Guild Wars 2

NikeEU.7690:

People should realize the mechanics of the fight are intrinsically linked to dps. How many green circles are vg does a speed clear guild have to deal with? 5 or 6. How many does a mediocre pug have to deal with? 8 or 9? 10?? How many orbs does a speed clear guild have to clear at gorseval? 1 or 2? How many does a mediocre pug have yo clear? 5 or 6?

How long do the healers in a speed clear guild have to go into turbo heal mode when sabetha and karde are alive together? 20 seconds? How long does a mediocre pug have yo deal with that pressure? 45 seconds?

How many shoots does a speed clear guild have to eat to kill slothadaur? 3. How many does a mediocre pug have to eat? 5 or 6?

I could go on. But you get the point hopefully. Good dps makes the mechanics easier. Raiding 101.

Sure, higher DPS helps move through mechanics faster, but … fun fact: speed clear is not what the raid is tuned for. It’s tuned to be achievable by people who don’t know the mechanics, don’t have the “optimal” composition for speed clearing, and do deal with all those extra rounds of the mechanics.

The same thing is true of the overall kill as of the individual phases: unless your problem is that you run out of healing within two percent of the phase end, every single time, and are doing the mechanics correctly … DPS from the “optimal” class vs the next twenty best is not your real problem.

Maybe this is fatalistic of me, but it seems to me like this is destined to happen eventually. One problem of every MMO is that earlier content becomes outdated as new releases happen and people gravitate to the newer content for its rewards/newness/power creep/because that’s where everyone else is/etc. The likeliest way to keep older content relevant as the game begins to compete with itself by providing more content over time for players to choose between, without having to design a new set of rewards, is to increase the older content’s accessibility.

The easiest, cheapest, requiring-the-fewest-man-hours way this can be achieved is by creating easier modes/tiers of difficulty and reducing the size of group required or scaling it so it can be completed with any number of players from 1 to the maximum. It doesn’t require any creative development, art design, new properties, etc—just time for refiguring the difficulty and mechanics (where needed—some of which will be provided for by power creep) and testing these, a significant reduction in rewards and the potential addition of multiple tiers of things like achievement points or mastery points (the addition of which would probably not break anyone’s heart).

I don’t know that raids are at that point yet, but dungeons already are. They could all stand to be rebalanced to allow people to go in with informal groups or even solo. The raids we have in the game already will get there, if not by the next expansion, then by the one after. I kind of think they should just do it on a rolling schedule: as they release a new set, they should open up accessibility on the set that was released two cycles ago.

In other words, when the next expansion comes, they should open accessibility on the dungeons; in the expansion after that, open accessibility on the raids that currently exist, so that there’s always an exclusive set of new content for the hardcore folks, the middle-range stuff isn’t open yet but not offending anybody by being open to early, and the oldest stuff that nobody cares about anymore is open to everyone.

GW2 already has a scaling system in place in the programming, so it doesn’t seem to me like this is something that is outside of the parameters of the game, either functionally or philosophically.

Bridget Morrigan.1752:

Maybe this is fatalistic of me, but it seems to me like this is destined to happen eventually. One problem of every MMO is that earlier content becomes outdated as new releases happen and people gravitate to the newer content for its rewards/newness/power creep/because that’s where everyone else is/etc. The likeliest way to keep older content relevant as the game begins to compete with itself by providing more content over time for players to choose between, without having to design a new set of rewards, is to increase the older content’s accessibility.

The easiest, cheapest, requiring-the-fewest-man-hours way this can be achieved is by creating easier modes/tiers of difficulty and reducing the size of group required or scaling it so it can be completed with any number of players from 1 to the maximum. It doesn’t require any creative development, art design, new properties, etc—just time for refiguring the difficulty and mechanics (where needed—some of which will be provided for by power creep) and testing these, a significant reduction in rewards and the potential addition of multiple tiers of things like achievement points or mastery points (the addition of which would probably not break anyone’s heart).

I don’t know that raids are at that point yet, but dungeons already are. They could all stand to be rebalanced to allow people to go in with informal groups or even solo. The raids we have in the game already will get there, if not by the next expansion, then by the one after. I kind of think they should just do it on a rolling schedule: as they release a new set, they should open up accessibility on the set that was released two cycles ago.

In other words, when the next expansion comes, they should open accessibility on the dungeons; in the expansion after that, open accessibility on the raids that currently exist, so that there’s always an exclusive set of new content for the hardcore folks, the middle-range stuff isn’t open yet but not offending anybody by being open to early, and the oldest stuff that nobody cares about anymore is open to everyone.

GW2 already has a scaling system in place in the programming, so it doesn’t seem to me like this is something that is outside of the parameters of the game, either functionally or philosophically.

You are ignoring one of the core points of GW2. We have an equipment and level cap that will stay forever. Content will never be outdated. There is no reason that everyone have to complete everything while it is ‘current’ content.
You can complete it with almost the same experience at a later time. Maybe it will become easier with elite specializations that other expansions offer so people that find it now too hard can complete it.
If you reduce the rewards for raids because you thing they are outdated you will kill them completly instead.

