Guild Wars 2

Patch Notes:
- Fixed Forum Bug
- Fixed Server Crash ( wouldn’t be Patch Notes if this wouldn’t be in the PAtch Notes )

Even though I agree that this could easily be merged into one of the other threads on the topic, I’m glad to see these discussion continuing and reappearing from multiple people despite ongoing attempts to shame or belittle anyone that says anything about opening up difficulties for more playstyles.

It is an important topic and one that I am sure will keep coming up again and again.

Was not aware pointing out grave flaws in reason and implementation was considered a form of shaming or belittlement.

Rather, what would be more prudent to bring up is that the continued ‘reappearance’ and ‘discussion’ of a topic spoken about over and over again, without contributing any further perspective or counter-points about the current non-dismissed arguments, would be a type of spam and thus ignored or at worst reported as such.

It’s not very different than the myriad threads you would see on the PvP forums crying about a profession being overpowered despite the consensus providing overwhelming facts against.

But I digress, the only new information in this thread that was relevant was posts demonstrating an idea of how one would create an easy mode with flat numbers, and there has already been enough discussion on why that in theory would break encounters apart.

You might think that there was enough discussion on these topics. Other people seem to disagree with you on this however. And let’s be honest – you are not agains this topic reappearing because “everything has been discussed already”. You are against it simply because you disagree with the suggestion and would rather Anet didn’t notice that it’s gaining popularity.

There is enough discussion on these topics, I know because I keep repeating the same things on all similar threads and never get any good responses. Then someone who never read any of the previous ones will post the exact same thing, same arguments are given, then they stop. And the cycle continues. If everything wasn’t discussed already then why do we see the exact same for and against arguments all the time?

Funny how now there aren’t even arguments presented to promote discussion, just some thread bumps to keep a dead horse alive.

Maybe Zhaitan isn’t dead at all. He just moved to the forums to create all of these undead threads.

What maddoctor said. There have been only a few posters that have been honest about why they want an easier mode, and that they willingly know it can butcher the content directly for the intent of bringing more people in. They likely see Raids as bringing an ‘Elitist’ culture to GW2, which is woefully ignorant as it has always been around this game. What’s wonderful though is that the worst elitism you will see, just because of what this game is, is extremely narrow. The vast majority of this game is extremely welcoming to everyone, and even in raids which are advertised as the highest difficulty content for PvE, and rightfully so, elitism is being marginalized there courtesy of the unheard-of Training runs being done daily.

I am so sick of this stupid argument, their is nothing to argue, Raids SHOULD have a story mode or easier difficulty like Fractals, The argument comes from a selfish place of wanting to be a special little snowflake that gets exclusive access, the argument that it would take away from Raid development is kind of BS if you ask me, all they would have to do is change a couple of numbers around and it would open Raids up to be available to alot more players. I will never understand it, are you that starved for content and that impatient that the idea of letting a ton of other players have access to new content when a new raid comes out might interfere with you getting a raid that the idea infuriates you?

GW2 the MMO that has always stood for respecting a players time and everyone can enjoy the same content…is actively blocking people from raiding. And don’t even bother with the “your just mad” crap guys, my problem isn’t skill, my problem is lack of a group, and not I’m not interested in spending 5-7 hours in a single raid just to have everyone go “Oh well g2g guys bye!” ugh will Arenanet just add a difficulty selector already? I’m not even asking for the same rewards, I mostly would prefer to experience the story first hand as well as learn the game mechanics for myself so that maybe I’ll have a shot at you know…breaking into raiding

Please don’t bother offering me to join a group, I have put up with enough harassment and taunting from so called “Raiders” crying about how I can’t roll with them unless I have X Y Z A B C D G H L M and at least 2 of J and if I don’t have that I’m not “good enough” to be a raider and I should uninstall…this is the type of garbage I play GW2 to avoid, and yet…here it is…

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

I get your point in theory, except…I believe that you are exaggerating, how would it double the development time exactly? Do you think that all the fractals difficulty scales are designed separately and one fractal is the equivalent of making 10? Because I’m pretty sure thats not how it works, all it would take would be some number tweaking and rebalancing, yes it would take some time, but so many more players would get to look forward to raids and actually enjoy the content and story, it really shouldn’t affect the development time that significantly

Also apologies in advance if I get a bit heated, this topic really bugs me because every time I try getting into raids all I get are elitist pricks giving me 30 reasons why I’m a casual noob and need to stop playing and uninstall and kill myself and blah blah blah and it doesn’t help when I get onto forums and people just tell me I’m ignorant or whatever without any actual reasons

thewaterguy.4796:

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

Also apologies in advance if I get a bit heated, this topic really bugs me because every time I try getting into raids all I get are elitist pricks giving me 30 reasons why I’m a casual noob and need to stop playing and uninstall and kill myself and blah blah blah

You sure that you played GW2 and not LOL when People gave you this? I haven’T even seen something like this in the Queensdale Champtrain in the Days of old, and this Champtrain was the most toxic Place ever in GW2. ( The Tower of Nightmare would have died from poisoning because of this toxicity )

Also balancing is not an easy Task. You brought up Fractals but Anet showed us that it isn’t easy to scale Things even in 5 Man Content without breaking Stuff or screwing Group Balance. Balancing manually would require quite a lot of Work. It is very easy to overdo it and then making Stuff so easy that Vanilla Open World laughs at it. There is a Line between making the Easy Mode too Punishing and so easy that everything is just Faceroll and you need to work out the Balance before Releasing it. If there is an Easy Mode it should give People an expression on what to expect of the Raid itself and train them on the Mechanics.

