Guild Wars 2

Lots of waiting.

Players still dropping out regularly.

Professions are underdeveloped and roles are anemic, yet you are trying to up the difficulty in certain areas of the game and things don’t match up.

Always common builds and lack of variety.

Still boring. Kill boss. Kill a few unrewarding trash. Kill boss. Kill a few unrewarding trash.

Immersion is killed because you need TS to listen to order barking so you can up chance of success.

In another game I played I never had to wait around for a group more than a few minutes. There were many active roles to play like tank, melee dps, ranged dps, heals, cc, buff, debuff, disruption and hybrids… There were many many many viable builds and variations. Could always do raid content with any set up of skilled players. We could crank up difficulty settings to challenge players, or lower them to accommodate skill, and this encouraged all players to get better.

If you are going to have the best armors in raids, without other options, then please make some serious changes. Players don’t have hours to waste to form teams and replace members. It’s not fun seeing one player make a mistake and wipe the raid. It’s not fun for players to die over and over because they missed something by half a second. It’s not enjoyable to be forced into a particular build you, devs, say we need. Players should not be excluded based on skill level.

Your instanced content is lower quality, was hoping that dungeons and fractals would have been an eye opener.

you aren’t forced into builds by the devs. You’re forced into them by other players. people who only want to use the setups that the first raiders cleared with

Swagger.1459:

In another game I played I never had to wait around for a group more than a few minutes.

What game was this? Really eager to find out.

1) People dropping out – Make friends? Join a raid guild? Don’t have either? Well I didn’t have when raids came out, so guess what i did? Now I clear them on Monday in 2 hours like lots of other raiders.

I will also add because I’m sure this is an argument, “I have a current guild, they don’t raid but i want to raid, and can’t join/rep another guild that (will probably) require you to rep and be apart of” Simple answer is you can’t have everything. (especially if you are apart of a “casual” group that avoids that type of gameplay)

2) As for underdeveloped classes. I beg to differ. Every profession can par take in raids and can pick up a role. The whole “no variety etc etc….” Needs to just stop. You can’t have 10 nomad’s geared character’s clearing the raid. Like sorry your greatsword mesmer can’t beat/be accepted into raids.

3) Name of the game please

4) As for 1 mistake whole group wipes. That’s the whole point of raids. Challenging group content where everyone pulls their weight (though it’s not really the case as people are carried all the time) Also you can recover from missing a green, or a green in a bad “pie” in VG, or missing cannons with SAB

a tip : struggling with VG? bring a couple tempests, when you miss a green and it’s in a bad piece of pie just have them cast rebound! Boom recovered in 2 seconds.

Swagger.1459:

Always common builds and lack of variety.

That’s forced to you by players. Have you seen the 10 [insert whatever profession] raid runs? Please watch them.

In another game I played I never had to wait around for a group more than a few minutes. There were many active roles to play like tank [..] heals

What game? In WoW I was waiting 30 mins for a healer and around 3 hours for a tank. In RIFT healers were easy to find, tanks took from half a day to a few days. Since in both these games you could only kill each boss once/week, all good tanks were unavailable, since they were doing those kills with their guilds, and after tons of hours you would’ve gotten a trash geared tank or a first timer. Please tell me how you never had to wait.

Raizen.7981:

Swagger.1459:

Always common builds and lack of variety.

That’s forced to you by players. Have you seen the 10 [insert whatever profession] raid runs? Please watch them.

Actually player behavior is caused the the system that the developers has set into the game. In other MMOs that has kill stealing, you are more likely to see toxic players running around and raging at others. Kill stealing mechanics causes players to not want other players around as it is slowing down their progress towards their quest reward. If you need a rare monster kill that spawns every 5minutes, and you have been camping at its spawn point for an hour, I’m sure you will rage at the person that stole the kill from you. The same thing can be said about raids where the mechanics are designed to force players to kill bosses based on speed. If your build does not boost your party’s DPS, you are simply not wanted. Another thing is clearing raids as fast as possible is an increase in your personal monetary rewards.

There has been no raid meta, in any game where raids were actually seen as initially hard, in which classes were not shoehorned by player expectations into whatever was seen as the best build for the raid.

Leezy.4567:

1) People dropping out – Make friends? Join a raid guild? Don’t have either? Well I didn’t have when raids came out, so guess what i did? Now I clear them on Monday in 2 hours like lots of other raiders.