Dungeons could be completed with informal groups since release, that was actually their problem. They never fit the term ‘challenging group content’ which they were supposed to offer. Many paths were completed solo half a year after release.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

NikeEU.7690:

People should realize the mechanics of the fight are intrinsically linked to dps. How many green circles are vg does a speed clear guild have to deal with? 5 or 6. How many does a mediocre pug have to deal with? 8 or 9? 10?? How many orbs does a speed clear guild have to clear at gorseval? 1 or 2? How many does a mediocre pug have yo clear? 5 or 6?

How long do the healers in a speed clear guild have to go into turbo heal mode when sabetha and karde are alive together? 20 seconds? How long does a mediocre pug have yo deal with that pressure? 45 seconds?

How many shoots does a speed clear guild have to eat to kill slothadaur? 3. How many does a mediocre pug have to eat? 5 or 6?

I could go on. But you get the point hopefully. Good dps makes the mechanics easier. Raiding 101.

Sure, higher DPS helps move through mechanics faster, but … fun fact: speed clear is not what the raid is tuned for. It’s tuned to be achievable by people who don’t know the mechanics, don’t have the “optimal” composition for speed clearing, and do deal with all those extra rounds of the mechanics.

The same thing is true of the overall kill as of the individual phases: unless your problem is that you run out of healing within two percent of the phase end, every single time, and are doing the mechanics correctly … DPS from the “optimal” class vs the next twenty best is not your real problem.

That in no way had anything to do with what I said. If you have good dps you don’t have to deal with the things that trouble inexperienced groups (mechanics). The fact of the matter is that if your group is failing mechanics you can improve that by having better dps. So yes a dps meter helps groups who are having trouble with mechanics too.

NikeEU.7690:

That in no way had anything to do with what I said. If you have good dps you don’t have to deal with the things that trouble inexperienced groups (mechanics). The fact of the matter is that if your group is failing mechanics you can improve that by having better dps. So yes a dps meter helps groups who are having trouble with mechanics too.

I disagree because it is easier to execute the mechanics with a less challenging (and therefore worse) dps rotation than to be focussed on a perfect one + mechanics. Some of the qtfy rotations in the videos aren’t made for a bigger part of the playerbase, they require a good preparation of hotkey binding, of course using and in almost all cases very fast reaction time or timing. That’s not a thing many players are willing to invest or even physically able to if GW2 raids stay like they are now.
The majority of gamers is still playing for fun not for perfection.

You are ignoring one of the core points of GW2. We have an equipment and level cap that will stay forever. Content will never be outdated. There is no reason that everyone have to complete everything while it is ‘current’ content.
You can complete it with almost the same experience at a later time. Maybe it will become easier with elite specializations that other expansions offer so people that find it now too hard can complete it.
If you reduce the rewards for raids because you thing they are outdated you will kill them completly instead.

Dungeons could be completed with informal groups since release, that was actually their problem. They never fit the term ‘challenging group content’ which they were supposed to offer. Many paths were completed solo half a year after release.

Here you’ve provided an example of content becoming outdated on its own through the natural process of time and attrition, without the addition of competing content. Thanks!

Honestly, your opinion about dungeon difficulty is entirely beside the point because there was only ever one level of difficulty for dungeons in the first place. The problem back when dungeons were relevant was that there was insufficient challenging content, period.

No one here is suggesting reducing the amount of challenging content with raids. They’re suggesting that there be a way to increase access to raid content for other players who are less interested in or less capable of playing on the verge of failure all the time (which may be helpful for them to learn the mechanics and move up), or who lack the social capital or time commitment in their schedules to get together with nine other people on a regular basis. They’re asking for something to be added, not something to be taken away.

Additionally, no one is suggesting lowered rewards for raids, either: rather, that if an easier mode is activated, that it should have a lowered reward than the regular raid. People should not be getting the same rewards in an easy mode as they do on a harder mode. Um…duh?

Secondly, content will always become outdated because people move on when there are newer things to do. This causes a feedback loop of attrition: as fewer people are doing older content while they chase the newest shiny, it gets harder to find groups to do that older content. This means that some players who would have done the older content will give up trying to do it or will stop looking to do it as frequently because the effort, time and work required to generate a group exceeds whatever their personal threshold is for such things. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for the people who are left. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The stat caps for level and equipment are an important stopgap to prevent content from becoming mechanically obsolete, but they will never, ever erase the basic human desire to choose to do something fresh over something stale.

Kitten gets old, dude. This is not rocket science I’m theorizing about here.

It’s in fact one of the major concerns of the people in this thread who don’t want the easier tier in place: if people become divided by level over time, it will make grouping at all levels more difficult as this attrition process continues.

My suggestion was essentially to wait until the attrition more or less occurred on its own anyway and no one cared about that particular content anymore, then open up the accessibility via smaller groups or solo modes and lesser difficulty at that time.

