I already said I am fine with easy mode raids IF they take nothing away from current raids, (meaning no unique rewards, rewards are fine, just not magnetite shards or unique skins, or legendary armor).
That’s not “taking away” from raids. Raids would still have those things, it’s just that the easy mode would have them too.
Most of the content being produced by the Living World team was very, very poor in terms of replay-ability and longevity.
A fair point, but maybe they determined that they were worth it, not because of their longevity ratio, but because they so fully engaged players that even if they didn’t repeat them, they would feel more connected to the game and want to play other game elements more. I don’t know what metrics they take in, but perhaps they determined that people who played LS content were more likely to keep playing other content for longer. The LS is a foundation that gives added life to the rest of the content.
A fair point, but maybe they determined that they were worth it, not because of their longevity ratio, but because they so fully engaged players that even if they didn’t repeat them, they would feel more connected to the game and want to play other game elements more. I don’t know what metrics they take in, but perhaps they determined that people who played LS content were more likely to keep playing other content for longer. The LS is a foundation that gives added life to the rest of the content.
Considering their major restructuring of their teams the live team this year to be split more evenly, I’d say that they have probably determined it wasn’t that worth it.
(Source)
You’ve seen in past years that we went through times when the whole company worked on one thing. In 2013, the year we shipped 21 Living World updates, pretty much the whole company was working on Living World.
We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both. Within these groups we have cross-discipline teams with focused missions. For example on Live we have the PvP team, the WvW team, the Fractals team, the Raids team, the Living World team, the Legendaries team, and a couple others.
And why can’t we have both? You’re talking as if raids take away from these other parts of the game, and they do not.
please point out the exact post or phrase used to indicate proof of your point of view that STIHL is saying anything about raids taking away from other aspects of the game.
throwing my 2 cents in the pot here. raids should feel epic. amirite? old time EQ player here and it was an everyday occurrence to wrangle 50-100 people (in groups of 6… no fancy raid UI, and no voice coms at first) for a planes raid. that’s epic… on a grand scale. much more recently i played DDO… and while the group size for a raid was much smaller (max group size 12)… for the most part the raids themselves still had an epic feel to them… trouping through a multi-part maze where 2 of the first 4 phases could kill you if you didn’t complete them quickly enough… one of which was a guaranteed fail if you didn’t complete in time… followed by 2 rounds of fighting a balor? that’s still epic even with reduced group size. exploring a gigantic dwarven-made extraplaner bank vault that had an ongoing story woven into it replete with love, betrayals, doublecrosses, and forced teamwork to solve all the puzzles… followed by a fight with an ancient red dragon who liked her adventurers roasty toasty and covered in ketchup. that was epic.
now in GW2… the first time i ran TTT… taxiing in people until the map was full to bursting… sorting people by what job to do.. each head with a different mechanic, and needing teamwork and coordination to kill them all at nearly the same time… THAT was epic… my first time facing a dragon (i think it was Jormag)…so many people on my screen they literally bought my computer to a halt… dealing with all the mechanics… being told to “stand here” and getting the crash landing achievement… when i wasn’t expecting it and had no idea what was going to happen (i have some friends who are practical jokers… they raised me at least XD)…. that… was epic.
my first time running the raid didn’t feel as epic. its like 2 trial runs… like… if you can’t kill these two, don’t even bother to pass GO do not collect 200 dollars, please step your way out of the raid now. then the “boss”… no epic trek to find the boss… no puzzles… no minions to mow through first….its just “oh look… there’s a platform… with the boss… lets do this…” followed by “dodge… green…. dodge…. bounce….green…. dodge… green… bounce… dodge… green…” etc rinse repeat for 5 phases. i’m sorry, but no. no offense to the designers, but that’s not epic
was it a good idea to make a raid? apparently, because for some reason everyone wanted them even tho we already had some pretty epic encounters in game, they just weren’t labeled “raids”…was this a good implementation? IMHO not really. does having a raid that isn’t epic and is really nothing more than a skill-gate take anything away from the mechanics and enjoyment of other encounters of various types and difficulties in game? nope.
Some people just like different things, I find the open world bosses all to be an extreme bore and a grind, they’re easy, you can’t lose them, there’s 100+ people who you have no control over, and you dont actively do anything other than just straight up attack the boss if you’re the majority of players, and even if you aren’t just autoattacking, then the mechanics still aren’t very engaging and you don’t feel like you’re doing much.
Raids are actually fun, nothing else in PvE is.
Some people just like different things, I find the open world bosses all to be an extreme bore and a grind, they’re easy, you can’t lose them, there’s 100+ people who you have no control over, and you dont actively do anything other than just straight up attack the boss if you’re the majority of players, and even if you aren’t just autoattacking, then the mechanics still aren’t very engaging and you don’t feel like you’re doing much.
Raids are actually fun, nothing else in PvE is.
But in raids you still have nine other people that you have no control over (aside from kicking them out of the group), and the outcome is much more in their hands than yours. Any group activity is a shared experience.
I’m in favor of changes to world bosses to make them more interesting. I have some issues with the more recent world bosses, I do not think total failure should actually be an option, but more that the worse you do, the more time they take to complete, meaning that you can’t get to the next thing as quickly. But more mechanics, more direct impact on the outcome is certainly a positive factor.
But again, you like raids? Great. You like raids at the current challenge level? Great! Keep doing them, nobody is talking about taking them away. Yet. But if other people do not appreciate challenge the way you do, and want to have a less challenging version of the raids, support them too. Support them being as happy as you are, even if they are happy doing different things than make you happy.
They’re already making a less challenging version of the raids in fractals now. Also you CAN control the other 9 people because you can yell at them, tell them what to do, choose who they are (which you can’t do in open world without a huge guild), and kick them.
They’re already making a less challenging version of the raids in fractals now.
Again, Fractals are not raids.
Fractals are not a “less [anything]” versions of raids. Fractals are fractals, raids are raids, they are not similar, they are not substitutions. People REALLY need to stop saying “well you could just do X instead.” We KNOW we could do X instead, if we’re arguing that we want easy mode raids, it’s because X is not what we want to be doing.
Also you CAN control the other 9 people because you can yell at them, tell them what to do, choose who they are (which you can’t do in open world without a huge guild), and kick them.
Aside from being able to kick people, you can do all of those things in open world content. you even have some control over adding people to maps, I remember doing that all the time on TTS-run Queen’s Pavilion maps. It’s not efficient though. I definitely want better map control options to be available, but the point is, open world content is not necessarily that far off from raid content, it’s all in how it’s managed.
They’re already making a less challenging version of the raids in fractals now.
Source? I want to see some more specifics.
They’re already making a less challenging version of the raids in fractals now.
Again, Fractals are not raids.
Fractals are not a “less [anything]” versions of raids. Fractals are fractals, raids are raids, they are not similar, they are not substitutions. People REALLY need to stop saying “well you could just do X instead.” We KNOW we could do X instead, if we’re arguing that we want easy mode raids, it’s because X is not what we want to be doing.
Also you CAN control the other 9 people because you can yell at them, tell them what to do, choose who they are (which you can’t do in open world without a huge guild), and kick them.
Aside from being able to kick people, you can do all of those things in open world content. you even have some control over adding people to maps, I remember doing that all the time on TTS-run Queen’s Pavilion maps. It’s not efficient though. I definitely want better map control options to be available, but the point is, open world content is not necessarily that far off from raid content, it’s all in how it’s managed.
No what I mean is the devs have actually said that they are changing fractals to be like raids.
On the giant AMA:
“We want Fractals to be the content that fills this game space. They’re not quite there yet, but we’re working on making them less of an Hit point slog and more mechanically interesting, especially at higher scales.”
“At this time the Raids team doesn’t have any direct involvement with what the Fractals guys are doing (and by direct I mean going to the same meetings, or sitting next to each other talking through our designs). But I can say they have talked to us a little about how we approach our design docs and are adapting something similar for themselves. And if they invite us to come check out their content for feedback we will absolutely be there to help support them!”
It sounds at the very least they are taking advice from raids with how they are updating fractals.
No what I mean is the devs have actually said that they are changing fractals to be like raids.
but it sounds from that that they are just talking about adding new mechanics to the existing Fractals stages, so that as you rise in levels they are less just numerical increases and more actual things to do with them. I have no interest in that at all. I want to actually do everything that currently exists in Forsaken Thicket, just with a significantly lower risk of wiping. That’s it, dead simple, no embellishment on that theme. Just the current raid, only less risky. I’ve repeated that at least a dozen times and it looks like it may take a thousand more, but I’m up to the challenge.
The HoT maps were individually impressive, but they still haven’t come close to earning back the box price for the expansion, so it all depends on what they continue to release before they expect us to pay out again. I’m just saying, an open world map that involved the scale and complexity of the Forsaken Thicket would have been a strong nudge in the right direction.
And I agree HoT was light on content. But it was said it would be a “feature” expansion and not a content expansion, also the “foundation for future content”. I would say next content releases will have much more content, because they won’t need to invent new systems.
True, which is why I don’t know why the raiders are so content to live in their ivory Jenga tower. It would give raids a much higher chance of long term success if they would embrace methods for the masses to become a part of the raiding cycle, rather than keeping it as niche as possible.
Maybe. But that wouldn’t make it “raid content for the hardcore crowd”. First, they want to measure if they can actually do hardcore challenging content, if that fails, who knows what they’ll do. As I said, it’s a gamble. Can the hardcore crowd alone sustain Raids? If yes then they will continue as they currently have. If it cannot, they no doubt will do changes to their model (or scrap it completely if it is a complete failure).
And yet I always saw more people in EotM than on other WvW maps.
Of course. But not to play “actual WvW”, it’s a karma train map, farm map and fast leveling map. Nothing to do with epic sieges and server vs server battles. People who started Guild Wars 2 for WvW started it to participate in large scale epic fights, not to do karma trains.
In a similar manner, those who started GW2 for the great combat system didn’t want its instanced content to revolve around stacking in corners and DPSing bosses fast. Raids solve that problem by offering roles and more engaging mechanics.
The entire Raid idea is a gamble. Same as the meta-heavy HoT maps.