I will also add because I’m sure this is an argument, “I have a current guild, they don’t raid but i want to raid, and can’t join/rep another guild that (will probably) require you to rep and be apart of” Simple answer is you can’t have everything. (especially if you are apart of a “casual” group that avoids that type of gameplay)

2) As for underdeveloped classes. I beg to differ. Every profession can par take in raids and can pick up a role. The whole “no variety etc etc….” Needs to just stop. You can’t have 10 nomad’s geared character’s clearing the raid. Like sorry your greatsword mesmer can’t beat/be accepted into raids.

3) Name of the game please

4) As for 1 mistake whole group wipes. That’s the whole point of raids. Challenging group content where everyone pulls their weight (though it’s not really the case as people are carried all the time) Also you can recover from missing a green, or a green in a bad “pie” in VG, or missing cannons with SAB

a tip : struggling with VG? bring a couple tempests, when you miss a green and it’s in a bad piece of pie just have them cast rebound! Boom recovered in 2 seconds.

Players shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to do content.

Professions are poorly designed and underdeveloped sorry.

City of heroes.

Missing a gimmick by a fraction of a second and the raid is lost. Bad design.

Professions are low quality and the devs are trying to make content around these subpar classes.

Swagger.1459:

Players shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to do content.

Professions are poorly designed and underdeveloped sorry.

City of heroes.

Missing a gimmick by a fraction of a second and the raid is lost. Bad design.

Professions are low quality and the devs are trying to make content around these subpar classes.

Raids are the “hard” content of GW2. The fact that if you are half a second late causing you to wipe, is just how it should be. Hard content should be their to make you bring your A game. Sorry you can’t afk and watch netflix and complete the raid.

As for underdeveloped classes. I’ll list some varieties of builds off the top of my head that i have raided with/grouped with.

ELE – Healing tempest / Staff(D/WH) tempest / Condi tempest
Reaper – Zerk reaper/condi reaper, Also done the raid with a reaper tank
Chrono – DPS/tank Chrono – Condi Chrono (condi chrono was pretty awesome was fun)

Thief – Tank / Condi / Zerk, (Can use DD or Staff)
Engi – Condi Engi / scrapper tank
Druid – Offensive healer / Condi / Dedicated Healer

War – PS / Condi
Rev – boon bot
Guard – Hammer guard

Far as i see only the heavy classes are pretty limited into one set role. These are all viable to use in raids, and are used in raids. Again sorry your Greatsword full nomad mesmer can’t be accepted into raids.

I will add as well since people continue to add that classes are underdeveloped, what changes can you suggest? What would make it so much better? People keep asking for build diversity, but as i see it their is plenty. All people seem to want is to be able to be in full PVT/Nomad/Cleric to clear the raid so they can afk and watch netflix,

Leezy.4567:

Swagger.1459:

Players shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to do content.

Professions are poorly designed and underdeveloped sorry.

City of heroes.

Missing a gimmick by a fraction of a second and the raid is lost. Bad design.

Professions are low quality and the devs are trying to make content around these subpar classes.

Raids are the “hard” content of GW2. The fact that if you are half a second late causing you to wipe, is just how it should be. Hard content should be their to make you bring your A game. Sorry you can’t afk and watch netflix and complete the raid.

As for underdeveloped classes. I’ll list some varieties of builds off the top of my head that i have raided with/grouped with.

ELE – Healing tempest / Staff(D/WH) tempest / Condi tempest
Reaper – Zerk reaper/condi reaper, Also done the raid with a reaper tank
Chrono – DPS/tank Chrono – Condi Chrono (condi chrono was pretty awesome was fun)

Thief – Tank / Condi / Zerk, (Can use DD or Staff)
Engi – Condi Engi / scrapper tank
Druid – Offensive healer / Condi / Dedicated Healer

War – PS / Condi
Rev – boon bot
Guard – Hammer guard

Far as i see only the heavy classes are pretty limited into one set role. These are all viable to use in raids, and are used in raids. Again sorry your Greatsword full nomad mesmer can’t be accepted into raids.

And these are the “professions” and roles in use to raiding and pveing and pvping with…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

And these were my choice of raids…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Strike_Force

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Task_Force

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Trial

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Incarnate_Trial

These were my difficulty setting choices…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety

@Swagger

I don’t understand why you keep comparing GW2 to some game from 2004. GW2 is it’s own game. GW2 was clearly never originally designed around a raid concept, So Anet had to adjust. As the game stands with what it’s got it doing quite well.