Dungeons are past due for this treatment, tbh.

Bridget Morrigan.1752:

My suggestion was essentially to wait until the attrition more or less occurred on its own anyway and no one cared about that particular content anymore, then open up the accessibility via smaller groups or solo modes and lesser difficulty at that time.

Dungeons are past due for this treatment, tbh.

To be fair you already can make dungeon pushes and raid pushes without 10 players. Dungeons don’t actually need to be changed other than to have a few mechanics adjusted so that you don’t need to have a full party (like the 4-brazier room in CoF1)

I was thinking, to make raids easier to get into, instead of creating an easy mode they just introduce a vendor into the lobby that sells equipment packs that give you everything you need for a certain build/profession. So it includes armour, weapons, runes ,sigils and food with a token which puts you into an instance where you can practice against the raid boss the build is meant for and teaches you how to do the boss then on completion it gives you an item showing you completed that tutorial which you can then ping in chat to show you have an understanding and are equipped for raiding.

Each raid has a vendor and each tab is for a different raid setup so one tab might have 2 necro packs, 1 ele pack, 1 ranger pack, and so forth and to make this easier you can give the setups names so that when advertising you just put boss ……. setup …………
and then you just wait for the slots to fill up.

Here’s my 2 cents as someone who has never raided but would totally do it if it we’re easier for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to do start learning the ropes.

The Lion Guard makes a deal with Taimi and her crewe, the Lion Guard at the raid lobby are able to utilize her discovery of the simulation room in Rata Novus to present an approximation on how raid bosses are like. This means that you and 9 others can practice how a boss plays out as many times as you want without the hassle of spending hours organizing.

Because this is only a simulation and an approximation, the encounter will not include any achievements, mastery unlocks, or exclusive loot. This also means that enrage timers and certain attacks might not be present. This simulation is only a means to help players easily practice the basic mechanics of an encounter.

In order to hype up players into facing the actual encounters, I propose some extra restrictions.

• You don’t actually get to see the boss in it’s full glory, just a wire frame only detailed enough to make out the shape and animations
• Environments are also lacking in detail, think of something like in Tyria 3D
• This may be pushing it, but how about the simulations for bosses in a specific wing are only unlocked after the real wing has been cleared a certain number of times in your server’s region

Vinceman.4572:

NikeEU.7690:

That in no way had anything to do with what I said. If you have good dps you don’t have to deal with the things that trouble inexperienced groups (mechanics). The fact of the matter is that if your group is failing mechanics you can improve that by having better dps. So yes a dps meter helps groups who are having trouble with mechanics too.

I disagree because it is easier to execute the mechanics with a less challenging (and therefore worse) dps rotation than to be focussed on a perfect one + mechanics. Some of the qtfy rotations in the videos aren’t made for a bigger part of the playerbase, they require a good preparation of hotkey binding, of course using and in almost all cases very fast reaction time or timing. That’s not a thing many players are willing to invest or even physically able to if GW2 raids stay like they are now.
The majority of gamers is still playing for fun not for perfection.

But you dont need that rotation to clear any raid, as shown they 4 man it, meaning that even if you do 30% of the dps on the videos you would clear it.
What this means? For example on VG, i’m 100% if you get DPS like Hammer DH, DD staff, 3 Condi reapers ( for the red VG ), and all of them only press 1, never use any other skill or utility ( of course use the evasion button for the blue/red circles ) you would clear it with a lot of the enrage timer to spare.
So yeah all the encounters are really easy on the dps side, its just a mechanic problem when you wipe. So no excuse that you miss mechanic because of rotation

OnizukaBR.8537:

So yeah all the encounters are really easy on the dps side, its just a mechanic problem when you wipe.

That’s what I’ve said.

Don’t forget the average GW2 player isn’t able or at least not willing to learn those mechanics. They want to press 1 and loot the corpses at best without a single dodge, movement or care about a break bar.

DPS requirements and enrage mechanics are lazy design elements that create the illusion of difficulty. They should be removed – especially, as people say, they don’t really matter for experienced groups anyway. This alone would open up raids for a greater variety of playstyles and builds (including some that people consider cheese, but so what).

Once that is done, they could easily (I think, but could be wrong) add a challenge and a story mote to every encounter. The challenge mote adds the enrage back in, alongside potential new mechanics. The story mote tones down the boss health and the severity of attacks/mechanics by a set percentage (but doesn’t remove them).

Each mote is assigned the appropriate reward level.

And, with that, this would be a non issue.

Blaeys.3102:

DPS requirements and enrage mechanics are lazy design elements that create the illusion of difficulty. They should be removed – especially, as people say, they don’t really matter for experienced groups anyway. This alone would open up raids for a greater variety of playstyles and builds (including some that people consider cheese, but so what).

Once that is done, they could easily (I think, but could be wrong) add a challenge and a story mote to every encounter. The challenge mote adds the enrage back in, alongside potential new mechanics. The story mote tones down the boss health and the severity of attacks/mechanics by a set percentage (but doesn’t remove them).