Also what about Rewards? No Rewards and this Easy Mode will be dead quickly. Too much and then you could just run Easy Mode and gain mostly the same Rewards, this is where PuGs would then go to.

thewaterguy.4796:

I get your point in theory, except…I believe that you are exaggerating, how would it double the development time exactly?

There are a lot of moving parts to a system like this. They’d have to design the alternative mode(s) to be sufficiently rewarding without impeding on the unique rewards of the current mode, they’d have to tailor/rebalance their already very specifically made bosses to still work with fewer/adjusted mechanics, there’s a lot of base code necessary to support new mode(s), they’d have to change the GUIs to support the new mode(s), this (legitimately) multiplies the QA time on literally every change that goes out related to raids by the number of new modes… There are a lot of things to consider. Even if the number doesn’t come to exactly +100% per mode, it’s very clearly enough to impact their release cadence for new content, and that’s bad for GW2 overall.

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids

Would it? I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. There’s no way doing an easy mode of an existing raid would be more work than making a completely new comparable instance.

1. Rebalancing isn’t only a thing of numbers. It’s also about mechanics and some of them need to be changed entirely + tested to be functional. All in all it would massively increase time to balance and stopping the dev team from bringing out new content. Additionally, raids are easy if you practice enough. In several eyes, mine included, some of the 9 bosses are too easy if you know what you are doing. Even pugs kill some of them with a big amount of time left.
btw: fractals were designed from the scratch to have different stages of difficulty – raids not!

2. When I started raiding in spring almost all people were nice to me. Of course here and there you find some bad apples like in every corner in this and other games. I doubt that this attitude has changed dramatically and you are reading so many insults and other toxic things. A hint: Read and understand lfgs properly!, it can prevent awkward and toxic situations.

3. There are still enough training and helping runs in the lfg. Every frickin day Plus certain raid teaching guilds exists – have a deeper look into the forum and especially reddit.
In the end you can open your own squad and form a training run. It will fill fast but don’t expect to kill the boss you are going for because it needs time to get along with the mechanics and so on. Not everybody in your group will be on the same level. There is only one reason not to build up an own squad if you want to start raiding: You want to get carried by better players and get your kill fast without practicing. In that case: Sorry, that’s not how raids are working!

4. There are classes that easily can be played by everyone knowing a little bit of the class for example PS warrior; Necro and Rev are also easy (dunno about their need in team comps due to the post-patch situation). If you are proficient with the druid it’s also very simple to play that class in magi’s gear. I got several first kills with druid although I had no clue about the class and were just smashing buttons to burst heal what I could. My team stayed alive whole time, had scholar rune buff up as much as it was possible and could focus on doing dmg – easy peasily!

If you really want to get into raiding then gear up 2-3 different classes and at first follow the basic guides. They are existent for everyone and well explained. It may not always be the best for you and some fights/kills later you will adjust skills/traits but to start with that’s the way to go.
I don’t get why people still blaming raids like they are. The game is old now and everybody can afford ascended gear within an appropriate time due to fractals, AB multiloot and other farm maps. There is no excuse to not have asc gear and simultaneously having the wish to raid.

Astralporing.1957:

Would it? I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. There’s no way doing an easy mode of an existing raid would be more work than making a completely new comparable instance.

My previous comment was based on the concept from the other poster of them adding 1 to N new modes/difficulties, not necessarily just one new mode. If they add just an easy mode, realistically it’s probably an increase of anywhere from 33-50% of developer effort since you’re right, art assets at least can be reused. Still, as I said in my previous post, this would impact their release cadence in an unacceptable way per their stringent release schedule.

thewaterguy.4796:

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

I get your point in theory, except…I believe that you are exaggerating, how would it double the development time exactly? Do you think that all the fractals difficulty scales are designed separately and one fractal is the equivalent of making 10? Because I’m pretty sure thats not how it works, all it would take would be some number tweaking and rebalancing, yes it would take some time, but so many more players would get to look forward to raids and actually enjoy the content and story, it really shouldn’t affect the development time that significantly

Also apologies in advance if I get a bit heated, this topic really bugs me because every time I try getting into raids all I get are elitist pricks giving me 30 reasons why I’m a casual noob and need to stop playing and uninstall and kill myself and blah blah blah and it doesn’t help when I get onto forums and people just tell me I’m ignorant or whatever without any actual reasons

Fractals were designed from the start to scale. It’s always had repeating instances at different difficulty tiers. Fractals were designed to appeal to the majority of the community and allow people to practice the level under easier circumstances before trying it under more difficult ones.

Raids were designed to appeal to the minority of players looking for content that requires a coordinated group, all intimately familiar with their prof and all willing to devote time to learning more challenging mechanics.

Changing raids to work like fractals means reworking every single design choice so that it can scale. That’s a huge initial investment.

