses right now are on that fine line where they are just out of reach of most players and practice is difficult because of hard failures. However if you soften some of those failures you can quickly train people to learn to react properly under hard circumstances.
You can’t get the armor without doing raids it’s that simple Ohoni, there are no satisfactory solutions because there isn’t a problem. You have to do the content to get rewarded for that content’s reward.
You’re basically wanting free stuff without having to work for it. In real life people would tell you to get a job to make money but your replies are basically
“Working” is not a satisfactory solution.
“Not having money” is not a satisfactory solution.
You seem to feel that you ‘deserve’ stuff and how raiders’ efforts aren’t worth much yet you seem to be unable to even muster that minimal level of effort to get the armor which says more about you than raiders.
FOR THE GREEEEEEEEEEEEN
Now you say you want the main path to be the most effective means?
Yeah, he’s been quite consistent about it. Now, notice, he also is quite consistent in saying that “most effective” shouldn’t mean “so good it blows all other options out of the water”. So no, 5-times the effort/time invested would be out too.
(how much would be reasonable would depend on the content and the base requirements. the longer the base requirement, the less relative difference between modes. If something takes an hour, then 5 hours for an alternate option wouldn’t be unreasonable, but if you go up to weeks or months it’s no longer so. When you get to times close to years, then even just doubling that time would be problematic.
And this is a nice analogy, but the realistic model would be not something like A to C, we have to balance around everything here if we want to cater to your model.
He’s been also quite consistent in admitting that while having everything be available through all avenues is his ideal, it’s likely not very practical, and so the best option would be to have everything obtainable by at least 3-4 different methods.
At that level balancing it becomes much more reasonable.
Yes, there would still be people that would complain, because there are always people that complain, but with every player having a choice, those complains would be much less visible, and would carry much less strength. Especially, if you’ve remembered to always add TP to those choices.
It does not matter, the factor would be escalated because there would be one method that could innocently enough be too fast at the rate of getting a particular reward, and all hell will break loose for that particular content.
When something is exclusive to one content, then by definition that method is the fastest way to obtain it. Shouldn’kitten by your reasoning, cause “all hell to break lose” for that content? If we give alternate methods, then the amount of people going for that reward in that mode will decrease, because no matter how effective, some people will still do it using other avenues.
The scale you are seeing today where maybe an occasional Event Map of Vinewrath has a sour apple complaining and everyone else dismisses him or just ignores it, would not be the case here. Try quite a few more, constant rage whispers, just overall worse toxicity. They would NOT take the alternative, because the reward would be earned far too slow for any normal player.
Unlike with exclusives, where the alternatives are much more reasonable.
Oh wait…
You’re basically wanting free stuff without having to work for it. In real life people would tell you to get a job to make money but your replies are basically
“Working” is not a satisfactory solution.
“Not having money” is not a satisfactory solution.
Except it’s more like demanding someone earned the money only through a very specific job. You can’t be a doctor or a businessman. You must be a lawyer, or it doesn’t count for some reason.
You seem to feel that you ‘deserve’ stuff
So do you.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
those complains would be much less visible, and would carry much less strength
So just like now when every single difficulty/reward thread is same ~5 people arguing in circles until the thread is closed by mod or a red post because nothing valuable or interesting has been said?
So do you.
Nah. Devs think that he deserves stuff.
(edited by TheRandomGuy.7246)
So just like now when every single difficulty/reward thread is same ~5 people arguing in circles until the thread is closed by mod or a red post because nothing valuable or interesting has been said?
Have you been to other sites lately, reddit, for example? I’d say that the raid opposition on official forums is the lowest of all media. And even here is far more that 5 people (notice that the number of people defending raids here isn’t that much higher either)
Nah. Devs think that he deserves stuff.
So, if devs changed their mind and decided others deserve it too (like they do all the time with other things), that would be all right. Duly noted.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Have you been to other sites lately, reddit, for example? I’d say that the raid opposition on official forums is the lowest of all media. And even here is far more that 5 people (notice that the number of people defending raids here isn’t that much higher either)
It’s pretty small on reddit too. A lot of those posts are just “I dislike raids”. No points, no demands, nothing useful.