Each mote is assigned the appropriate reward level.

And, with that, this would be a non issue.

None of the bosses has an Enrage timer that prevents you from using “cheese builds” (Look up 10 healing Tempest kills), move along.

Blaeys.3102:

DPS requirements and enrage mechanics are lazy design elements that create the illusion of difficulty. They should be removed – especially, as people say, they don’t really matter for experienced groups anyway. This alone would open up raids for a greater variety of playstyles and builds (including some that people consider cheese, but so what).

Once that is done, they could easily (I think, but could be wrong) add a challenge and a story mote to every encounter. The challenge mote adds the enrage back in, alongside potential new mechanics. The story mote tones down the boss health and the severity of attacks/mechanics by a set percentage (but doesn’t remove them).

Each mote is assigned the appropriate reward level.

And, with that, this would be a non issue.

But doesn’t that just remove any of the skill from it, i mean if there was no timer on the boss you could all just run nomads and have no way to fail, i mean hey i would love to run my selfish cleric ranger like i do in fractals watching everyone drop but me but it would completely take the point out of raids.

vectorfox.6894:

Blaeys.3102:

DPS requirements and enrage mechanics are lazy design elements that create the illusion of difficulty. They should be removed – especially, as people say, they don’t really matter for experienced groups anyway. This alone would open up raids for a greater variety of playstyles and builds (including some that people consider cheese, but so what).

Once that is done, they could easily (I think, but could be wrong) add a challenge and a story mote to every encounter. The challenge mote adds the enrage back in, alongside potential new mechanics. The story mote tones down the boss health and the severity of attacks/mechanics by a set percentage (but doesn’t remove them).

Each mote is assigned the appropriate reward level.

And, with that, this would be a non issue.

But doesn’t that just remove any of the skill from it, i mean if there was no timer on the boss you could all just run nomads and have no way to fail, i mean hey i would love to run my selfish cleric ranger like i do in fractals watching everyone drop but me but it would completely take the point out of raids.

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

Coconut.7082:

None of the bosses has an Enrage timer that prevents you from using “cheese builds” (Look up 10 healing Tempest kills)

So why are the timers even there, then? Based on your input here, it sounds like they don’t really serve a purpose at all (which is kinda my point as well).

Blaeys.3102:

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

And it extends the development cycle for raids. They already have one of the longest of any content right now.
Would the casual player be pleased if LS updates would take longer because they implement a hard mode for veteran players? I don’t think so.

None of the bosses has an Enrage timer that prevents you from using “cheese builds” (Look up 10 healing Tempest kills)

So why are the timers even there, then? Based on your input here, it sounds like they don’t really serve a purpose at all (which is kinda my point as well).

Enrage timer are an incentive to run more offensive equipment, so you have to pay more attention to your surroundings.

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

And it extends the development cycle for raids. They already have one of the longest of any content right now.

On contrary, they have one of the shortest development cycles of any side content in this game (which, due to their exclusivity, they are). And it’s even shorter than development cycles for some of the main game modes (like WvW).

Astralporing.1957:

And it’s even shorter than development cycles for some of the main game modes (like WvW).

We are getting WvW updates regularly but the problem with those is that they aren’t liked by the community or they aren’t enough. It doesn’t help that the two big maps created for WvW (Edge of the Mists and Desert Borderlands) weren’t exactly well received. It appears that the WvW crowd is by far the hardest to please, leading to more time in-between updates. And they are like that because there are loads of different, often conflicting, opinions on what WvW is all about.

On the other hand, I’m quite positive that those who liked the first Raid will like the second one too. The Raiding crowd is much easier to please because unlike WvW, they all want the same thing. Now if the second Raid proves to be a disaster of Desert Borderlands scale then we’ll see what will happen in the future, but some change will sure come.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

And it extends the development cycle for raids. They already have one of the longest of any content right now.

On contrary, they have one of the shortest development cycles of any side content in this game (which, due to their exclusivity, they are). And it’s even shorter than development cycles for some of the main game modes (like WvW).

What is side content? What is main content? But if we consider Story and open world the main focus of PvE, the only other ‘side content’ would be fractals, which also get regular updates every LS update now. Last raid update was 8 months ago.

Miellyn.6847:

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

And it extends the development cycle for raids. They already have one of the longest of any content right now.

On contrary, they have one of the shortest development cycles of any side content in this game (which, due to their exclusivity, they are). And it’s even shorter than development cycles for some of the main game modes (like WvW).

What is side content? What is main content? But if we consider Story and open world the main focus of PvE, the only other ‘side content’ would be fractals, which also get regular updates every LS update now. Last raid update was 8 months ago.

I wouldn’t say Fractals are a side comment. As they took dungeons’ place in the game, they are something meant for most of the players to do (though, of course, not necessarily at higher fractal difficulties). Raids on the other hand are not meant for everyone. Quite the opposite. As such, you can’t really expect Anet to put the same development importance on them, as they do for LS, for example.