Worse, it also means that adding a new raid means starting out designing it to work like fractals. One of the reasons the raid team is so much quicker than the fractal team is that they aren’t appealing to all the different types of player; they are designing content for a minority and so don’t have to build in all sorts of contingencies and alternatives. They err on the side of making things too difficult and it’s possible (even likely) their intended audience will rise to the challenge and figure out how to deal with it. That’s certainly not true in Fractals (witness the reaction to the new Bloomhunger).

In short, adding tiers of difficulty to raids changes the essence of what raids are and so will increase the amount of resources raids consume.

Put another way, those against “elitist-oriented” content are better off asking ANet not to add difficulty tiers to raids, the better to ensure more staff are assigned to the rest of the content in the game.

I was against ANet adding Raids to the game (for reasons some have stated in this thread: I thought it counter to the original design for the game). However, it’s clear that raids have been very successful for the target audience and even likely have appealed to more people.

I haven’t managed to finish a raid wing and I do not want ANet to alter their plans for raids. As they are right now, they are a challenge to which I aspire. They have brought in fresh blood to the game (and helped keep some veterans) and they are very different from the rest of the game.

tl;dr adding tiers in raids will increase development costs and thus take away resources from elsewhere in the game. Raids are successful in their intended goal; instead of tinkering with that, let’s apply the same strategy to improving content elsewhere in the game.

thewaterguy.4796:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

thewaterguy.4796:

I am so sick of this stupid argument, their is nothing to argue, Raids SHOULD have a story mode or easier difficulty like Fractals, The argument comes from a selfish place of wanting to be a special little snowflake that gets exclusive access, the argument that it would take away from Raid development is kind of BS if you ask me, all they would have to do is change a couple of numbers around and it would open Raids up to be available to alot more players. I will never understand it, GW2 the MMO that has always stood for respecting a players time and everyone can enjoy the same content…is actively blocking people from raiding. And don’t even bother with the “your just mad” crap guys, my problem isn’t skill, my problem is lack of a group, and no I’m not interested in spending 5-7 hours in a single raid just to have everyone go “Oh well g2g guys bye!” ugh will Arenanet just add a difficulty selector already? I’m not even asking for the same rewards, I mostly would prefer to experience the story first hand

Please don’t bother offering me to join a group, I have put up with enough harassment and taunting from so called “Raiders” crying about how I can’t roll with them unless I have X Y Z A B C D G H L M and at least 2 of J and if I don’t have that I’m not “good enough” to be a raider…this is the type of garbage I play GW2 to avoid, and yet…here it is…

Your ignorance is astounding.

My ignorance…ok, you guys are bloody hilarious, the idea of people getting access to similar content as you just infuriates yah! And if anyone dares to call it what it is you can just safely ignore them!

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, because all I hear is raiders crying about “casuals” wanting to kill their precious exclusivity with nothing but vague excuses about how it would “ruin” raiding…somehow

Reasons have been mentioned plenty, in this thread and everywhere else. See some of the other responses.

And yes even if you might not believe it, it increases the development time by a huge amount and the raid devs do not want to sacrifice time for multiple difficulties in order to cater to a group of players that don’t want to raid anyway.

If you want to raid, there’s enough ways to get in without getting flamed (which, from what I’ve seen on the forums, sometimes is even exaggerated or even caused by the one complaining about being flamed due to bad behaviour on their part in the first place), but at the same time you need to be willing to adapt and change in order to contribute to your group as needed.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Reasons have been mentioned plenty, in this thread and everywhere else. See some of the other responses.

And yes even if you might not believe it, it increases the development time by a huge amount and the raid devs do not want to sacrifice time for multiple difficulties in order to cater to a group of players that don’t want to raid anyway.

Every percent of players who started to do raids actually increasing value of development time spent on raids. Currently with less than 10% of players raiding regularly I have no idea why someone can even thought about raids being developed further than 4 wings total to finish legendary collection promised on HoT release. Developing content for tiny minority instead of majority is a pointless waste if development time, unless this minority is somehow paying money for everyone else.

Rednik.3809:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Reasons have been mentioned plenty, in this thread and everywhere else. See some of the other responses.

And yes even if you might not believe it, it increases the development time by a huge amount and the raid devs do not want to sacrifice time for multiple difficulties in order to cater to a group of players that don’t want to raid anyway.

Every percent of players who started to do raids actually increasing value of development time spent on raids. Currently with less than 10% of players raiding regularly I have no idea why someone can even thought about raids being developed further than 4 wings total to finish legendary collection promised on HoT release. Developing content for tiny minority instead of majority is a pointless waste if development time, unless this minority is somehow paying money for everyone else.

How many players do you think pvp or wvw?

Rednik.3809:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Reasons have been mentioned plenty, in this thread and everywhere else. See some of the other responses.

And yes even if you might not believe it, it increases the development time by a huge amount and the raid devs do not want to sacrifice time for multiple difficulties in order to cater to a group of players that don’t want to raid anyway.

Every percent of players who started to do raids actually increasing value of development time spent on raids. Currently with less than 10% of players raiding regularly I have no idea why someone can even thought about raids being developed further than 4 wings total to finish legendary collection promised on HoT release. Developing content for tiny minority instead of majority is a pointless waste if development time, unless this minority is somehow paying money for everyone else.

