Guild Wars 2

Wildstar have recently announced that they’re letting staff go and are canceling their plans to expand into the Chinese market citing Wildstar’s performance since launch.

This is interesting in relation to Guild Wars 2 because Wildstar was built around the concept of hardcore raiding as its endgame and has experienced nothing but problems because of it. Wildstar started out as a buy and sub game but quickly converted to a free to play model once its playerbase started to collapse. This is because while a vocal contingent of players insisted that hardcore raiding was the best thing ever and the game was designed around that, the reality is that not only was it not enough to carry the game, but the difficulty itself drove players away.

Considering that GW2 and Wildstar are both made by NCSoft subsidiaries it’s highly unlikely that Anet were unaware of what was happening with Wildstar but decided to not only push ahead with raids but coupled them directly into the core story arc so you either have to raid or miss out on core game story unless you really like watching Youtube videos of other people playing the game. The entire situation here just strikes me as curious.

Do you think that Anet made the right call here? Either in regards to the development of raids at all or by tying them in so closely to the core story arc? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Definitely, the raid has been the best content I’ve played in GW2, I was surprised at how well they adapted the raid environment into the game.

Can’t wait for more.

I believe WS and GW2 are apples and oranges as regards raids. WS was aimed at the raid crowd, but made preparing to raid into a massive chore, while many raiders were getting older and no longer had the time to throw at preliminaries. GW2, on the other hand, has made raids accessible to organized groups with little to no preparation. They’re going to make some adjustments to LFG as regards to PuG raids, but that seems to be a minor blip compared to the issues with WS.

I’ve been very vocal about raids. I don’t think they were a bad idea, but I do think they could have been better implemented with GW2’s players in mind. I think that they do what they do very well, but they are very exclusionary to a lot of the players who are not up for that level of intense gameplay, and now some rather significant story elements are tied into them.

I am by no means arguing that they should “nerf” the existing raids, but I do think they should offer an alternate raiding experience for less coordinated groups, one with much lower chance of failure in exchange for reduced levels of reward. It should not take any significant amount of developer time to implement, leveraging existing methods of players choosing difficulty, and keeping all the existing content, just with the numbers tweaked to make it more on par with non-raid content in terms of difficulty.

Basically all they’d need to change is to tone down the damage of OHKO attacks to be a more moderate threat, and tone down the boss HP a bit to require less sustained DPS. Again, this would only be an optional mode, so people who like the raids in their current form could continue to play them like that. They have no reasonable grounds for complaint.

Probably a bit of mixed feeling.

I don’t think GW2 having raid is a good idea. But if GW2 don’t have raids, HOT end game content is probably a bit lacking.

The more things change, the more it stay the same. Probably why every mmorpg is so similar. GW2 also end up going the raid route.

Raiding was needed to attract a certain type of player. Whether they should actually attract that type of player however is another question. All my WoW friends for example quit back at launch due to the lack of an endgame, aka raiding. Without a gear grind however, I doubt raids themselves will be enough and legendary armor, which is obviously meant to fill that role, is only cosmetic. Considering ArenaNet’s track record, raiding will likely end up just like dungeons and fractals.

As for WildStar, they had problems on all fronts. For PvE, they devoted all of their endgame resources to dungeons and raids. Within the first month, they found that 60% of their players played entirely solo, at which point they immediately began to cut raids. From a raiding perspective, a lot of people just didn’t want to bother with attunements, gearing or got discouraged due to gold dungeons, resulting in a collapsing community. On the PvP side, win trading/carrying/exploiting was rampant and the better PvP gear being wanted for raids made it even worse. PuG/undergeared vs premade/overgeared quickly became a problem, discouraging new players.

As long as I am proven wrong and ascended will stay on the same level as legendary, people can have their raids if you ask me. I am torn between the good aspects to attract different kinds of people to gW2 while ironically the people attracted by raids are often not the kind of people I would like to have around me personally.

I am a little bit grumpy that i will miss out on optional story parts, but that can be helped by using Youtube.

Luckily, I also have a guild of like minded people who do not give a rats rektum about raids for various resaons.

I am not sure why Wildstar is bombing. From what I have seen, graphics are very cartoony and the idea of raid city sounds very unaapealing to me personally. But there could be various reasons, maybe it is just not a good game?

