Guild Wars 2

Derigar.7810:

Myself, and many of my friends, are actually very disheartened with the introduction of raiding in this game.

The toxicity between players, the elitism, has never been higher. I tried many a times to get into a good raiding guild. I’ve done a LOT of effort, but I failed time upon time. I know for a fact I’m not the only one. Most of my friends have had this issue as well.

Raiding ruined this game for me. I don’t even feel the incentive to log in for my dailies any longer…

I’m refraining of buying any more gems for this game for quite a while. The focus here seems to be on content that a small percentage of the player base can complete and, let’s be fair here, is the most vocal & arrogant part of this community.

Christ, if I would put this on reddit the downvotes would crash the kitten site. I’m just sad that my will to play this game has disappeared (as have most of my friend’s).

This was a horrible move of yours, Arenanet. The game was build for the ones that liked to relax. This content takes it all away.

You know, I’ll be honest. I wouldn’t even mind it that much if the rewards of raids were only cosmetic. But they’re not. Legendary armor is a big reason for why many of my friends tried to get into raids. I really hope they’re adding a secondary way of obtaining it, otherwise I doubt Arenanet is going to see some veteran costumers going back to the game.

I fail to see the correlation between raids and lack of incentive to log-in. Not to mention that the stats on legendary armour gives a MARGINAL increase to your overall stat count, so you hardly need legendary armour to succeed in any part of this game. We have basically no permanent challenging content for three years, and now that there is some, we get a bunch of complaints? How about looking from the eyes of the people who LIKE this kind of stuff? They have had to wait a heck of a long time for any meaningful challenging content. Mind you, I’m not in this group, as I’ve barely stepped foot in raids. I just fail to see how catering to one portion of the player base in one section of the game is the downfall of GW2 and a terrible decision of ArenaNet.

Swagger.1459:

We can talk semantics all day, but the facts are that scripted combat is given a path to the best rewards. Unscripted combat is given no path to the best rewards.

Surely the devs can can create a fancy new wvw and spvp currency to buy equivalent gear offered in raids and provide paths to legendary gears. It would not be unreasonable or unfitting considering it takes true skill, time, effort, determination… to be successful in competitive combat and environments.

Did you forget that JUST WALKING FROM POINT TO POINT is one of the most rewarding things to do in this game? Fractals have better loot compared to raids too.

Also whats your problem with RAIDS? If they are so easy why don’t you just do them and get the rewards? It’s not like these ~2 hours per week are that much.

Neox.3497:

Swagger.1459:

We can talk semantics all day, but the facts are that scripted combat is given a path to the best rewards. Unscripted combat is given no path to the best rewards.

Surely the devs can can create a fancy new wvw and spvp currency to buy equivalent gear offered in raids and provide paths to legendary gears. It would not be unreasonable or unfitting considering it takes true skill, time, effort, determination… to be successful in competitive combat and environments.

Did you forget that JUST WALKING FROM POINT TO POINT is one of the most rewarding things to do in this game? Fractals have better loot compared to raids too.

Also whats your problem with RAIDS? If they are so easy why don’t you just do them and get the rewards? It’s not like these ~2 hours per week are that much.

Did you forget that pvp content is inherently more difficult than pve content?

Fractals have better loot? That’s pretty interesting…

Raid rewards…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Priory_Scholar_

Getting more Ascended added.

Legendary Armors soon

Fractal rewards…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/BUY-4373

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pristine_Fractal_Relic

I’ll let you look up wvw and spvp rewards and you can make some comparisons…

Swagger.1459:

Did you forget that pvp content is inherently more difficult than pve content?

You forgot the /s here

And tbh I’d rather have tomes and transmutation charges from pvp than endless loads of ascended stuff you get from fractals and raids, which you usually already have before even starting them.
Wanna trade my bank tab full of celestial rings for your tomes? ty

bladex.9502:

Swagger.1459:

Did you forget that pvp content is inherently more difficult than pve content?

You forgot the /s here

And tbh I’d rather have tomes and transmutation charges from pvp than endless loads of ascended stuff you get from fractals and raids, which you usually already have before even starting them.
Wanna trade my bank tab full of celestial rings for your tomes? ty

I forgot nothing. Pvp is wvw and spvp…

Swagger.1459:

Did you forget that pvp content is inherently more difficult than pve content?

Fractals have better loot? That’s pretty interesting…

Raid rewards…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Priory_Scholar_

Getting more Ascended added.

Legendary Armors soon

Fractal rewards…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/BUY-4373

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pristine_Fractal_Relic

I’ll let you look up wvw and spvp rewards and you can make some comparisons…

What I was saying is that your complain about raids is stupid because not the raids rewards are the problem but the pvp rewards. Everybody knows the WvW rewards are kitten and the sPvP rewards only decent.

Oh and nice how you posted links of the stuff you can buy with the tokens but totally ingnored the RNG loots. Also comparing the difficulty of 3x swamps vs doing the raid the rewards are way too good in fractals.

Neox.3497:

Also comparing the difficulty of 3x swamps vs doing the raid the rewards are way too good in fractals.

Or way too bad in raids

Retro.6831:

I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you, but challenging content and raids are not mutually exclusive. You can have content that presents a challenge without it being in the form of a 10-player raid. There could easily be challenging dungeons or even solo encounters; in fact, the Queen’s Gauntlet (especially Liadri) is a great example of that. It’s even timed and “instanced” like raids, but takes the form of single player content instead.

Do not assume that the only way you can be challenged is via raids.

Completely true. And to be honest, I would have probably preferred hard and challenging 5man dungeon and fractals. If they could get back to the old old first fractals where you couldn’t have enough AR for the highest level and you had to dodge every single agony attack or die. ANd if they could had use the idea of skull that Wooden Potatoes made a video about, i would be so much happier. 10 man are just harder to prepare and organized. A lot of people that could be good and have a great time with challenging content, can’t because they can’t form a group.