With having NO trinity all Anet had was a full zerk DPS kill before you are killed. So a semi trinity was created, with the main focus being group checks e.g GORs, DPS check (which isn’t even high),and e.g SABs personal check with cannons/bomb throwing/ timed bombs. VG has a mild of both. Group check for making it to greens/covering is someone can’t make it/personal check, don’t get teleported

Edit : i see the “choice” of raids, but GW2 just started with raid development that’s not even an argument that you have. As for difficulty. Raids as they stand now are more of a medium difficulty.

For difficulty I believe anet added they will be changing how achievements work in future raids/wings to make you tackle the encounter in a different way, which can be seen as a way to add a layer of difficulty to an encounter

Swagger.1459:

And these are the “professions” and roles in use to raiding and pveing and pvping with…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

And these were my choice of raids…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Strike_Force

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Task_Force

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Trial

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Incarnate_Trial

These were my difficulty setting choices…

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety

Those links are completely irrelevant. You’ve time and time again complained about GW2 not being City of Heroes. Sure, external sources are great for comparing apples to apples, but your complains practically boil down to “GW2 is not CoH”. Guess what? This is a completely different game, and if you feel like preaching on about that other game I would suggest you join up with the communities that are trying to bring back the game even those that are willing to bring it back in the form of private servers. Other than that, we don’t care about anything that’s not GW2.

I’ll agree that the raids pale in comparison to other games’ definition of raids, but the game does as best it can with the content with respect to its origins. Sure there will always be an optimal vs viable argument, but the fact is the raids are extremely generous in what class you can bring. In GW2 raids you’re having to balance classes that offer unique mechanics based on their classes vs unique mechanics imposed by the raids.

Granted some team compositions mesh better than others and make the encounter easier. E.G. 10 man single x-class vs traditional diverse groups. That, and some classes are better at roles than others. For example, your Thief Healer won’t make the cut.

I’ll agree that the squad forming takes forever though that’s to be expected of any MMO that doesn’t have a match making system (pros and cons to that). In games that similarly have no matchmaking I’ve spent much more time trying to find squadmates for even 4-5 man content than I have in GW2.

I’ll also somewhat agree on difficulty being lackluster. Though I’m nowhere near the “casual audience” that the game was originally designed for so my opinion is biased. Sure, the more hardcore players beat the raid day/week 1 and came up with silly runs to entertain themselves. The more novice players? They’re still trying to get Sabetha done let alone a smooth full clear. So, I would say the difficulty is okay for the game overall for itself but not at all living up to definition of raids that other games have set.

Leezy.4567:

@Swagger

I don’t understand why you keep comparing GW2 to some game from 2004. GW2 is it’s own game. GW2 was clearly never originally designed around a raid concept, So Anet had to adjust. As the game stands with what it’s got it doing quite well.

With having NO trinity all Anet had was a full zerk DPS kill before you are killed. So a semi trinity was created, with the main focus being group checks e.g GORs, DPS check (which isn’t even high),and e.g SABs personal check with cannons/bomb throwing/ timed bombs. VG has a mild of both. Group check for making it to greens/covering is someone can’t make it/personal check, don’t get teleported

Edit : i see the “choice” of raids, but GW2 just started with raid development that’s not even an argument that you have. As for difficulty. Raids as they stand now are more of a medium difficulty.

For difficulty I believe anet added they will be changing how achievements work in future raids/wings to make you tackle the encounter in a different way, which can be seen as a way to add a layer of difficulty to an encounter

When I judge a game I judge it by classes offered, roles and their mechanics, ability/skill/weapon/spell variety and design and function, build variety and viaibility, good team synergy with each class and role, combat systems, stealth mechanics, cc systems and a lot more… In these areas gw2 leaves a lot to be desired.

You just brought up points that I’ve made. One dimensional profession designs and content designed around these subpar professions and roles. If gw2 were to reinvest in professions and create better roles, they could have better content and a player vs player experience.

Swagger.1459:

Professions are poorly designed and underdeveloped sorry.

The raid designers don’t balance or adjust the classes, you know. Most of your points are all over the place, complaining about things being both too hard and too easy; it’s pretty incoherent. Maybe you just don’t like Guild Wars 2?

Swagger.1459:

Lots of waiting.