(unless of course the initial assumption is wrong and they are meant to be far more of a mainstream content – in which case Anet really would need to work on their accessibility to the majority of players)

TL/DR; if you want them to stay as exclusive as they are now, you should be content with them being a sideshow only (and thus developed more slowly). If you want them to be something more important to the game (and thus developed at faster pace), you should expect changes to difficulty and general accessibility.

(also, Anet does things in waves and bursts. Don’t expect for Fractal development rate to hold on for long – as soon as they will end those that are in the current pipeline, we’ll likely have a cooldown period again. Which may also last a year or longer. Raids they seem to do in waves containing one full raid. They were coming at an extremely fast rate during Forgotten Thicket development, for example)

Astralporing.1957:

As such, you can’t really expect Anet to put the same development importance on them, as they do for LS, for example.

I think you are missing the part where each type of content is done by a different team.
Also the LS team has to create far more diverse content, this includes collections, story instances, jumping puzzles and other things that might be included in an LS release.

Raids have just the Raid encounters. They have a much higher possibility of success. An LS episode zone might have too hard mobs, too complicated maps, not enough rewards, and any other thing that players come up with to say that they didn’t like an LS episode. Just see the reception of the 3 latest LS episodes, they all got their share of love and hate. Also, since LS releases have multiple types of content, they aren’t meant for everyone 100%. How many players liked the EB jumping puzzle for example?

Raids on the other hand? Aside from accessibility and requests for easier versions, the Raid content itself has been a success. If the next Raid proves to also be a success then Anet has a gold mine of success right there.

If you want them to be something more important to the game (and thus developed at faster pace), you should expect changes to difficulty and general accessibility.

You got it backwards. If changes to difficulty and general accessibility is something needed, then the importance of Raids, which means the allocation of resources and manpower, needs to be increased at the expense of other types of content.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

It would only remove skill if it were the only option. By offering multiple tiers – through the idea of motes (which they have said they are open to using in raids) – it doesn’t remove anything at all. It just extends a new experience to more players.

And it extends the development cycle for raids. They already have one of the longest of any content right now.

On contrary, they have one of the shortest development cycles of any side content in this game (which, due to their exclusivity, they are). And it’s even shorter than development cycles for some of the main game modes (like WvW).

What is side content? What is main content? But if we consider Story and open world the main focus of PvE, the only other ‘side content’ would be fractals, which also get regular updates every LS update now. Last raid update was 8 months ago.

I wouldn’t say Fractals are a side comment. As they took dungeons’ place in the game, they are something meant for most of the players to do (though, of course, not necessarily at higher fractal difficulties). Raids on the other hand are not meant for everyone. Quite the opposite. As such, you can’t really expect Anet to put the same development importance on them, as they do for LS, for example.

(unless of course the initial assumption is wrong and they are meant to be far more of a mainstream content – in which case Anet really would need to work on their accessibility to the majority of players)

TL/DR; if you want them to stay as exclusive as they are now, you should be content with them being a sideshow only (and thus developed more slowly). If you want them to be something more important to the game (and thus developed at faster pace), you should expect changes to difficulty and general accessibility.

(also, Anet does things in waves and bursts. Don’t expect for Fractal development rate to hold on for long – as soon as they will end those that are in the current pipeline, we’ll likely have a cooldown period again. Which may also last a year or longer. Raids they seem to do in waves containing one full raid. They were coming at an extremely fast rate during Forgotten Thicket development, for example)

It is not about raids getting faster developed. It is about not adding development time to appeal to people that are not the target audience.
Raids are niche content produced by a small team. If you want difficulty levels be willing to sacrifice other content for those.

Astralporing.1957:

I wouldn’t say Fractals are a side comment. As they took dungeons’ place in the game, they are something meant for most of the players to do (though, of course, not necessarily at higher fractal difficulties).

Isn’t that quite irrelevant? Both dungeons and fractals didn’t receive any real updates for 3 years before HoT. Sounds a lot like side-content to me.

cranos.5913:

Astralporing.1957:

I wouldn’t say Fractals are a side comment. As they took dungeons’ place in the game, they are something meant for most of the players to do (though, of course, not necessarily at higher fractal difficulties).

Isn’t that quite irrelevant? Both dungeons and fractals didn’t receive any real updates for 3 years before HoT. Sounds a lot like side-content to me.

I did mention that one too, indirectly, when i was talking about development in waves and bursts, and how the current development rate for fractals is unlikely to hold on for long.

This is how it should have been implemented, how ever the Raid Team is very very very small and this is the real reason.

i would like to see the stories in raids as well,but i hate grouping with self-appointed elitist. Plus I’m more of a bunker player so raids leave us out in the cold, with the build requirement of glass cannon dps, because of all the timers. My GS necro has around 30-40k life and 3.5k+ def..and i feel i should not have to change to please other players. i would love a solo mode or a story mode, since the White Mantle are becoming more part of the game and storyline.