That said, Anet officially told us that dungeon are dead and they pretty much screw up fractal for me. So in the end we only have raid. Not perfect, but It’s the only content that keep a lot of players in the game.

I like Spirit Vale but I would have really loved some challenging 5-man content even more.

Not everyone who complains about raids are unwilling to adapt. Majority that are cant even get in a raid without being spammed INSIGHTS INSIGHTS INSIGHTS. Which is where I fall. I have only attempted the last two bosses and can never get into a group willing to help. Its become tedious for people interested, and its become a farm/sell for elites who will scream for nothing to change. More likely for them to keep an income. They would rather take advantage of people than help them

Nick Lentz.6982:

Not everyone who complains about raids are unwilling to adapt. Majority that are cant even get in a raid without being spammed INSIGHTS INSIGHTS INSIGHTS. Which is where I fall. I have only attempted the last two bosses and can never get into a group willing to help. Its become tedious for people interested, and its become a farm/sell for elites who will scream for nothing to change. More likely for them to keep an income. They would rather take advantage of people than help them

Yet farming sw or fractal 40s give even more gold than selling raids probably, and you won’t be able to do that for much longer now that some guilds are giving away raids for free. As you implied, the hardest part about raids isn’t the encounters, its finding a group. For obvious reasons, people want quick runs, which means finding people experienced. If new, I suggest forming your own group. We are screaming for nothing to change because the encounters ARE fun. Please don’t accuse us of “taking advantage” of people or wanting raids as they are “for profit” The people who buy raids are doing it of their own will. I’m honestly sick of being called a bad person just because I enjoy difficult content in this game. People say elitists are what’s hurting the community in this game, but is it? Or is it the people trying to divide us and call others names?

Professions are boring.

Profession roles here are poorly created and defined and boring.

Long waits to get groups are boring.

The bosses are boring.

Trash mobs are boring.

The story is boring.

Raids are overall boring.

I miss city of heroes where I had lots of classes and active roles to play. Teamwork mechanics were amazing. I miss wading through massive mobs. I miss fast paced kick kitten gameplay… GW2 pales in comparison to anything class and role and combat and instanced content and raid content and personal connections to story and npcs.

GW2 has such potential, but they keep wasting it. Hope they revamp professions so they can make better content.

lfg is full of listings that are selling raids.Players buy raids because legendary Armour is locked behind raids.players get the gold to pay for raids from gems to gold.
working as intended.

eldrin.6471:

lfg is full of listings that are selling raids.Players buy raids because legendary Armour is locked behind raids.players get the gold to pay for raids from gems to gold.
working as intended.

It’ll be sad if one of the next bosses absolutely demands 10 people (and they all have something mandatory to do) and the raid can’t be bought through.

Malchior.5732:

It’ll be sad if one of the next bosses absolutely demands 10 people (and they all have something mandatory to do) and the raid can’t be bought through.

That would be awesome.

The balance will never be harsh enough that it requires 10 players with optimal DPS rotations to succeed. It will always have some flexibility, which will mean that players can low-man it and sell the remaining slots if they like.

Anyway, given how many raids you have to complete to finish the first collection for Envoy Armor, if you’re willing to pay 5000g+ just for the collection and none of the other parts that’s your prerogative. The legendary armor will still have massive prestige in that case.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The balance will never be harsh enough that it requires 10 players with optimal DPS rotations to succeed. It will always have some flexibility, which will mean that players can low-man it and sell the remaining slots if they like.

Anyway, given how many raids you have to complete to finish the first collection for Envoy Armor, if you’re willing to pay 5000g+ just for the collection and none of the other parts that’s your prerogative. The legendary armor will still have massive prestige in that case.

No, but it could be something like CoF p1, where you would need 10 different people to go to different spots and do something. You could still technically buy it, but you’re just paying for a group at that point.

That being said, I don’t care if people pay a ton of gold for their legendary armor, but it would be nice if they couldn’t.

Malchior.5732:

No, but it could be something like CoF p1, where you would need 10 different people to go to different spots and do something. You could still technically buy it, but you’re just paying for a group at that point.

You’re absolutely correct; they could utilize mechanics like that to discourage selling a little. It’d be interesting to have something like that in a raid boss!

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re absolutely correct; they could utilize mechanics like that to discourage selling a little. It’d be interesting to have something like that in a raid boss!

It would be interesting because it make the fight more interesting for everybody, not because it would discourage selling. I would hate if they start their design with the idea of discouraging selling. If they dislike selling, they just have to chance their stance on it, no need to go the sneaky way.

That said, there is pros and cons about that.

It would be a good thing because it make the fight more interesting for everybody. For example, Sabetha is a lot more interesting for the 4 ppl that go for the 4 canons. They have a lot more to do and the change of pace is actually important to keep the fight from being boring.

But it would also be a bad thing because, not everybody have the same amount skill. Some people prefer to play PS Warrior because it’s simple so they can focus on staying alive. Some people prefer to play Engineer because that stimulate them to focus on their rotation and to know that their skill improve their result. It’s the same from raid encounter. Some people prefer to have a lot to do to keep them buzy. I like focus on my dps rotation, then run to my canon, jump kill it, jump by while keeping a eye of the wall, then run to the other side of the platform to launch the bomb to the next canon while Lighting Flashing through the wall. It’s high pace, my adrenaline is pumping and I love it. But for a lot of people, that’s just too much for them. If you have a specific role for all 10 players, you limit by a lot the amount of group that will be able to complete the content. You lose this adaptability that raid have now that allow you to put your best player on the hardest role, while leaving the easiest role for others.

Thaddeus.4891:

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re absolutely correct; they could utilize mechanics like that to discourage selling a little. It’d be interesting to have something like that in a raid boss!

It would be interesting because it make the fight more interesting for everybody, not because it would discourage selling. I would hate if they start their design with the idea of discouraging selling. If they dislike selling, they just have to chance their stance on it, no need to go the sneaky way.

That said, there is pros and cons about that.