No what I mean is the devs have actually said that they are changing fractals to be like raids.
No, What you are talking about is (like Ohoni already mentioned) introducing more mechanical diferences between fractal levels, so higher fractals will be more interesting for people that will like it. Because i think we all agree that increasing difficulty merely by inflating hp and toughness is boring (though i sure hope they won’t think to introduce enrage timers to fractals, as this is also a really primitive and lame difficulty replacement).
Which is cool, but it still doesn’t touch at all the problems many people have with raids.
Maybe. But that wouldn’t make it “raid content for the hardcore crowd”.
Sure, but that’s where the “ivory tower” comment comes in. Pure “raid content for the hardcore crowd” is not sustainable, because the hardcore crowd is too small. It has to be to remain really hardcore.
And yet I always saw more people in EotM than on other WvW maps.
Of course. But not to play “actual WvW”, it’s a karma train map, farm map and fast leveling map. Nothing to do with epic sieges and server vs server battles. People who started Guild Wars 2 for WvW started it to participate in large scale epic fights, not to do karma trains.
Indeed, from WvW point of view EotM was a big failure. And it makes it even more surprising that the new Battlegrounds seem to be based more on EotM than on old WvW concepts.
In a similar manner, those who started GW2 for the great combat system didn’t want its instanced content to revolve around stacking in corners and DPSing bosses fast. Raids solve that problem by offering roles and more engaging mechanics.
Yet it still mostly revolves around stacking and dps-ing bosses fast – preferably fast enough to bypass some of the mechanics (Gorseval no updraft).
Also, in that same spirit, those who started GW2 to get away from games revolving around raids (and instanced content in general) didn’t want Raids to follow after them.
The entire Raid idea is a gamble. Same as the meta-heavy HoT maps.
Yes. And, seeing AMA responses, they are already acknowledging that at least in case of HoT meta it’s a gamble that didn’t fully pay off.
Admitting the same for Raids will likely take them longer, though.
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
Maybe. But that wouldn’t make it “raid content for the hardcore crowd”.
Sure, but that’s where the “ivory tower” comment comes in. Pure “raid content for the hardcore crowd” is not sustainable, because the hardcore crowd is too small. It has to be to remain really hardcore.
If it’s sustainable or not is not up to you, or any forum poster, to decide. If it proves to be unsustainable I don’t think it would make sense to continue with this model. But since there is no indication of changing at the moment it means that there isn’t enough data to support either way, yet.
Yet it still mostly revolves around stacking and dps-ing bosses fast – preferably fast enough to bypass some of the mechanics (Gorseval no updraft).
Unlike corner stacking in dungeons and DPSing bosses fast, doing enough damage to bypass mechanics (no updraft Gorseval) is NOT an easy thing to do. Which makes it fine in my book, if it takes a lot of skill and preparation to do it then it’s fine to bypass mechanics by doing that much high dps. In dungeons you can bypass mechanics without any specific preparation. Everyone can do it, and that’s the difference.
Also, in that same spirit, those who started GW2 to get away from games revolving around raids (and instanced content in general) didn’t want Raids to follow after them.
GW2 had instanced content at release and during the first year there were regular instances added to the game through the living story.
The entire Raid idea is a gamble. Same as the meta-heavy HoT maps.
Yes. And, seeing AMA responses, they are already acknowledging that at least in case of HoT meta it’s a gamble that didn’t fully pay off.
Exactly my point. If Raids also don’t pay off, they will acknowledge it and make changes. The fact that they haven’t yet, means either it’s a massive success or we simply don’t have enough data to support either way yet, which is the most probable answer.
And I agree HoT was light on content. But it was said it would be a “feature” expansion and not a content expansion, also the “foundation for future content”.
That. . . makes no difference whatsoever. It’s still all about what’s delivered to the players for that money. So far the sum total just doesn’t remotely add up, so it comes down to what they offer between now and the next time they come asking for money, and they’ve given no road map as to what to expect for that. I’d assumed we would be getting into a Season2-calibur Living World cycle within the first 3-6 months, but it looks like that won’t be happening and all word we’ve had on the issue have been about lowering, not raising expectations. If they try to drop a paid expansion before they at least add a few more maps, I don’t see the players being as enthusiastically generous as they were with HoT.
Maybe. But that wouldn’t make it “raid content for the hardcore crowd”. First, they want to measure if they can actually do hardcore challenging content, if that fails, who knows what they’ll do.
The two have nothing to do with each other. They’ve tried “raid content for the hardcore” crowd, and by most accounts it seems to have worked, the hardcore crowd like it. Now they need to open it up to everyone else, which is the much larger group that actually sustains the game so that the hardcore crowd are allowed to play it. There is no reality in which the second step should not be a part of the process. It’s not as if the raids will just catch on with the general public in their current state, everyone knew that going into it.
Of course. But not to play “actual WvW”, it’s a karma train map, farm map and fast leveling map. Nothing to do with epic sieges and server vs server battles. People who started Guild Wars 2 for WvW started it to participate in large scale epic fights, not to do karma trains.
Yes, but there weren’t that many of them so they were easy enough to write off when it came down to it.
In a similar manner, those who started GW2 for the great combat system didn’t want its instanced content to revolve around stacking in corners and DPSing bosses fast. Raids solve that problem by offering roles and more engaging mechanics.
And that’s only because they learned how players would exploit tactics given the opportunity. But it’s not an either/or system, you can have raids that are easier than the current ones, while retaining all the same mechanics.
Unlike corner stacking in dungeons and DPSing bosses fast, doing enough damage to bypass mechanics (no updraft Gorseval) is NOT an easy thing to do. Which makes it fine in my book, if it takes a lot of skill and preparation to do it then it’s fine to bypass mechanics by doing that much high dps. In dungeons you can bypass mechanics without any specific preparation. Everyone can do it, and that’s the difference.
“An exploit is only cool if only a few people can pull it off.” Uh-huh.
Exactly my point. If Raids also don’t pay off, they will acknowledge it and make changes. The fact that they haven’t yet, means either it’s a massive success or we simply don’t have enough data to support either way yet, which is the most probable answer.
We don’t know what they have or have not decided. For all we know they decided to do “something” about raids months ago. My whole point is to advocate for the solution I would like to see, if and when they decide to attempt one, because we all know that their standard practice is to decide to do something, work on it in the dark for six months, and only when it’s ready to launch tell us what they’re doing, at which point the entire community erupts with “what? That’s stupid, nobody wanted that in the first place!” and then they either go dark for another six months or they stubbornly move forward with it anyway, rinse and repeat.
It’s how we ended up with not one but two skill/trait management system overhauls that were in many ways inferior to the ones the game launched with.
So I figure it’s best to drill in what the appropriate solution should be, whether or not they’ve given any indication that they intend to move forward on a solution, in the hopes that we can avoid wasting everyone’s time on a faulty solution (like many of the ones raised by opposition in these threads).
It’s still all about what’s delivered to the players for that money. So far the sum total just doesn’t remotely add up, so it comes down to what they offer between now and the next time they come asking for money, and they’ve given no road map as to what to expect for that.
Well obviously, I never said otherwise. But it doesn’t have much to do with Raids.
The two have nothing to do with each other. They’ve tried “raid content for the hardcore” crowd, and by most accounts it seems to have worked, the hardcore crowd like it. Now they need to open it up to everyone else, which is the much larger group that actually sustains the game so that the hardcore crowd are allowed to play it. There is no reality in which the second step should not be a part of the process. It’s not as if the raids will just catch on with the general public in their current state, everyone knew that going into it.
Yet you don’t know the actual adoption rate. In fact now Spirit Vale is much easier than it was when it was first released, players improve, new tactics, new builds, and so on. Who knows how much of the population will be finishing the second Wing in let’s say 3 months? Or when Wing 3 is out.
Yes, but there weren’t that many of them so they were easy enough to write off when it came down to it.
I don’t know which server you are on. But on many top tier servers there were very long queues to play WvW which means the population far exceeded what the devs planned for. So that “weren’t that many of them” isn’t true at all, WvW population declined due to neglect, same with the dungeon population really. Before the dungeon nerf a lot of the dungeon were run extensively even if they were the same dungeons.
And of course during the AMA they acknowledged this. They acknowledged that dungeons are important piece of content for the community (finally!) and maybe there is something coming for them.
And that’s only because they learned how players would exploit tactics given the opportunity. But it’s not an either/or system, you can have raids that are easier than the current ones, while retaining all the same mechanics.
That’s a topic for the other thread, no reason to start it here too.
“An exploit is only cool if only a few people can pull it off.” Uh-huh.
No updraft Gorseval is not an exploit, it’s a valid tactic that only the most coordinated and well-built groups can pull off. Corner stacking isn’t an actual exploit either, unless you use terrain bugs to get mobs stack or whatever.
In a very similar manner if you build your group correctly you can avoid the entire green circle mechanic of Vale Guardian and never run there. That’s also not an exploit, it’s good use of mechanics and use of “proper” builds.
So I figure it’s best to drill in what the appropriate solution should be, whether or not they’ve given any indication that they intend to move forward on a solution, in the hopes that we can avoid wasting everyone’s time on a faulty solution (like many of the ones raised by opposition in these threads).
Actually your “solution” also has a myriad of faults too, although you can’t see them for some reason, mostly because it assumes “it wouldn’t take much time to implement.” You are the hasty one here that wants a quick and “easy” solution and not want an appropriate and well thought out solution. “Hey just lower a few numbers so it’s easier!” is NOT a good solution. More details on the other thread.
A half-solution is far worse than a no solution.
Well obviously, I never said otherwise. But it doesn’t have much to do with Raids.
Again, Forsaken Thicket could have been a full open world map, so it’s not like it’s entirely inconsequential.
Yet you don’t know the actual adoption rate. In fact now Spirit Vale is much easier than it was when it was first released, players improve, new tactics, new builds, and so on. Who knows how much of the population will be finishing the second Wing in let’s say 3 months? Or when Wing 3 is out.
I’m not entirely sure whether you buy that yourself, but if it helps, go for it.
I don’t know which server you are on. But on many top tier servers there were very long queues to play WvW which means the population far exceeded what the devs planned for.