If you don’t have a team and schedule – and haven’t bothered trying to make one.

Swagger.1459:

Players still dropping out regularly.

And? Others are starting to raid regularly – what’s your point?

Swagger.1459:

Professions are underdeveloped and roles are anemic, yet you are trying to up the difficulty in certain areas of the game and things don’t match up.

Matter of perspective honestly – the roles are different enough. Remember – most of GW2’s demographic don’t want hard fixed roles – and neither do the developers.

Swagger.1459:

Always common builds and lack of variety.

We’ve had 1 raid wing – and now we have the builds that work best for that raid wing. There’s still enough variety between teams and encounters in my opinion – I guess what you’re saying is just entirely subjective.

Swagger.1459:

Still boring. Kill boss. Kill a few unrewarding trash. Kill boss. Kill a few unrewarding trash.

Subjective – for me it’s fun. For you it’s boring.

Swagger.1459:

Immersion is killed because you need TS to listen to order barking so you can up chance of success.

Agreed – the first times you’ll be doing raids you’ll have no idea what’s going on story-wise because you’ll be focused on the mechanics so much you won’t register more than “kill this stuff” from the actual fights.
On the other hand these are Raids – not story mode dungeons.
I feel a lot of this would be alleviated by cutscenes that clearly define what’s going on.

Swagger.1459:

In another game I played I never had to wait around for a group more than a few minutes.

Great – and your point is? In another game I played I used guns and flew helicopters. What’s your point?

Swagger.1459:

There were many active roles to play like tank, melee dps, ranged dps, heals, cc, buff, debuff, disruption and hybrids… There were many many many viable builds and variations.

The first wing already has a few roles that are a must – with more wings and more raids you’ll get more roles. You want every role in the game to fit into the first 3 encounters?

Swagger.1459:

ould always do raid content with any set up of skilled players. We could crank up difficulty settings to challenge players, or lower them to accommodate skill, and this encouraged all players to get better.

Yes but this also invalidates the point of “hard exclusive content” – with emphasis on exclusive.

Swagger.1459:

If you are going to have the best armors in raids, without other options, then please make some serious changes.

Best? Ascended is on par with legendary – there’s no “best” here – only “most convenient”.

. Players don’t have hours to waste to form teams and replace members.

Yeah sure – let’s make it so every team ever made can complete – wait we had that – it was called dungeons.

Swagger.1459:

It’s not fun seeing one player make a mistake and wipe the raid.

So how do you make them hard overall but also make it that individual mistakes don’t matter?

Swagger.1459:

It’s not fun for players to die over and over because they missed something by half a second

I suspect this is low quality trolling.

Swagger.1459:

. It’s not enjoyable to be forced into a particular build you, devs, say we need. Players should not be excluded based on skill level.

Right – wow – let’s not exclude based on skill level because everyone enjoys playing with new or bad players right? No thanks.
My group – my rules.

Swagger.1459:

Your instanced content is lower quality, was hoping that dungeons and fractals would have been an eye opener.

I like the instanced content quality – and if you don’t perhaps there are other “more high quality” games out there ?

Nokaru.7831:

Swagger.1459:

Professions are poorly designed and underdeveloped sorry.

The raid designers don’t balance or adjust the classes, you know. Most of your points are all over the place, complaining about things being both too hard and too easy; it’s pretty incoherent. Maybe you just don’t like Guild Wars 2?

All these things are interrelated and all these teams are interconnected.

You build content around professions and roles and combat mechanics, not the other way around.

Please show me where I’m “complaining about things being both too hard and too easy”?

My posts are coherent and my comments make a ton of sense if you are the type of gamer who values having good professions and combat above all else.

Some elements I like and some I don’t, and well within my right to provide constructive feedback.

Really constructive post OP (sarcasm). Bashing the content just for the sake of bashing.

1) Waiting and people dropping. There 3 aspects here. First, a group of 10 people is harder to make than a group of 5, especially for hard content. I would have been happier for hard mode dungeon and fractals, but 10man raid ain’t that drastic of a change. Second, anet didn’t provide enough tools to help create a squad (LFG section, LFG/Squad compatibility, Raid lobby, etc. Third, but most player have a big part of the responsability. Creating groups and guild to help in the faster group creation is a big part of the player responsibility and most people are lazy about that. They want a goop of same level of skill, same level of experience without making the effort of creating such group.