So, if devs changed their mind and decided others deserve it too (like they do all the time with other things), that would be all right. Duly noted.
Yup. I don’t think I recall them making legendaries accessible outside of their intended content tho.
But remember, the long term goals STAY long term, they are just more flexible. I’m in no way saying “instead of The Ascension requiring you to complete Paths I-IV, you should be able to get the whole thing by just clearing Amber once.” It still should take just as long to complete, all I would change is to offer alternate methods of doing so. Only the first step of a long process would be locked into a single mode, so that you have to do that single mode at least long enough to earn that first step, but then you would be free to do some other mode. The entire process of earning that reward would take just as long as it does now, longer if they pursued it outside the default area, the only change being made is in which activities you were earning them from.
The content would only “die out quicker” if nobody actually wanted to do that content in the first place, in which case it would deserve to die out quickly, so that ANet no longer throws resources after it and they can focus on content that players do enjoy.
How would you balance that mess? Where would all the stats and numbers come from to accurately determine if A is only slightly slow than B or C, you cannot fathom how needlessly complicated your solution would be to attempt to balanced. Could you even come up with a number for how many HoT currencies would go into a Legendary Piece of Armor?
There’s so much that can go wrong that it’s extremely unreliable to make this request of Arenanet to do. This is nothing they have done before, they haven’t even figured out how to balance current reward systems yet with few options. For instance, why would you ever buy Obsidian Shards from the Fractal Vendor? It costs literal silver and relics for a single one. HoT Currencies take the map currency and karma. There’s proof right now that Arenanet can’t even balance a few paths correctly, let alone trying to add a few more on top of it!
That’s always been my position, I’m sorry if you misunderstood it. Let me be clear right now, when it comes to earning Envoy armor, completing the existing versions of raids and using the existing methods should ALWAYS provide you with the armor in less total time, and with less total repetitions of the content than any alternative method.
The default should always remain the default, and if you can stomach it, it should always be the objectively “best” option. The only change I would want to see is for OTHER options to be on the table, taking longer and more effort, but still available. They have done this in the past with various rewards that were relatively cheap and simple to earn in a certain event, but then became more expensive or complicated to earn after that event ended.
This is also a factor in the HoT maps, where the “best” way to earn certain map reward currencies is clearly to farm that specific map, but if you really dislike one map, like Tangled Depths early on, you can earn currencies in one map and convert them to currencies for another. It’s lossy enough to be very inefficient, but useful enough to provide a safety net.
How much more effort though? How do you measure effort? Time? Skill? There’s a lot going on here that you are just throwing out optimistic phrasing for?
If it were going to be based on time, for instance if a single piece of raid armor took a few months for a raider to obtain, the Verdant Brink Enthusiast would have to dedicate around a few months of Airship parts farmed at around the same pace.
What is that number Ohoni? Can you come up with it? I sure as hell can’t, at this pace I am thinking it is well above 10000 parts. And then you brought up conversions, what would these conversions be? 1 to 1 so you can go anywhere, but wait some currencies are farmed at a lot slower pace (Dry Top /cough).
A lot of your argument is just conceptual, again there’s a tremendous, easily unreasonable balancing act going on here.
Again, they already do this, no major change involved. And even though there ARE “most efficient” ways of earning gold in the game, or earning karma, or whatever, that doesn’t mean that these are the methods that EVERY player uses. Many players are just content playing in the ways that they enjoy, and earning whatever gold or karma happens to result from that. Same thing here.
They try, and failed, some methods are outright ignored because they are not balanced correctly. If they can’t balance methods in game that try to do what you want, what makes you think they can come close to balancing offering every exclusive reward to every unique vendor?
They can’t.
Maybe, but all resolving that would take would be for them to behave proactively to correct such issues. They have adjusted reward payouts in the past, and can do so again. Most “broken” events in the game, from a reward standpoint, are broken only being ANet chooses to allow it, not because it would be difficult to correct. If an event pays out 5 tokens per cycle, and this turns out to make it too efficient, then they can drop it to 4, or even 3. No problem. And even if it is too efficient, who cares?