I am not sure why Wildstar is bombing. From what I have seen, graphics are very cartoony and the idea of raid city sounds very unaapealing to me personally. But there could be various reasons, maybe it is just not a good game?

In terms of gameplay, it was very much like vanilla WoW. It had a lot of "talk to the “!” NPC, get a kill quest, complete it, turn it in, repeat" style gameplay. There was pretty much no interaction with other players, and when there was it was them getting in your way by kill stealing. They had things like HoT’s Adventures, only other players could steal the things you were trying to get, making them impossible unless you were alone. They were also very lacking in real-estate, with only four “baby zones” that within an hour or so fed into two “teen zones,” and after that it was basically a single-zone track to the endgame, no real options. It also didn’t help that you couldn’t reasonably play alongside members of the “opposing” factions, even in PvE maps, although I hear they were more flexible about that later.

It basically just felt very dated in terms of gameplay, and very antiseptic, it was completely lacking in the community spirit that GW2 has. I never even got to the raiding portion of the game before I was too bored to continue, but I can’t help but think that if they weren’t so focused on the hardcore raiding experience that they could have spent more time working on making the open world content more engaging.

I think adding the raid was a good idea. What I think was a bad idea, and what made the raid a scapegoat for the situation it created, was creating an expansion with hardly anything in it that was remotely similar to the game it expands.

I also think making the raid based on this specific bit of GW1 lore that many people coming in from that game have been craving for years wasn’t a smart move.

This is the gaming equivalent of the sequal to a popular English language book only being published in Suomi. Sure, you can go live in Finland for a few years and learn the language, but would you? Speaking for myself, I would actually sooner learn a language to access content, than embrace a playing style that doesn’t entertain me.

The Raid was an excellent idea and at the moment it’s more like SAB, self-contained instanced content with its own storyline that has nothing to do with the overall Guild Wars 2 story arc, its own mechanics and even its own development team. It’s more like a game within a game (as it should be imo)

As long as the percentage of the playerbase doing this Raid is equal or larger than the percentage of developers working on it, and it keeps those players busy and happy, then it’s a 100% win for Anet.

If only SAB got an equal treatment (wink wink)

Raids are content, content is precious, more content = better game. However the gw2 team has a habit of regularly implement and handle content in a suboptimal manner to say the least.

The audience is too small, and they’re behind on adding PvE, WvW, and PvP content. I’d say yes, they’ve made a mistake going the raiding route. I used to be a raider, so I’m not just some casual talking out of my rear. But I know what it takes to create raids, and the sacrifices gaming companies have to make in order to create these raids.

Raids are never viewed as “content” by the masses, and we’re talking about 95% of your gaming playerbase that’ll never ever touch raids. Raids are also never enough, meaning your hardcore raiders will churn through them within a couple of weeks and they’re on farm mode, begging for more. No matter what you do short of putting a time gate on them, they are never enough, and raiders are never fully satisfied.

So just as I think dropping $400k to promote spvp pro leagues was a bad waste of resources given the small sPvP playerbase, I think spending dev time on raids while the game currently is lacking behind on content for PvE, WvW, and PvP is just a bad call. By dev time, people mistaken the handful of designers as all it took to create raids. It takes more than a handful of designers to create the raids you see in GW2, these include and not limited to art/graphic/animation assets, sound/music, story/lore, environment design, creation of legendary armors, and programming for new mechanics and abilities. All these resources put into raids to please the 2-5% of the player population that’ll try raids. Even less of them will play raids more than once or twice.

This coming at a time when PvE players are asking for more content because they’re through HoT and are getting bored farming the same 4 maps, many weren’t happy with HoT in the first place and the lack of Legendary weapon choices that they were promised. This coming at a time when WvW can’t be in a worse shape, WvW activities are way down, population balance is still bad, borderlands are a mess, and people just aren’t having fun. WvW needed a whole revamp, which would require resources. This coming at a time when sPvP could use new maps, new game modes/design, participation is still low despite an ongoing season, matchmaking still a mess, balance still whacky, etc..