It would be a good thing because it make the fight more interesting for everybody. For example, Sabetha is a lot more interesting for the 4 ppl that go for the 4 canons. They have a lot more to do and the change of pace is actually important to keep the fight from being boring.

But it would also be a bad thing because, not everybody have the same amount skill. Some people prefer to play PS Warrior because it’s simple so they can focus on staying alive. Some people prefer to play Engineer because that stimulate them to focus on their rotation and to know that their skill improve their result. It’s the same from raid encounter. Some people prefer to have a lot to do to keep them buzy. I like focus on my dps rotation, then run to my canon, jump kill it, jump by while keeping a eye of the wall, then run to the other side of the platform to launch the bomb to the next canon while Lighting Flashing through the wall. It’s high pace, my adrenaline is pumping and I love it. But for a lot of people, that’s just too much for them. If you have a specific role for all 10 players, you limit by a lot the amount of group that will be able to complete the content. You lose this adaptability that raid have now that allow you to put your best player on the hardest role, while leaving the easiest role for others.

This is only the first raid. I would be severely disappointed if they didn’t get harder (to the point where everyone is trying their hardest) and didn’t also demand full ascended gear to complete.

Malchior.5732:

This is only the first raid. I would be severely disappointed if they didn’t get harder (to the point where everyone is trying their hardest) and didn’t also demand full ascended gear to complete.

I would be against that to be honest. I think that the difficulty is just right. In the ideal world there would be an easy mode and an hard mode for the raids to satisfy everybody, but it doesn’t seem to be Anet’s opinion so they can’t really make the new wing much harder than the current. My first raid group would be up for the challenge if they make it harder, but we would probably need to kick a bunch of people from our second group, which is a bit sad.

Hard to balance only 1 difficult scale for everybody. It will always be too hard or too easy for someone. Everybody talk about their own experience. You want to make the 2nd wing harder because that’s fine for you, but what if someone else which is a better player want it hard enough that you can’t succeed on a regular basis with your team?

Thaddeus.4891:

Hard to balance only 1 difficult scale for everybody. It will always be too hard or too easy for someone. Everybody talk about their own experience. You want to make the 2nd wing harder because that’s fine for you, but what if someone else which is a better player want it hard enough that you can’t succeed on a regular basis with your team?

We practice and get better until we beat it.

Malchior.5732:

We practice and get better until we beat it.

So you are saying that there is no limit? Your group have one of the highest level of skill of the whole game and whatever Anet through at you, you will always be able to beat it?

They could make the canons fire each 10 seconds and make the flame wall a Flame cross dividing the platform in 4, while each 3 of the mini boss spawn each at each phase and you would still have no problems?

At some point, they will reach your level of difficulty, when your group can’t keep up and that’s the problem. Each group have their limit of skill and what make your limit more appropriate than the limit of any other group?

I hope my computer is fixed by then. :’(

Thaddeus.4891:

Malchior.5732:

We practice and get better until we beat it.

So you are saying that there is no limit? Your group have one of the highest level of skill of the whole game and whatever Anet through at you, you will always be able to beat it?

They could make the canons fire each 10 seconds and make the flame wall a Flame cross dividing the platform in 4, while each 3 of the mini boss spawn each at each phase and you would still have no problems?

At some point, they will reach your level of difficulty, when your group can’t keep up and that’s the problem. Each group have their limit of skill and what make your limit more appropriate than the limit of any other group?

Uhh, you’re going a bit too crazy.
Raids should be the top of PvE. Only really good groups should be able to clear all of them.
Any group can get really good with enough practice.

The raids should be difficult by adding mechanics, changing up said mechanics and forcing multi-tasking (i.e. juggle all these mechanics while also maximizing your DPS), not by adding so much garbage that it becomes anti-fun.

Your example is like a mirror image of Dark Souls 2 and their developers.
Dark Souls was awesome even though it was incomplete because of its world, lore, atmosphere, and it understood how to make something difficult, but fun and fair (for the most part).
Dark Souls 2 was different. For most bosses, they didn’t try to make something fun and challenging, they just added crap to make it “harder”. For example, instead of giving Freja an interesting moveset, they just added a ton of infinitely respawning spiders for “difficulty” or for multiple encounters and bosses, all they did was just add more enemies because “difficulty” (all people do is cheese them now). While it makes the fight harder than it normally would, it wasn’t fun at all and I was bored with them immediately.

When I say I want harder Raids, I want primarily what Dark Souls gave: fun, fair, and challenging. This challenge is currently at a decent place, but it can be improved so that people need to pull their own weight and wont get so easily carried by a few good players. Again, this isn’t to say that it should just be so brutally difficult for the sake of it, because they would fall into the same trap as Dark Souls 2. They should be difficult, but primarily fun and engaging.

I just think (and it seems many other people agree) that they could be pushed much further. Sabetha is really the only boss so far that has a lot of multi-tasking; VG is fun, but is pathetically easy for most of the group and Gorseval is great, but just a big DPS check that can be covered by a bit over half the team.

Personally, I’m not looking forward to it. While I’ve spent my time raiding, have beaten all bosses multiple times, got the “pro-kids” title and so on and so forth, I count myself to the part of the community who thinks that introducing raids into GW2 has been a huge mistake and is a waste of valuable resources. Both dungeons and fractals – in their original state – were what I considered healthy content for this kind of game: While good groups progressed faster and could therefore net more rewards within the same amount of time, the content was also accessible to less experienced groups, at a much slower pace of course. The group size of five meant less initial planning/waiting and while roles were still present, it was not as strict as it is now in raids.

As far as I’m concerned, the hardcore minority who wanted raids is still not satisfied, wants more of a challenge and generally more, while I personally believe that they should simply have moved on to another game long ago. I hope you guys enjoy the initial challenge before you put it on farm and then go back to logging in once a week to clear the two raid wings. Hey, maybe if you’re lucky, it’s long enough that you’ll be busy for two evenings a week now.

