Guild Wars 2

Joxer.6024:

And, as I said, this process killed raids in that game for most.

That’s highly debatable, actually. Yes, it made it worse for some. Just as it made it better for some. As for “killing raids” however, that’s just an opinion based on your likes and dislikes. It’s not supported by any hard data.

Op, as i mentioned prior, WOW did EXACTLY this with their LFR system.

I think we can all agree that the LFR system of WoW cannot be used in Guild Wars 2 despite some people asking for it. In WoW you have 3 fixed roles (Tank/Healer/Damage) and you make a build that fills that role. The system then takes enough people from each role to form automatic teams. In Guild Wars 2 we DO NOT HAVE Tank/Healer/Damage roles therefore an automatic system that works like the one in WoW is impossible to use. It’s not hard, it’s not happening out of spite or to keep Raids hard, it’s downright impossible to use the same system in Guild Wars 2.

Emperor Palpatine.5329:

Complete valid points. You are correct here So maybe they might also create these squads based on the specs needed. So get 3 eli, 2 heal etc. Of course you can’t know for sure if the Eli is on the correct build…but than again evein in regular grp u don;t know that unless u check the dps or ping the gear.

This is the problem with GW2 and automatic systems. They’d need to create lots of specs and slots and with variety for each boss encounter, then the system would need extra upkeep and maintenance after every patch.

Let’s take VG as an example again. You need at least 2 condition damage dealers, let’s say that the system allows you to enter the condition damage role if you have a a Ranger, a Warrior, a Necromancer and an Engineer. This was proper pre last patch.
Now after the last patch Elementalists and Thieves got into the meta as amazing condition damage dealers. Now the automatic system needs to be updated to include Elementalist and Thief in the condition damage role. Let’s say a few patches later Warrior isn’t a good condition damage dealer anymore, then the system needs to be updated once again. Every time they do balance patches they will be forced to update their automatic selection process, adding an extra overhead and development work.

I will give another example. Say you kill Samarog with an automatic team. At Deimos you cannot proceed with your Samarog composition because you need one player to kite the red aoes. You cannot send your tank (he’ll be busy on Deimos), you can’t send a healer either. It MUST be one of the remaining players. So what do you do there? If nobody has a Ventari Revenant ready to take that role (or another build that can kite) the team will be forced to KICK someone to invite another person that can fill that role. How can an automatic system account for that?

Another example: at Keep Construct it was widely accepted that Condition builds are at a disadvantage, therefore most players of the Raid swapped to power variants. How does an automatic system take care of that?

I’m giving some examples here on why an automated system cannot work in Guild Wars 2 at all. In order for it to work, there needs to be drastic balance changes. Instead of “bring a Chrono tank”, they need to make it “bring a Tank”, instead of a “bring a PS Warrior” make it “bring a damage/might buffer” and so on. Unless they make the roles clear and distinct, it’s impossible to make an automatic system.

The other solution is to change the Raid encounters or at least make it possible to complete entire wings without any required composition changes. The team that beats Boss 1 can reliably kill Boss 2 and Boss 3. This is NOT happening in the game at the moment.

maddoctor.2738:

This is the problem with GW2 and automatic systems. They’d need to create lots of specs and slots and with variety for each boss encounter, then the system would need extra upkeep and maintenance after every patch.

And worst of all, a lot of these slots are encounter-specific and are not necessarily intended but rather are created by the players while figuring out the encounter. And even if they all are intended, just listing them there would take away the fun of figuring it out.

Vinceman.4572:

Nah, they are not obsessed with dps it’s just common sense that the more dps you bring the easier it is to kill a boss. KC with a good amount of dps in the burn phase = 3 phases in total and not a single more. Gorse no updraft = no need to fly outside and walk around like chicken. VG with enough dps = little field rotation = lesser possibility of mistakes and so on. Similar things on the other bosses.
I’m also a fan of playing mechanics properly while most of my guild mates are dps orientated. In the end you need both and in pugs it’s a matter of fitting together or not.

It is also common knowledge that people obsessed with dps also often ignore fight mechanics/don’t rez teammates/die themselves a lot etc. Especially all those beloved condi rangers that just fart their golem rotation, brag with their dps, trashtalk other while they don’t have any other job to do like canons or killing adds/orbs. Makes me want to puke, honestly.

As for topic, i do wish this game had some kind of LFR tool, kind of like for pvp. A person could queue for a raid under certain role, a group of 10 would be put together and they would face raid bosses that have bit easier mechanics (e.g. dealing less dmg) and less rewards + no LI. Works wonderful in wow, i don’t understand why it can’t work in GW2.