NikeEU.7690:

People should realize the mechanics of the fight are intrinsically linked to dps. How many green circles are vg does a speed clear guild have to deal with? 5 or 6. How many does a mediocre pug have to deal with? 8 or 9? 10?? How many orbs does a speed clear guild have to clear at gorseval? 1 or 2? How many does a mediocre pug have yo clear? 5 or 6?

How long do the healers in a speed clear guild have to go into turbo heal mode when sabetha and karde are alive together? 20 seconds? How long does a mediocre pug have yo deal with that pressure? 45 seconds?

How many shoots does a speed clear guild have to eat to kill slothadaur? 3. How many does a mediocre pug have to eat? 5 or 6?

I could go on. But you get the point hopefully. Good dps makes the mechanics easier. Raiding 101.

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. But you’re saying good DPS makes mechanics easier, and while you’re correct, the reverse is also true, that being proficient with the mechanics makes good DPS easier.

It’s one thing to get the ideal rotation down perfectly against a training golem, it’s another to have an optimal dps rotation when you’re also focusing on moving to correct areas, throwing bombs, clearing orbs/bloodstone shards, dodging things like gorseval ground pound or sloth shake, etc. Unfamiliarity with these mechanics is what cause people to mess up their dps rotations, stop moving for seaweed salad buff, get stuck in the wrong attunement on ele, not maintain quickness/grace of the land, etc. Knowing perfect rotations against golems is one thing, but if you’re unfamiliar with mechanics that’s when you have issues like “oh kitten I’m stuck in air attunement on ele with no conjure weapons up”.

LFR destroyed wow, we don´t need it in gw2! The challenge gives players something to shoot for. Without it the game could have all the content in terms of dungeons and raids cleared in 2 hours of play. That is not what we need.

Sheltron.2190:

LFR destroyed wow, we don´t need it in gw2! The challenge gives players something to shoot for. Without it the game could have all the content in terms of dungeons and raids cleared in 2 hours of play. That is not what we need.

AMEN and please no!!! yea, no LFR PLEASE!!!!!

LFR did not kill raids in WoW. I stopped playing the game years ago, but my friends who still do tell me that raids are more popular there than ever – and that is thanks in big part to the flex raiding system they implemented (which is needed in this game).

Blaeys.3102:

LFR did not kill raids in WoW. I stopped playing the game years ago, but my friends who still do tell me that raids are more popular there than ever – and that is thanks in big part to the flex raiding system they implemented (which is needed in this game).

They are popular because the content patches features mostly raids and almost nothing for open world except 1 or 2 patches that feature open world but no raid. Also they are needed to progress the main story unlike GW2 and WoW is a raid game in general. Two completly different systems.
LFR is also automatic matchmaking which contributes to it’s popularity. Something that can’t be achieved in the current GW2 systems.

Flex raiding only exists for the 3 lower difficulties, not for mythic. GW2 raids are intended as the most challenging content (which would be mythic in WoW terms), which can’t be achieved with scaling as you can abuse some scaling breakpoints on abilities.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. But you’re saying good DPS makes mechanics easier, and while you’re correct, the reverse is also true, that being proficient with the mechanics makes good DPS easier.

Its easier to have good dps wich will make the mechanics easier rather than the reverse, reason being doing good dps remains the same in everyfight while being good with mechanics changes from fight to fight.

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

LFR did not kill raids in WoW. I stopped playing the game years ago, but my friends who still do tell me that raids are more popular there than ever – and that is thanks in big part to the flex raiding system they implemented (which is needed in this game).

They are popular because the content patches features mostly raids and almost nothing for open world except 1 or 2 patches that feature open world but no raid. Also they are needed to progress the main story unlike GW2 and WoW is a raid game in general. Two completly different systems.
LFR is also automatic matchmaking which contributes to it’s popularity. Something that can’t be achieved in the current GW2 systems.

Flex raiding only exists for the 3 lower difficulties, not for mythic. GW2 raids are intended as the most challenging content (which would be mythic in WoW terms), which can’t be achieved with scaling as you can abuse some scaling breakpoints on abilities.

The fact that mythic – which is intended to be the most challenge – exists alongside flex raiding, LFR and the lower difficulty levels clearly shows that it is possible to have both challenge and accessible instances without detracting from either experience.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

LFR did not kill raids in WoW. I stopped playing the game years ago, but my friends who still do tell me that raids are more popular there than ever – and that is thanks in big part to the flex raiding system they implemented (which is needed in this game).

They are popular because the content patches features mostly raids and almost nothing for open world except 1 or 2 patches that feature open world but no raid. Also they are needed to progress the main story unlike GW2 and WoW is a raid game in general. Two completly different systems.
LFR is also automatic matchmaking which contributes to it’s popularity. Something that can’t be achieved in the current GW2 systems.