I’m convinced the devs took that into consideration and realized that the value overall decreases still or it is not worth it. Also, raiders are usually more invested into the game, so keeping them in is definitely something to pursue. On top of that, the raid team is rather small compared to the rest of the company and has been specifically hired from what I remember, so they got new resources to work on raids instead of using existing ones. Sure, could argue now that they could’ve hired more devs for open world content, but having too many devs working on the same thing isn’t good either.

thewaterguy.4796:

I am so sick of this stupid argument, their is nothing to argue, Raids SHOULD have a story mode or easier difficulty like Fractals, The argument comes from a selfish place of wanting to be a special little snowflake that gets exclusive access, the argument that it would take away from Raid development is kind of BS if you ask me, all they would have to do is change a couple of numbers around and it would open Raids up to be available to alot more players. I will never understand it, are you that starved for content and that impatient that the idea of letting a ton of other players have access to new content when a new raid comes out might interfere with you getting a raid that the idea infuriates you?

GW2 the MMO that has always stood for respecting a players time and everyone can enjoy the same content…is actively blocking people from raiding. And don’t even bother with the “your just mad” crap guys, my problem isn’t skill, my problem is lack of a group, and not I’m not interested in spending 5-7 hours in a single raid just to have everyone go “Oh well g2g guys bye!” ugh will Arenanet just add a difficulty selector already? I’m not even asking for the same rewards, I mostly would prefer to experience the story first hand as well as learn the game mechanics for myself so that maybe I’ll have a shot at you know…breaking into raiding

Please don’t bother offering me to join a group, I have put up with enough harassment and taunting from so called “Raiders” crying about how I can’t roll with them unless I have X Y Z A B C D G H L M and at least 2 of J and if I don’t have that I’m not “good enough” to be a raider and I should uninstall…this is the type of garbage I play GW2 to avoid, and yet…here it is…

With this attitude, I can see why you dislike raiding. It actually requires cooperation with 9 other people.

You simultaneously state that your problem “isn’t skill,” and that you’re too good for a training group.

You won’t state your build. You won’t accept invitations to groups. You won’t accept criticisms on how to optimize your play.

If that’s how you want to play, fine. Do open world. Raids aren’t for you. You don’t see pvp players complaining when their sub-optimal build gets destroyed in pvp.

Finally, I’ll never understand why people want raids to be more like fractals. We didn’t get a new fractal for over 2 years. And there are no new ones on the horizon. It obviously takes anet a long time to balance multiple difficulty scales. I don’t want raids to be like that.

Absurdo.8309:

How many players do you think pvp or wvw?

Feel free to go at gw2eff and see by yourself.
At least 50% of players have 200+ pvp games. At least 40% of players have 100+ wvw rank.

Rednik.3809:

Absurdo.8309:

How many players do you think pvp or wvw?

Feel free to go at gw2eff and see by yourself.
At least 50% of players have 200+ pvp games. At least 40% of players have 100+ wvw rank.

That is only based on those who even register and use gw2efficiency the majority of the player base don’t use or know about that website

+ don’t forget pvp-rank farm
+ many wvw-players are at eotm for karma-trains

Rednik.3809:

Absurdo.8309:

How many players do you think pvp or wvw?

Feel free to go at gw2eff and see by yourself.
At least 50% of players have 200+ pvp games. At least 40% of players have 100+ wvw rank.

These game modes have been out for 4 years. When you compare things like proof of heroics or pvp league tickets, the numbers are comparable at 20% participation.

Edit: Plus, both those game modes are available to those without HOT.

Astralporing.1957:

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids

Would it? I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. There’s no way doing an easy mode of an existing raid would be more work than making a completely new comparable instance.

It would be work that will keep new raids from being made. The maintenance time will be indeed doubled because you’d need to upkeep two completely different instances. I’m sorry but from the suggestion on “simple number tweaks” we’ve seen on this thread we are talking about a completely new, completely original, completely different experience. Now if you have some non-number tweaks that are not completely useless then we can discuss those.

Rising Dusk.2408:

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

I don’t think we can realistically make any statements about how much time it would add – only developers can do that.

That said, I think this is the only real argument against the idea of story/training/whatever modes – the idea that it would take more effort and time from the developers.

I would counter that by saying that every part of the game obviously takes developer effort. The metric for whether that effort is warranted should be how much it adds to the game – does the effort provide something positive that people will find valuable and fun. The answer to that is obviously very subjective – some will feel it is worthwhile (I am among that number) while others will feel it is not.

That is why this argument and discussion remain valid and important.

By adding raiding into the game, they have, whether they wanted to or not, shined a light on what raiding in GW2 might look like. For some, what we have now hit the nail perfectly on the head. It is the experience they want from raiding.

For others, that light only emphasizes the potential of what raiding could be. They see something fun in the game and want to participate/enjoy it, but at the same time, they either don’t have the dedication/time – or they simply don’t want to significantly alter their play style – to enjoy it in its current form. That is where the developer time/end result comes into play. I for one think it would be worth developer time (even if that time doesn’t come from the current raid team) to extend the raid experience to more playstyles and people. Again, however, it ultimately falls to the developers. Only they know what that time investment really looks like.