2) Professions are underdeveloped and roles are anemic, Always common builds and lack of variety. I don’t really agree, it’s pretty subjective. For exemple, guild made a no updraft gorseval with all 9 profession in their group. Thief and Guardian used be the only left aside and they fixed that. True enough, there is only 1 meta build per profession, but that’s normal since you can’t by definition have more than 1 meta build. You will always have 1 that is best even if the difference is small. That said, that’s a never ending battle and the game still need a lot of work in that area. More healer possibility, more profession with both Direct Damage and Condition damage good variant, inter profession balance, etc.

3) Boring. That’s 100% subjective. From what most people are saying on the forum, very few people dislike that current raid because they find it boring. The vast vast majority of people that dislike raid is either because it’s hard to make a group that work or because they just don’t like raid. The first could be fixed by what I talked in point 1 and an easy mode of the raid with less rewards to introduce players to raid, let them get experience and allow less skilled players experience the content. I’m not saying that no one is finding raid boring, but Judging by what people usually complain about raid, that seem to be a minority here.

Swagger.1459:

Some elements I like and some I don’t, and well within my right to provide constructive feedback.

I didn’t see any constructive feedback there. You may have some decent point (which were talked in length already, nothing new here), but you just seem to whine in your OP.

Some of you should really reread my points and put them into better context.

I’d also suggest avoiding personal insults because it diminishes your arguments.

Swagger.1459:

Some of you should really reread my points and put them into better context.

I’d also suggest avoiding personal insults because it diminishes your arguments.

The way I see it you posted your complaint/grieves, spelled them out in detail, and offered suggestions on how to fix them (sorta). The community disagreed with the majority of your post, and you retaliated by stating they didn’t get your points.

So either you’re not making yourself very clear, or we have a case of checkmate in that the community doesn’t agree with you. I get that you feel the right to post your own “constructive feedback” but it goes both ways in the everyone else gets the right to post their own feedback. Whether you see it as a personal insult or not is up to you but so far it looks like you’re the one being the most negative.

As others have mentioned, it really just looks like you’ve had a bad experience with raids. That’s fine, you’re allowed to voice that. Though it’s rather moot to make a post complaining about it if you’re just going to complain rather than work out your grieves with those who have taken interest in your thread. In all honestly the only person who’s diminished their arguments is yourself.

savacli.8172:

Swagger.1459:

Some of you should really reread my points and put them into better context.

I’d also suggest avoiding personal insults because it diminishes your arguments.

The way I see it you posted your complaint/grieves, spelled them out in detail, and offered suggestions on how to fix them (sorta). The community disagreed with the majority of your post, and you retaliated by stating they didn’t get your points.

So either you’re not making yourself very clear, or we have a case of checkmate in that the community doesn’t agree with you. I get that you feel the right to post your own “constructive feedback” but it goes both ways in the everyone else gets the right to post their own feedback. Whether you see it as a personal insult or not is up to you but so far it looks like you’re the one being the most negative.

As others have mentioned, it really just looks like you’ve had a bad experience with raids. That’s fine, you’re allowed to voice that. Though it’s rather moot to make a post complaining about it if you’re just going to complain rather than work out your grieves with those who have taken interest in your thread. In all honestly the only person who’s diminished their arguments is yourself.

You are correct that I brought out my dislikes and suggestions.

I don’t care if someone disagrees or not, I think commenters should read more and be more aware of their responses.

Swagger.1459:

savacli.8172:

Swagger.1459:

Some of you should really reread my points and put them into better context.

I’d also suggest avoiding personal insults because it diminishes your arguments.

The way I see it you posted your complaint/grieves, spelled them out in detail, and offered suggestions on how to fix them (sorta). The community disagreed with the majority of your post, and you retaliated by stating they didn’t get your points.

So either you’re not making yourself very clear, or we have a case of checkmate in that the community doesn’t agree with you. I get that you feel the right to post your own “constructive feedback” but it goes both ways in the everyone else gets the right to post their own feedback. Whether you see it as a personal insult or not is up to you but so far it looks like you’re the one being the most negative.

As others have mentioned, it really just looks like you’ve had a bad experience with raids. That’s fine, you’re allowed to voice that. Though it’s rather moot to make a post complaining about it if you’re just going to complain rather than work out your grieves with those who have taken interest in your thread. In all honestly the only person who’s diminished their arguments is yourself.