If GW2 always had raids, I would’ve said fine, it’s a niche feature catered to a niche crowd. But it seems Anet thought spending resources on raids right now is a good idea, mainly to attract players from other MMO’s. You can really see the content they’ve sacrificed as a result. You see how short and incomplete HoT expansion is. You see how WvW didn’t even have a dedicated team working on it, it truly is a mess, so many have left the game due to neglect. I just don’t think right now is a good time to add raids when the game could use resources pretty much everywhere else. Anet is essentially gambling 95% of the player population in hopes to please the 2-5%. Anet isn’t Blizzard, when your resources are extremely limited, you need to put them to good use.

Apples and oranges.
Wildstar started out as a Raid centric game,and had very little and
too few content for casuals.Eventually it got a lot better in the casual
department,but apparently that was too late to reverse the situation.
And that was only one of the reasons that led to it’s current state.
Wildstar did not fail because of the content it had,the Raids,it failed to
retain players because it lacked the more casual content that brings in
the money.
GW2 has a ton of different content to satisfy all kinds of players,and
now it also has Raids.It didn’t become Raid focused.

I think that GW2’s Raids were a great addition to the game. They add more variety to what people can do with their time in-game and are not mandatory to play for gear. You can get BIS gear from a wide variety of places in GW2.

GW2 has a ton of different content to satisfy all kinds of players,and
now it also has Raids.It didn’t become Raid focused.

And yet the only new content added to the game over the past four and a half months has been raid wings. . .

The obsession with raids is a very bad idea, and it takes away from the casual content, which is what keeps gw2 alive. Dont try to compete with wow and being something you aint. Stop with the raid kittenz.

They’re not bad, but they’re not good either. Thankfully though, there’s no need to bother with them at all.

no even though im not playing them right now i have watched videos and they seem pretty fun, it is something to work towards being capable of.

I think raids are an interesting addition to the menu of things to do in game. I have greatly enjoyed raiding in other MMOs… while the raids here are definitely a contributing factor to my having all but entirely stopped playing GW2.

I think Developers’ widespread belief that they have to treat raiders’ time as a quantum leap more valuable than the time in-game of every other type of player by grossly over-incentivizing raids is a manifestation of mental illness. It’s misguided and it’s insulting.

Basically there’s an unwritten understanding setting up raids SUCKS. It is for the adventure craving typical player with limited free time one of the single worst things you can possibly get bogged down in. And so Devs keep tying an enormous porkchop around their raids’ necks to get the dog to play with it in the form of ‘exclusive’ advancement instead of improving the watching-paint-dry level of boredom brought on by the pre-raid logistics.

You should be raiding because you enjoy that kind of gameplay, not because they’ve jammed a hook in your mouth with a shiny you can get nowhere else and have been dragged into it with blood running down your torn cheek.

Any form of elitist content should not have existed in Guild Wars 2. GW2 was a great example of a game without elitism, where everyone did everything with anyone in the open world or from LFG. No need to gear check etc.

But then came raids. Now we have 20 insights required, full ascended, eternal required for raids, no noobs allowed. End game is basically raids now, and end game is elitism now. To do raids effectively, you have to find an elite guild and do it only with elite players, otherwise you can enjoy your raids with consecutive fails, frustrations and blamings.

Raids cater to the tiny percentage of the playerbase, who say it’s the most awesome thing to be added to the game. But then, now you’re casting away the majority of the playerbase who enjoyed the original GW2 that had no elitism, dangling them with content that they don’t like to do, or will frustrate them to hell.

the problem with raids is that the term is now poisoned by WOW with the antisocial elitist, have x or be benched/kicked noob mentaility., that is not what gaming should be about. Raids can work if a casual group can complete it with difficulty, thats a good experience. The repeat a boss 100 times until everyone has memorized everything to perfection or the faceroll AOE every boss experience is dated and creates a nasty gaming environment.

xiiliea.9356:

Any form of elitist content should not have existed in Guild Wars 2. GW2 was a great example of a game without elitism, where everyone did everything with anyone in the open world or from LFG. No need to gear check etc.

You obviously never ran dungeons or fractals before HoT. Sure, there were groups welcoming pretty much anyone, but they were in a significant minority compared to the groups asking ‘2 ele, 1ps, 1thief, 1guard exp meta’ with or without gear check and where you would be kicked if not playing well. Asking for experience is not new, and anyone is free to create a group where everyone is welcome. That group can also do the raids once they are past the initial grind/learning phase and this is not different from how it used to be before hot.