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think we can realistically make any statements about how much time it would add – only developers can do that.

You’re right that I can’t say anything for certain, but having spent over a decade in software development I would bet money that I’m right and it would have huge ramifications on their development cycle. Either way, the developers will never say one way or the other because to do so would poison the well, so I guess we’ll have to keep living in suspense.

Blaeys.3102:

That said, I think this is the only real argument against the idea of story/training/whatever modes – the idea that it would take more effort and time from the developers.

Now you are disregarding all the other real arguments about that idea but I guess in the end all of them are about effort and time from the developers. It also depends on which “version” someone uses, because different people are asking for different easier modes, there is not one unified idea.

1) Story Mode only: If it’s a way for players to experience the story, and the story alone, then the question becomes is it worth the development time to make something with zero replay value. Something that players will do once to see the story and not visit again.

2) Training: If it’s a way to train, then there are multiple issues.
First, a lot of the raid bosses (I admit not all of them) have training build-in to them already that help much better to teach the mechanics, since they are the actual mechanics, than a version with much simplified mechanics.
Second, if you remove 1-shot kills from the bosses and make them less lethal then it’s no longer the same fight despite how much the “it’s just a numbers tweak” crowd will try to make you believe. If you can heal through, dodge, use invulnerability, or anything else to avoid an instant-kill then it won’t teach you to avoid it in the “real” version but instead teach how to build around countering it instead.
Third, what do we do about roles in this easier mode? One of the most important aspects of raiding is splitting roles among the group, from following DPS rotations, to providing important boons, tanking and healing. There is more than following mechanics, if the easier version is really easy, what would stop players from doing it with 10 bear bow rangers (no offense to bear bow rangers, using it as an example)? Even if the mechanics are similar, there is absolutely no training value in that case.

3) Rewards: Another thing is the issue of rewards. Others want only to see the story, or use it only to train, but other people want the easier versions to have a fraction of the rewards, others want just magnetite shards but not access to legendary armor achievements, others want only the legendary armor achievements but not magnetite shards. Which becomes a real headache if you think about it. Which one do you choose?

4) Accessibility vs More Raids: A game developer has limited resources, that’s for certain. Is it best for the developers to open up the Raid for MORE players (Accessibility), or continue releasing new content at the same pace for those who are already having fun with the content (More Raids).

It should be obvious that both can’t happen at the same time, making the content more accessible takes more development time, which in turn makes new raid releases slower. Unless they allocate more resources / manpower to the Raid team, which means they will have to make cuts in other types of content. Or they could hire new people to augment the Raid team. Is any of that worth it though? There is a reason no MMORPG had multiple difficulties for their Raids when they first released them.

5) Difficulty: And finally we have the issue of “How easy, is easy enough?” Made-up numbers follow:
I mean if 10% of the community is raiding, is allowing access to 30% of it considered acceptable? And if the first iteration of easier raids allows for 30%, will we see more of these “make raids easier posts?” Do we then make another even more easier version to increase the number to 50%, then an another one for 80% and so on? How many versions do we need?

Ultimately they are all questions that only the devs can answer. But it would be very helpful if someone who asks for an easier mode for Raids tries to address at least some of them.

thewaterguy.4796:

GW2 the MMO that has always stood for respecting a players time and everyone can enjoy the same content…is actively blocking people from raiding.

The only thing blocking you from raiding is you. GW2 is exactly the opposite, it’s anti-grind, only about skill. You can gear up and get ready for raids in few weeks max (that is assuming you will be starting from scratch and have no asc gear whatsoever) – after that, the only thing that separates you from other raiders is… skill. Maybe you have to change your attitude, but it’s established that joining raids is far from impossible for those who really want to. There are many groups out there, some may not have been nice to you, but it doesn’t mean all of them are like that. And of course, you always have the option of creating your own group with any requirements you choose. Don’t be lazy.

maddoctor.2738:

I mean if 10% of the community is raiding, is allowing access to 30% of it considered acceptable? And if the first iteration of easier raids allows for 30%, will we see more of these “make raids easier posts?” Do we then make another even more easier version to increase the number to 50%, then an another one for 80% and so on? How many versions do we need?

Ultimately they are all questions that only the devs can answer. But it would be very helpful if someone who asks for an easier mode for Raids tries to address at least some of them.

If only 10% of community is raiding and we are not in game where these 10% are paying for 90%, then what exactly must be made to distribute content evenly? Stop developing raid content until 4 new fractals, 4 new pvp maps and 2 new wvw maps are made? Or maybe somehow widen raid audience instead, because value of content for 30% of players is 3 times higher than same content for 10% of players?

The raid team is smaller than 10% of the rest of the development staff, so even if these magic “10%” are true, it’s already well-adjusted.

Rednik.3809:

maddoctor.2738:

I mean if 10% of the community is raiding, is allowing access to 30% of it considered acceptable? And if the first iteration of easier raids allows for 30%, will we see more of these “make raids easier posts?” Do we then make another even more easier version to increase the number to 50%, then an another one for 80% and so on? How many versions do we need?