You are correct that I brought out my dislikes and suggestions.

I don’t care if someone disagrees or not, I think commenters should read more and be more aware of their responses.

Suggestions? yea like remaking all 9 classes is something that would ever happen. How about a real suggestion besides, “I don’t like Y because X was this/could do this” when X was an entirely different game.

You also call them suggestions when…. You don’t actually give any type of example you repeat the whole “ohh they are undeveloped blah blah blah”

You’re whole “review”! As you labeled it is not that. Its a complaint that raids, are well raids. Hard content that you need to bring the A game.

My last remark will be instead of waiting for something to be handed to you on a silver platter, is go out and do something about it yourself. Like join a guild/make friends It is an MMO after all

Leezy.4567:

Swagger.1459:

savacli.8172:

Swagger.1459:

Some of you should really reread my points and put them into better context.

I’d also suggest avoiding personal insults because it diminishes your arguments.

The way I see it you posted your complaint/grieves, spelled them out in detail, and offered suggestions on how to fix them (sorta). The community disagreed with the majority of your post, and you retaliated by stating they didn’t get your points.

So either you’re not making yourself very clear, or we have a case of checkmate in that the community doesn’t agree with you. I get that you feel the right to post your own “constructive feedback” but it goes both ways in the everyone else gets the right to post their own feedback. Whether you see it as a personal insult or not is up to you but so far it looks like you’re the one being the most negative.

As others have mentioned, it really just looks like you’ve had a bad experience with raids. That’s fine, you’re allowed to voice that. Though it’s rather moot to make a post complaining about it if you’re just going to complain rather than work out your grieves with those who have taken interest in your thread. In all honestly the only person who’s diminished their arguments is yourself.

You are correct that I brought out my dislikes and suggestions.

I don’t care if someone disagrees or not, I think commenters should read more and be more aware of their responses.

Suggestions? yea like remaking all 9 classes is something that would ever happen. How about a real suggestion besides, “I don’t like Y because X was this/could do this” when X was an entirely different game.

You also call them suggestions when…. You don’t actually give any type of example you repeat the whole “ohh they are undeveloped blah blah blah”

You’re whole “review”! As you labeled it is not that. Its a complaint that raids, are well raids. Hard content that you need to bring the A game.

My last remark will be instead of waiting for something to be handed to you on a silver platter, is go out and do something about it yourself. Like join a guild/make friends It is an MMO after all

There are many elements of classes and ability designs and combat mechanics… that could be used to work on professions and roles here. Look at the primary and secondary power sets on archetypes, then look at what could be applied to weapons and utilities and skills… Look at the healing abilities and mechanics. Look at tanking designs. Look at classes that buff, debuff, designed for disruption, cc… Look at the hybrid nature of classes and their versatility…

Look at stealth abilities and counter stealth mechanics.

Check out their cc system.

There are many fundamental core concepts and designs that could be applied to professions and combat here to make improvements.

Also, this thread isn’t to educate players, it’s for the devs to look at and remember there are games who do professions and roles better.

Silver platter? Are you talking about difficulty sliders? Those work to scale content from easy to extremely difficult, and are meant to help raids be more inculsive. Also allows players of all skill levels to build up their personal skill while feeling a sense of accomplishment and to challenge themselves even further. None of what I said was about being handed a silver platter…

Y’all miss all the overarching messages in my posts, assume way too much and take so many things out of context.

Also, judging by the responses, y’all never played that game so maybe do some research before you make more assumptions.

reikken.4961:

you aren’t forced into builds by the devs. You’re forced into them by other players. people who only want to use the setups that the first raiders cleared with

Not always true.
How is not the rune of the chronomancer not a forced option for a chrono?
The #6 bonus should have been a trait at least, and even so it would have been basically mandatory to be efficient.
Phalanx for war? Etc…
Why should we choose sinister over the grindy viper?
They’re not different, the second one is basically a better version of the first one.

A lot of things in the game are set in a way that strongly encourage their use.
You can choose to not use them, but most of the time you’re just crippling your team doing so, that IF any team will accept you.

The lack of build diversity is real in this game, at least for what concerns pve.
Not that you can’t enjoy it anyway, but imo just one or two optimal ways to play your character for most of the classes is too little.

edit: also specializations shoulnd’t have basically killed the core classes… if anet was serious with the “horizontal progression” we could be using many more builds right now…

The problem Swagger is that I think most people would agree with the majority of your point, but you hyperbole so much while spitting on the content that, this usually trigger people. You come across as whining, while praising another game. At least, that’s what most people will get from your post.