But the max size of those maps were, what, 500 people? So at any given time, on only some of the maps, a total of 500 people wanted to play at once, out of a population of hundreds of thousands. I’m whelmed.
Before the dungeon nerf a lot of the dungeon were run extensively even if they were the same dungeons.
Before the dungeon nerf some dungeons were run regularly for easy gold, but that’s not a rousing success story. You may as well say that Silverwaste farming is the absolute pinnacle of their achievements by that standard.
No updraft Gorseval is not an exploit, it’s a valid tactic that only the most coordinated and well-built groups can pull off. Corner stacking isn’t an actual exploit either, unless you use terrain bugs to get mobs stack or whatever.
I think any tactics which bypass the intended mechanics are, at best, stretching the rules. ANet has often condoned these behaviors in the past, but from an ethical standpoint, “no glide Gorseval” isn’t any better or worse than corner stacking or any of the other dungeon exploits that “trivialized” them. The only difference is that ANet learned most of the player’s tricks and worked to undermine them as best they could (like by making it very difficult to stand still in most of these encounters, which limits stacking).
Actually your “solution” also has a myriad of faults too, although you can’t see them for some reason, mostly because it assumes “it wouldn’t take much time to implement.” You are the hasty one here that wants a quick and “easy” solution and not want an appropriate and well thought out solution. “Hey just lower a few numbers so it’s easier!” is NOT a good solution. More details on the other thread.
It’s quick, easy, AND the best possible outcome. Most of the alternative proposals are more work for less benefit, like “make an entirely new content stream that doesn’t offer the same rewards!” What I advocate IS the full solution, the best possible outcome.
Again, Forsaken Thicket could have been a full open world map, so it’s not like it’s entirely inconsequential.
What would be the point? There are 4 open world maps and even if the entire Raid is as big as one of them, that’s still only a small subset of what HoT offered in its entirety.
But the max size of those maps were, what, 500 people? So at any given time, on only some of the maps, a total of 500 people wanted to play at once, out of a population of hundreds of thousands. I’m whelmed.
More people couldn’t even play on the maps. And there were queues for most of them, there are 4 WvW maps so that’s 500*4=2000 players plus more waiting on queues. I don’t get your logic, because the maps have limited capacity they should ignore them?
Before the dungeon nerf some dungeons were run regularly for easy gold, but that’s not a rousing success story. You may as well say that Silverwaste farming is the absolute pinnacle of their achievements by that standard.
I thought you measure success by the amount of players some piece of content attract. You did sound like that when you were talking about the amount of players playing WvW, or the amount of players playing Raids. By that definition you used on other parts of the game, yes Silverwastes is their highest achievement. Let’s follow that logic and from now on make only chest farming maps and ignore every other aspect of the game.
I think any tactics which bypass the intended mechanics are, at best, stretching the rules. ANet has often condoned these behaviors in the past, but from an ethical standpoint, “no glide Gorseval” isn’t any better or worse than corner stacking or any of the other dungeon exploits that “trivialized” them. The only difference is that ANet learned most of the player’s tricks and worked to undermine them as best they could (like by making it very difficult to stand still in most of these encounters, which limits stacking).
Wait until they reduce the hit points of Gorseval, or the Walls, or anything else in your easy modes and “No updraft Gorseval” is done by everyone. Going against everything the Devs learned up to this point.
Still not an exploit though.
It’s quick, easy, AND the best possible outcome. Most of the alternative proposals are more work for less benefit, like “make an entirely new content stream that doesn’t offer the same rewards!” What I advocate IS the full solution, the best possible outcome.
No it’s not a full solution, it’s not quick and it’s not easy, in fact it’s not even a “solution” at all. It’s a half-baked band-aid fix without any purpose or reason to exist at all.
What would be the point? There are 4 open world maps and even if the entire Raid is as big as one of them, that’s still only a small subset of what HoT offered in its entirety.
I’m just saying, you keep downplaying and downplaying the effort that went into making the raid. It is not something that magically appeared in their inbox one day and they just plugged it in. It took actual work, and any work spent could have been spent on other things, making the game more fully fleshed out by this point. Not necessarily a Forsaken thicket open world map, but something else of similar scale and complexity. So I’m not saying that the raid necessarily was the wrong thing to spend that time and effort on, but that could turn out to be the case.
More people couldn’t even play on the maps. And there were queues for most of them, there are 4 WvW maps so that’s 500*4=2000 players plus more waiting on queues. I don’t get your logic, because the maps have limited capacity they should ignore them?
My point is that you’re stacking all the peak conditions up as if that represented the average. Most of the servers almost never reached a queue, and if so it was a small one. Those servers that did have queues mostly had them during certain peak periods, like Friday resets, which were also peak times for everyone else since it was the start of the weekend for people with jobs or school. and even if some of the maps on a server hit cap, it was relatively rare that all of them would hit cap at the same time, it was usually just the one seeing the most action. My basic point is, “the map I was trying to get on had a queue” is not a definitive indication of a massive population, relative to the game as a whole. WvW was always a relatively concentrated element, and they don’t give us figures on overall population specifics.
I thought you measure success by the amount of players some piece of content attract.
You have to use your head though, and not only use raw data, but also filter out clear biases in that data. If something “pays out” well, it will obviously have higher attendance than activities that do not. That doesn’t mean that people enjoy it more.
Wait until they reduce the hit points of Gorseval, or the Walls, or anything else in your easy modes and “No updraft Gorseval” is done by everyone. Going against everything the Devs learned up to this point.
Still not an exploit though.
Hey, if the devs condone it for anyone now, it’s only fair that they condone it when everyone is doing it. The problem would be in it being possible in the first place, not that more players would be able to output the necessary DPS. If they wanted to resolve the exploit itself, the simplest solution I could think of would be to prevent players from skipping phases. I mean, the way it works now, if I understand correctly, is that they do enough damage that before he can use World Breaker, he rolls into his next damage-based phasing, and cancels the attack. The solution would be to make it so that no matter how much damage you do, he’ll still complete World Breaker each time, and if you don’t fly, you die. Then when that sequence ends and you return to the stage he would fall into whatever phase he was meant to be in. They could either make him invulnerable when you hit his damage threshold during WB, or not and just let people continue to pile damage, I don’t think that would end up making much difference relative to the current techniques.
No it’s not a full solution, it’s not quick and it’s not easy,
It’s at the very least quicker and easier than any solution I’ve heard, all of which would involve significantly more work than I proposed. Whether it’s quick and easy enough is debatable, but if they intend to do anything, it would be the quickest and easiest that would actually solve anything. And as for it not being a “full solution,” it solves every problem I had, what problems do you believe it wouldn’t solve?
It’s a half-baked band-aid fix without any purpose or reason to exist at all.
No, it’s a fully baked and complete solution for problems that you don’t agree exist, but that others have expressed. I get it, you see no need for an easy mode raid, and that’s fine, for you, but others have requested it, and if the goal is to come up with a solution that would satisfy those people, “alternate copy of the raid that is identical except for re-balanced numbers” is the fastest and BEST solution.
I’m just saying, you keep downplaying and downplaying the effort that went into making the raid.
I’m downplaying it because the effort used to make it was minimal compared to the entire expansion. But of course if it’s not effort towards what the majority likes it’s wasted effort to you.
My point is that you’re stacking all the peak conditions up as if that represented the average. Most of the servers almost never reached a queue, and if so it was a small one.
That’s false. Most of the t1 servers had queues during all prime time. Of course during off hours they didn’t, but let’s see which open world map has a high population during weird hours.
You have to use your head though, and not only use raw data, but also filter out clear biases in that data. If something “pays out” well, it will obviously have higher attendance than activities that do not. That doesn’t mean that people enjoy it more.
Obviously. So next time someone posts about “what the majority likes” I’ll re-post this one. Should go well in the “HoT isn’t casual” thread.
The problem would be in it being possible in the first place, not that more players would be able to output the necessary DPS.
It’s not an exploit so it’s not a problem for the devs. As it’s not an exploit and is also done by a minimal amount of the playerbase there is no reason to tweak it and adversely affect everyone. If on the other hand an “easy mode” makes it easy to avoid the mechanics then the mechanics have no reason to exist and then it becomes an actual problem. Still not an exploit.
It’s at the very least quicker and easier than any solution I’ve heard, all of which would involve significantly more work than I proposed.
Of course. A GOOD solution takes time and work, that’s why it’s called a GOOD solution. Otherwise it’s not a solution.
No, it’s a fully baked and complete solution for problems that you don’t agree exist, but that others have expressed.
You are mistaken. I can see the potential problem, it’s not apparent now, but it might become a problem in the future, the problem of raid accessibility. And I really hope they have a plan for it. Stat combinations available only in Raids can also be solved (proposal for LS3?), Legendary Armors can appear in other types of content too, just like the Legendary backpacks available through both PVP and Fractals, and so on. Those are actual problems and have working solutions (or SHOULD have).
“A GOOD solution takes time and work,” Wrong. Just completely blatantly wrong.
Not saying i agree with ohoni here on it could be that simple, but no, a good solution does not NEED to take time and work.
As I’ve been arguing with others on here for months now, timers are a good solution that took minimal effort.
“A GOOD solution takes time and work,” Wrong. Just completely blatantly wrong.
Not saying i agree with ohoni here on it could be that simple, but no, a good solution does not NEED to take time and work.
As I’ve been arguing with others on here for months now, timers are a good solution that took minimal effort.
Timers do not take a minimal effort though. Sure for a programmer it’s not hard to tweak a number but they need to be balanced around something. They require loads of testing to get right.
A GOOD solution takes a lot of work and time especially when it involves complex mechanics. A solution that just tweaks a few numbers is NOT a solution.
That’s false. Most of the t1 servers had queues during all prime time.
Sure, but half of the servers usually didn’t, and a third (in EU, in US population disparity between tiers was even higher) didn’t even come close to capping one map out of 4. Or even having significant presence on all maps, for that matter. Also, the caps were smaller than Ohoni remembers (iirc it was somewhere around 50 people per map per server)
Now, that still comes up to several thousand people at peak times. And the whole WvW population then was likely much bigger than we have raiders now. Which makes what happened to that content a real shame.