Ultimately they are all questions that only the devs can answer. But it would be very helpful if someone who asks for an easier mode for Raids tries to address at least some of them.

If only 10% of community is raiding and we are not in game where these 10% are paying for 90%, then what exactly must be made to distribute content evenly? Stop developing raid content until 4 new fractals, 4 new pvp maps and 2 new wvw maps are made? Or maybe somehow widen raid audience instead, because value of content for 30% of players is 3 times higher than same content for 10% of players?

Not if it takes 4 times longer to develop, for example.
Also, it’s nice that you always come up with those numbers but they might not be true in the slightest.

Even if there was an easier mode, the raid would still have to be challenging to a degree, which might still be too difficult for some. Then there’s also the no-reward fact (or heavily lowered at least), which will put people off from clearing it on low difficulties more often than necessary.

A lower difficulty merely gives people throwaway content, so there is no point in pursuing multiple difficulties.

Rednik.3809:

If only 10% of community is raiding and we are not in game where these 10% are paying for 90%, then what exactly must be made to distribute content evenly? Stop developing raid content until 4 new fractals, 4 new pvp maps and 2 new wvw maps are made?

The content a different team produces isn’t measured by the amount of maps they release. You are making it sound like the other teams, other than the raid team, are lazy and not doing anything because they don’t release new maps for their respective content. Each team is made to please their target audience.
The part you quoted was about the difficulty/difficulties. When/where do you stop making new raid difficulties. Why stop at 30%? And why 30%?

Or maybe somehow widen raid audience instead, because value of content for 30% of players is 3 times higher than same content for 10% of players?

I already discussed the widening the audience part:

4) Accessibility vs More Raids: A game developer has limited resources, that’s for certain. Is it best for the developers to open up the Raid for MORE players (Accessibility), or continue releasing new content at the same pace for those who are already having fun with the content (More Raids).
It should be obvious that both can’t happen at the same time, making the content more accessible takes more development time, which in turn makes new raid releases slower. Unless they allocate more resources / manpower to the Raid team, which means they will have to make cuts in other types of content. Or they could hire new people to augment the Raid team. Is any of that worth it though? There is a reason no MMORPG had multiple difficulties for their Raids when they first released them.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Not if it takes 4 times longer to develop, for example.
Also, it’s nice that you always come up with those numbers but they might not be true in the slightest.

Even if there was an easier mode, the raid would still have to be challenging to a degree, which might still be too difficult for some. Then there’s also the no-reward fact (or heavily lowered at least), which will put people off from clearing it on low difficulties more often than necessary.

A lower difficulty merely gives people throwaway content, so there is no point in pursuing multiple difficulties.

Feel free to visit gw2eff and see numbers by yourself.
Also, looks like you don’t understand a purpose of tiered difficulty. Lowest difficulties are not intended to be farmed, hence their low rewards, they are made to bridge a difficulty gap for starters and saturate higher tiers with a new blood. “Muh training runs/muh training guilds/start your own group/l2p” is a band-aid, and it’s not working.
People desperately need repeatable content to play, and making it only for 10% of players… well, you can go to NCSoft website and see it by yourself.

Rednik.3809:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Not if it takes 4 times longer to develop, for example.
Also, it’s nice that you always come up with those numbers but they might not be true in the slightest.

Even if there was an easier mode, the raid would still have to be challenging to a degree, which might still be too difficult for some. Then there’s also the no-reward fact (or heavily lowered at least), which will put people off from clearing it on low difficulties more often than necessary.

A lower difficulty merely gives people throwaway content, so there is no point in pursuing multiple difficulties.

Feel free to visit gw2eff and see numbers by yourself.
Also, looks like you don’t understand a purpose of tiered difficulty. Lowest difficulties are not intended to be farmed, hence their low rewards, they are made to bridge a difficulty gap for starters and saturate higher tiers with a new blood. “Muh training runs/muh training guilds/start your own group/l2p” is a band-aid, and it’s not working.
People desperately need repeatable content to play, and making it only for 10% of players… well, you can go to NCSoft website and see it by yourself.

1. Most players don’t use gw2eff or even know it exists.
2. Training runs are working for the people who do have the desire to continue raiding in the long run and have the right attitude, the problem is the people who join them expecting to get a kill or be carried. Then there’s also the people who give up after a few wipes, making the group suffer because they have to look for another person.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think we can realistically make any statements about how much time it would add – only developers can do that.

You’re right that I can’t say anything for certain, but having spent over a decade in software development I would bet money that I’m right and it would have huge ramifications on their development cycle. Either way, the developers will never say one way or the other because to do so would poison the well, so I guess we’ll have to keep living in suspense.

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

It’s absurd to argue something would take double the time it needs without thinking a second about implementation.

Vinceman.4572:

The raid team is smaller than 10% of the rest of the development staff, so even if these magic “10%” are true, it’s already well-adjusted.

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

Rednik.3809:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Not if it takes 4 times longer to develop, for example.
Also, it’s nice that you always come up with those numbers but they might not be true in the slightest.

Even if there was an easier mode, the raid would still have to be challenging to a degree, which might still be too difficult for some. Then there’s also the no-reward fact (or heavily lowered at least), which will put people off from clearing it on low difficulties more often than necessary.