Not if they have to continue adding content, there would be a lot of overhead at their headquarters if they mess up rewards. There would be a LOT of toxicity on the forums about ‘Why isn’t my method doing this faster?’ or ‘I hate how all the elitists are coming to my map to farm for this, they are harassing me!’
Then you mentioned simply nerfing or buffing events themselves. I didn’t even want to go down that balancing act yet but thank you for bringing it up as another point they cannot balance correctly. Do you think Auric Basin Multimap can ever be fixed? I assume you know what I am talking about. This is another point that will be escalated if everything can be rewarded to everyone.
Perhaps, but again, you already have to do this. All rewards already need to be balanced across all currencies. This is not adding an extra burden. Also, it wouldn’t have to be a token system, it could perhaps be a collection, in which each item has several ways of earning it but you need to get one of each. Basically we know the recipe for The Ascension, so just have each piece acquirable through several means, each balanced in terms of effort and difficulty with what it would take to earn it via the PvP track.
And now we are pulling in achievements and collections? You are just going everywhere tossing out ideas. How do you even evaluate these things? Have you done the Legendary Precursor crafting yet? That’s proof that Arenanet has not gotten the tech balanced yet just due to bugs and different stages where it repeats the same activity in a later collection.
I do have to thank you for taking the time to save me from pointing out the flawed systems.
Look, ideally, sure, those would all be methods, but of course the lazier methods would take much longer, perhaps unrealistically long (like 2000 daily completions to get Envoy Armor or something). More realistically, I’d settle for just having MORE options, to have all the core gameplay styles covered, so while your very favorite activity might not provide direct access to the reward you want, changes are that something at least similar to your favorite would. Players should be expected to be at least a little ell rounded, but expecting all players who want Envoy Armor to “git gud” and run the existing raids is just an unreasonable expectation.
You said this. I can pull up a conversation we had around 9 months ago in a different topic in the Instanced Raids Confirmed thread. We were talking about the raid exclusive rewards being delayed for everyone else for a while to give raiders adequate time to complete the set and show it off. This is part of the discussion where I offered my compromise a few posts before…
Ohoni.6057:
Well, if I recall the “compromise” offer was that it might take a month or so to get it via raids, and like 2-3 years to get it via alternate means. That was never going to be a starter. Others suggested that items might be exclusive for a period of 1-6 months, which is far more reasonable, and then be available for everyone else. I think if you’re going to hard lock the exclusivity period then the items should be relatively easy to earn, while if you only make them more time consuming to earn then they can involve a lot more effort. My point is, they shouldn’t say “you can’t even begin working on them for six months, and then once it becomes available it would take another six months to earn.” If the method itself takes six months then you should be able to get started immediately.
But no, I’ve always been in favor of that method as a compromise, so long as the time and effort required for the alternative is a fair one, and not some cruel joke.
Tell me Ohoni, is 2000 daily completions still a fair compromise? And Astralporing would you still say Ohoni is consistent with his arguments or has he been influenced by months of back and forth.
It’s good to know that you have slightly changed your position since back then.
Suicidal Warrior.
Putting Perspective on Zerg Sizes since 2012. Common Suffixes for 40+ include ~Zilla and ~Train
“Seriously, just dodge.”
Putting Perspective on Zerg Sizes since 2012. Common Suffixes for 40+ include ~Zilla and ~Train
“Seriously, just dodge.”
Have you been to other sites lately, reddit, for example? I’d say that the raid opposition on official forums is the lowest of all media. And even here is far more that 5 people (notice that the number of people defending raids here isn’t that much higher either)
It’s pretty small on reddit too. A lot of those posts are just “I dislike raids”. No points, no demands, nothing useful.
So, if devs changed their mind and decided others deserve it too (like they do all the time with other things), that would be all right. Duly noted.
Yup. I don’t think I recall them making legendaries accessible outside of their intended content tho.
I do remember them giving out legendaries as rewards for pvp tournaments. I remember them tweaking acquisition of legendary components several times as well (dungeon tokens from pvp reward tracks, WvW zones not being a part of map completion, changes to Gift of Battle, adding more ways to get obsi shards and clovers, etc).
What you have to remember about “intended content” is, that intentions can change.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
I think the best evidence that this would actually work is in the game right now – the first encounter in the Stronghold of the Faithful wing.