If I ignore how you presented your post, here what I get from your post.

- Group are hard to make. That was talked about in length already and you are right. There is a lot of small or big thing that anet can do to help the community. I won’t repeat them again, we all know what they are.

- Lack of diversity in build. Most profession are pigeon-hole into 1, maybe 2 builds. Whatever we say, it’s true. There is other options and they are more than viable in dungeon and fractals. But in Raid, the margin is not that big for the majority of players that are average skilled. They need to use the best build because otherwise, they won’t succeed. They can’t bring direct damage engineer, condi ranger and Sword/Pistol Thief because at boss like Gorseval and Sabetha, they probably not gonna have enough dps. A good skilled group that can already kill Gorseval in no updraft? Ya, they probably can complete the raid with those build. But not the average group.

To me the problem can be fixed in 3 ways.
1) Balance. Different build, should be more equal in term of performance. I know we never gonna have perfect balance, but we should at least have decent option for condition, direct damage and healer.

2) Personnal DPS meter. Right now, I’m sure plenty of build are good enough for raid, even for the average group. But since there is just a handfull of people that have the time, the know how and the community credibility to test out build and to make them approved by the community. Take the Guardian Hammer build for exemple. It was never buffed since HoT so it was good in raid since day one 4 months ago, but it became popular only 1 month ago. Why? Because we had to wait enough credible people, able to make videos and the DPS meter to prove how it was good. For 3 months the community was kittening about the Guardian, kicking them all from raid and in the end it was one of the good profession for raid. A real ’’PERSONNAL’’ dps meter is needed in this game so that more people can test and provide evidence. I’m sure that plenty of other build, which are good enough for raid, are view as garbage by the community because not enough information about their dps are knowned. I’m sure plenty of people will realize that they do bad dps with one of the meta build and do better dps with an alternative build.

3) Easy mode for less skilled players, as an introduction/training for new players in raid and as a way for people without a group to create one fast, because it will be way easier to pug an easy mode.

Erick Alastor.3917:

reikken.4961:

you aren’t forced into builds by the devs. You’re forced into them by other players. people who only want to use the setups that the first raiders cleared with

Not always true.
How is not the rune of the chronomancer not a forced option for a chrono?
The #6 bonus should have been a trait at least, and even so it would have been basically mandatory to be efficient.
Phalanx for war? Etc…
Why should we choose sinister over the grindy viper?
They’re not different, the second one is basically a better version of the first one.

A lot of things in the game are set in a way that strongly encourage their use.
You can choose to not use them, but most of the time you’re just crippling your team doing so, that IF any team will accept you.

The lack of build diversity is real in this game, at least for what concerns pve.
Not that you can’t enjoy it anyway, but imo just one or two optimal ways to play your character for most of the classes is too little.

edit: also specializations shoulnd’t have basically killed the core classes… if anet was serious with the “horizontal progression” we could be using many more builds right now…

Lack of build diversity is real, and is narrowed down even more for raids.

It’s sad how players are forced into certain gear set ups because of tank mechanics so as not to draw aggro…

Healing in this game is poorly done too. Druids with their gated and timed heals, and aiming reticles. Can’t heal people when they need at times, or target individual players. Ele is a bit better but it’s mostly pbaoe and you can’t target individuals either…

Professions and roles here seem more of a half hearted effort that were quickly rushed out the door. Almost 4 years of almost negligible trait number shuffling and tool tip fixes. I was surprised that we even got elite specs to be honest, considering there were so many things unattended to with core professions.

Also, it’s a far departure from the “play how you want”, or whatever, and the let’s be inclusive mentality.

Raids would have been dead after the first week if legendary armor wasn’t gated behind them. The game I referenced had end game reward tokes, but even without, players would do them because they were FUN and critters offered loot and there were strong tie ins with more iconic npcs. Players didn’t have to listen to barking orders on TS for pve content and could just absord themselves into the game and their character. Also, those end game reward tokes could be earned in many areas of the game and were not gated.

Sad to see modern games throw away potential such as gw2 has. It could have been the one of the top fantasy games for professions and combat, but it’s being squandered. The devs won’t even make the effort to separate some skills and combat mechanics between two sides of the game and that’s pve and pvp. All because it would add too much “overhead work” to do so. Professions and combat are the most critical parts of this game, yet the least taken seriously.