A lower difficulty merely gives people throwaway content, so there is no point in pursuing multiple difficulties.

Feel free to visit gw2eff and see numbers by yourself.
Also, looks like you don’t understand a purpose of tiered difficulty. Lowest difficulties are not intended to be farmed, hence their low rewards, they are made to bridge a difficulty gap for starters and saturate higher tiers with a new blood. “Muh training runs/muh training guilds/start your own group/l2p” is a band-aid, and it’s not working.
People desperately need repeatable content to play, and making it only for 10% of players… well, you can go to NCSoft website and see it by yourself.

“Hey guys lets a take a website only a small part of the playerbase uses with no possibly way to check if the distribution between different types of players is equal or if a certain type of player uses this website more often and use it to extrapolate it for the whole game” – Now, I’m aware that this is something you can do, is something that can work more often than not and GW2eff is our best way to do this… it’s just that I don’t think it’s accurate in any way. Assuming your numbers are true though, then yes, the 10% are definitely not randomly pulled from somewhere; the 30% however would be.

Oh, I do understand the purpose of tiered difficulty, but I do not think it’s necessary whatsoever. If you think running raids with guilds/teaching groups is a bandaid which is not working I’m sorry to disappoint you. Posted this a bit earlier in another thread but basically the tl;dr to it: below average friend gets back into game, finds guild, they set up training raid, 6 people never did raids, 3 have a bit of experience, me (with quite a bit of experience); I barely said anything, let them do their thing, ended up with suboptimal comp and mostly average at best players, VG died 2h later. Another hour of attempts later, Gors was dead too. I know other players who found their way into raids like this too, it definitely works. However, one should not assume that the guilds or teaching groups come up to you; you have to go up to them, ask and be willing to adjust if necessary as they are most likely to adjust around you too.

I personally think that almost everyone who plays this game is capable of clearing raids if they want to. Everyone who truly wants to run raids and enjoy them will be able to without the “help” of an easy mode.

Scipio.3204:

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

And they still insist on the fact that no other game content was denied, lowered or delayed due to raid development.
So there is still no point for me in Rednik’s statement.

Vinceman.4572:

Scipio.3204:

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

And they still insist on the fact that no other game content was denied, lowered or delayed due to raid development.
So there is still no point for me in Rednik’s statement.

Content? No. But reason to play any other content was denied, and will be. Have you ever counted how much exclusive skin PvP has? Or WvW? I have. And with the second raid probably raids will have more exclusive than 2 game mode combined.

Which is more important in a MMO? The amount of content, or the reason to spend more time in the game? This could be argued, but I’d say the latter, and currently how things are raiders got a lot more reason to play this game than the other “90%”.

Scipio.3204:

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

• No.
• No.
• Because they were minor implementations and critical to the meaningful design of the content (other raid modes are not).
• Because it’s bad design for a game like GW2.

Scipio.3204:

It’s absurd to argue something would take double the time it needs without thinking a second about implementation.

You’re right. Good thing I thought a lot about the implementation and even spent a year and a half as a forum specialist to interact with the fractals/raid team!

Scipio.3204:

Content? No. But reason to play any other content was denied, and will be.

Why? Because the help of designers to implement raid weapons denied designing of shinies in other areas? No way, man, no way. They have made clear that none of the involvement of further devs in raids has had any influence on other content. Deal with it!
You can blame them for developing less weapons and armor sets in the other game modes, yeah, totally agree. But don’t throw in raids as the big evil preventing you from having new skins. That is not true.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Scipio.3204:

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

• No.
• No.
• Because they were minor implementations and critical to the meaningful design of the content (other raid modes are not).
• Because it’s bad design for a game like GW2.

How exactly is the challenge mote at KC is “critical to the meaningful design of the content”? It’s only purpose is a one-time achievement yet they made room for it’s implementation. And if you don’t think making changes to the encounter through a challenge mote is complicated, then why can’t we achieve the opposite of it’s original goal? Similary the same can be said about enrage.

Vinceman.4572:

You can blame them for developing less weapons and armor sets in the other game modes, yeah, totally agree. But don’t throw in raids as the big evil preventing you from having new skins. That is not true.

I don’t see how this two sentence doesn’t contradict each other. The amount of weapons and armors they can develop is finite, everything they add to raids they could have added it to somewhere else. They said raids doesn’t influence the development of other content, not that it doesn’t influence how rewarding they are.

Scipio.3204:

They said raids doesn’t influence the development of other content, not that it doesn’t influence how rewarding they are.

And even that statement is not true. The very fact that raids exist influences the development of other content. For one, there are things that are called “raid exclusive”, which prevents them from being developed elsewhere (at the moment raid legendary armor seems to be in this category). On another, much simpler level, if not for raids, they could have set those devs on some other content (dungeons, for example). A team of people working on raids means that this team doesn’t work on something else, which definitely influenced development of this “something else” (whatever that might have been).
Remember WoW and the “it would cost us a raid” argument? Remember, that it also works the other way. Every raid also costs us something else.

Yes, and 9/11 was an inside job….

Please, do you want to have a serious discussion or not?
If Anet officially states that there is no interference to other development things so that nobody has to suffer, I personally trust them. It was the only valid source we could get.
If you don’t believe that, ok, but then don’t expect to be treated seriously.

