Raid Praise

Raid Praise

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: ButterPeanut.9746

ButterPeanut.9746

I know that I cannot be the only one VERY tired of the hostility, negativity, and complaining for the sake of complaining on raids in the last few weeks.

So…I’m creating this thread to give the raids the praise they deserve and some constructive feedback.

Raiding is the most fun that I’ve had in GW2. I thrive on challenging content that brings out the best in players and makes them better, even if that takes time. I’m not going to get into an “easy/story” mode in this thread and I’d ask that others do the same. There are plenty of threads for that.

Without going into a laundry list of items, I’d like to highlight a few things that I think Anet did really well:
1. Progression of difficulty between the bosses (especially wing 1)
2. Diversity of encounters. (wing 1 vs wing 2 might as well not even be the same game they are so different)
3. Fun extra rewards such as the statues for the guild hall

Here are a few small things that I feel they could improve without drastically changing the content/dev time:
1. Make all AOE markers on the players more obvious and distinguishable between the environment. For example, there is no excuse for making the volatile poison AOE so far above the players head AND the same color as many other details in the arena. I don’t have trouble with it, but I know that many do and it greatly depends on your graphical settings. I’m sure this is more difficult than I am making it out to be, but being a software developer myself, I believe this is something that should be evaluated during Dev/QA.

2. I think the addition of the “hard mode” achievements for wing 2 is wonderful. However, I think they need tiny bit more incentive to complete them. Even if I was able to complete them today, if everyone in the group has that achievement, there is no additional incentive. I believe that every time you run the raid, you should have to evaluate with your team whether or not you should attempt the “hard mode”. This could be something simple as an achievement/title/collection that requires you to collect an item that is dropped via the “hard mode” multiple times, or a small increase in the drop rate for ascended items, etc.

3. In a particular raid wing, I think it would be cool to give players a choice as to what boss/encounter comes next. Obviously not for every boss in every raid, but in other games I enjoyed raids where after killing 1 or 2 bosses, you could choose to go left or right to fight a certain boss. That way, if you were struggling or got tired of attempting a particular boss, you could swap over to the other one.

I’d be interested to see what other people think and to give their own positive feedback.

(edited by ButterPeanut.9746)

Raid Praise

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: BloodyNine.7504

BloodyNine.7504

I can honestly say that if GW2 had not come out with raids when they did. I wouldn’t be playing this game anymore. I would have moved on to something else. I was getting bored and raids came out at just the right time for me. I also think it is the best content they have produced in a long time. Sure it has its issues. But I love it. It really is all I do in the game anymore.

Raid Praise

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Pandabro.8743

Pandabro.8743

Raids are incredible. If everything in this game had as much care and attention to detail put into it the game would be hands down the biggest MMO on the market.

Sadly everything surround raids looks subpar in comparison.

Raid Praise

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Chaos.5072

Chaos.5072

Raids are the only thing that are keeping me from quitting this game.

Keep them coming!

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in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Absurdo.8309

Absurdo.8309

I agree, I raid every day and love it.

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Posted by: Dinosaurs.8674

Dinosaurs.8674

I’m a huge fan of the raids as well. The second wing especially has fun, challenging encounters.

I would agree that the diversity of the encounters is a strong point of the raids. Although some of the encounters have a couple specific similar features, the fights overall are quite different and – especially in salvation pass – require very different styles of play.

Something else I think they did well that a lot of people seemed to hate on was the rewards system. I think some players felt like they should be getting multiple free ascended items per clear or something. And while some people definitely have gotten unlucky, overall I feel that the rewards are very fair. Including magnetite, you will probably average something like a complete armor set every 1.5 months or so, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

And despite the whining about it all over the forums I like that raids are being used to tie up loose ends from the gw1 storyline. The storyline in forsaken thicket is awesome; I’m not generally a lore fanatic but after killing matthias I stayed around to read all the responses and get all the info I could, and walked around to read all the notes that previously said nothing. I hope that the raid team can continue to deliver quality storylines in future raids.

My biggest complaint is the number of bugs that are still in some of the fights. VG/Gors/Sloth all have significant movement bugs, and everyone knows about the sabetha minion bug with flak shot and timed bomb. For tres banditos I don’t know of any actual bugs, but at least one of the launch pads is positioned such that the bottom third of it will shoot you into a wall instead of into the air. Matthias doesn’t clear shocking aura when he attempts to sacrifice a player which can cause a lot of the team to get stunned when trying to CC (which is actually kinda funny but I would definitely be mad if I died that way lol). I’m assuming the spirit vale bugs at least are difficult to fix and it’s not just for lack of trying, because the wall bug in the sloth fight was fixed ridiculously fast by arenanet standards, but it would be nice to know at least if a fix was on the horizon (and if not change gors aggro back to the way it was, being punished for moving too far away was a cool mechanic).

Overall great content, play raids almost every day, and I’m looking forward to a year+ down the line when there are multiple raids with multiple wings. Some encounters could use a little polish in the programming department but still pretty amazing overall.

Raid Praise

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

Hear, hear! I look forward to my casual, guild runs on a weekly basis and they’re always a blast. It’s great content and is something I’m super happy ANet is supporting actively.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!