I think raids are awesome, especially since fracs became a snooze fest.

Raids are made for a small portion of the playerbase and it will backfire soon.

Well raid are a form of end game and it’s never a bad idea to produce different kind of end game. The whole idea being to keep the player base busy with in game content. The moment the player base is bored is the moment the game fall apart.

In this regard Anet seem to have a pretty good understanding of this fact. The only thing that may be lacking is the fact that raid, like PvP, is an area that is not thought by the vast majority of the player base. To much focus on raid will probably hurt the game more than anything.

As for my personal opinion, raids are incredibly boring due to the fact that you play for 10 minute and wait for your teammate to be ready for 1 hour. But that’s something that is right for all game that feature “raids”.

Johnsen.6253:

Raids are made for a small portion of the playerbase and it will backfire soon.

It remains to be seen if the surviving MMO studios can absorb the lesson of Wildstar bleeding out.

Tapioca.9062:

Wildstar have recently announced that they’re letting staff go and are canceling their plans to expand into the Chinese market citing Wildstar’s performance since launch.

This is interesting in relation to Guild Wars 2 because Wildstar was built around the concept of hardcore raiding as its endgame and has experienced nothing but problems because of it. Wildstar started out as a buy and sub game but quickly converted to a free to play model once its playerbase started to collapse. This is because while a vocal contingent of players insisted that hardcore raiding was the best thing ever and the game was designed around that, the reality is that not only was it not enough to carry the game, but the difficulty itself drove players away.

Considering that GW2 and Wildstar are both made by NCSoft subsidiaries it’s highly unlikely that Anet were unaware of what was happening with Wildstar but decided to not only push ahead with raids but coupled them directly into the core story arc so you either have to raid or miss out on core game story unless you really like watching Youtube videos of other people playing the game. The entire situation here just strikes me as curious.

Do you think that Anet made the right call here? Either in regards to the development of raids at all or by tying them in so closely to the core story arc? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Since I don’t know many who have been in raids, I wonder why the resources were used for that instead of fixing the many game-destroying bugs we still have or have added after three years of game-play…

And as far as raids being “end game” play, seems some haven’t been in WvW lately

WvW is the true end game of Guild Wars 2.

Nike.2631:

I think raids are an interesting addition to the menu of things to do in game. I have greatly enjoyed raiding in other MMOs… while the raids here are definitely a contributing factor to my having all but entirely stopped playing GW2.

I think Developers’ widespread belief that they have to treat raiders’ time as a quantum leap more valuable than the time in-game of every other type of player by grossly over-incentivizing raids is a manifestation of mental illness. It’s misguided and it’s insulting.

Basically there’s an unwritten understanding setting up raids SUCKS. It is for the adventure craving typical player with limited free time one of the single worst things you can possibly get bogged down in. And so Devs keep tying an enormous porkchop around their raids’ necks to get the dog to play with it in the form of ‘exclusive’ advancement instead of improving the watching-paint-dry level of boredom brought on by the pre-raid logistics.

You should be raiding because you enjoy that kind of gameplay, not because they’ve jammed a hook in your mouth with a shiny you can get nowhere else and have been dragged into it with blood running down your torn cheek.

Man, I wish you could double or triple “+” a post.

You obviously never ran dungeons or fractals before HoT. Sure, there were groups welcoming pretty much anyone, but they were in a significant minority compared to the groups asking ‘2 ele, 1ps, 1thief, 1guard exp meta’ with or without gear check and where you would be kicked if not playing well.

There were always elitist groups out there, and always will be, but there were also always more casual groups, and they were successful too. Yeah, if you were playing a suboptimal build you couldn’t join up with the “elites,” but you could still find an LFG for “just whoever,” and join that group, and usually succeed. I have never been a huge dungeon person, but there was a period where I was running CoF 1 and 2 daily, and only a handful of 2 runs collapsed due to player error and frustration.

The raids are a much more complex, inherently elitist, and easier to implode undertaking.