On the other hand, a far larger pool of average players who got hyped by raids thinking that these are the new dungeons, got a very harsh reality check with a few nice community-enforced rules on top (insights, eternal, …) that make any sort of stuff we dungeoneers used to put on the lfg look feeble in comparison. This boils down to initial advertising of course, I’m fairly sure that these players expected – unjustified or not is irrelevant here – to be able to play raids (and I don’t mean wiping on first boss with that) when they did the HoT purchase.

That said, personally I couldn’t care less about raid exclusivity IF there was still a similar amount of work put into dungeons and fractals. But as long as dungeons are officially dead and fractals as stale as ever, I believe that we’re missing some kind of middle ground for raids. If these are the only instanced content being worked on, I sure expect them to be accessibly to a larger crowd. Multiple difficulties have been suggested, amongst many other things I’m sure. Until then, don’t mind me for not cheering for any new raid wings.

Swagger.1459:

All this for beating scripted AI.

High to moderately populated wvw server provides sufficient number of player AIs to farm for ascended as well. Press 1 for success.

eldrin.6471:

Your so called pros will have had 2 raid wings since hot,what have the rest of the players who payed for this expansion had? sweet f all.

Technically there has only been one raid wing since HoT -.- . As for the rest of the players who paid for the expansion? Well… they got four new maps to do events on and raids too.

Satenia.9025:

Personally, I’m not looking forward to it. While I’ve spent my time raiding, have beaten all bosses multiple times, got the “pro-kids” title and so on and so forth, I count myself to the part of the community who thinks that introducing raids into GW2 has been a huge mistake and is a waste of valuable resources. Both dungeons and fractals – in their original state – were what I considered healthy content for this kind of game: While good groups progressed faster and could therefore net more rewards within the same amount of time, the content was also accessible to less experienced groups, at a much slower pace of course. The group size of five meant less initial planning/waiting and while roles were still present, it was not as strict as it is now in raids.

As far as I’m concerned, the hardcore minority who wanted raids is still not satisfied, wants more of a challenge and generally more, while I personally believe that they should simply have moved on to another game long ago. I hope you guys enjoy the initial challenge before you put it on farm and then go back to logging in once a week to clear the two raid wings. Hey, maybe if you’re lucky, it’s long enough that you’ll be busy for two evenings a week now.

On the other hand, a far larger pool of average players who got hyped by raids thinking that these are the new dungeons, got a very harsh reality check with a few nice community-enforced rules on top (insights, eternal, …) that make any sort of stuff we dungeoneers used to put on the lfg look feeble in comparison. This boils down to initial advertising of course, I’m fairly sure that these players expected – unjustified or not is irrelevant here – to be able to play raids (and I don’t mean wiping on first boss with that) when they did the HoT purchase.

That said, personally I couldn’t care less about raid exclusivity IF there was still a similar amount of work put into dungeons and fractals. But as long as dungeons are officially dead and fractals as stale as ever, I believe that we’re missing some kind of middle ground for raids. If these are the only instanced content being worked on, I sure expect them to be accessibly to a larger crowd. Multiple difficulties have been suggested, amongst many other things I’m sure. Until then, don’t mind me for not cheering for any new raid wings.

^ Pretty much this. Raids are the “end-game” content that we login once a week for >.> . Even so, I can’t even do that anymore…

Malchior.5732:

Any group can get really good with enough practice.

See that’s the problem. It’s not true. There is actually 2 problems with that.

1) Players have different level of skill in the game. I have currently about 22 players in my raid group right now and we can clearly see a difference in skill. The best example is playing Elementalist at Gorseval. Some in our group don’t die and are able to keep the arena clear of balls, even on the first try. For other it took 3-4 weeks to get it right. For other? We swap them to another role because they just can’t. Some players we had to kick from the group because they were just not improving much. Other quit themselves because they were doing the same error over and over and just could do it. The practice is one thing, but each player have a level of skill and whatever the amount of practice, they won’t be able get better at it. For some it’s the attention, they can’t focus enough and miss what they are suppose to do. For other it’s the multitasking. If they focus on a mechanic, they won’t be able to stay alive, if they stay alive, they will have a terribad rotation.

2) Some players could get good enough with enough practice. But the amount of practice is just too high. They will give up, or their group will push them away.

And the thing is, it’s not a black or white issue. You are not either good enough or bad enough. It’s a spectrum, going from the guy in my guild that do guild rush for the last 2 years and is still always the last one to cross the end line if he don’t just give up after 10 tries. To the guy that can succeed to any mechanics with any profession on his first try.

So, for the sake of simplicity. Let’s say that everybody have a skill level from 1 to 10. At what difficulty should the raid be? At 7? 8? 9? The higher you go the less people will be able to complete it, but the more fun the guys that can complete it will have. Like I said, you want to add difficulty because the current difficulty is lower than you level of skill. But by doing so you will exclude some people from doing the raid and ask yourself what would you do in their shoes. What if the difficulty of the raid was push high enough that your group couldn’t complete it on a regular basis. Each week, you wouldn’t know if you group would be able to complete it, even after weeks and weeks of practice. Imagine the tension inside your group and the blaming that would be going on.

Like I said, the ideal would be different level of difficulty to satisfy everybody. Hell every single game have a difficulty setting. But if that doesn’t happen, you can put the single difficulty to high or you will limit too much how many people can complete the raid.

perry.9645:

eldrin.6471:

The real problem here is that providing exclusive content for a fraction of your paying customers is economic suicide.

ok lets compare what “pro” players got and what casual players got

Casuals:
4 massive open world maps with tons of events
Story
tons of achievements and collections
still the same old tyria world and events

“pro”:
raids once a week
dungeons -66% of the reward
fractals -50+% of the playtime

so yeah they definitely provide exclusive content for “pros”

Debatable.
Massive open map.
I don´t know what your definition of massive is, but HoT is not massive in my opinion. It´not small either, but massive is completely different.
DS is actually far from massive and appears to me like a loaded gun with only one shot that can only fire at a specific time. Kind of like an early flintlock rifle who had a massive chance of not working when it rains, aka you miss the timer. It is nice to look at, and also kind of exciting for the first runs, but it gets old and grindly pretty fast.
The large majority of tangled web is exactly this, a tangled web. Hard to navigate, walls everywhere. Neither funny or massive for me personally.
The worst offender is the Tarir map. It has only one layer that I would call acceptable, the rest is jumping puzzle garbage on really close spaces.
The first map is actually the best map, although I can´t call the layers above and the little spaces massive layers with a straight face.