Atm, all you can do (as new player) is to find a guild that would be willing to take you into raids (which also not guaranteed, because usually those guilds already have a core group in which you will never get a spot and second/third groups don’t always raid because GMs don’t have time/don’t care/there are not enough people so you sit there for weeks without even entering an instance once but hey, they still require full rep and be nice to everyone and donate and all, oh and don’t forget forced registration on some guild website which will result phishing emails later -the summary of my epic raiding experience. Thankfully i don’t need to raid anymore as i have legendary armor now).

Cynz.9437:

Works wonderful in wow, i don’t understand why it can’t work in GW2.

This is why: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-learning-Issue-question-for-dev/page/2#post6625740

I outlined more than enough issues with an automatic system. Can they be fixed?

In summary:
WoW has 3 roles (Tank/Healer/Damage), Guild Wars 2 has dozens of roles, some very encounter specific. How is an automatic system going to work with all those roles involved?

I’m not sure what the difference is in posting to LFG saying: This is a Training Run, We Would Like XYZ, and then people joining it vs. posting to TLFG and selecting a “role” to join as.

In both situations you either need some very tenacious individuals who will learn mechanics through trial and error or someone with some prior knowledge of the mechanics. Just getting bodies together isn’t enough.

Let’s take a popular PUG view of VG as an example…

1. You need a tank .
2. You need some form of boon stripping.
3. You need some condition damage.
4. You need to do enough DPS to kill the guy before enrage meaning about a 60k group dps average.
5. You need some folks to run to green circles.
6. You need some healers.

If this were the case, than you could make your imaginary queue with 6 roles. However, thanks to GW2 having a rather flexible system, this is NOT the case.

1. You need a tank.
You don’t NEED someone dedicated to being the tank. Anyone can tank. If you can’t take the heat of “tanking” VG’kittens, just run him around constantly as a dps or whatever you like. You don’t NEED to keep VG constantly in unlit sections, you can easily heal through them if everyone is on the same page or you decide to bring an extra healer (or 2, or 10..)

2. You need boon stripping.
While you do need a form of boon stripping, LITERALLY ANYONE CAN BOONSTRIP WITH THE APPROPRIATE SIGIL. Of course other classes have boon stripping available (engi throw mine, necro corrupt boon, rev mallyx, etc.) but anyone could fill this role.

3. You need condition damage.
While you do need some condition damage, practically every class does some small amount of condition damage even if they are power based. You can use the slightly less common strategy and have your group attune to red and run to blue and let your power classes’ inherent condi damage slowly kill red as you cleave blue and then green. So, how many condi damage slots should your TLFG queue have? If your dps are a bunch of power engis or scepter guards, you could probably get by with 0. Pretty much any other comp would only “need” 1.

4. You need “good” dps or enough to kill before enrage timer.
You don’t NEED enough dps to kill before enrage, but you will need to be able to survive enrage if you don’t have the DPS. We’ve seen interesting strategies such as stacking a team with heal tempests or revs and simply doing terrible dps but surviving the enrage to eventually kill. Will your TLFG tool account for alternative strategies such as this? And to preempt claims of “well a training group shouldn’t be using such a strategy”, Why not? Who is to say they shouldn’t if that is the way they wish to learn and get their kill? And what is considered DPS anyway? Practically every meta build (and most non-meta builds) can achieve 6k dps. From my own testing, practically every meta build and most non-meta builds can achieve 6k dps…. without any outside buffs.

5. You need a green circle squad.
You don’t NEED a green circle squad. As pretty much everyone is aware, distorting green circles is a fairly common strategy as is simply ignoring the greens and “bracing for impact” with healers or a combination of these strategies as a safety net. Such strategies can be very beneficial to learners seeking a kill as it removes a mechanic they need to keep track of. How will your TLFG tool account for this?

6. You need healers.
You don’t NEED dedicated healers. With the right group composition and “friendly” healing skills (healing turret, healing spring, ventari tablet, wash the pain away, countless regen sources, healing mantras, etc etc etc.) almost every class can, some with little to no sacrifice, provide a healing source for everyone else which is enough healing to secure a kill.

This isn’t super secret hidden knowledge, I know, but with so many variables, making an automated TLFG tool would not only be silly, it would discourage new players from coming up with their own strategies that may actually work better for them/their group. Having all this flexibility and the leniency of raids and their mechanics is what makes the fights so interesting. It is a puzzle to solve with many interesting solutions and taking that away from players by saying you MUST play role XYZ for training, is awful.

So again I have to wonder what benefit, if any, this form of “automated” LFG would have when you really do need the communication and customization to work within a system as flexible as gw2’s.

Crysto.7089:

snip

I like you.

I like the idea of having an auto queue for raids, but it would work better for experienced raiders to just auto queue together for some casual kills. For training purposes, it would be terrible.