Flex raiding only exists for the 3 lower difficulties, not for mythic. GW2 raids are intended as the most challenging content (which would be mythic in WoW terms), which can’t be achieved with scaling as you can abuse some scaling breakpoints on abilities.

The fact that mythic – which is intended to be the most challenge – exists alongside flex raiding, LFR and the lower difficulty levels clearly shows that it is possible to have both challenge and accessible instances without detracting from either experience.

With a much bigger team. The raid team in GW2 is very small.
Between Stronghold of the Faithful and Bastion of the Penitent were 8 months. You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.

Sheltron.2190:

LFR destroyed wow, we don´t need it in gw2!

Yeah, that poor, destroyed WoW, there’s like noone playing it nowadays…

Miellyn.6847:

You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.

I can point to a feature that pretty much disproves the myth that adding this would significantly increase development time – challenge motes.

If it is possible to add challenge motes to every encounter in the new wing and still get the content out on schedule, then the idea of a story mote (or mode) should be possible as well.

Yeah, seems they have exactly this (made 2 different difficulty levels, due to motes) on this wing. So, it can be done. And we now have a rough estimate of how much time is needed.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.

I can point to a feature that pretty much disproves the myth that adding this would significantly increase development time – challenge motes.

If it is possible to add challenge motes to every encounter in the new wing and still get the content out on schedule, then the idea of a story mote (or mode) should be possible as well.

They only add 1 or 2 mechanics. No damage, health, mechanic, enrage timer scaling. And there is a dev post in the Bastion of Penitent thread that says, that challenge motes are not intended to act like easy/hard mode.

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.

I can point to a feature that pretty much disproves the myth that adding this would significantly increase development time – challenge motes.

If it is possible to add challenge motes to every encounter in the new wing and still get the content out on schedule, then the idea of a story mote (or mode) should be possible as well.

They only add 1 or 2 mechanics. No damage, health, mechanic, enrage timer scaling. And there is a dev post in the Bastion of Penitent thread that says, that challenge motes are not intended to act like easy/hard mode.

Hmmm…

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

Seems like a hard mode to me.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

There you go.
And when they want to add a hard mode with challenge mote they think the actual difficulty is fine and doesn’t need an easy mode.

Miellyn.6847:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

There you go.
And when they want to add a hard mode with challenge mote they think the actual difficulty is fine and doesn’t need an easy mode.

And some of us strongly disagree with this decision – the impetus for these kind of threads.

Miellyn.6847:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

There you go.

And? You said the devs stated that they are against two-modal setup. Which they clearly aren’t.

And if we do know now that two modes can exist, we can safely move the discussion from debating that point to arguing about what level each of those modes should be at (and whether harder mode should be repeatably rewarding – which, at the moment, it isn’t).

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

There you go.

And? You said the devs stated that they are against two-modal setup. Which they clearly aren’t.

And if we do know now that two modes can exist, we can safely move the discussion from debating that point to arguing about what level each of those modes should be at (and whether harder mode should be repeatably rewarding – which, at the moment, it isn’t).

Any debate ought to center around two issues:

1. What is the base mode of content? In other words, is the lion’s share of development time for that content aimed at the challenge, or the less-challenge demographic? Another question to ask is, “Is it easier to add a mechanic or so onto harder content or to subtract mechanics, change numbers and rebalance harder content to be accessible to people who want less challenge?” What ANet is actually doing is making a hard version, then adding additional mechanics for those who want something more. That’s something they’ve been doing since Queen’s Pavilion.
2. If — as i suspect — it would involve considerably more dev effort to produce a tiered raid, where do those resources come from? They’d either come from the existing raid team, or they’d come from other devs within the live team. The former would slow down raid releases. The latter would impact production of other content. Neither is a desirable state, especially when the demand for the existing raids and for regular content updates seems much greater than the demand for easy-mode hard content.

thrag.9740:

Lonami.2987:

Easy/Normal/Hard modes are necessary, because without them, raids won’t be profitable. You need an easy mode so that players can learn the encounters at their own pace, and you need a hard mode because let’s face it, raids are a joke for good teams.

See my post above, where I explain how based on their previous statements, anet would have to nerf raid rewards if they implemented easy mode. Hardly profitable as you claimed.

Profitable for ArenaNet, not the players. Easy mode raids could give no loot whatsoever for all that matters.

Assic.2746:

Blaeys.3102:

It definitely needs to happen for a lot of reasons – from accessibility to story to keeping raids more relevant for larger groups of people. Most of these points have been raised MANY times in the past year. It really is in the hands of the devs now.

Be wary, however – the general reaction to these topics in this particular subforum is often less than cordial. The general strategy is often to shame (“its already easy – you must suck at the game” style comments) or insult people asking for this until they give up.

With that in mind, I am glad to see the topic resurfacing on a regular basis. It’s important that developers know there is a desire for this in the game’s community – despite the trolling and attempts to shut the conversation down.