The story of HoT actually makes me cry a little for the lack of imagination invested here. But that is personal perception of course.

Tons of achievment where you have to play adventures and have to get better at playing them if you want to have it. Yeah, very casual and not grindy at all…

Still the same events. Nope, some were nerfed. Besides, if you want ot keep your players, you can´t feed them with the same stuff from 3 years ago. It does not work. Patience does not run too deep in most gamers. I am a pretty loyal guy that has to see massive advantages in changing my game, but I have to honestly tell you that if I would find a game that is as good as GW2 and suits my casual tastes, I am at a point where I would quit right now despite my loyality issues.

Where I am fully agreeing with Eldrin is the fact that I really don´t get how this can get a pass from an econimical point of view. My only guess is that they sold it like:
“Look, everyone hass raids. We need to have them too or fall behind.”

Torolan.5816:

Tons of achievment where you have to play adventures and have to get better at playing them if you want to have it. Yeah, very casual and not grindy at all…

The paladins of casuals, the defenders of playhowiwants, the stalwarts of the unskilled and holy inquisitors of everything “toxic”, “elitist” or pretty much any topic with the words “berserker” and “skill” in it…
… always end up insulting themselves and all the people who identify as casuals.
I gotta say, no clue if it amuses or saddens me.

deSade.9437:

Torolan.5816:

Tons of achievment where you have to play adventures and have to get better at playing them if you want to have it. Yeah, very casual and not grindy at all…

The paladins of casuals, the defenders of playhowiwants, the stalwarts of the unskilled and holy inquisitors of everything “toxic”, “elitist” or pretty much any topic with the words “berserker” and “skill” in it…
… always end up insulting themselves and all the people who identify as casuals.
I gotta say, no clue if it amuses or saddens me.

I would prefer to amuse you of course!^^

I did not write that a casual playing style means that you can´t do it with practice, just that it is not funny or casual if you want some of the stuff like adventures and exploration of the maps done in 2016. I am pretty sure that a large majority of gamers could actually manage to do this stuff with relative ease if it was only more convenient, exciting, better accessible or a combination of these things.

I actually did the silver achievement with the bug hunting adventure lately, and my guild mates probably still hate me for the half of an hour groaning and moaning I showered them with while completing it.

Btw, where is “Berserker” and “Skill” hidden in adventures? You´re probably better at a Super Mario playstlye than me because I lack practice and dedication for it, but that does not keep me awake at night.^^

So is there only going to be one boss?

It’s simple, really. The crysuals. The vocal lawyers for the silent masses who never hired them, the ones assuming casuals are unable to acquire a decent build, a handful of ascended pieces and beat content without the need of divine intervention. The ones that complain about this obscure category of elitist hardcores (everyone with enough brain activity to learn scripted encounters is hardcore, or something like that – after years of reading endless whine threads the complaints are all kinda molding in my head). Aaaalll of them, different race, same species. Whether it’s the spanish inquisition against whomever is in favor of meta builds or going full space troopers on the aliens enjoying the gracious presence of raids – they all keep insulting themselves and the actual casuals who don’t go ape at the introduction of such a basic thing like instanced content for organised groups.

A game wants you to improve to beat it? Well, kitten. What can I answer to that? No wonder people are falling apart over the release of raids, if there isn’t enough casual content…
Hmmm… Enough “casual content”… or “enough casual” content? If I… nevermind, I’m bored already.

And enough of hiding behind the “super Mario excuse”, as I like to call it (refer to anti-sab, anti-clocktower threads). It’s part of the game. Raids are too. I’d hoped at least a portion of these self-proclaimed Torquemadas would drop the torches and suck it up, but it’s not gonna happen, so…
Gee, I’m sick of logging and mining. If I didn’t suck at raids so much, I’d be dying to see the 2nd wing. Plleeeease, Baphomet, let us get past the first boss before I grow too old to play properly!

You will be hard pressed to show me personally complaining about the availability of SaB for example. There is nothing of interest for me in SaB and it was temporary, so I don´t care for it. I have also long ago resigned to the need of people to only accept the best instead of a simple viable solution, aka a meta. If raids had tons of gold, exclusive titles or another non game altering stuff for the aliens as you call it, we would not even have this conversation.

My personal line in the sand was gated legendary armor, that is the only thing I am seriously lobbying against, with adventures also taking some flag because I find them unfitting for GW2. Just because you and most other people assume that legendary vs ascended will make no difference in GW2 until it closes does not make it so. I am pretty sure that you also have such a line in the sand.

And of course I am arguing from my personal opinion with adventures. And yes, I could have just quit the game, but I do not want to quit it. I find adventures boring and nearly repulsive. But Anet offered this forum to write them how you feel about their stuff. Why should I not use this chance because some people find it tiresome to argue and prefer to just bend over and take whatever Anet offers, regardless if it suits their preferences or not?

Torolan.5816:

You will be hard pressed to show me personally complaining about the availability of SaB for example. There is nothing of interest for me in SaB and it was temporary, so I don´t care for it. I have also long ago resigned to the need of people to only accept the best instead of a simple viable solution, aka a meta. If raids had tons of gold, exclusive titles or another non game altering stuff for the aliens as you call it, we would not even have this conversation.

My personal line in the sand was gated legendary armor, that is the only thing I am seriously lobbying against, with adventures also taking some flag because I find them unfitting for GW2. Just because you and most other people assume that legendary vs ascended will make no difference in GW2 until it closes does not make it so. I am pretty sure that you also have such a line in the sand.