That’s false. Most of the t1 servers had queues during all prime time. Of course during off hours they didn’t, but let’s see which open world map has a high population during weird hours.
“Most of the t1 servers” was not most of the servers.
Obviously. So next time someone posts about “what the majority likes” I’ll re-post this one. Should go well in the “HoT isn’t casual” thread.
Sure, so long as you don’t abuse that principle to insist that something the majority clearly does enjoy is not. I mean, the players clearly DO enjoy casual content, and will do so even when the rewards are not ideal. They clearly don’t enjoy instanced content as much, as the participation is not amazing even when the rewards are exceptional, and participation is minimal when the rewards are merely “fair.”
It’s not an exploit so it’s not a problem for the devs. As it’s not an exploit and is also done by a minimal amount of the playerbase there is no reason to tweak it and adversely affect everyone. If on the other hand an “easy mode” makes it easy to avoid the mechanics then the mechanics have no reason to exist and then it becomes an actual problem. Still not an exploit.
Again, if only a small number of players can pull it off, and that’s not an exploit, then if everyone could pull it off, it would still not be an exploit. The number of people capable of achieving something has nothing to do with whether or not a tactic is an exploit. Also, if they did implement the tweak I noted, it would not at all impact “everyone,” it would only impact those “minimal amount pf the playerbase” that can currently perform that trick. For everyone else, they would just be doing it as usual, as intended.
Of course. A GOOD solution takes time and work, that’s why it’s called a GOOD solution. Otherwise it’s not a solution.
No. A Good solution is not the one that takes the most time to implement, it’s the one that best solves the problems. My solution best solves the problems and happens to be quicker to implement than most alternatives. You don’t like this because you don’t want the problems I’ve raised to be solved, and if they are, you’d prefer they remain unsolved for as long as possible, stretch out any potential solutions to the point where neither side really cares anymore, but if the goal is to solve the problems, then my proposal would be the best way to do it, and the fastest way to do it. It’s win-win-win.
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
And I really hope they have a plan for it. Stat combinations available only in Raids can also be solved (proposal for LS3?), Legendary Armors can appear in other types of content too, just like the Legendary backpacks available through both PVP and Fractals, and so on. Those are actual problems and have working solutions (or SHOULD have).
After the current announcement about Legendary Weapons, the chances of them doing different Legendary Armor sets for other content are now practically zero.
Which really narrows the number of possible ways of solving that problem.
Anet has confirmed that the current stats only available in ascended forms from raids WILL be available from season 3 living story I believe on their giant AMA.
Sure, so long as you don’t abuse that principle to insist that something the majority clearly does enjoy is not. I mean, the players clearly DO enjoy casual content, and will do so even when the rewards are not ideal. They clearly don’t enjoy instanced content as much, as the participation is not amazing even when the rewards are exceptional, and participation is minimal when the rewards are merely “fair.”
If we went by participation then chest farming would be the clear winner. Does the majority actually enjoy it though?
Again, if only a small number of players can pull it off, and that’s not an exploit, then if everyone could pull it off, it would still not be an exploit. The number of people capable of achieving something has nothing to do with whether or not a tactic is an exploit. Also, if they did implement the tweak I noted, it would not at all impact “everyone,” it would only impact those “minimal amount pf the playerbase” that can currently perform that trick. For everyone else, they would just be doing it as usual, as intended.
I never said if more people do it, it would be an exploit. I said if more people can do it, then it’s a PROBLEM. Those that can currently perform the trick won’t be affected by any kind of tweak, they can already do it. But making it easier will allow everyone to do it, I mean a lot of PUG groups are very close in doing it already, they just fail by a couple of seconds. Lower the requirements and slowly everyone can do it, just like what happened with dungeons.
No. A Good solution is not the one that takes the most time to implement, it’s the one that best solves the problems. My solution best solves the problems and happens to be quicker to implement than most alternatives. You don’t like this because you don’t want the problems I’ve raised to be solved, and if they are, you’d prefer they remain unsolved for as long as possible, stretch out any potential solutions to the point where neither side really cares anymore, but if the goal is to solve the problems, then my proposal would be the best way to do it, and the fastest way to do it. It’s win-win-win.
We’ve seen a lot of number tweaking “solutions” in the past. They never actually solved any problems, instead they created new ones, much more important ones. Fractal higher difficulties? Hey let’s make higher tier mobs have more hp and do more damage!
Materials being sold at vendor price? Hey let’s make those recipes require MORE of this material so they aren’t as common!
Rare orbs/crests cost next to nothing? Hey, let’s make it a legendary requirement to require 2250 of those!
All those nice “number tweaks”, never worked very well. Somehow you believe if they try lowering hp and damage values in the Raid they would do a good job… I honestly doubt it, even if they wanted to do it, that they could pull it off. And let’s not enter the skill balancing with skills still dealing way more damage than they should and others dealing way too low damage. Just a “numbers tweak” isn’kitten
If we went by participation then chest farming would be the clear winner. Does the majority actually enjoy it though?
and again (and again (and again)), you have to factor out biasing elements like disproportionate rewards. Chest farming, minus the rewards, would not be something many people would bother with. Dungeons, even WITH appropriate levels of rewards, are not something many people bother with, apparently.
I never said if more people do it, it would be an exploit. I said if more people can do it, then it’s a PROBLEM.
If it’s not an exploit then it can’t be a problem.
Those that can currently perform the trick won’t be affected by any kind of tweak, they can already do it.
Well not, my point was that if they wanted to close the loophole, it would be by making it so that you can’t skip steps by phase-changing him, that even if you get his damage below the threshold while charging World Breaker, he’ll still do that move before advancing to the next phase, which would disrupt those players who currently use that tactic, but would have no impact on those who do not.
But making it easier will allow everyone to do it, I mean a lot of PUG groups are very close in doing it already, they just fail by a couple of seconds. Lower the requirements and slowly everyone can do it, just like what happened with dungeons.
But if they did lower it, it would ONLY be in a separate easy mode version, which would offer less rewards. Since rewards would be time-gated, if a group is good enough that they can almost pull off a no-glide win on Gorseval, then they would be much better off just getting a standard glider win against him than they would ever be by getting no-glide wins off the easy mode version. If they wanted to though, no reason to stop them.
We’ve seen a lot of number tweaking “solutions” in the past. They never actually solved any problems, instead they created new ones, much more important ones. Fractal higher difficulties? Hey let’s make higher tier mobs have more hp and do more damage!
A lazy solution, certainly, but that’s because they were taking the same mechanics and trying to scale them up, which works, it’s just boring. This would be taking already complex and interesting mechanics, and just scaling them down a bit, so that the risk of failure is lower. The mechanics would still be interesting for anyone that cared to engage them. It’s much easier to make something easier than it is to make it harder in an interesting manner. It’s always best to tune for the maximum and ease off a bit than to tune for the minimum and scale it up.
Materials being sold at vendor price? Hey let’s make those recipes require MORE of this material so they aren’t as common!
Rare orbs/crests cost next to nothing? Hey, let’s make it a legendary requirement to require 2250 of those!
Again, a somewhat lazy solution, but it does work if they want the price to rise. If I ever disagree with them on that, it’s that I disagree that the price should rise, not in how they accomplished it.
And besides, you’re worried that they’ll screw it up? So what? Remember, the loot will be relatively low and on a weekly lock-out, so what’s the worst that can happen? A lot more people will be able to beat him once, and get a relatively small pile of magnetite, what they could achieve by failing the hard mode for a few hours? How awful for the game! If people are beating it way more easily than intended, they can always shut ti down temporarily before any real harm could be done, or more likely just tweak things slightly upward again to compensate. They’ve done far more significant changes in patch-day hotfixes before.
and again (and again (and again)), you have to factor out biasing elements like disproportionate rewards.
There will always be bias, the only solution would be to adjust the rewards on the fly but I don’t think that is possible. And besides, World bosses, Eotm trains, Cursed Shore/Frostgorge trains, SW, chest farming, what else is there that the vast majority of players is participating in? They all have some reward bias.
If it’s not an exploit then it can’t be a problem.
Using Fiery Rush to deal insane amounts of damage to a boss wasn’t an actual exploit. Yet it was a problem and it got fixed.
But if they did lower it, it would ONLY be in a separate easy mode version, which would offer less rewards.
Wasn’t the easy mode supposed to also be training for the harder mode? IF you can easily skip mechanics in the easy mode, then it’s no longer valid for training. I made a suggestion for the easy mode to use only earlier phases of the bosses and what you didn’t like about it was that it wouldn’t be used as “training” for the next phases and wouldn’t be the same fight. But if you make such tweaks, it won’t be the same fight anyway.
And besides, you’re worried that they’ll screw it up?
Yes…. past experience and all that.
If it was just for magnetite shards then there wouldn’t be a problem since as you said those players could already get their shards by failing the harder version. What about the rest of the rewards? Like Ascended items? You can’t get those while failing.
What about the rest of the rewards? Like Ascended items? You can’t get those while failing.
The thing that gets me is that I’ve never seen a reward schema for this sort of content – raids with similar raid sizes and difficulty modes, that is – that actually does a good job.
There will always be bias, the only solution would be to adjust the rewards on the fly but I don’t think that is possible. And besides, World bosses, Eotm trains, Cursed Shore/Frostgorge trains, SW, chest farming, what else is there that the vast majority of players is participating in? They all have some reward bias.
The trick is to measure the number of people doing the things that don’t have a reward imbalance. Really, if ANet wanted to solve the various reward imbalance trouble-spots, it’s not like it would be hard to do. They already tweaked many of them like Dungeons and Champ Trains (although maybe not enough or too much). The problem isn’t that it’s hard to fix, it’s that for whatever reason they _choose not to fix certain issues. I mean any number of issues that the game currently has could be fixed just by changing a few numbers. I’m not saying that they’d get the fix 100% right on the first try, but they could always make a tiny change, see how it plays out, and then try again until they get it just right. So long as they don’t make too big a change it shouldn’t cause too big a problem even if they overshoot.
Using Fiery Rush to deal insane amounts of damage to a boss wasn’t an actual exploit. Yet it was a problem and it got fixed.