Scipio.3204:

everything they add to raids they could have added it to somewhere else.

Of course they could. So, you would have some more collections in the open world. Good for some AP grinders but definitely not for content lovers. And you don’t want to tell me that ppl would be satisfied only with collections. The overall majority of players wants to play content.

Scipio.3204:

They said raids doesn’t influence the development of other content, not that it doesn’t influence how rewarding they are.

And that is an argument for what?

And again, Astralsporing, they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before. So there were no plans to enlarge the fractal team or rebuild a dungeon team.
Dungeons are dead for a reason: It takes way too long to design new ones or even bugfixing the older ones. Fractals are a similar thing, we would have had enough new fractals if developing and balancing them for tiers was easy. It’s not. That’s the reason we got a new fractal with reheated content, called Chaos. I myself, I find it ridiculous that we don’t have new fractals besides the mentioned one but realistically seen it has nothing to do with raids that the situation is like it is.

Astralporing.1957:

And even that statement is not true. The very fact that raids exist influences the development of other content.

Vinceman.4572:

If Anet officially states that there is no interference to other development things so that nobody has to suffer, I personally trust them. It was the only valid source we could get.

To both of you, it’s context. If my memory serves me right when they said this it was sort of a behind the scene post and they were talking about how they borrowed some help from other teams , but that didn’t interrupt their development schedule.

And Vinceman if you don’t think raids are taking away the rewards from other game modes just look at the two new zones and compare them to the other two we had with LS. The old ones came with a weapon set and an armor set, while the new ones have 1 Backpack / Zone. To this day even fractal doesn’t have an armor set while raids have multiple. And the list could go on.

Also edit:

Vinceman.4572:

they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before.

I could be wrong but I think the lead of the raid team has been with Anet far longer than raids.

Edit 2:

I’ve looked into it on Wiki , If I’ve read it correctly 8 out of 11 dev part of the raid dev team were with arenanet and worked on other stuff , including the guy who worked on Festivals like Halloween for example

Scipio.3204:

Astralporing.1957:

And even that statement is not true. The very fact that raids exist influences the development of other content.

Vinceman.4572:

If Anet officially states that there is no interference to other development things so that nobody has to suffer, I personally trust them. It was the only valid source we could get.

To both of you, it’s context. If my memory serves me right when they said this it was sort of a behind the scene post and they were talking about how they borrowed some help from other teams , but that didn’t interrupt their development schedule.

And Vinceman if you don’t think raids are taking away the rewards from other game modes just look at the two new zones and compare them to the other two we had with LS. The old ones came with a weapon set and an armor set, while the new ones have 1 Backpack / Zone. To this day even fractal doesn’t have an armor set while raids have multiple. And the list could go on.

Also edit:

Vinceman.4572:

they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before.

I could be wrong but I think the lead of the raid team has been with Anet far longer than raids.

Edit 2:

I’ve looked into it on Wiki , If I’ve read it correctly 8 out of 11 dev part of the raid dev team were with arenanet and worked on other stuff , including the guy who worked on Festivals like Halloween for example

I too blame raids for every deficiency in the game.

(/s)

Scipio.3204:

but that didn’t interrupt their development schedule.

Thx for mentioning, thereby the discussion is over for me in this point.

Scipio.3204:

And Vinceman if you don’t think raids are taking away the rewards from other game modes just look at the two new zones and compare them to the other two we had with LS. The old ones came with a weapon set and an armor set, while the new ones have 1 Backpack / Zone. To this day even fractal doesn’t have an armor set while raids have multiple. And the list could go on.

Sry, but it’s cheap to first argue months/weeks against raids because they are taking away content which was proven to be wrong and now crying out loud “raids are taking my rewards away”. This is nonsense.

Scipio.3204:

Vinceman.4572:

they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before.

I could be wrong but I think the lead of the raid team has been with Anet far longer than raids.

Edit 2:

I’ve looked into it on Wiki , If I’ve read it correctly 8 out of 11 dev part of the raid dev team were with arenanet and worked on other stuff , including the guy who worked on Festivals like Halloween for example

Even if so, there were open positions to be filled from people outside the company “ArenaNet hiring designer for Guild Wars 2 raid content”, so there hasn’t been a significant reduction of the other teams if you compare the raid dev team size to the rest.
Still don’t know where this should lead us to…weird theories?

Absurdo.8309:

I too blame raids for every deficiency in the game.

(/s)

Nah. However I will blame people who want to be unique little snowflakes at the expense of raids, because they fail to see why the current status is not going to work out in the long term.

Vinceman.4572:

Thx for mentioning, thereby the discussion is over for me in this point.

Their release schedule is the problem tho. Take 2016 for example. They released around 2 armor sets , 3 weapon sets around a dozen “unique piece” like backpacks and helmets and around 50 % of these things are behind raids, considering it’s likely we get a new raid with new stuff it won’t get better.

Now add to this that raids are meant for the minority and you’ll see the problem.

Vinceman.4572:

Even if so, there were open positions to be filled from people outside the company

I don’t see how this is relevant, I don’t remember a time they weren’t hireing. The fact is majority of the raid team were with arenanet prior raids.