Hey there, GW2 PvE friends! Let me start this off by saying that we obviously have no idea how long raids will take. It’s possible they won’t be very long at all and this suggestion won’t be needed. It’s possible they’ll be super long. We just plain don’t know. So please read my following suggestions with that in mind!
Anyway, let’s assume they’re going to be pretty long. Just for the sake of argument.
What if I want to raid, but I can’t schedule a two-hour block of time?
I don’t know, maybe I have young kids or something. I don’t personally, but some of my guildmates do, so I naturally care about whether they can come raid with me without, y’know, neglecting their kids.
My suggestion? Not an “easy mode” and “hard mode,” but rather Full Run mode and Partial Run mode.
When you first enter a raid, you and your nine other pals get to pick whether you’re in for a full run right now, or whether you want to tackle the raid in chunks.
Full Run Mode
Maybe we can tall it “Marathon Mode?” Who knows. Name doesn’t matter. Here’s how it works: exactly how raids are described right now! Each wing is one continuous dungeon from start to finish, with no loading screens or area transitions (that aren’t normally there—we haven’t seen the raids yet, so maybe there already will be some, I don’t know). You and your party just do the raid, and at the end, you get your reward. Sweet!
Partial Run Mode
Alternative names include “Chapter Mode” or “Mini-Wings” or who knows? I’m clearly bad at naming things! Anyway, how this works is it lets you do a third of the dungeon at a time. You do the first part of the dungeon, ending with the first boss, and then there’s a portal afterwards that takes you outside of the raid. The next time you walk up to the portal, you have the option of starting right where you left off—like a bookmark.
What’s the value of this? Well, let’s imagine that the raid, all told, takes like 90 minutes for a successful run. (Total guess. We don’t know how long it’ll be yet.) But, dang it, you have kids, and you know you’re probably only going to have 30-45 minutes of uninterrupted playtime before you’re going to have to run off to do something else. So you get together nine other likeminded people and do the first third of the dungeon. A couple days later, you and your pals can get together again for another 30 minutes and do the second third. And again for the last part a couple more days later—as you have time! You don’t get the full weekly reward until you down all three bosses, but you also are under no pressure to do it all at once. Cool!
Why is this a good idea?
I think it presents a really good compromise. If you want a long, uninterrupted raid experience, you and your group are free to do it as one dungeon. If you can’t commit to that, you can still raid and still get the same rewards—you’re just going to do it in smaller pieces.
How could it go wrong? Well, it would ask ArenaNet to design the raid in three discrete chunks, I suppose. But I bet they’re doing that already. All this would require is putting a portal after the first and second bosses, where I bet there’s already only one path out of the room. And maybe it’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t work for some raids, and that’s fair. But it’s an option that I think is worth considering!
But hey. Maybe it won’t be necessary and a raid will only take as long as a fractal run does now (for people who already know what they’re doing). That’s also cool! But I thought I’d float this idea just in case it sounds like a good one to some people.