And of course I am arguing from my personal opinion with adventures. And yes, I could have just quit the game, but I do not want to quit it. I find adventures boring and nearly repulsive. But Anet offered this forum to write them how you feel about their stuff. Why should I not use this chance because some people find it tiresome to argue and prefer to just bend over and take whatever Anet offers, regardless if it suits their preferences or not?

I find it to be a ridiculous statement that legendary gear is somehow better than ascended gear, this is just clearly untrue, they have exactly the same stats.

Satenia.9025:

Personally, I’m not looking forward to it. While I’ve spent my time raiding, have beaten all bosses multiple times, got the “pro-kids” title and so on and so forth, I count myself to the part of the community who thinks that introducing raids into GW2 has been a huge mistake and is a waste of valuable resources. Both dungeons and fractals – in their original state – were what I considered healthy content for this kind of game: While good groups progressed faster and could therefore net more rewards within the same amount of time, the content was also accessible to less experienced groups, at a much slower pace of course. The group size of five meant less initial planning/waiting and while roles were still present, it was not as strict as it is now in raids.

As far as I’m concerned, the hardcore minority who wanted raids is still not satisfied, wants more of a challenge and generally more, while I personally believe that they should simply have moved on to another game long ago. I hope you guys enjoy the initial challenge before you put it on farm and then go back to logging in once a week to clear the two raid wings. Hey, maybe if you’re lucky, it’s long enough that you’ll be busy for two evenings a week now.

On the other hand, a far larger pool of average players who got hyped by raids thinking that these are the new dungeons, got a very harsh reality check with a few nice community-enforced rules on top (insights, eternal, …) that make any sort of stuff we dungeoneers used to put on the lfg look feeble in comparison. This boils down to initial advertising of course, I’m fairly sure that these players expected – unjustified or not is irrelevant here – to be able to play raids (and I don’t mean wiping on first boss with that) when they did the HoT purchase.

That said, personally I couldn’t care less about raid exclusivity IF there was still a similar amount of work put into dungeons and fractals. But as long as dungeons are officially dead and fractals as stale as ever, I believe that we’re missing some kind of middle ground for raids. If these are the only instanced content being worked on, I sure expect them to be accessibly to a larger crowd. Multiple difficulties have been suggested, amongst many other things I’m sure. Until then, don’t mind me for not cheering for any new raid wings.

Preach!!

The points you’ve made are pretty much in line with the frustration that a lot of players seem to have with content. Tbh, I never really understood why they even introduced raids is a game targeted towards the more casual player. The more novice players feel like they have to pull teeth to get a team while getting their kill is an entirely different story. The more hardcore players got their fix in the first week or less when the content was new and challenging. After that? Back to cheesing the content like they did with dungeons and fractals which the PvE community seemed to enjoy for a spectating point of view.

Honestly, if I had to take a stab at it I would just say that raids were/are just a marketing strategy to attract new players since the term “raids” have a very attractive connotation in the MMO genre. Though the raids in this game (and what we’ve seen of this stupid sloth preview) are disappointing and feel more like glorified dungeons. I get that the difficulty/complexity probably has to be diluted a little to bring the content in line with the overall difficulty of the game, but they could have easily compensated difficulty with creativity. I’d say I agree multiple difficulties, but we already got the foot in the ground saying “not gonna happen”.

I’ve tried to put a positive spin on things, but the recent decisions from the development team make is seem more and more like conversation from players and whoever looks at the forums to be very 1 way. And, it’s not just limited to PvE. Luckily for me, I’ll be out of the country while everyone is griping and moaning when Wing 2 releases. I’ll just read-up on the Spark Notes when I get back to The States.

Good fun, have luck.

randomguy.1283:

Torolan.5816:

You will be hard pressed to show me personally complaining about the availability of SaB for example. There is nothing of interest for me in SaB and it was temporary, so I don´t care for it. I have also long ago resigned to the need of people to only accept the best instead of a simple viable solution, aka a meta. If raids had tons of gold, exclusive titles or another non game altering stuff for the aliens as you call it, we would not even have this conversation.

My personal line in the sand was gated legendary armor, that is the only thing I am seriously lobbying against, with adventures also taking some flag because I find them unfitting for GW2. Just because you and most other people assume that legendary vs ascended will make no difference in GW2 until it closes does not make it so. I am pretty sure that you also have such a line in the sand.

And of course I am arguing from my personal opinion with adventures. And yes, I could have just quit the game, but I do not want to quit it. I find adventures boring and nearly repulsive. But Anet offered this forum to write them how you feel about their stuff. Why should I not use this chance because some people find it tiresome to argue and prefer to just bend over and take whatever Anet offers, regardless if it suits their preferences or not?

I find it to be a ridiculous statement that legendary gear is somehow better than ascended gear, this is just clearly untrue, they have exactly the same stats.

And if you excuse me for a rather rude sounding but not rude meaning, you have
a) not read it right. right now, statwiese it is the same, but that is not a rule set in stone. See Anet change policies because people like the grind treadmill more than they expect and it is a market to tap in, and soon you would watch ascended become second rate armor.
b) it already is better. What would you rather have:
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells and can be refittet into an artillery tank given time and money (aka runeswap and stat swap).
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells that can be refittet for free as soon as you have some combat free time and always carries the best armor as soon as it is available(legendary armor).

That you don´t find the second tank is significantly better than the first one because it also fires standard shells or presently has the same type of armor as the first one is irrelevant to it´s superiority in general.

Torolan.5816:

And if you excuse me for a rather rude sounding but not rude meaning, you have
a) not read it right. right now, statwiese it is the same, but that is not a rule set in stone. See Anet change policies because people like the grind treadmill more than they expect and it is a market to tap in, and soon you would watch ascended become second rate armor.
b) it already is better. What would you rather have:
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells and can be refittet into an artillery tank given time and money (aka runeswap and stat swap).
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells that can be refittet for free as soon as you have some combat free time and always carries the best armor as soon as it is available(legendary armor).

That you don´t find the second tank is significantly better than the first one because it also fires standard shells or presently has the same type of armor as the first one is irrelevant to it´s superiority in general.