Except the fact that the conversation was nailed by the Raid Team long time ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Suggestion-For-Raids/first#post6403471

And they’re wrong, and making a mistake, just like they’ve done other times before.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Simin i might agree, but mainly because to the history of bugs that encounter had. Lupicus, if you didn’t try to do him the “pro” way, wasn’t all that hard even before HoT power creep. And both of those encounters were on the most difficult end of what dungeons had to offer – you’re conveniently ignoring here the other end, like AC’s Colossus Rumblus.

I don’t care about the easy bosses. I’m sick and tired of reading about the dungeon accessibility and how people want a raid “mode” of dungeon difficulty, when in reality they want AC/CoF P1 difficulty. At least be honest and don’t hide.

If you don’t care why are you discussing about them anyway? Just move along and stick to normal mode, or try your luck with hard mode. Those “challenge motes” could be a separate harder mode easily.

This “muh exclusive content” elitisim will not lead anywhere healthy.

Amaimon.7823:

You want a hard mode for your raids? sure >
Fighting 2 vale guardians at once
Gorseval will bring ruin to the world every 30 seconds
The a flamewall will be spinning around sabetha permanenta, a double one at 75%, a triple one at 33%

I’m all for it. We need really crazy stuff that barely anyone can complete. However, it needs to be an extra mode for already existing content.

Well…looks like wing 4 came to the “easy mode” prayers. First two bosses could very easily be completed with any comp, any build, etc. Especially boss #2.

W4 is a dumbed (except last boss? not sure haven’t tried it yet) version of raids with no incentive to complete the challenge motes more than once…smh

ButterPeanut.9746:

Well…looks like wing 4 came to the “easy mode” prayers. First two bosses could very easily be completed with any comp, any build, etc. Especially boss #2.

W4 is a dumbed (except last boss? not sure haven’t tried it yet) version of raids with no incentive to complete the challenge motes more than once…smh

This is the other side of the coin justifying the need for tiered difficulties.

The one thing I think we can all agree upon is that there are many different types of players – who enjoy playing different ways, seek different things in difficult content and need/want more/less challenge in the content.

There is no way a single version of the map is going to meet the gaming desires of all sides of this equation. Thus the need for tiered difficulty or some kind of scaling system (as a really bad example – give better rewards to 8 player groups that beat the content and lesser/almost no rewards for 12 player groups that beat it).

Blaeys.3102:

ButterPeanut.9746:

Well…looks like wing 4 came to the “easy mode” prayers. First two bosses could very easily be completed with any comp, any build, etc. Especially boss #2.

W4 is a dumbed (except last boss? not sure haven’t tried it yet) version of raids with no incentive to complete the challenge motes more than once…smh

This is the other side of the coin justifying the need for tiered difficulties.

The one thing I think we can all agree upon is that there are many different types of players – who enjoy playing different ways, seek different things in difficult content and need/want more/less challenge in the content.

There is no way a single version of the map is going to meet the gaming desires of all sides of this equation. Thus the need for tiered difficulty or some kind of scaling system (as a really bad example – give better rewards to 8 player groups that beat the content and lesser/almost no rewards for 12 player groups that beat it).

I don’t think it needs to be that complicated necessarily. Normal difficulty is definitely easy enough to bring in more players than say wing 1 is.

All they would need to do is add increased incentive to do the hard mode every week

Blaeys.3102:

There is no way a single version of the map is going to meet the gaming desires of all sides of this equation. Thus the need for tiered difficulty or some kind of scaling system (as a really bad example – give better rewards to 8 player groups that beat the content and lesser/almost no rewards for 12 player groups that beat it).

What would you say to low skill players for whom even the easiest reasonable difficulty represents too high of a challenge?

NikeEU.7690:

Blaeys.3102:

There is no way a single version of the map is going to meet the gaming desires of all sides of this equation. Thus the need for tiered difficulty or some kind of scaling system (as a really bad example – give better rewards to 8 player groups that beat the content and lesser/almost no rewards for 12 player groups that beat it).

What would you say to low skill players for whom even the easiest reasonable difficulty represents too high of a challenge?

Ah, that entirely depends on what we would consider to be the easiest reasonable challenge. Personally, i really doubt that people unable to do even low tier fractals would be interested in raids. They might still be interested in legendary armor, which is why it should have an alternate acquisition method.

Astralporing.1957:

NikeEU.7690:

Blaeys.3102:

There is no way a single version of the map is going to meet the gaming desires of all sides of this equation. Thus the need for tiered difficulty or some kind of scaling system (as a really bad example – give better rewards to 8 player groups that beat the content and lesser/almost no rewards for 12 player groups that beat it).

What would you say to low skill players for whom even the easiest reasonable difficulty represents too high of a challenge?

Ah, that entirely depends on what we would consider to be the easiest reasonable challenge. Personally, i really doubt that people unable to do even low tier fractals would be interested in raids. They might still be interested in legendary armor, which is why it should have an alternate acquisition method.

So we just have a different perspective on where to draw the line for “sorry you aren’t skilled enough.” I think the current raids are easy enough already, you don’t.