I would argue that it always was an exploit (at the very least wall-stacking it), it was just one that they chose not to address for a long time. I mean if something is relatively easy to do then they can’t just start banning everyone that does it, but they didn’t want to nerf FGS right away because they couldn’t decide how to fix it without making it worthless (and eventually settled on worthless). But yes, the intended function of FGS was that each enemy would only take 1-2 ticks of damage, not the entire load, and people were abusing hitboxes and walls to greatly increase the damage, as they were doing with “line-casting” This is as much an exploit as anything in the game, but ANet chose to turn a blind eye to it for a while rather than fix it or smack-down on it, presumably because they saw it as the lesser of three evils.
Wasn’t the easy mode supposed to also be training for the harder mode? IF you can easily skip mechanics in the easy mode, then it’s no longer valid for training.
I said it could be used as training, not that that would be the only way to play it. Some people insist that easy mode should only be training, that it should offer no rewards and basically be worthless unless you eventually use it to graduate to hard mode. I’ve never taken that stance. I feel that if people will only be comfortable in easy mode, then it’s fine for them to stay in easy mode and take full advantage of its opportunities. Even if they do, they still only get a weekly payout that is a fraction of what the hard mode offers, so it wouldn’t be unbalancingly attractive to anyone who is capable of hard mode.
So yes, I think it’s pretty much inevitable for them to have methods by which players could pull off tricks in easy mode to win even easier, that would never work at all in hard mode, but I don’t see that as a huge issue given the reduced reward potential.
My point was that if you WANT to use it as a training mode, by including the full mechanics, you could do so. Presumably you would go in with other players who also intend to use it for training. So in this case, even though you know that a given mechanic would not wipe your party if you failed it, you would still make every effort to clear it the “right” way, the way you would need to in the hard mode. You would try to catch the green dot, try to glide away from World Breaker, try to keep VG out of the colored areas, try to avoid Sabetha’s flame, even if some of these mechanics would be potentially survivable, you would treat them as if they were deadly.
If you screwed up, you’d know it, know that you’d have to do better next time, but it wouldn’t lead to a wipe and reset, and you could continue forward. The value it would have in training is entirely dependent on how much you’re willing to put into it, just like with any non-lethal training, such as paintball/airsoft, or sparring matches. Treat them as a no-consequence game and they might not offer you much, treat them seriously and you might learn from them.
If it was just for magnetite shards then there wouldn’t be a problem since as you said those players could already get their shards by failing the harder version. What about the rest of the rewards? Like Ascended items? You can’t get those while failing.
It might be that they would hold off on making those available for a few weeks while they work out the potential kinks in the system. I looked over the methods of currently earning those things, and I think on easy mode the idea would be to only let you earn pieces of them instead of the full thing, requiring more runs to accomplish what could be earned in a single run, so if they notice people are acquiring them too quickly they can put the brakes on before anyone can get a complete set.
The trick is to measure the number of people doing the things that _don’t have a reward imbalance.
Balancing rewards has been a problem since release, and I agree they don’t want to fix reward imbalance, or maybe they don’t see it as imbalanced. maybe it’s working as intended. Who knows?
This is as much an exploit as anything in the game, but ANet chose to turn a blind eye to it for a while rather than fix it or smack-down on it, presumably because they saw it as the lesser of three evils.
It clearly shows that a number tweak isn’t sufficient enough to fix a balancing issue. Going from OP to worthless in one patch isn’t exactly ideal. The exploits weren’t the skills themselves but how much their effect was multiplied under certain conditions (large hit boxes, terrain bugs on walls) and instead of fixing those conditions they nerfed the skills, which meant they were nerfed in every other possible usage.
I said it could be used as training, not that that would be the only way to play it. Some people insist that easy mode should only be training, that it should offer no rewards and basically be worthless unless you eventually use it to graduate to hard mode.
I don’t think using it only for training is a good thing either. If you want to train, run the actual content, there is no need for an easy version.
My point was that if you WANT to use it as a training mode, by including the full mechanics, you could do so.
That’s not how it would work though. You’d have to find a very specific group of people, it would be impossible to do with any kind of pug, defeating the idea of anyone playing without caring about who they team up with. And if you really want that, why not train at the actual difficulty? What’s the point in “training” at this lower difficulty? Because you could still win? But if you win taking advantage of the lower difficulty, it won’t be training anymore, so the only kind of player that would use it as “training” is the one that says: “hey we failed, let’s reset until we get it”. How is that different to wiping?
It might be that they would hold off on making those available for a few weeks while they work out the potential kinks in the system. I looked over the methods of currently earning those things, and I think on easy mode the idea would be to only let you earn pieces of them instead of the full thing, requiring more runs to accomplish what could be earned in a single run, so if they notice people are acquiring them too quickly they can put the brakes on before anyone can get a complete set.
Which leads us to constant monitoring and balancing of rewards. Something we all know they don’t want to do. Remember the famous line: “we will monitor the dungeon rewards and adjust them accordingly”? That was said when they added gold rewards to dungeon paths. It was a good thing, it meant they’ll be watching if players are acquiring rewards too fast on some dungeon paths and adjust the gold. But that never happened, until they completely nerfed the gold rewards.
It clearly shows that a number tweak isn’t sufficient enough to fix a balancing issue.
No, again, it entirely depends on their goals. If their goal is to keep it reasonably balanced, a number tweak can do that just fine. As we’ve discussed, in some cases it might involve trading one skill affix for another, say from an “auto defeat” to an “auto-down,” or just to a raw damage attack that is at a level that they know will down most builds but not certain ones, etc. but that’s just a matter of swapping out one tool they already have for another tool they already have, rather than creating entirely new tools.
I don’t think using it only for training is a good thing either. If you want to train, run the actual content, there is no need for an easy version.
Again though, it can have value for training. Running hard mode is NOT, no matter how much you insist it, the “best” way to train. For some people, they would thrive under those conditions, and those people likely already do. But for others, they would actually, TRULY learn better and faster in an easy mode than they ever would in hard mode. I’m going to have to ask you to accept that basic premise. There are people for whom the stress of hard mode presents more of a barrier to learning than it does a motivation, and having the option of adapting to the mechanics in a lower stress environment allows them to more quickly learn how to overcome them.
They will obviously face a second learning curve when they hit hard mode, no amount of easy mode is likely to get them through hard mode on the first try (as an equal party member), but players with this mindset definitely will learn to play hard mode faster through a combination of easy and hard than they ever would through hard mode alone.
That’s not how it would work though. You’d have to find a very specific group of people, it would be impossible to do with any kind of pug, defeating the idea of anyone playing without caring about who they team up with.
Obviously. No question, not an issue. It would go down like this:
Scenario A: A player joins a completely random pug for easy mode. The expectation of this group is that they would speed-clear it, so “play it like hard mode” shenanigans would not be appreciated. Players would quickly learn this. Even in these conditions, a player with an interest in hard mode could learn useful skills, because the mob would still be firing off attacks, and even if the player is reacting to them differently, he could pick up what he’s meant to react to. This would not be the ideal training method for hard mode, but would give a slight edge over complete newbies.
Scenario B: A player is in a guild raid squad, and they all agree that they want to do hard mode, but are not yet ready for hard mode, and do not enjoy the “fail until you make it” style you so love. They all go in and all attempt to run the easy raid “as if hard mode.” They try their best to avoid trouble and know when they screwed up in a way that would be fatal in hard mode, so over time they’ll learn to avoid those screw-ups. They screw up constantly, and take longer than a speed-clear pug, but they still manage to complete it, while learning valuable skills.
Scenario C: The player joins a pug that is labeled “easy mode: hard training,” or whatever the community decides is an appropriate label for that sort of thing, just as dungeon lfgs would advertise “speed clear, exp only” or whatever they were looking for. When a player joins one of these pugs, it’s expected that everything will play out exactly like in Scenario B, with each player at least attempting to follow the mechanics. If some of them attempt to speed-clear anyways, that’s their business, but they can’t be made that the rest don’t join in because that wasn’t what they signed up for.
it won’t be training anymore, so the only kind of player that would use it as “training” is the one that says: “hey we failed, let’s reset until we get it”. How is that different to wiping?
Again, it’s not “we screwed up, let’s wipe and reset,” it’s “I got hit by Sabetha’s wall, that would have killed me in hard mode, I’ve really got to learn to avoid that better than I have been.” Or, Ok, we cleared it this time with no major mistakes, but the timer was fairly close and we know that he had less HP than the hard mode boss, so we’ll need to do better before we’re ready for hard mode." I’m sure that within a week or two of release, players will figure out ratios, so that you’ll know “if we can beat Vale Guardian with no mistakes in under 7 minutes, then we can beat the hard mode version within the timer.”
It allows players to experiment with timing, and if they master it, then they have a skill they can take to hard mode, while if they screw up, the rest of the raid goes on.
Which leads us to constant monitoring and balancing of rewards. Something we all know they don’t want to do.
It wouldn’t be constant, it would be a toggle. When the system launches, the raid collection stuff would be toggled off, when they feel confident the easy mode is within balance they toggle them on. And unlike dungeons where there were two dozen paths to manage at once, this is only nine total boss fights to look at (and three more each additional wing).
but that’s just a matter of swapping out one tool they already have for another tool they already have, rather than creating entirely new tools.
It IS an entirely new tool if you change how the tool works.
Again, it’s not “we screwed up, let’s wipe and reset,” it’s “I got hit by Sabetha’s wall, that would have killed me in hard mode, I’ve really got to learn to avoid that better than I have been.”
And what’s the difference in wiping by that flamewall and “understanding” that you shouldn’t be hit by it? Oh right in the second case you will get your rewards even if you fail miserably. That’s what this is all about? The only difference between easy mode and non-easy mode (as far as “training” goes) is that in easy mode you will also get rewards.
And playing easy mode “as if it’s hard mode” is a joke. There is no such thing. If you want to play “as if hard mode” play hard mode.
It wouldn’t be constant, it would be a toggle. When the system launches, the raid collection stuff would be toggled off, when they feel confident the easy mode is within balance they toggle them on. And unlike dungeons where there were two dozen paths to manage at once, this is only nine total boss fights to look at (and three more each additional wing).