So your 2 points is

1) Legendary armor isn’t better right now, but might become better later if anet change how they work?

That point have no value. We can fear that they could make Legendary have better stats, but right now and for the last 3 years they didn’t. They also officially said, that they are not planning to add any other gear rarity better than ascended. If they ever talk about changing that, then you would have a point, but as today you don’t.

2) Legendary have better quality of life. True. That’s one of the advantage of Legendary. That doesn’t make them better, that’s just making them more easy to use. Now in reality there is 2 problems with your points.

- Legendary Armor like Weapon will probably not able to swap Runes/Sigils. That mean, that you are really limited in the change you can make to your build. You can’t use legendary to swap for another build, just another stats. I have 7 legendary on 4 different character. And the only time I was able to use the feature is when I swap between my Condi Engineer and my Condi Tank Engineer. What I’m saying is that yes, it’s a quality of life, but it’s a badly designed, limited quality of life that most people can’t use anyway.

- A legendary weapons cost about 2k gold to make. You can craft about 20+ ascended weapons with different stats, looks and sigils for that same price. And in theory, it should be about the same with Legendary armor.

Thaddeus.4891:

Torolan.5816:

And if you excuse me for a rather rude sounding but not rude meaning, you have
a) not read it right. right now, statwiese it is the same, but that is not a rule set in stone. See Anet change policies because people like the grind treadmill more than they expect and it is a market to tap in, and soon you would watch ascended become second rate armor.
b) it already is better. What would you rather have:
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells and can be refittet into an artillery tank given time and money (aka runeswap and stat swap).
-A sturdy battle tank which fires standard shells that can be refittet for free as soon as you have some combat free time and always carries the best armor as soon as it is available(legendary armor).

That you don´t find the second tank is significantly better than the first one because it also fires standard shells or presently has the same type of armor as the first one is irrelevant to it´s superiority in general.

So your 2 points is

1) Legendary armor isn’t better right now, but might become better later if anet change how they work?

That point have no value. We can fear that they could make Legendary have better stats, but right now and for the last 3 years they didn’t. They also officially said, that they are not planning to add any other gear rarity better than ascended. If they ever talk about changing that, then you would have a point, but as today you don’t.

2) Legendary have better quality of life. True. That’s one of the advantage of Legendary. That doesn’t make them better, that’s just making them more easy to use. Now in reality there is 2 problems with your points.

- Legendary Armor like Weapon will probably not able to swap Runes/Sigils. That mean, that you are really limited in the change you can make to your build. You can’t use legendary to swap for another build, just another stats. I have 7 legendary on 4 different character. And the only time I was able to use the feature is when I swap between my Condi Engineer and my Condi Tank Engineer. What I’m saying is that yes, it’s a quality of life, but it’s a badly designed, limited quality of life that most people can’t use anyway.

- A legendary weapons cost about 2k gold to make. You can craft about 20+ ascended weapons with different stats, looks and sigils for that same price. And in theory, it should be about the same with Legendary armor.

So you are basically agreeing with me when I say that legendary armor is already more useful and convenient than ascended. The argument is about how significant that advantage is, not that it is not there. That you can´t swap runes is irrelevant for the point that legendary in general is better than ascended, it only decreases the value of the legendary armor but not to the point where it is even again with ascended armor.
Again:
I agree that the difference is not that big right now. But it is there.

We are also in the same boat when you say that the stat difference is not there right now and that it is indeed a little tinfoil hatery to except Anet to make ascended armor irrelevant soon.
But honestly, I would not make such a point if Anet had just been true to their word as this thread for example would not be there because raids were not even planned in the initial concept of GW2 if I remember well and Anet made a point of the idea that GW2 was NOT a game like every other game.

And why should I craft 20+ ascended weapons? And if buying legendary armor on the TP was an option, I´d happily wave you a heartfelt goodbye and lots of fun with your raid.

My point are

1) Legendary are not better than ascended. Someone attacking with a full legendary set will have the exact same offensive and defensive capability. Someone with legendary won’t be superior in-game to someone in full ascended.

2) Legendary armor have better quality of life than ascended gear and arguably better looks and animation. But that come at the way bigger cost in gold. You pay more gold for a legendary because you have a little bit more quality of live (stats swap) and better looks.

My point about 20+ ascended weapons is that. Yes you can swap stats on a Legendary weapons. But how is that an advantage? It costed you 20 times the cost of an ascended weapons. If you value so much the stats swapping capability of the Legendary, it’s because you want to use different stats right? So what is the advantage of the Legendary in that situation? I would much rather play 150 gold and get 2 Sword with the stats I want and Sigil I want, then to play 2k gold for a Legendary sword that can swap between 2 stats, but not sigils.

Thaddeus.4891:

My point are

1) Legendary are not better than ascended. Someone attacking with a full legendary set will have the exact same offensive and defensive capability. Someone with legendary won’t be superior in-game to someone in full ascended.

2) Legendary armor have better quality of life than ascended gear and arguably better looks and animation. But that come at the way bigger cost in gold. You pay more gold for a legendary because you have a little bit more quality of live (stats swap) and better looks.

My point about 20+ ascended weapons is that. Yes you can swap stats on a Legendary weapons. But how is that an advantage? It costed you 20 times the cost of an ascended weapons. If you value so much the stats swapping capability of the Legendary, it’s because you want to use different stats right? So what is the advantage of the Legendary in that situation? I would much rather play 150 gold and get 2 Sword with the stats I want and Sigil I want, then to play 2k gold for a Legendary sword that can swap between 2 stats, but not sigils.

Agreed.

Of the two Legendaries that I have I pursued, I did so for the skin not for the functionality. The functionality is a nice touch that I’ve used maybe once since the feature came out, but it’s not at all the selling point.

Unless you somehow find yourself switching stats on a ridiculously regular basis it is much more cost effective to make ascended weapons with the sigils you want rather than having to buy new sigils or settle for hybrid-esque sigils. EG.