Fun fact, btw, raiding almost completely destroyed my guild, which had been running rather smoothly after HoT dropped, but then after the first raid we had some teams attempting the raid, some on TS and others not, and those on TS were pressuring the rest to join in, even just on listen mode, but for whatever reason the guild leader was very averse to voice chat, and the pressure to conform eventually caused her to snap and kick out some of the most vocal advocates, which then caused a Night of Drama where sides were taken and punches were thrown, and eventually most of the people involved settled back down, but it certainly was A Thing.

Personally I’ve been enjoying raiding immensely. The challenge is there but it is not gated behind a simple gear grind where the next boss always needs better equipment but instead they require learning the mechanics. This approach will keep every raid wing relevant till power creep comes in the form of new elite specs (although it’ll be much slower this way than through gear).

I have been fortunate enough to get myself into a raiding group and we’re doing the content in a regular schedule. The only problem I see for people not being able to at least try out raids is the hassle around it, not the content itself. Getting a group of 10 like-minded people can be a real problem. If Anet is able to make a system to bring these people together more efficiently raids will be a HUGE advantage for Guild Wars 2.

Good or bad, by now Anet should know and will (eventually) act accordingly.
Even without actual metrics this shouldn’t be to hard to figure out: In a situation where you have limited resources and your latest offering is considered underwhelming by a lot of people, is it a good idea to throw a substantial amount of resources at activities that only have a niche following?

Currently I am neither playing nor spending anything on GW2 – I hate that Anet seem hellbent on turning their, once different, MMO into a copy of the other 95% MMO’s.

Another raid wing? I don’t give a feline newbie about those, just like most other players.

Anet missed a trick, with a bit of balancing the new raids could have become the new 10 man dungeons, the repeat boss over and over model is old and stale.

the rewards given for completing a raid in the time it takes to complete them is better spent farming the silverwastes for profit instead.
the reason i don’t think raids work for GW2 is because of their point: legendary armor. not only is it not obtainable right now, but it’s just a skin. you’ll have to do a bit more convincing to make me want to do this kind of content.
think of what raids in other games reward you with, then compare them to GW2’s rewards for raiding. they are minimal to nothing in comparison.

Lightsbane.9012:

the rewards given for completing a raid in the time it takes to complete them is better spent farming the silverwastes for profit instead.
the reason i don’t think raids work for GW2 is because of their point: legendary armor. not only is it not obtainable right now, but it’s just a skin. you’ll have to do a bit more convincing to make me want to do this kind of content.
think of what raids in other games reward you with, then compare them to GW2’s rewards for raiding. they are minimal to nothing in comparison.

I’m affraid that you completly missed the point of “legendary items”. There are not “just a skin”. They are usefull item that you can adapt to your build as you wish, whenever and wherever you want. Skin is just a very tiny part of what make a legendary.

Dadnir.5038:

Lightsbane.9012:

the rewards given for completing a raid in the time it takes to complete them is better spent farming the silverwastes for profit instead.
the reason i don’t think raids work for GW2 is because of their point: legendary armor. not only is it not obtainable right now, but it’s just a skin. you’ll have to do a bit more convincing to make me want to do this kind of content.
think of what raids in other games reward you with, then compare them to GW2’s rewards for raiding. they are minimal to nothing in comparison.

I’m affraid that you completly missed the point of “legendary items”. There are not “just a skin”. They are usefull item that you can adapt to your build as you wish, whenever and wherever you want. Skin is just a very tiny part of what make a legendary.

i don’t know about you, but i’ve changed the stats on my frostfang maybe twice in the two years i’ve had it. if the reason you got your legendary items is not because of how it looks, you’re a rare breed indeed.

If sufficient people are doing them then it’s a good addition to the game.

Personally I wish they would add a “Raid Lite” for non raiders so they can go inside and do the content. They can give them a few dungeon tokens or something.

Raids a bad idea for gw2? Nah.. not really. Only thing i do hope is that they dont forget or skimp the other content in favour of them …eh.. well it happened already with dungeons so its a valid concern. Other then that… make your raids a-net, eventually more and more people will play em and for those who doesnt… dont skimp arround or nerf other instanced stuff anymore to get people to do em, you might regret it…

Na, I’m not playing them (though I might play some eventually) but I don’t have problem with them.

For all he talk about “elitists”, it’s the other side of the coin thats been getting increasing vocal and venomous, and not just in this game. Liking harder content such as raids dose not automatically mean you think you are higher than other players and make you elitist. Wanting to do speed runs so having requirements on group composition and experience that you put in the LFG dose not make you elitist. Having scorn for people who you perceive as being “less skilled” is elitist. Content existing that is harder than you like or requires more time and effort to prep for than you want to be bothered with is not a personal insult aimed at you.

The heart of raiding is the opposite of everything that Guild Wars got right. Fractals? The same. Not all content is good and brings everyone together. Some by nature divide and promote cliquing of the worse kind that will have guildmates kicking guildmates to the curb over builds and buddies. I’ve seen people invited to a raid only to be kicked at the last minute when someone “special” logged in.

Its already been guild poison for some causing players to leave guilds, or the game entirely. While those that are part of the “in crowd” are so ate up with pursuit of the shiny that they are too blind or simply don’t care that others in guild are being left out… But as long as they are in who cares?

Its content for a set few who get to pick and choose who’s in and who’s out, and all the candy-coating in the world won’t change the fact that everyday its happening to someone, somewhere in game who was left out of said content.

Anet had a mostly casual loyal player base that they betrayed with raids and it will hit there profits hard.If the game survives that lets hope for once they learn who there player base is.They did not make raids for the same 2 million+players they made guild wars 2 three years ago for.

i don’t know about you, but i’ve changed the stats on my frostfang maybe twice in the two years i’ve had it. if the reason you got your legendary items is not because of how it looks, you’re a rare breed indeed.

To be fair, armor is even more useful in this regard, since if you equip a weapon on a character, you’re pretty much defining the role you’ll play, like Scepter on a Necro is a condi weapon, so you’d always want condi stats. With armor though, you might have situations where you’d want to completely swap your build, and in such cases, stat-shifting armor would be more useful. Not to mention being able to shift it from character to character.

For all he talk about “elitists”, it’s the other side of the coin thats been getting increasing vocal and venomous, and not just in this game. Liking harder content such as raids dose not automatically mean you think you are higher than other players and make you elitist.

True, but advocating that everyone else doesn’t deserve the rewards you do would be elitist. I have no problem with people who like raids. I do have a problem with people that vocally attack those who would like to see “easy mode” raids or some equivalent way for more casual players to participate and work towards the same rewards.

Raids have like 5 developers working on them. They said so as much in an AMA. The lack of casual content is not because of raids. The state of WvW, Fractals, Dungeons, Open World, and the Living World have nothing to do with the raid team.

Raids have like 5 developers working on them. They said so as much in an AMA. The lack of casual content is not because of raids.

I’m not sure this is accurate. It may be that raids have a permanent staff of five people, five who’s job it is to work on raids all day, every day, but I have to believe that they borrow people from the “staff pool” to create content as well, environment modelers, artists designing gear that only drops in raids, creature creators, effect programmers, etc. If so, they would be taking those staffers’ time away from other potential activities.

If they truly are the work of only five people, start to finish, then these are clearly the best five people to work at ANet, and their talents could be spend accomplishing similarly incredible feats elsewhere in the game.

Wildstar is failing because the entire game is pretty awful. The raids are it’s only redeeming feature and an MMO is not going to be popular if all it has to offer is raiding. Even though GW2 makes raids now (by mind you only a small development team that is only a fraction of how many developers there are at Anet, it’s not a huge resource investment) it’s still a great game overall. The leveling experience is still one of the best and it has a huge amount of good casual friendly content which means you literally can’t compare the two games.

Wildstar failing because of it being awful despite of their raids does not equal that GW2 will because it added raids because GW2 has a lot more to offer, it seems like a ridiculous statement. People also like to ignore the fact that they did actually add quite a bit of other end-game content that isn’t raids in HoT, just because some people don’t like that content and some of it failed doesn’t mean it wasn’t made. Sometimes ideas fail and who knows what they’re currently working on to fix or add new stuff, people are so pessimistic…

raids don’t bother me, i’ll just never have legendary armor, and access to those mastery points. big deal -shrug-

i do hear the skritt in the back of my mind say “But don’t you want a shiny?!!” – and i say “I don’t need the stress”

Ohoni.6057:

i don’t know about you, but i’ve changed the stats on my frostfang maybe twice in the two years i’ve had it. if the reason you got your legendary items is not because of how it looks, you’re a rare breed indeed.