And then a group of players will find “easy mode” not easy enough for them. Then you will do “easier easy mode”, then “more easy than easier easy mode”, then “even more easy than easier easy mode”, and so on. Or the alternative put the “easy mode” into a spiral of never-ending nerfs til it reaches that point. Then let’s do balancing again from scratch, rinse repeat for each Raid wing.
It IS an entirely new tool if you change how the tool works.
No, I don’t think you get my point. Think of a skill. A skill is a collection of “things that will happen.” It will cue an animation, it will apply damage to a target, it might apply a stack of burning, or a knockback, etc., all the things listed in the tooltip. My point is, if they want to apply burning, they don’t have to reinvent the wheel and calculate damage from scratch, they can just reference “a stack of burning” which they already have stored somewhere, right? Likewise, there seems to be an effect that already exists called “defeat the players hit,” or something to that effect, that both World Breaker and Sabetha’s flame wall currently apply. Rather than having to invent something completely new, like “turn the player into a hot air balloon,” all they would need to do is remove that affix, and replace it with some other existing one, like an “auto defeat,” or remove both, and just have it apply X unblockable damage. I’m saying they already own the tools, they won’t need to craft any new tools.
And what’s the difference in wiping by that flamewall and “understanding” that you shouldn’t be hit by it? Oh right in the second case you will get your rewards even if you fail miserably.
Exactly. Lower stress, which for most people promotes better learning. They’ve done studies.
That’s what this is all about? The only difference between easy mode and non-easy mode (as far as “training” goes) is that in easy mode you will also get rewards.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there will still be a baseline, it’s not intended as “show up, get rewards,” just that the baseline is a lot lower than the current raid’s.
And playing easy mode “as if it’s hard mode” is a joke. There is no such thing. If you want to play “as if hard mode” play hard mode.
Ok, at this point you can’t even pretend to be paying attention, you just flat out disagree with the concept, and there’s no point discussing it with you further. I’m right, you refuse to agree, end of story.
No, I don’t think you get my point.
If a “skill” auto-defeats you originally and you change it so it will auto-down you, or deal a set amount of damage, then it’s not the same as playing with burning stacks. It’s a different skill altogether, and usually those “skills” are balanced around that concept. Sabetha’s flamewall is not a hard skill to avoid, it has a HUGE tell, an obvious animation and an obvious pattern it follows. That’s BECAUSE it is so powerful, if it wasn’t as powerful there wouldn’t be a need for such a tell in the first place.
Exactly. Lower stress, which for most people promotes better learning. They’ve done studies.
If you do not reset the fight if you get hit by it, saying “oh next time I will try better to avoid it” then you haven’t accomplished anything, nor learned anything. And if you reset, what’s the point of the easier mode anyway. An easy mode as training method is useless.
After reading the latest statement of Mr O`Brien regarding legendaries, things may switch back into the favor of non-raiders again in the near future. He is even talking about the manifesto, as strange that may sound to some of us. so maybe even Anet thinks now that it was a bad idea?
Of course he nowhere wrote that raids will be cancelled or not supported anymore, but his wording does not sound very hardcore-ish to me.
After reading the latest statement of Mr O`Brien regarding legendaries, things may switch back into the favor of non-raiders again in the near future. He is even talking about the manifesto, as strange that may sound to some of us. so maybe even Anet thinks now that it was a bad idea?
Of course he nowhere wrote that raids will be cancelled or not supported anymore, but his wording does not sound very hardcore-ish to me.
Maybe because the small team working on the Raids is doing a good job? While the legendary team wasn’t as successful?
If I’m being honest, I liked dungeons better. Not because they didn’t have significant design flaws that were exploited for mindless play. I mean, dungeons only suffered because of the massive power creep that berzerker gear alongside the ease of generating and maintaining might stacks and fury created alongside aegis spam and so much of many encounters being nullified with easy to use reflects.
But it amounted to a lot more than just a boss in a box. The original explorable dungeons had ambiance, storytelling, and there’s nothing better than a 5 man so you can just get your core group of reliable friends without having to deal with the logistics of managing 10 people’s schedules and varying time commitments.
They released in vanilla Guild Wars 2 with 33 branches of a dungeon (counting 3 explorables plus the 1 story branch except for Arah which had 4).
33 dungeons, now compare that to maybe 14 fractals. Of the 14 fractals, 3 are just bosses; 2 are recycled from living season instances, 2 of the 3 boss fractals are from living story recycled instances as well. That leaves us with about 10 original fractal introductions, however most of them are even shorter than a dungeon path and don’t even contain much narrative progression to begin with.
People SHOULD be annoyed at the marginal amount of content we’ve received after the vanilla release. The expansion is an atrocity: same price as the base game, but only 3 maps full of zerg dynamic events, no new dungeons, no new fractals, and a tiny tiny fraction of the amount of weapon and armorsets the vanilla game offered FROM the game with guaranteed token rewards, not RNG grindfests and massive goldsinks.
It’s an utter ripoff how all you get from this xpac is virtually raid wings with almost a 6 month wait in between if “dynamic” braindead events are not your cup of tea.
It also doesn’t help they still refuse to split PvE/PvP balance so classes are still hideously lopsided in balance and performance. They won’t even standardized the godkitten autoattacks across the classes.
If a “skill” auto-defeats you originally and you change it so it will auto-down you, or deal a set amount of damage, then it’s not the same as playing with burning stacks. It’s a different skill
It is different, but it’s not using a new effect. It’s like taking a skill that applies 3 burn stacks, removing the burn stacks, and replacing them with 2 poison stacks. Yes, it would then behave differently in several ways that matter, but the mechanics of changing it is just like pulling and replacing lego bricks. It’s not like creating an entirely new effect that needs to be coded from the ground up. If their process for changing how a skill functions is more complicated than I’m describing then they did a horrible job building their development tools, because there are GW2 fansite tools that can do this stuff.
Sabetha’s flamewall is not a hard skill to avoid, it has a HUGE tell, an obvious animation and an obvious pattern it follows. That’s BECAUSE it is so powerful, if it wasn’t as powerful there wouldn’t be a need for such a tell in the first place.
Sure, but that’s why it’s called “easy mode,” the effect would be no easier to avoid successfully, but the penalties for failure would be less severe, making the net result easier.
Say what you will about how “effortless” it is to dodge, plenty of people still get caught by it every day, mainly because they haven’t practiced how best to leverage their options.
If you do not reset the fight if you get hit by it, saying “oh next time I will try better to avoid it” then you haven’t accomplished anything, nor learned anything.
Sure you have. You learned the exact same thing you would have learned if the event reset, just without the stress of knowing that you caused the entire thing to fail for everyone else. The lesson is identical, just the penalty is lower.
An easy mode as training method is useless.
To you, maybe it is, and you don’t have to use it, but I’m explaining to you the FACT, not opinion, FACT that it would be useful to people who are not you. You can have the opinion that you don’t care that it would be useful to these people, but you cannot dispute that it would be.
After reading the latest statement of Mr O`Brien regarding legendaries, things may switch back into the favor of non-raiders again in the near future. He is even talking about the manifesto, as strange that may sound to some of us. so maybe even Anet thinks now that it was a bad idea?
Of course he nowhere wrote that raids will be cancelled or not supported anymore, but his wording does not sound very hardcore-ish to me.
Maybe because the small team working on the Raids is doing a good job? While the legendary team wasn’t as successful?
More like they want to at least finish the third wing before cancelling new raids. And since they did not make any specific promises about those, they will be able to do it quietly, behind the scenes.
It is different, but it’s not using a new effect. It’s like taking a skill that applies 3 burn stacks, removing the burn stacks, and replacing them with 2 poison stacks.
Switching from burn stacks to poison stacks isn’t a numbers tweak. Which was the initial statement, a numbers tweak isn’t enough, nor it’s good balance. No matter how easy it is to make.
Sure, but that’s why it’s called “easy mode,” the effect would be no easier to avoid successfully, but the penalties for failure would be less severe, making the net result easier.
You can learn how to avoid certain mechanics during the earlier phases of an encounter, that’s why they are there for. That’s why they are also considerably easier than the rest of the fight. That’s your easy mode as far as training is concerned. The Raids have “training” build-in already.
Sure you have. You learned the exact same thing you would have learned if the event reset, just without the stress of knowing that you caused the entire thing to fail for everyone else. The lesson is identical, just the penalty is lower.
But you cannot re-run the content until you get it perfect, since the team will succeed even if you fail miserably. On the other hand, if you actually had to restart the fight due to the wipe you’d get way more training until you get it right. That one simple time you will be required to do something won’t be enough to actually learn a mechanic.
To you, maybe it is, and you don’t have to use it, but I’m explaining to you the FACT, not opinion, FACT that it would be useful to people who are not you. You can have the opinion that you don’t care that it would be useful to these people, but you cannot dispute that it would be.
It could also cause way more harm than good, especially if try-hard easy mode runners go to do the “real thing” using their “easy mode” techniques and tactics. Train in the real thing, not an imitation, especially since the real thing has build-in training.
After reading the latest statement of Mr O`Brien regarding legendaries, things may switch back into the favor of non-raiders again in the near future. He is even talking about the manifesto, as strange that may sound to some of us. so maybe even Anet thinks now that it was a bad idea?
Of course he nowhere wrote that raids will be cancelled or not supported anymore, but his wording does not sound very hardcore-ish to me.
Maybe because the small team working on the Raids is doing a good job? While the legendary team wasn’t as successful?
So you think it is a quality issue? There are already legendaries out made by the same formula they wanted to apply to new legendaries, how can there be a difference between making a staff and a sword? Animations when the weapons are in combat are probably already there. And then the shortbow gets released, why the Shortbow and nothing else? It can´t be that hard to look for some ridiculous sidetreck nobody cared for before entering the new legendaries for the quest itself.
I gladly admit that I know Jack about programming, but that does not sound right for me right now. For me, it sounds like a shift in direction again.