Power staff with Force/Air
Healer’s staff with x/Transference
Condi Staff with Malice/Bursting.

Aside from “fun builds” those are about the only 3 staves that I need to fit multiple purposes that can be shared across multiple toons. Otherwise, I could change the stats on my Legendary staff, but I’d also have to buy the sigils that complement the build as well.

At that point it’s a matter of cost analysis. Why in the world would I buy a 2k gold + staff that requires continued investment (due to having to buy sigils) when I could just buy ~100g staves (cost of staff + appropriate sigils) and have saved tons of gold to spend on more weapons or armor.

In regards to the Legendary armor? Personally, I’m just in it for the free Ascended precursors (assuming the collections continues to be achievement based rather than cost based). If they change the functionality down the road to allow for rune swapping or if the Legendary skins look sick then I’ll consider upgrading the armor set to Legendary. Otherwise, it’s staying at the Ascended level.

So weapons are way cheaper than armor. Ok, agreed upon. But how does that take away from the point that a raid user will have an advantage over someone who does no raids, how insignificant that advantage may appear to you and me?
It is not even so much about the properties of that legendary armor set only, it´s the exclusivity too. Of course there is also the argument that to get an ascended backpack, you had to farm fractals for a while. Although that is as wrong as hiding vital stuff behind raids is wrong, someone could theroretically make lvl 1 fractals over and over with no sweat to get his back, the only thing stopping him would maybe be some fractal shards that only drop at lvl 20+. Where is the lvl 1 raid?
Lets take the eternal title for example. That is a reward I am completely happy with. It shows that this person has made the raid and done something worthwhile in his opinion, at least until enough people with big enough purses were carried through the title so that it is only slighlly more prestigious than the dungeon master title.

I also already agreed that we are not at the point where you can kiss your ascended armor goodbye, and maybe my tinfoil hat sits too tight here.^^

Torolan.5816:

So weapons are way cheaper than armor. Ok, agreed upon. But how does that take away from the point that a raid user will have an advantage over someone who does no raids, how insignificant that advantage may appear to you and me?
It is not even so much about the properties of that legendary armor set only, it´s the exclusivity too. Of course there is also the argument that to get an ascended backpack, you had to farm fractals for a while. Although that is as wrong as hiding vital stuff behind raids is wrong, someone could theroretically make lvl 1 fractals over and over with no sweat to get his back, the only thing stopping him would maybe be some fractal shards that only drop at lvl 20+. Where is the lvl 1 raid?
Lets take the eternal title for example. That is a reward I am completely happy with. It shows that this person has made the raid and done something worthwhile in his opinion, at least until enough people with big enough purses were carried through the title so that it is only slighlly more prestigious than the dungeon master title.

I also already agreed that we are not at the point where you can kiss your ascended armor goodbye, and maybe my tinfoil hat sits too tight here.^^

Eternal title is meaningless. There are plenty of guilds that sell the title nowadays, and it’s not even an accurate reflection of you skill. You could be like me that grinded out kills and by some miracle no one died, or you could have been carried by other 9 players and gotten it with little to no effort.

As far as exclusivity or prestige? Still a bogus argument. Unless the remaining 12 items of the Armor collection shift in focus there’s nothing about the collection that currently calls for skill. You can, once again, grind out all the work yourself, or you can just buy your kills and the necessary events to complete your collection items. Thus, you have the same problem with Legendary Armor as you do with Tyrian Legendaries: we have no way of differentiating someone who worked their way through the grind of the effort….or someone who just paid ridiculous amounts of money to have someone else do the work for them.

Maguuman Legendaries are about the only thing I respect since at least 2/4 final components cannot be bought and actually require work and effort.

Torolan.5816:

So weapons are way cheaper than armor. Ok, agreed upon. But how does that take away from the point that a raid user will have an advantage over someone who does no raids, how insignificant that advantage may appear to you and me?
It is not even so much about the properties of that legendary armor set only, it´s the exclusivity too. Of course there is also the argument that to get an ascended backpack, you had to farm fractals for a while. Although that is as wrong as hiding vital stuff behind raids is wrong, someone could theroretically make lvl 1 fractals over and over with no sweat to get his back, the only thing stopping him would maybe be some fractal shards that only drop at lvl 20+. Where is the lvl 1 raid?
Lets take the eternal title for example. That is a reward I am completely happy with. It shows that this person has made the raid and done something worthwhile in his opinion, at least until enough people with big enough purses were carried through the title so that it is only slighlly more prestigious than the dungeon master title.

I also already agreed that we are not at the point where you can kiss your ascended armor goodbye, and maybe my tinfoil hat sits too tight here.^^

It wil the same thing, at least we suppose here. Crafting 2-3 sets of ascended armor will cost you less than 1 set of Legendary armor. So the same logic here apply. Yes you have small advantage, but you pay for it.

That said, I agree that Legendary armor shouldn’t be exclusive to Raid. The skin yes, but not the concept of Legendary armor. They should have an legendary armor accessible for WvWers, PvPers and Open World Players. Or it should ask from us to play all modes. I good with skin exclusive to one mode, but not to category of item exclusive to one mode.

Mechalibur.9618:

Holy freaking crap, people, if you don’t like raids or don’t want challenging content, then DON’T PLAY IT

But the main argument we see over and over is that they are the majority.
And how I understand it:
“why should you have content you like, when they can have content they like instead of you?”

I hope the bosses aren’t easy to beat. I want to have something to hold my interest for at least a month lol… this raid wing was spaced at just the right amount of time

Sabetha might need a QoL update… it’s way to boring of a fight

I hope that Anet can actually made some encounters truly mechanics based and not timer based. I played other games that if you made a mistake (possible to recover but really hard to do so) your party would wipe and not ever was the pressure on from a timer.

Timers make it boring and don’t do what Anet said would happen. The end of zerker meta. In fact those timers did the opposite it made zerker even more prevalent.

So lets all really hope that Anet learned a real lesson and can make something not timer based. (Probably not).