My guild has recently started taking multiple groups to successfully complete that fight – even with people who enjoy non meta builds. That isn’t something we can enjoyably do with the rest – but could (and would LOVE doing so) if there was a dual tier of difficulties.
That encounter feels like what I would like to see in a lower difficulty mode. If every fight offered two modes – one that was tuned around the level of that fight and one that was tuned around (or tuned higher than) Gorseval or Matthias, I think it would be well received. In fact, based on the fun people are having with that first fight, I know it would. This would probably even allow Anet to make the higher difficulty MUCH more difficult (as many agree they aren’t currently that challenging for the higher end raiders).
And, it is worth noting, while it isn’t the sole defining factor of the fight, part of what makes that first encounter feel more open is the lack of an enrage timer. Little changes like that can make enough of a difference in many cases.
You can’t get the armor without doing raids it’s that simple Ohoni, there are no satisfactory solutions because there isn’t a problem. You have to do the content to get rewarded for that content’s reward.
You’re basically wanting free stuff without having to work for it. In real life people would tell you to get a job to make money but your replies are basically
“Working” is not a satisfactory solution.
“Not having money” is not a satisfactory solution.
You seem to feel that you ‘deserve’ stuff and how raiders’ efforts aren’t worth much yet you seem to be unable to even muster that minimal level of effort to get the armor which says more about you than raiders.
Exactly. Ohoni is the reason Andrew Ryan went off to build a sub-aquatic city.
NSPride <3
You can’t get the armor without doing raids it’s that simple Ohoni, there are no satisfactory solutions because there isn’t a problem. You have to do the content to get rewarded for that content’s reward.
But that IS a problem. It may not be a problem that bothers you personally, but not bothering you personally does not make it not a problem. Either work towards a solution or step out of the conversation, because you cannot meaningfully contribute if you can’t even recognize that the problem exists.
You’re basically wanting free stuff without having to work for it.
No, I’m very clearly not.
You seem to feel that you ‘deserve’ stuff and how raiders’ efforts aren’t worth much yet you seem to be unable to even muster that minimal level of effort to get the armor which says more about you than raiders.
Not wanting to do something does not add value to that activity. I don’t want to clean out sewers with my bare hands, but that doesn’t mean that it should be a $600K job. If raiders like to raid, then that’s great, but it doesn’t make them better or more deserving of things than players who don’t like to raid.
If something takes an hour, then 5 hours for an alternate option wouldn’t be unreasonable, but if you go up to weeks or months it’s no longer so. When you get to times close to years, then even just doubling that time would be problematic.
Yes, the longer the time scales involved, the more the balance would shift from pure time-gates to “time and effort” gates, for example perhaps allowing players to complete the easy version twice per week instead of once, which would mean that if they had to do, say, three times as many runs, it would not take them three times as long from start to finish, it would only take them 1.5 times as long, but still require three times as many repetitions o the event.
When something is exclusive to one content, then by definition that method is the fastest way to obtain it. Shouldn’kitten by your reasoning, cause “all hell to break lose” for that content? If we give alternate methods, then the amount of people going for that reward in that mode will decrease, because no matter how effective, some people will still do it using other avenues.
Exactly.
Nah. Devs think that he deserves stuff.
Until they decide that other players also deserve stuff, which would be no less valid. That’s the issue here, you can’t stand on “well the devs have decided it’s this way, so this way is right.” The devs are not infallible, and the devs change their mind fairly regularly. What the devs have decided a thing should be this week may not be what it is next week. If you want to claim that you deserve something, not only under the current rules, but under all future rules as well, then you need to justify that without leaning on the developers, because in future, they may disagree with you.
How would you balance that mess? Where would all the stats and numbers come from to accurately determine if A is only slightly slow than B or C, you cannot fathom how needlessly complicated your solution would be to attempt to balanced.
Again, they already have to do this to balance existing rewards. Nothing would change about that. And perhaps they get it slightly wrong the first try, and players tend to gravitate towards a single unintended activity to grind out their points, but they’ve shown in the past that they have the capability to tweak those situations very rapidly (if not always a willingness to do so), so I can’t see it causing any major harm. Again, you’re arguing that the perfect should be the enemy of the good, if the change cannot be made to work 100% flawlessly then it shouldn’t be made at all. My point is that the existing game is already far from perfect, and these changes would improve things, even if some areas of it did have flaws as well.