I get a feeling Swagger is just mad he hasnt been able to complete the raid wing. Some of his points are straight up contradictory.

Im sorry raids aren’t easy, find a good team and earn your spot.

Nandor The Stampede.1593:

I get a feeling Swagger is just mad he hasnt been able to complete the raid wing. Some of his points are straight up contradictory.

Im sorry raids aren’t easy, find a good team and earn your spot.

How are you assuming all that?

What points are contradictory?

Another day, another post in the forum:
“I’m mad. I don’t like this [ ______ ] part of the game because of [ ______ ], [ ______ ], [ _ ]. I have you know that your game is losing [non factual amounts] of players and it is vastly inferior to the other game namely [ ______ ].”

In a following post:
“I don’t care about other people disagreeing with me but they need to learn to read and respect my opinion.”

My response would be: I’m here with the others not agreeing with a lot of points in OP post. So I’m voting that ANet devs don’t change anything.

Well, you said the raid is boring, kill boss, then trash, boss, trash…. then you said it’s annoying a half a second mistake wipes the raid. Those two points seem contradictory to me.

I was a little annoyed at raids at one point, until I found a solid team, now it’s just fun.

Nandor The Stampede.1593:

Well, you said the raid is boring, kill boss, then trash, boss, trash…. then you said it’s annoying a half a second mistake wipes the raid. Those two points seem contradictory to me.

I was a little annoyed at raids at one point, until I found a solid team, now it’s just fun.

Those are completely different things my friend.

I’m not “annoyed”, or even “mad” as some have said, those are more assumptions. The raid is boring to me. I’m just bringing up some objective points and constuctive feedback devoid of negative emotions.

True, I assumed you were annoyed or mad at them.

I didn’t read this thread, I just couldn’t… but thanks for the laugh!

Also thanks for dropping a raid review the day before a new wing was released and basically said nothing besides how usual raid mechanics work, and that you did not like it.

I give you an S for satisfactory on the elementary scale.

Edit: I did some more reading (I know I lied to myself) and what Thaddeus.4891 said was pretty spot on. An easier mode with less rewards would be fantastic for casual players. Emphasis on LESS rewards. I am a bit skeptical about balancing every possible role a class could play due to the fact that this would be near impossible. Every class has a clutch spec that outputs the most damage. It’s simple math. This is present in every MMO that works in this way. I think this game does a fantastic job on allowing for diversity when you compare it to games such as WoW. You really are not tied to a certain group composition although, obviously, some compositions will be more optimal than others. This is why class diversity is important. You need to know how to play multiple roles if you want to be involved in raiding.

Also, there are DPS meters you can download from outside sources. Google it. The thing is hardcore players have already done the math from a loooong time ago. This won’t help you figure out what is best. If anything metabattle will do that.

Also, Harpers response was pretty spot on.

I also feel the lack of variety and the resulting monotony. This lies mainly in the design of the encounters. You are in a small room/area with the boss. You have to kill the boss in a certain time. You have to avoid certain areas. Slothasor reminds me a lot of Vale Guardian. Some small variations but the same concept.

It seems encounters with bosses do not allow much variety. DPS is always the main or the only checked variable. I think Arenanet works too much with bosses. Th edevs should use the dynamic event system more often. This would allow the design of encounters with much more variety. This would lead variety in group composition and roles.

Some classes are more chained to certain builds than other classes. In some cases we have quite strong monoculture where many favored build are centered around the first elite specialisation. As a quote

“ELE – Healing tempest / Staff(D/WH) tempest / Condi tempest
Reaper – Zerk reaper/condi reaper, Also done the raid with a reaper tank
Chrono – DPS/tank Chrono – Condi Chrono (condi chrono was pretty awesome was fun)”

We are highly missing the second elite specialisation to compensate deficits many classes still have (e.g. strong healing option for Mesmer or Necromancer).

Belenwyn.8674:

Slothasor reminds me a lot of Vale Guardian.

WHAT? Are we watching/playing the same fights? I cannot think of any similarities between the two.

Pandabro.8743:

Belenwyn.8674:

Slothasor reminds me a lot of Vale Guardian.

I cannot think of any similarities between the two.

They are both the first boss of the wing… oh and you fight them in the arena. Almost identical lol.