I think the main issue would be that everyone would be queuing with others of similar skill. So, if I was brand new to raids, I would get grouped up with 9 other people that are also brand new to raids. So the “training” group would be just 10 random people brand new to the fight getting tossed in there with no guidance, direction, or even commander. I highly doubt much progress can be made under such conditions, and it’s more likely to be a waste of time as people inevitably drop and have to be replaced every couple of pulls.

From what I’ve seen the quickest way to learn raids is in training groups where there are enough exp players to keep the fight under control, and then the trainees can just focus on the mechanics and themselves. A lot of training runs I see cram too much trainees in, and its just a mess. For instance in VG training, if your tank is getting ported constantly and greens are back spawning, everything just becomes chaotic. For the other trainees in that run, they aren’t getting much value as the things causing the mess are outside their control.

Joxer.6024:

Astralporing.1957:

Joxer.6024:

And, as I said, this process killed raids in that game for most.

That’s highly debatable, actually. Yes, it made it worse for some. Just as it made it better for some. As for “killing raids” however, that’s just an opinion based on your likes and dislikes. It’s not supported by any hard data.

that’s why I said for “most”.

And why i said that “most” is also just your personal opinion based on the fact you didn’t like it. It’s not supported by any data. Even if we agreed that “most” raiders left (which in itself is highly doubtful), it’s not like there weren’t many other, completely unrelated to LFR reasons that caused many veteran raiders to leave. Reasons that for many were much more important anyway.

maddoctor.2738:

Op, as i mentioned prior, WOW did EXACTLY this with their LFR system.

I think we can all agree that the LFR system of WoW cannot be used in Guild Wars 2 despite some people asking for it.
(lengthy explanation cut to save space)

Those are actually quite valid arguments. Some of them could likely be minimized with some changes, but for at least one (the need to change party composition) i can’t really see a solution in such a fully automated system.

I think raids in GW2 failed even before they were implemented, somewhere around 2012. And it is really philosophical issue.

Why?
Playerbase plays GW2. What is GW2?

1. Game centered around personal class collection and fashion wars (having 1 main char for 3 ingame regimes really dreadful and boring)
2. Game centered around non-existent vertical gear/lvl progression (full soldier exotic gear is more than enough for every piece of content except fractals and raids)
3. Game was designed around dungeon endgame content (5 man group, with several members switching to support here and there, elementalist is favorite Anet child)
4. Open world designed in a way that solo play = party play (u get same rewards)
5. Personal story = solo play (even Zaitan is now solo content)
6. Game had no guild halls until HoT. Guild Halls have no TP and Bank.

Results:
1. Most of playerbase do not need guild
2. Most of playerbase do not need team/friends
3. If you need dungeon/fractal you can LFG with high % of success with total strangers
4. As result social structure of the game was destroyed even before HoT (there was no need in it)

HoT changed whole concept of GW2
1. Exotic gear now is expensive. Vipers, Ministrels, Commanders stats are desirable, and cost a lot of effort to get them for casual player.
2. Ascended tier became from optional Fractal thing to a mandatory/expected. This was done by implementing new vendors, profession collections, “broken Calidbolg” quests and etc.
3. Whole berserker meta nerf/condi buff pushed community to invest in the new gear
4. Raids gone from 5 man to 10 man teams. Now one/two persons switching to a support role is not enough. Whole idea of 10 man suggest hard specialization (tanks, healers, pullers, condi, etc) while 5 man group content suggests more versatile playstyle.
5. As the result we have endgame content designed around hard specialized teamplay in a game with non existent community for that kind of play.

What are the problems?
1. No middle ground.
2. No learning curve for 10 man content.
3. 10 man content optional.

Solutions?
1. More Triple Trouble style events! Best open world event filling current gap. While requiring rather low personal efforts it is 95% fail without well coordinated guild/team/community.
2. More 10 man content not involving raids. Why not create part of big meta event that accept in one of the phases only 10 man group inside. Create several parallel 10 man events for organised groups, make their impact only on quality of loot after meta event end. (rendering them optional, but tasty to be done)
3. We need to lure people into group content. Bring back group content to a personal story. As an optional thing. Create separate arks. First for solo, with infiltration and diversion storyline. Second for 5 man group with sneak assault, more black ops style. Third for well coordinated 10 man group with direct assault in mind, while requiring split somewhere down the line. (just an example)
4. And yes lock final boss behind at least half casual 10 man group content. Right now average person could go for raids without ever working in a small party, just solo kill Mordy and go go for raids.

And why we have this problems in the first place?
Core game designed to casually innovate and made by one team.
Raid content designed with high degree of competitive conservatism by SEPARATE team.
Most of the playerbase just played another game for 4-5 years. And there is no middle ground between this game and raids.

You’re so wrong in many of your listed things, don’t even know where to start correcting.

Yakez.7561:

I think raids in GW2 failed even before they were implemented, somewhere around 2012. And it is really philosophical issue.

Why?
Playerbase plays GW2. What is GW2?