Could you even come up with a number for how many HoT currencies would go into a Legendary Piece of Armor?
No, but that isn’t likely how I’d balance it. There might be elements of the legendary crafting that could be bought using HoT currencies, but more likely an item on that scale would be tied into achievements, requiring that you complete various objectives similar to Precursor crafting.
There’s so much that can go wrong that it’s extremely unreliable to make this request of Arenanet to do. This is nothing they have done before, they haven’t even figured out how to balance current reward systems yet with few options. For instance, why would you ever buy Obsidian Shards from the Fractal Vendor? It costs literal silver and relics for a single one. HoT Currencies take the map currency and karma. There’s proof right now that Arenanet can’t even balance a few paths correctly, let alone trying to add a few more on top of it!
And yet the game still works fine, which proves my point. Maybe they don’t get it perfect, but you still have options. Maybe buying Obsidian from the Fractal vendor is a terrible deal, but having the option is better than nothing if all you ever want to do is Fractal. They can continue to work towards a better balance, but even an imbalanced system is better than no options at all.
How much more effort though? How do you measure effort? Time? Skill? There’s a lot going on here that you are just throwing out optimistic phrasing for?
I would measure it as “time spent actively engaging the content, on average.” Of course each players time would vary, but I mean that if a hard mode raider spends say three hours a week in raids and needs say ten weeks to complete a task, then an easy mode version would require some combination of 3-6 hours spent in the raid per week for at least 15-20 weeks, possibly more, to match that result. Effort is work over time.
And then you brought up conversions, what would these conversions be? 1 to 1 so you can go anywhere, but wait some currencies are farmed at a lot slower pace (Dry Top /cough).
If there are more currency conversions added to the game (keeping in mind that they already do have plenty of currency conversions in the game), then of course they would have to be balanced, with the intention being that they aim to make them take equivalent time to earn either way, and then have a significant “penalty” on top of that, so that the original source is always the more efficient. This could be tricky for us players to theory out, but it’s actually much easier for ANet, since they have hard data for how quickly players are earning these currencies, what the peak efficiency is, the minimum, the median, etc., and can use that data to determine what a fair balance would be.
They try, and failed, some methods are outright ignored because they are not balanced correctly. If they can’t balance methods in game that try to do what you want, what makes you think they can come close to balancing offering every exclusive reward to every unique vendor?
They can’t.
And again, having an option that goes unused is still preferable to not having that option at all. Obviously the ideal is to balance them all evenly, but falling short of that ideal is still preferable to not attempting it at all.
Tell me Ohoni, is 2000 daily completions still a fair compromise? And Astralporing would you still say Ohoni is consistent with his arguments or has he been influenced by months of back and forth.
If all you’re doing is completing the daily achievements, yeah. I mean that’s fairly minimal effort, so it should take a loooong time. Now obviously I think that there should be plenty of middleground options for pursuing Legendary armor between “complete the hard mode raids” and “just do your dailies and wait for it.” Several options should take closer to 2-3 times as long as the existing methods.
Exactly. Ohoni is the reason Andrew Ryan went off to build a sub-aquatic city.
And that worked out great!
Seriously, it’s actually painful to my soul when people take on dystopian satire as a mission statement.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
I think the best evidence that this would actually work is in the game right now – the first encounter in the Stronghold of the Faithful wing.
My guild has recently started taking multiple groups to successfully complete that fight – even with people who enjoy non meta builds. That isn’t something we can enjoyably do with the rest – but could (and would LOVE doing so) if there was a dual tier of difficulties.
That encounter feels like what I would like to see in a lower difficulty mode. If every fight offered two modes – one that was tuned around the level of that fight and one that was tuned around (or tuned higher than) Gorseval or Matthias, I think it would be well received. In fact, based on the fun people are having with that first fight, I know it would. This would probably even allow Anet to make the higher difficulty MUCH more difficult (as many agree they aren’t currently that challenging for the higher end raiders).