And why can’t we have both? You’re talking as if raids take away from these other parts of the game, and they do not.
please point out the exact post or phrase used to indicate proof of your point of view that STIHL is saying anything about raids taking away from other aspects of the game.
throwing my 2 cents in the pot here. raids should feel epic. amirite? old time EQ player here and it was an everyday occurrence to wrangle 50-100 people (in groups of 6… no fancy raid UI, and no voice coms at first) for a planes raid. that’s epic… on a grand scale. much more recently i played DDO… and while the group size for a raid was much smaller (max group size 12)… for the most part the raids themselves still had an epic feel to them… trouping through a multi-part maze where 2 of the first 4 phases could kill you if you didn’t complete them quickly enough… one of which was a guaranteed fail if you didn’t complete in time… followed by 2 rounds of fighting a balor? that’s still epic even with reduced group size. exploring a gigantic dwarven-made extraplaner bank vault that had an ongoing story woven into it replete with love, betrayals, doublecrosses, and forced teamwork to solve all the puzzles… followed by a fight with an ancient red dragon who liked her adventurers roasty toasty and covered in ketchup. that was epic.
now in GW2… the first time i ran TTT… taxiing in people until the map was full to bursting… sorting people by what job to do.. each head with a different mechanic, and needing teamwork and coordination to kill them all at nearly the same time… THAT was epic… my first time facing a dragon (i think it was Jormag)…so many people on my screen they literally bought my computer to a halt… dealing with all the mechanics… being told to “stand here” and getting the crash landing achievement… when i wasn’t expecting it and had no idea what was going to happen (i have some friends who are practical jokers… they raised me at least XD)…. that… was epic.
my first time running the raid didn’t feel as epic. its like 2 trial runs… like… if you can’t kill these two, don’t even bother to pass GO do not collect 200 dollars, please step your way out of the raid now. then the “boss”… no epic trek to find the boss… no puzzles… no minions to mow through first….its just “oh look… there’s a platform… with the boss… lets do this…” followed by “dodge… green…. dodge…. bounce….green…. dodge… green… bounce… dodge… green…” etc rinse repeat for 5 phases. i’m sorry, but no. no offense to the designers, but that’s not epic
was it a good idea to make a raid? apparently, because for some reason everyone wanted them even tho we already had some pretty epic encounters in game, they just weren’t labeled “raids”…was this a good implementation? IMHO not really. does having a raid that isn’t epic and is really nothing more than a skill-gate take anything away from the mechanics and enjoyment of other encounters of various types and difficulties in game? nope.
Some people just like different things, I find the open world bosses all to be an extreme bore and a grind, they’re easy, you can’t lose them, there’s 100+ people who you have no control over, and you dont actively do anything other than just straight up attack the boss if you’re the majority of players, and even if you aren’t just autoattacking, then the mechanics still aren’t very engaging and you don’t feel like you’re doing much.
Raids are actually fun, nothing else in PvE is.
I have to agree, some people like different things, equally so, some people dislike different things, and yet others feel that some game elements don’t add to the game, or are even determent to the game community.
In some cases, it’s not even the content itself, it’s difficulty, or what it provides that is the issue, but the kind of people that it attracts to the game.
Case in point, I had someone send me hostile, insulting, nasty tells in game, while I was trying to enjoy a fractal, simply because I said on the forums “I think raids were a bad idea”, can you imagine how disjunctive that was, to be sent insulting hateful tells, simply for expressing an opinion? His opening attacks were so non-sequitur that I thought he had me confused with someone else. If that is the kind of person that raids being to this community, the community is much better off without them, and if that means the raids need to go away to get rid of that kind of toxic player base, then that would be what is best for the game and community. Equally so, it might not be the raids fault, we could try to justify that this person would have been that way no matter what, that they would have went off on personal attacks for anyone that did not adore any play style that they were a proponent of from fractals to open world, to whatever. While that could be true, they told me, during our very brief and abrasive exchange, that Raids were the only thing they enjoyed in GW2, thus logically, if we got rid of raids, we would also get rid of that kind of toxic player. In that front, it’s Not the raids fault, it is simply the kind of player it attracts.
But I don’t think everyone who enjoys raids is like that. I believe that was a isolated kind of incident.
To that effect, I have had civil discussions with other forum posters in game, and while we may disagree, we never came to insults, on top of that, I was also able to enjoy a Raid Training run with some amazing people, wonderful jovial folks, that were willing to be helpful, easygoing, and informative. And given we were all learning our roles, most of us painfully unprepared, to really take down the Vale Guardian, But no one got upset when the tank in training dodge rolled out of the arena, or the circle formed on the glowing section of the platform. We just dusted ourselves off and went at it again. But even with a band of misfits on a learning run, we still managed to drop the VG to around 50% most runs and even lower a few times, before something went wrong. And it was never an issue of gear, but often the biggest cause of death and wipe was just “Missed the Green”.
I can honestly say, content that your biggest cause of wipe comes from not running and standing in a green circle, is not content that I feel is a “Challenge” unless your game of choice when growing up was Simon Says™
In Closing It would be ideal if raids functioned as a means to bring the community together, where 10 people could gather and simply have some fun, thus larger groups, ,more pugs, and more friendly runs, as opposed to divide them.
The goal of any content should be designed to build up the community, make it stronger, and more accepting of each other, and any content that splits up the player base, and causes animosity and resentment among the players towards each other, is not profitable to the game or the community as a whole.
Switching from burn stacks to poison stacks isn’t a numbers tweak. Which was the initial statement, a numbers tweak isn’t enough, nor it’s good balance. No matter how easy it is to make.
Yes, we agreed that it likely won’t be just a numbers tweak like eight pages ago, but it’ll still be primarily a numbers tweak, with a handful of affix swaps. Again, same mechanics though. Please don’t bring us back around into a circle of semantics. Circle of semantics incoming in 3. . . 2. . .
You can learn how to avoid certain mechanics during the earlier phases of an encounter, that’s why they are there for. That’s why they are also considerably easier than the rest of the fight. That’s your easy mode as far as training is concerned. The Raids have “training” build-in already.
Sure, but then when you fail them, the event wipes and you have to reset, and that is frustrating and stressful which provides a poor learning environment. If you don’t fail and wipe when you screw up the technique, you’re more likely to internalize it. And keep in mind that not all mechanics are in the first stage, if they were, it wouldn’t be the first stage. If you fail on mechanics only available in the third stage, you might have to replay the first stage dozens of times to get back to it.
But you cannot re-run the content until you get it perfect, since the team will succeed even if you fail miserably. On the other hand, if you actually had to restart the fight due to the wipe you’d get way more training until you get it right.
I’m assuming you’d be able to rerun it as many times as you like, you just wouldn’t get more rewards except once per week. I mean, if your main problem is working out the final stage, which is more constructive, struggling through the first two stages dozens of times to hit the final stage a few times, by which point you’re burnt out from the early stages and not really on your A-game anymore, or blitzing through the first stages because they’re not nearly as hard and then working on the mechanics of the stage that’s really bothering you each and every time?
It could also cause way more harm than good, especially if try-hard easy mode runners go to do the “real thing” using their “easy mode” techniques and tactics.
Again, no. Just no, give it a rest please. No. There will obviously always be newbs pumped up on their own hubris, with or without easy mode. There will be people who have never done the raid but that have done dungeons and stuff and watched the videos and come in thinking they’ll wreck the place, and crash the rest of the group. That will happen no matter what we do. But people coming out of easy mode will at least be better than those people because they will have felt the mechanics, even if they did react to them differently. And if someone tries to jump from easy mode to hard mode without at least researching the differences they should expect then they likely wouldn’t be any help in the raid if they had jumped from “nothing” to raid rather than “easy” to raid. And again, all it would take is the raid coordinator explaining before it start, “here is what we’re doing, if you’ve been using easy mode, this might have worked, but it won’t work at all here so don’t try it.” Easy-moders will be whipped into shape in short order.
So you think it is a quality issue? There are already legendaries out made by the same formula they wanted to apply to new legendaries, how can there be a difference between making a staff and a sword?
It’s not that they can’t spit the weapons out well enough, it’s that they can’t spit out the Legendary Collections fast enough, and they plan to stick to that model. I’m sure if they wanted to just drop them on the gem store they could have several out per month.
Yes, we agreed that it likely won’t be just a numbers tweak like eight pages ago, but it’ll still be primarily a numbers tweak, with a handful of affix swaps. Again, same mechanics though. Please don’t bring us back around into a circle of semantics. Circle of semantics incoming in 3. . . 2. . .
Right. It won’t be just a numbers tweak but also a complete change of skills that 1-shot you to just deal some damage.
Sure, but then when you fail them, the event wipes and you have to reset, and that is frustrating and stressful which provides a poor learning environment.
Actually wiping and having to reset after each failure is a good learning environment for such content. Otherwise there is no reason to actually learn the mechanic in the first place. If you KNOW you will succeed before you even try, there is no learning, it’s just a boring “watch the hit points bar” move kind of content. We got loads of that. Take a look at the new Shatterer as a prime example of what happens if you can always succeed, nobody is even remotely trying to learn how to break his bar. You think if there was a “hard mode” version of Shatterer that wiped everyone if you didn’t break his bar, that anyone would try to break him in easy mode? I really doubt that. It would make zero difference, and that’s the same with “easy mode” as training, it won’t be used as training. Or at least it will be used as training until you finish the easy mode, then it will be a new “farm”.
I’m assuming you’d be able to rerun it as many times as you like, you just wouldn’t get more rewards except once per week.
You don’t know how the raid lock works right? So you re-run it multiple times, and complete the encounter multiple times, but with no rewards after the first? What’s the point of the re-run in this case? Do your easy mode run, win, get those rewards, go train in the hard mode. You won’t get anything during the next times you succeed in the easy mode anyway. And you also have the opportunity to get your hard mode rewards if/when you finally succeed at it.
But people coming out of easy mode will at least be better than those people because they will have felt the mechanics, even if they did react to them differently.
They wouldn’t “feel” the actual mechanics, if something just tickle them instead of wiping them. That’s hardly the same as experiencing the real thing. Of course that all depends on how “easy” this “easy mode” is going to be. There are many different meanings for “Easy”. If you just auto-attack to beat it then yeah it’s completely worthless.