Stats say otherwise. You’re free to still think this, but your thesis has been said to be wrong by Anet’s own internal metrics.

Another one? Ok, I started raiding just through pugging and continue to do so. It takes time, it takes effort but at the end of the day if you put both of those in, you will raid. I can’t stick to a guild schedule so that’s why I PuG. It isn’t that hard to get into pugging.

TexZero.7910:

Yakez.7561:

I think raids in GW2 failed even before they were implemented, somewhere around 2012. And it is really philosophical issue.

Why?
Playerbase plays GW2. What is GW2?

Stats say otherwise. You’re free to still think this, but your thesis has been said to be wrong by Anet’s own internal metrics.

Oh common, who really do care. Most of player base pew pew on power ranger with signets in soldier exotic gear and press 4 every time. I see this guys even in lvl 50 fractals, they are everywhere.
It is great to see that proper build and gear do triple damage, but who cares when you could do everything slacking.
Even one of most efficient farming types – RIBA do not require any effort in build/gear department, only mobility matters.

Yakez.7561:

It is great to see that proper build and gear do triple damage, but who cares when you could do everything slacking.

-The people playing raids
-The people playing proper builds
-The people who aren’t complicit in sucking

The list goes on. The simple fact the raid community exist destroys this statement.

Learning raids is relatively easy as there are plenty of information readily available on the internet if you would spend some effort to search and read. It is comparatively much easier than finding a proper group to raid with. Raids are a step towards GW1. Closed off content. However, this has improved alot since raids first came out.

With respect to Vale Guardian, the difficulty is actually propped up by the slight RNG involved (green circles spawning in neon sectors).

Roxanne.6140:

With respect to Vale Guardian, the difficulty is actually propped up by the slight RNG involved (green circles spawning in neon sectors).

That’s not RNG, That’s bad tanking.

Didnt really read the whole answers, except the first post but I just wanted to point out 2-3 things.
First of all, I ’m actually at 230ish LI so I have a bit of experiance in raiding.
I did from 0 to, more of less, 120LI litterally alone, just from lfg and may be with some friends some time to time.
How? English + whisping people are your mains weapons.

My firsts raids were ofc trainings vg and I stuggled really hard to get my 10-15 first LI, but then when I reached 40LI mainly thanks to W1, Escort and W4(b1-2-3) I began to whisp 100-150+LI groups to ask if I could get in their group to do Xera, Sloth, Sab, Deimos, Matt, … Some ofc said no but most of them were saying yes.

If you’re confident enough just say that if you fail once, kick me (Often works well). Also, the comm’ tag helps a lot when there really aren’t any groups.

I did my first full clear around 75LI and I think that it’s quite early for someone who did that only with pug, of course I sometime had some luck with my groups, made some friends along my grinding which helped me but well, that’s possible to get into the “raid game” :p

Just give a bit of yourself, train the rotations and know your job so that you’re sure that you dont do bad job.
If the group happen to fail, just add the commie in you friend list, he might do another group later or tomorrow.

Also, build a druid! It’s cheap to build, exotic build is more than enough, food is also cheaaaaap (2 silver/u, no need to get utility). Druid magi is a good way to learn raids, basics mechanics while having an important rôle(Keeping the 5gotl stacks, can save raids with spirit of nature, tides on VG, has some good CC…)

Well I just gave some randoms tips like that, but I hope it’ll help some people!

Should just have another training dummy with a drop down menu to select a boss, then the dummy takes on its coded attacks and movements so you can train against it.

Everyone could do it on their own time before actually going into the raid.

Wraistlin.6072:

Should just have another training dummy with a drop down menu to select a boss, then the dummy takes on its coded attacks and movements so you can train against it.

Everyone could do it on their own time before actually going into the raid.

To take it even further, why not add AI npcs to team up with you? It can train you how to take aggro from the team, how to heal, how to buff, etc. They already even exists in the pvp lobby. Just throwing in an idea.

I tried raids, cleared some of them but didn’t bother to continue running them. The issue of learning is real. I have a guild that do training runs, only limited slots and on a schedule. Sometimes I can join, sometimes I cannot. Managed to do the easy ones (VG, Gors, escort), but really never had the chance to learn other encounters since the training runs are always catered to the beginners (so it was always VG, Gors and escort).

Gave up on doing them, wasn’t really interested in the shiny, no time, and lastly, I personally didn’t find GW2’s raid design to be engaging. Personal opinion, don’t shoot.

However, player retention is a thing. Raids are catered to the very minority of the playerbase already, but, it’s a reality that players come and go. For the content to be sustainable, there should be an influx of new players trying it out and clearing them. Look what happened to WvW. It was a dying game mode after the last season hit. No new blood, no new content, same issues, etc. I don’t know the status now, but seems like the legendary backpack and the skirmishes brought some spark back.