To be fair, armor is even more useful in this regard, since if you equip a weapon on a character, you’re pretty much defining the role you’ll play, like Scepter on a Necro is a condi weapon, so you’d always want condi stats. With armor though, you might have situations where you’d want to completely swap your build, and in such cases, stat-shifting armor would be more useful. Not to mention being able to shift it from character to character.

For all he talk about “elitists”, it’s the other side of the coin thats been getting increasing vocal and venomous, and not just in this game. Liking harder content such as raids dose not automatically mean you think you are higher than other players and make you elitist.

True, but advocating that everyone else doesn’t deserve the rewards you do would be elitist. I have no problem with people who like raids. I do have a problem with people that vocally attack those who would like to see “easy mode” raids or some equivalent way for more casual players to participate and work towards the same rewards.

Fair enough, though I doubt Anet will actually make all legendary armour now and in the future raid only. I also think people like unique rewards and that’s fine . Last I checked you still couldn’t get Fires of Balthazar without structured PvP (which I don’t do) and the legendary weapons in the game already do force you to complete certain content that you might not want to do to get the what you need for them. I’m not likely to ever get one because the whole process makes me cringe just thinking about it. I don’t think this is unfair.

it’s just another way of making items more valuable so the marketplace holds real world money value. that’s really the big problem, they are going for the marketplace shiny so hard, they are forgetting to make the game fun. – best way for the player to have fun again is to just not care. at least that’s what works for me, many places in gw1 i never got to see….and I don’t care. lol

you have to wonder, will legendary armors be account bound ?

how many legendaries were bought with real world cash.

The Legend – staff – 1079 Gold 99 Silver 0 Copper in trading post.

I’m happy I’m not the only one who finds raiding a waste of time better spent elsewhere.

There are other priorities Anet should be paying attention to.

Fair enough, though I doubt Anet will actually make all legendary armour now and in the future raid only.

I don’t know about that. They might add future options later, but given that it’s been four months since HoT released and they still don’t even have it in raids, I’m not holding my breath that they’ll add it to other game modes any time soon. I definitely hope that they do though.

I still think the better solution is to have “easy mode” raids, where pretty much any player would be able to participate on their own merits, and still progress towards the existing rewards, just at a slower pace than through the hard mode raids. The hardcore raiders would always have the cool stuff months before anyone else, maybe up to a year, but eventually everyone else could catch up. The easy mode raids would also act as “training wheels” to allow lower-skill players to eventually work their way up to the hard mode versions, instead of the current method of “bang your head against the wall until you get through, or get a concussion, whichever comes first.”

Last I checked you still couldn’t get Fires of Balthazar without structured PvP (which I don’t do) and the legendary weapons in the game already do force you to complete certain content that you might not want to do to get the what you need for them.

People often raise the “two wrongs obviously make a right” argument, but I’ve never believed in that. There are flaws with all the game modes right now, but a flaw in one mode does not justify a flaw in another, it just exists as something that should be fixed for its own reasons.

you have to wonder, will legendary armors be account bound ?

I kinda doubt that players will be able to sell legendary armor. Given the HoT weapons, that doesn’t seem to be the direction they want to go. Of course, they did make crafted precursors sellable, which is not the direction I would have gone with them.

there’s nothing wrong with them doing this, it is after all a business and people do have bills to pay – which cost of living is ruthlessly going up as always.

but if you watched the facebook movie “You have to make it fun first”

I’d rather anet go back to their roots and just make great games – they have the new framework that has been proven to work. Now forget about the shiny, and make the game fun again – just trust us, we won’t let you fall.

Lady gaga and beiber always had their fans backing them, even in those moments when autotune wasn’t there or lady gaga fell off the stage. Love is love…

go back to adopting us as the guys who you love to entertain with doing stuff you love…we figure out how to get your bills paid along the way! trust us!

I don’t necessarily think adding raids was a bad idea, but I do think it was a bad idea to place so much focus on the raid for so long. I think it would be better to alternate raid releases with content that’s more accessible to the general community of players so people who aren’t interested in raiding don’t feel bored or left out.