The raids were fun to me for all of about a week, now it is just content that I do not bother with. It’s not “bad”, but boring.
The raids were fun to me for all of about a week, now it is just content that I do not bother with. It’s not “bad”, but boring.
Unlike dungeons, it’s content you don’t really repeat on a daily basis, and the rewards by comparison for time and effort spent compared to what dungeons were pre-nerf are pretty bad.
But then, in-game rewards in this game are bad by default in order to drive their gem to gold real money conversions.
I don’t know about you but I make way more gold per time by doing raids than I ever did with dungeons, the only issue is the weekly gate.
Right. It won’t be just a numbers tweak but also a complete change of skills that 1-shot you to just deal some damage.
Exactly, but again, it would only require swapping around some existing fixes, which should be a trivial change on their end. It’s not like I’m asking them to change the animation timings, or code an entirely new effect affix, or anything like that. It’s just popping out the “auto-defeats on hit” affix, and replacing it with either an “auto-down on hit” affix (which is already in their toolkit from other attacks), or a “deals unblockable damagE” affix, which they also already have, and type an appropriate damage value in. This entire process should take about three to fix minutes, and I’m including them opening the necessary software.
If it does take them any longer than that then they really need to overhaul their developer’s toolkit.
Actually wiping and having to reset after each failure is a good learning environment for such content.
For you? Maybe, I can’t say what works best for you. For me? definitely not. This is a fact, and again, you can say “I don’t care what works better for you,” that’s your opinion and you’ve a right to it, but you cannot make any argument that the “wipe until you succeed” environment is a better one for me to learn in. Again, they’ve done studies that show that high stress environments are, overall, terrible learning environments.
Otherwise there is no reason to actually learn the mechanic in the first place. If you KNOW you will succeed before you even try, there is no learning, it’s just a boring “watch the hit points bar” move kind of content.
Well, the reason is up to the participant. If the player only wants to farm easy mode indefinitely, then no, they would have no reason to learn to “do it right,” and that’s fine. They would just learn the best methods for easy mode and farm it out, and that would be fine. But if the player does intend to move up to hard mode, if that his his chosen goal, then he would need to take it seriously, even if he’s not strictly required to by the mechanics. He would need to treat the threat as deadly even if it is not. We’ve been over this like a dozen times, I’m really not sure why it’s not sinking in. Maybe repeated failure isn’t as good a teaching mechanism as you claim.
I came up with a complicated analogy that might help to teach you the principles at work here. I originally thoguht out a way to discuss the rewards using cookies, but it made things even more complicated, so let’s ignore rewards for now and just assume that they are good enough for easy mode that it feels worthwhile, but better enough for hard mode that those completing it feel suitably rewarded and those that can beat easy mode are enticed to try hard mode anyway.
Ok, so the analogy is this, you have two types of math tests. The tests themselves are identical, all that changes is what happens when you screw up. Each test consists of ten questions, each progressively more complex, so #1 is addition, #2 subtraction, then multiplication, division, then combinations of two or more processes, etc. If you retake the test, the numbers used and answers to each question will be different each time, so you can’t just memorize results, but the basic type of question remains the same. Again, so far this is identical between each version.
The difference is in what happens when you screw up a question. Each question is graded as you answer it. In the “hard” mode of the test, each time you screw up an answer, an air horn is blared in your ear, and you have to start the test all over again, with the questions all new. You can only reach and complete the last question if you never fail any of the previous questions. Further, you are taking the test with nine other people, and if any of them screw up a question, you all have to start over.
The easy mode version, if you screw up a question, you can continue to the next one, and you only fail completely if you miss more than three of the questions in total. You can miss the first three, or the last, and still continue to the end. Once you complete the test, you can start it over again if you’d like to practice. Also, you are still taking it with nine other people, but up to three of them can fail without failing the entire group.
Now obviously it’s easier to reach the end of the easy test, but it’s no easier to get a perfect score on the easy test than on the hard, the math skills required would be identical. A player who is only motivated to clear the easy test would be capable of doing so and then moving on, but a player who is motivated to get a perfect score regardless of whether it is required would still keep trying to get a perfect score, and since he would have an easier time passing the early phases, he could more easily focus on the portions that really bother him.
If a player did have the goal of being capable of beating the “hard mode” test, he would need to learn the exact same skills the “hard mode” test taker would, he would just have more flexibility in pursuing those skills, and less pressure on each attempt. Some players might thrive in the high pressure “hard test” environment, others would thrive better in the lower pressure easy test environment. Players would be able to choose for themselves which tool is best for them.
Take a look at the new Shatterer as a prime example of what happens if you can always succeed, nobody is even remotely trying to learn how to break his bar.
It really does depend on if you taxi into a “breakbar” map, but even then it’s hard to manage since you need the cooperation of 140 some people and have little control over who those people are. If Shatterer were a 10-man instance experience like a raid boss (and balanced for such), it would be trivial to get together a serious party capable of achieving it every time, even if it were completely unnecessary. There would still be some groups not even trying, of course, but there would also be groups that would be trying, and those groups would succeed.
You don’t know how the raid lock works right? So you re-run it multiple times, and complete the encounter multiple times, but with no rewards after the first? What’s the point of the re-run in this case? Do your easy mode run, win, get those rewards, go train in the hard mode.
Again, this is for people for whom hard mode is NOT and never will be a positive training environment. In this case, if people want to learn hard mode, their best path would be to rerun easy mode successfully multiple times in a week, even for no reward, than to fail multiple times at hard.
But of course people would be free to tackle it however they like. Some might choose to just beat Easy once a week and never raid again until next week. That’s fine. Some might choose to beat Easy, and then keep practicing on it several more times to build up experience. That’s also fine. Others might beat Easy once, and then face-bash hard for the rest of the week, trying to get past it. That’s also fine, it gives them a certain set reward, a feeling of accomplishment from having actually passed something, and then the hard mode training you seem to enjoy. Some might skip Easy mode entirely and just face bash Hard because they. like you, value that experience more. That’s fine too. And of course some are already good at Hard mode and can beat it regularly, and they can continue doing that, and might also choose to run easy mode once a week for the reduced, but bonus rewards. Everyone can choose to use it or not use it however they feel it is useful to them.
Exactly, but again, it would only require swapping around some existing fixes, which should be a trivial change on their end.
Of course you insist on calling it trivial so we go again back a few pages.
Example
That still doesn’t apply to the Raid at all. When you fail the first phase, you repeat it until you get it. Because if you can’t beat the first one (Which is an actual easy mode of the second one) there is zero point in going further. Always from a learning standpoint, nothing about rewards.
So say you mess up during phase 1, get hit by something you shouldn’t, fail to be at the correct spot etc. What next? In your example you will just continue the fight and beat it, which defeats any purpose of using it as a learning experience. You learn NOTHING AT ALL. The only way to actually learn it, is by resetting the fight and getting it better next time. But if you reset in the easy mode, why not use the hard mode and wipe? It’s the exact same thing.
Again, this is for people for whom hard mode is NOT and never will be a positive training environment. In this case, if people want to learn hard mode, their best path would be to rerun easy mode successfully multiple times in a week, even for no reward, than to fail multiple times at hard.
Why? Reruns of the easy mode give no rewards, but IF you succeed in the hard mode, you will get extra rewards. Why practice in an easy mode that offers nothing if you beat it? Not to mention the lack of a reset as mentioned above. The only way for the training to be useful is if you RESET the fight after each failure so you can try again the part you failed at. That’s how you will learn it, re-play the part you fail at, not the whole fight.
So you can retry the split phase, the updraft phase or the cannon phase for example. If you can just shrug it off and finish the fight anyway each time, it’s a total waste of 10 minutes of your life.
Honest question back to the thread it should be:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Raid-Difficulty-Settings-Merged/page/13#post6065012
Because all this talk about teaching and learning is meaningless if we don’t identify how “easy” this easy mode is going to be.
(edited by maddoctor.2738)
So say you mess up during phase 1, get hit by something you shouldn’t, fail to be at the correct spot etc. What next? In your example you will just continue the fight and beat it, which defeats any purpose of using it as a learning experience. You learn NOTHING AT ALL. The only way to actually learn it, is by resetting the fight and getting it better next time. But if you reset in the easy mode, why not use the hard mode and wipe? It’s the exact same thing.
I’m boggled.
You say that you can’t lose if you fail, know that you fail, but at not slapped around for it. This defies any educational principle. You can still learn from a failure, even if that failure is of minimal consequence. If you fail at a problem, then even if you are allowed to continue to the next one, you know you failed that one and will attempt to improve on your performance the second time through. They have no need to stop you and force you to redo the first bit until you get it right for you to have learned from it.
Why? Reruns of the easy mode give no rewards, but IF you succeed in the hard mode, you will get extra rewards. Why practice in an easy mode that offers nothing if you beat it? ]
Because it is a lower stress environment! This clearly doesn’t matter in the least to you, you don’t care, you don’t understand why anyone would care, and explaining it is like trying to explain “blue” to a blind person, but just accept as a fact that is outside your experience that the stress of potential failure DOES negatively impact the experiences and learning capabilities of people who are not yourself. That for these people, repeating content that has a lower chance of failure to build up their skills IS a superior experience than repeatedly failing against content as they attempt to improve on their last performance.
Again, you don’t have to agree that this is ever a way YOU would feel, just accept as an absolute fact that there are people who are not yourself who DO feel this way, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. If you cannot accept that this is am important factor to some people then you cannot meaningfully participate in this discussion at all, it’d be like trying to have a discussion about the importance of ramps instead of stairs to someone who simply can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t just prefer to walk up a short flight of stairs to a longer ramp.
The only way for the training to be useful is if you RESET the fight after each failure so you can try again the part you failed at. That’s how you will learn it, re-play the part you fail at, not the whole fight.
But the part you fail at in one run might not be the part where you really need work, it might just be a part where someone, maybe not even yourself, made a stupid error. I mean, if you can pass the first phase 20 times, the second 10, but fail the third, and then the next time you fail the first round because you’re burnt out and over-adrenalized, then it’s not because you really need a lot more work on the first round, what you need is to get back to the third round and get it down.
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