And, it is worth noting, while it isn’t the sole defining factor of the fight, part of what makes that first encounter feel more open is the lack of an enrage timer. Little changes like that can make enough of a difference in many cases.
On the other hand that encounter is by far the worst in the game and if that’s what you would like to see in an easy mode fight then I don’t see how they could possibly be successful. Somehow I doubt that anyone would enjoy doing 9 siege the castles every week. Fights that easy aren’t fun to repeat, they are a chore.
If I were to pick a current fight for an example of “easy mode” it would be gorseval with 10-15% less hp and no walls, or slothasor with no evolved slublings and a fixed tank. That’s pretty easy but at least there’s enough pressure on the players that it feels like you accomplished something at the end.
On the other hand that encounter is by far the worst in the game and if that’s what you would like to see in an easy mode fight then I don’t see how they could possibly be successful. Somehow I doubt that anyone would enjoy doing 9 siege the castles every week. Fights that easy aren’t fun to repeat, they are a chore.
If I were to pick a current fight for an example of “easy mode” it would be gorseval with 10-15% less hp and no walls, or slothasor with no evolved slublings and a fixed tank. That’s pretty easy but at least there’s enough pressure on the players that it feels like you accomplished something at the end.
You may be right on this, but keep in mind, if you enjoy the current raids, you are not the target audience for an easy mode, so “it’s not fun for me (a raider),” would not be a sign of failure, it may be a sign of success.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
And that worked out great!
Seriously, it’s actually painful to my soul when people take on dystopian satire as a mission statement.
It failed because Ryan abandoned his ideology when he stepped in to interfere with Fontaine out of fear of his city’s discovery. Had he stuck with his original ideals, the city would have continued to flourish.
The ideal was sound. It was the execution (in addition to some communication issues regarding product side-effects) that failed.
NSPride <3
/facepalm.
and more words.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
and more words.
NSPride <3
and more words.
I’m with Ohoni on this one, discussing Bioshock is way off topic.
I think the best evidence that this would actually work is in the game right now – the first encounter in the Stronghold of the Faithful wing.
My guild has recently started taking multiple groups to successfully complete that fight – even with people who enjoy non meta builds. That isn’t something we can enjoyably do with the rest – but could (and would LOVE doing so) if there was a dual tier of difficulties.
That encounter feels like what I would like to see in a lower difficulty mode. If every fight offered two modes – one that was tuned around the level of that fight and one that was tuned around (or tuned higher than) Gorseval or Matthias, I think it would be well received. In fact, based on the fun people are having with that first fight, I know it would. This would probably even allow Anet to make the higher difficulty MUCH more difficult (as many agree they aren’t currently that challenging for the higher end raiders).
And, it is worth noting, while it isn’t the sole defining factor of the fight, part of what makes that first encounter feel more open is the lack of an enrage timer. Little changes like that can make enough of a difference in many cases.
I have a different takeaway — developing raids at different skill levels is far superior. You have easy raids like escort and hard raids like matthias. Diversity is king.
and more words.
I’m with Ohoni on this one, discussing Bioshock is way off topic.
My apologies, it wasn’t my intention to make that the current topic, so much as the ideology that it’s plot portrayed:
That what one earns is inherently entitled to the one who earned it, and doesn’t need to be forcefully distributed to others who did not; also, that the concept of “earning” is by nature unbalanced and shouldn’t be trifled with in an attempt of “balance.”
NSPride <3
I have a different takeaway — developing raids at different skill levels is far superior. You have easy raids like escort and hard raids like matthias. Diversity is king.
This is potentially true, but not really. For one thing, we currently have nine raid phases, only one of which (maybe up to 3?) are tuned to a degree that filthy casuals seem to enjoy, and the rest tuned for raider types. The casuals still won’t enjoy the other phases, while the raiders complain that the easier ones are “too easy.” Wouldn’t it be better if casuals had down-tuned versions of the other fights, while raiders perhaps got tighter-tuned versions of the easier ones?
Second, having some easier raid fights does not allow casual players to appreciate the story of the harder fights, so that issue is left unresolved.
Third, while players could grind phase 3.1 to earn some raid rewards, several of them currently require you to complete ALL the raid bosses, so that issue is left unresolved.
Basically, having 1-2 raid phases that are easier than others doesn’t solve much, it’s essentially the same “solution” as “if you don’t like raids, then just do Fractals/Dungeons instead.” It misses the point of what people are asking for when they say “I want an easier alternative for raiding.”
I really think that all raids should be of the same difficulty level (within a marked difficulty mode), or, if there is any difference in difficulty, it should be a gradual curve. Instead, we have raids that seem to go up and down quite a bit, where from what I’ve heard, on a difficult scale of 1-10, 10 being the hardest raid and 1 being faceroll, they seem to go something along the lines of 7,8,9,7,5,10,4,5,7, or something like that, rather than a smoother 6,7,8,7,8,9,8,9,10 progression.
So I think it would be best to just have two explicit difficulty modes, and for all “hard” raid phases to be relatively hard, and for all “easy” raid phases to be relatively easy, rather than to have only one version of each, and each with a rather random level of challenge.
That what one earns is inherently entitled to the one who earned it, and doesn’t need to be forcefully distributed to others who did not; also, that the concept of “earning” is by nature unbalanced and shouldn’t be trifled with in an attempt of “balance.”
And the point is, in a game, there is no such thing as “earned.” Everything in the game is gifted to the player by the developer. Hit a block with your fist? Here, have a gold coin. Catch the flag near the top? Here, have a bunch of points. They set out a hoop, you jump through it, you get a prize. If they decide to set out another hoop, and someone else jumps through that one, then they are as entitled to their prize as you are to yours. There is no objective value to anything, no objective “earned” reward, it is all distributed according to the systems the devs put into place, and the devs are free to change those systems as they see fit. If ANet decides to reward Legendary armor for farming moas, then players who earn them that way have just as much earned them as players who went through the raid route.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
I think the best evidence that this would actually work is in the game right now – the first encounter in the Stronghold of the Faithful wing.
My guild has recently started taking multiple groups to successfully complete that fight – even with people who enjoy non meta builds. That isn’t something we can enjoyably do with the rest – but could (and would LOVE doing so) if there was a dual tier of difficulties.
That encounter feels like what I would like to see in a lower difficulty mode. If every fight offered two modes – one that was tuned around the level of that fight and one that was tuned around (or tuned higher than) Gorseval or Matthias, I think it would be well received. In fact, based on the fun people are having with that first fight, I know it would. This would probably even allow Anet to make the higher difficulty MUCH more difficult (as many agree they aren’t currently that challenging for the higher end raiders).
And, it is worth noting, while it isn’t the sole defining factor of the fight, part of what makes that first encounter feel more open is the lack of an enrage timer. Little changes like that can make enough of a difference in many cases.
On the other hand that encounter is by far the worst in the game and if that’s what you would like to see in an easy mode fight then I don’t see how they could possibly be successful. Somehow I doubt that anyone would enjoy doing 9 siege the castles every week. Fights that easy aren’t fun to repeat, they are a chore.
If I were to pick a current fight for an example of “easy mode” it would be gorseval with 10-15% less hp and no walls, or slothasor with no evolved slublings and a fixed tank. That’s pretty easy but at least there’s enough pressure on the players that it feels like you accomplished something at the end.
These ideas sound fine to me. I definitely wasn’t advocating mirroring the escort – just looking at as a (very rough) baseline for a lower level of difficulty.
The people I have talked to are in two distinct camps on that fight – one side thinks its boring because it is too easy and the other really enjoys the mechanics without the overt pressure of the enrage timer or more stressful mechanics.
I firmly believe each fight in the raid could be tweaked to offer two different difficulty levels that would be entertaining to those two groups. I’m not a developer, so this is just guesswork, but I also believe that could probably be done in a way that would not add extensively to the development process.
I do believe it is needed – to ensure everyone has realistic access to the story experience, to provide a deeper raiding experience that appeals to a larger percentage of players (warranting continued support for raids), and to simply ensure people in both camps actually enjoy the raid experience as much as possible on every fight.
And, so it is still clear – each difficulty should have distinct rewards based on the effort expended. By no means should a lower level of difficulty offer the same reward. This is really all about the experience (and, possibly, to offer a training platform).
(edited by Blaeys.3102)
I agree completely, current raids should be easymode and another mode that will be harder
I agree completely, current raids should be easymode and another mode that will be harder
I would be fine with them adding an even harder mode if there is a large enough audience for that, but doing that without adding a mode easier than the current one would do nothing for the audience currently left out by the existing raids. It’s a bit like saying “we don’t need to add wheelchair ramps, but what we should do is add another staircase where each step is 2ft high, since that’d give a strong thigh workout.”
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
It would be a bad idea to make raids any more easy than they currently are considering timers can be ignored completely in a good group, and you can skip a lot of mechanics with good dps e.g no updraft Gorseval. I would support a hard mode, but considering raids are already pretty easy and they were designed to be more challenging content, anything easier would be an insult to the reason for the creation of raids in the first place.
There are plenty of videos and teaching groups out there for raids, there really is no excuse not to be able to run them by now
It would be a bad idea to make raids any more easy than they currently are considering timers can be ignored completely in a good group, and you can skip a lot of mechanics with good dps e.g no updraft Gorseval.
That opinion may hold true for you, and if so, then an easier mode would probably not be fun for you and you’d be happiest avoiding it, just understand that what you would enjoy is not what everyone would enjoy, and that what you need or do not need out of the raid has no bearing on what other players might need from it.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
It would be a bad idea to make raids any more easy than they currently are considering timers can be ignored completely in a good group, and you can skip a lot of mechanics with good dps e.g no updraft Gorseval.
That opinion may hold true for you, and if so, then an easier mode would probably not be fun for you and you’d be happiest avoiding it, just understand that what you would enjoy is not what everyone would enjoy, and that what you need or do not need out of the raid has no bearing on what other players might need from it.
…So everyone’s opinion is invalid because you have to have your way ?
How about you actually go and raid before trying to critique them any further. As is no one takes your post with a grain of salt because they know you have not, nor will not give raids an adequate chance.
Maybe if you did, you’d realize that dumbing down the raid any further would actually be an insult to their core design of being challenging end game content.
Maybe if you did, you’d realize that dumbing down the raid any further would actually be an insult to their core design of being challenging end game content.
And maybe you’d eventually realize (or admit to realizing) that making a separate, easier difficulty mode would not be “dumbing down” the current one, because it wouldn’t change it in the slightest.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Maybe if you did, you’d realize that dumbing down the raid any further would actually be an insult to their core design of being challenging end game content.
And maybe you’d eventually realize (or admit to realizing) that making a separate, easier difficulty mode would not be “dumbing down” the current one, because it wouldn’t change it in the slightest.
As long its pure Training Raid without Rewards
Making an easier raid will just make people play that instead. People pick the easy route over the hard route all the time in MMOs. It’s what you do in games really: you try to get past an obstacle to a goal the best (read: easiest) way you find, not the hardest way. It’s simple gaming psychology, that needs to be kept in mind when designing different difficulty modes.
If you put the same goal behind two different paths people will usually pick the easiest path, not the most fun path, and not the most challenging path. (exceptions always exist)
If designing any kind of easy mode raid, or training raid, the developers need to make sure that the goal of the easy raid shouldn’t become the same as the hard raid, as people will be conflicted between just grinding the easy raid a hundred vs doing the hard raid a dozen times and be done. The story for example is such a goal that could be taken away from the current raid as the current raids would still have their unique rewards.
It basically means that if done wrong, people will do the harder raid encounters less as it is much easier to to do the easier ones. Or the other way around and people will tire themselves out in the easy raid because they need to grind it so often and declare it bad content.
This is also why you never will see a system where you can trade one type of dungeon tokens for other types. For example. It would basically mean favouring the easiest dungeon, rather than making each dungeon valuable on their own.
It would invalidate alot of the content, even though more people would get the rewards.
If you start to consider every reward in the game as a “need” and a “must have” for every single player, then you’re going past the whole concept of a game, or it becomes very hard to not invalidate certain efforts players went through or can go through in order to get to said goal.
“It isn’t working!” CL4P-TP
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik