Guild Wars 2

I think there are few things they can do early on to help fix some of the issues I raise and would be interested in what others think -

1. Balance has to be split between PVE, WVW and PVP.
2. In raids, boons need a 10-player cap
3. Once #1 has been done, they need to look at the professions/builds not in the current meta. Will simple dps increases or changes to how boons are shared make them more valuable in raids – to the point where choosing between a warrior or an engineer for direct damage is really more about the player playing than the profession they are on.
4. Of course, keep a close eye on power creep to ensure things don’t get out of hand.

Those, I think, are the bare minimum changes needed. They wont solve all of my concerns, but they would be a start.

Additionally, whether you agree with me about the story point or not, I think the writers and developers need to be ultra sensitive about the story they tell in future raids – always keeping in mind that raids aren’t meant for the masses.

As for non raid content, I think they should look at fixing the sloth in Bloodstone Fen to start. Don’t make it super powerful, but at least give it a mechanic or two from the raid (a poison shake that we can interrupt for instance). And, in the future, keep in mind that reproducing a raid boss is more than just copying a creature’s model into the open world.

As for the fractured playerbase issue, that one is on us more than the developers – and I would love to hear suggestions that don’t involve “learn to play”, “It will always be this way”, “well if the other side did XYZ, it wouldn’t be a problem”, etc. What can we (as the playerbase) do to do better.

Hopefully this clarifies some areas where there is some value in continued player feedback.

there is no problem here that anet can fix. the only problem is the playerbase. what anet can do against the lfg 70+li VG exp zerk PS chronotank groups? nothing. what anet can do against “learn the mechanics first then play it” common thought? nothing. what anet can do against a comm kicking you because he have to inv a guildie? nothing (report? buahahahahah funny) what anet can do against the playerbase? nothing. they went out with a content, a nice one….. they’ve done their job. now kitten to you if you can’t play it. playerbase problem (/O_O)/ \_\

there is no problem here that anet can fix. the only problem is the playerbase.

That’s a nonsense answer. This is a game, if the" problem is the playerbase," then the actual problem is in the game design, it is not serving the needs of the players adequately.

what anet can do against the lfg 70+li VG exp zerk PS chronotank groups? n

Make them unnecessary to complete the task, so that LFR would be like LGF for dungeons after launch, where there would be those “Zerker Warrior meta exp” postings, sure, but it was plenty easy to find a more casual group on there, and that group would succeed anyway. So long as meta exp groups are not only faster, but actually much more likely to succeed at the content, they will continue to be the only game in town.

you can run around with words but facts are facts \[T]/
you have the logic by your side, i’ve the reality
edit: and the kitten line. what anet have done after all those treads? they’ve closed them \o

you can run around with words but facts are facts \[T]/
you have the logic by your side, i’ve the reality

I have to admit that you’re at least half right. The real problem here is that ANet spent three years carefully cultivating a playerbase that does not enjoy challenging content. They drove away all the WoW raiders, drew in all the MMO expats who wanted an escape from the hardcore raider mentality that poisoned so many other games. And then they crammed a raid into their game, and the raiders tarted showing up and poisoning this game like so many others. So really the obvious and simplest solution would be to just remove the raids entirely, but I don’t think that’s absolutely necessary. I think there are other solutions that can mend this divide, while leaving raids largely intact for those that enjoy them. But there MUST be compromise, the solution can’t just be “raids stay how they are, git gud.”

Ohoni.6057:

you can run around with words but facts are facts \[T]/
you have the logic by your side, i’ve the reality

I have to admit that you’re at least half right. The real problem here is that ANet spent three years carefully cultivating a playerbase that does not enjoy challenging content. They drove away all the WoW raiders, drew in all the MMO expats who wanted an escape from the hardcore raider mentality that poisoned so many other games. And then they crammed a raid into their game, and the raiders tarted showing up and poisoning this game like so many others. So really the obvious and simplest solution would be to just remove the raids entirely, but I don’t think that’s absolutely necessary. I think there are other solutions that can mend this divide, while leaving raids largely intact for those that enjoy them. But there MUST be compromise, the solution can’t just be “raids stay how they are, git gud.”

And i’m 100% with you with this post \o

Blaeys.3102:

To bring new players into the game, they needed to promote the game as something it wasn’t – challenging. In order to use the words challenging and hardcore in press material and advertising,

That’s what those who never played GW2 at the start or during the first year of the game say or those who have a malfunctioning memory.

This game was never advertised as not having challenging content. Even pre-release they were calling the events in Orr to capture the temples “their version of Raids of other MMORPGs” if you recall. After release the dungeons of this game were said to be some of the hardest in the industry, anyone who played Ascalonian Catacombs during the beta weekend event should know this. I’m sure now most people laugh at the GW2 dungeons, but it wasn’t always like this. I’ve seen lots of comments and discussions about Giganticus Lupicus, and Arah in general, about how hard and challenging they were.

First year of GW2 we had 11 dungeons released, 2 temporary ones, Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, and 9 Fractal dungeons. All of them weren’t “easy mode” or not challenging. They offered unique challenges (at the time) and to my knowledge they were viewed mostly positively by both the casual and the hardcore.

Then dungeon creation started slowing down and the focus of the game were massive blob events were players could hide and semi-afk and still progress and get rewards. Still, for those actively participating in the events, the Marionette, the Assault Knights and Skarlet’s Holograms weren’t an easy mode events and offered some form of challenge. Heck I remember like it was yesterday the comments on THESE forums about how hard the Tower of Nightmares was. Or even the little toy princesses (that were later removed because <reasons>)

Then LS1 came to an end, all the temporary content disappeared and all we were left with were either the old events, or the few permanent ones from LS1, and those weren’t challenging at all. I guess with the disappearance of LS1, all the challenge of the game disappeared too as if people forgot all about it. From “GW2 is a hard mmorpg” we got to “GW2 is an easy mmopg”. With their expansion they went back to their roots, making the game challenging again, like it was at the beginning, like it was meant to be. What’s the use of having a complex combat system if all your players do is spamming 1 as fast as they can?

That’s what those who never played GW2 at the start or during the first year of the game say or those who have a malfunctioning memory.

This game was never advertised as not having challenging content. Even pre-release they were calling the events in Orr to capture the temples “their version of Raids of other MMORPGs” if you recall.

They may have marketed it that way, but it never lived up to that hype, and we liked that it never lived up to that hype, because we didn’t like that hype. And then the game ran three more years, and we were hopeful that hype was fully in the rear-view mirror, but then the HoT hype started, and we hoped that too would prove to be nonsense, but then it ended up mostly being true, which was lame.

First year of GW2 we had 11 dungeons released, 2 temporary ones, Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, and 9 Fractal dungeons. All of them weren’t “easy mode” or not challenging. They offered unique challenges (at the time) and to my knowledge they were viewed mostly positively by both the casual and the hardcore.

I played and beat Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat, all the Fractals, etc., all usually in the first weekend of their release. They were nothing on raids. Don’t even raise them for comparison.

Still, for those actively participating in the events, the Marionette, the Assault Knights and Skarlet’s Holograms weren’t an easy mode events and offered some form of challenge.

Not really. This is a point of confusion for some people, but let’s be clear “high chance of failure” != “challenge.” Challenge is entirely about what YOU can do to prevent failure. If you do everything to can right, but an event fails because various other players completely drop the ball, that is NOT “challenge,” that is just happenstance. And that was the nature of those open world events, that the individual player challenge was there, they were slightly challenging, but they weren’t especially challenging, they just had a high failure rate if you didn’t end up on a map with a skilled and dedicated party, because, using the Marionette as an example, if even a couple of people on a couple of platforms were to drop the ball, then the efforts of dozens of other hard working players would be wasted, and those other players could do nothing about it (for which there was a great deal of complaint at the time).

Likewise, the Assault Knights were super easy, they just required that the players on the map divide themselves VERY evenly between them, and the UI tools available made that extremely difficult to coordinate, especially on pug maps where plenty of people did not understand or care that this needed doing.

Rednik.3809:

Before introducing raid content my guild had like 20-30 constant online (with 300+ members, a lot of them are playing since game release) during any EU primetime. Yesterday we barely had 10 to do guild activities, where majority of people are supposed to log in. And situation is not getting any better, because no clear promises about new content were made, and no promises about different approach to raids either. But hey, we got a new raid wing announcement.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Rednik.3809:

faulty raid implementation

Raid implementation is so faulty, so outrages and kills the game yet none of you still explained what is wrong with it.

Blaeys.3102:

Snip

This post is decent and describes some real problems this game has but like 80% of it is not raid related and should be discussed in the general forum.

Ohoni.6057:

what anet can do against the lfg 70+li VG exp zerk PS chronotank groups? n

Make them unnecessary to complete the task

They are unnecessary to complete the task. Your problem was fixed before raid release during the design process.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Correlation does not imply causation.

Where is content then?

They are unnecessary to complete the task. Your problem was fixed before raid release during the design process.

That statement will be a valid answer when there are plenty of LFGs for raid pugs without any limitation (not just for training runs). Until then, they’re just sad excuses.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Rednik.3809:

Before introducing raid content my guild had like 20-30 constant online (with 300+ members, a lot of them are playing since game release) during any EU primetime. Yesterday we barely had 10 to do guild activities, where majority of people are supposed to log in. And situation is not getting any better, because no clear promises about new content were made, and no promises about different approach to raids either. But hey, we got a new raid wing announcement.

Correlation does not imply causation.

yes and as a counter exemple, my guild is alive and has grown thanks to raid…

Hypairion.9210:

yes and as a counter exemple, my guild is alive and has grown thanks to raid…

Soon we will get Q3 earnings report from NCsoft, and will see results.

Rednik.3809:

Hypairion.9210:

yes and as a counter exemple, my guild is alive and has grown thanks to raid…

Soon we will get Q3 earnings report from NCsoft, and will see results.

yes, and i’ll be waiting the proof that raid, as you claim, will kill the game…you know, proof… (and not lack of content or other actual problem …)

Hypairion.9210:

yes, and i’ll be waiting the proof that raid, as you claim, will kill the game…you know, proof… (and not lack of content or other actual problem …)

Proof that raids, when being only repeatable content released, are killing game population due to being badly tuned for majority of players?
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
Here, feel free to read.

Ohoni.6057:

They are unnecessary to complete the task. Your problem was fixed before raid release during the design process.

That statement will be a valid answer when there are plenty of LFGs for raid pugs without any limitation (not just for training runs). Until then, they’re just sad excuses.

There are plenty of LFGs without any limitations. There are also plenty of guild and group advertisements on reddit and forums.

Rednik.3809:

Where is content then?

In the game. And more is being made right now. Its added every few month.

Ohoni.6057:

They may have marketed it that way, but it never lived up to that hype, and we liked that it never lived up tot hat hype, because we didn’t like that hype. And then the game ran three more years, and we were hopeful that hype was fully in the rear-view mirror, but then the HoT hype started, and we hoped that too would prove to be nonsense, but then it ended up mostly being true, which was lame.

First, remove that “we” from there you aren’t talking about the entire community. Throughout 2013 we got Aetherblade path in Twilight Arbor and Thaumanova Reactor. Both considered HARD instances and much harder than any of the previous ones in the game.

From November 2013 (last instanced content added with Fractured) to October 2015 is not 3 years. And let’s not count the period between January 2015 and October 2015 that we got absolutely nothing, the so called “content drought”.

I’m not saying we got content that was similar to the Raid difficulty. I’m saying that in the past they had a constant and healthy pace of challenging content creation. Something, somewhere, went terrible wrong and they simply stopped.
A big “what if” question, but would we have Raids now, if they continued releasing new Fractals and Dungeons with the same pace as they did during the first year?

Rednik.3809:

Hypairion.9210:

yes, and i’ll be waiting the proof that raid, as you claim, will kill the game…you know, proof… (and not lack of content or other actual problem …)

Proof that raids, when being only repeatable content released, are killing game population due to being badly tuned for majority of players?
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
Here, feel free to read.

i read, where is it written “raid kill gw2” ? pls tell me

Rednik.3809:

Proof that raids, when being only repeatable content released, are killing game population due to being badly tuned for majority of players?
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
Here, feel free to read.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Correlation does not imply causation.

Raids could be wildly successful and actually contributing to increasing their revenue and player base, and yet those numbers could still indicate that overall there is a net loss due to other reasons. Your ‘proof’ substantiates nothing. Anyway, not going to argue it further.

There are plenty of LFGs without any limitations. There are also plenty of guild and group advertisements on reddit and forums.

I can never find any. There are just “met and LI” groups, and “training runs” which go nowhere.

First, remove that “we” from there you aren’t talking about the entire community.

Nope. I am referring to this game’s community.

A big “what if” question, but would we have Raids now, if they continued releasing new Fractals and Dungeons with the same pace as they did during the first year?

As impossible to determine as it is irrelevant to the conversation.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids could be wildly successful and actually contributing to increasing their revenue and player base, and yet those numbers could still indicate that overall there is a net loss due to other reasons. Your ‘proof’ substantiates nothing. Anyway, not going to argue it further.

I have no idea how anyone can call something “successful and increasing revenue” when revenue is actually rapidly decreasing. Maybe you talk about another game or something.

Rednik.3809:

Hypairion.9210:

yes, and i’ll be waiting the proof that raid, as you claim, will kill the game…you know, proof… (and not lack of content or other actual problem …)

Proof that raids, when being only repeatable content released, are killing game population due to being badly tuned for majority of players?
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
Here, feel free to read.

You missed a couple of LS episodes?

Rednik.3809:

I have no idea how anyone can call something “successful and increasing revenue” when revenue is actually rapidly decreasing. Maybe you talk about another game or something.

You are still using the numbers wrong, period.

The biggest crowd had already left GW2 way before HoT came out due to massive disappointments the years before. And the reason was: Too less content, only boring repeatable stuff to do without any challenge at all. Not even for the usual after-work player. I had many “open-world” ingame mates who were leaving the game only because one reason: “I have nothing to play in here.”

It was obvious that HoT wouldn’t be the awesome “relaunch” of the game because too many players were already expelled and had no serious reason to come back.

The connection to raids from your side is such bullkitten I don’t think you are believing it yourself to be honest. Raids came one month after the HoT release and even at this stage the huge open-world playerbase was frustrated, mad and had filled the forums with complaints. Even have a look at the reviews from gaming magazines at HoT-launch. They were disastrous – raids weren’t in to that point of time! That’s the reason why we can see the sales numbers. Raids never had a negative impact, if at all a positive one due to bringing players into the game.

I’m hoping that soon a mod comes in with profound knowledge and teach you not to spread these wrong conclusions any longer.

A small graph I made with the revenue of Guild Wars 2. Have fun.

Click on it for a bigger version

Yeah, so expected spike on or around launch, then relatively stable through the launch of HoT, then it shot up considerably with HoT’s launch, and then due to the focus on raiding it quickly dropped below previous stable levels. Hopefully LWs3 will pick things back up a bit, but I still think they need to do something to make right with players over the raids.

Ohoni.6057:

There are plenty of LFGs without any limitations. There are also plenty of guild and group advertisements on reddit and forums.

I can never find any. There are just “met and LI” groups, and “training runs” which go nowhere.

First, remove that “we” from there you aren’t talking about the entire community.

Nope. I am referring to this game’s community.

A big “what if” question, but would we have Raids now, if they continued releasing new Fractals and Dungeons with the same pace as they did during the first year?

As impossible to determine as it is irrelevant to the conversation.

The “we” statement is by far the most hypocritical thing you have ever posted. “Oh this game wasn’t designed for hard core players….oh this game didn’t implement hard core content at launch…oh we didn’t ask for this”

WRONG!

If you can’t accept the argument that “raids weren’t designed to be easy so they should never be made any easier under any circumstances” then you can’t use the reverse argument to represent the game as a whole. I mean I guess you can, but it completely invalidates 100% of your argument.

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, so expected spike on or around launch, then relatively stable through the launch of HoT, then it shot up considerably with HoT’s launch, and then due to the focus on raiding it quickly dropped below previous stable levels. Hopefully LWs3 will pick things back up a bit, but I still think they need to do something to make right with players over the raids.

Really, your hate on raid made you think silly things…how can you tell that the drop is due to raids? I think that without raids, the drop would have been much more important, so raids saved the PVE in this game.

Really, your hate on raid made you think silly things…how can you tell that the drop is due to raids? I think that without raids, the drop would have been much more important, so raids saved the PVE in this game.

The drop-off coincided with the release of the raids. I don’t think it could be much clearer than that. And the player rates for raids are not large enough to have any impact on the game’s bottom line. Any impact they do have is on how players outside the raids react to their presence.

Ohoni.6057:

Really, your hate on raid made you think silly things…how can you tell that the drop is due to raids? I think that without raids, the drop would have been much more important, so raids saved the PVE in this game.

The drop-off coincided with the release of the raids. I don’t think it could be much clearer than that. And the player rates for raids are not large enough to have any impact on the game’s bottom line. Any impact they do have is on how players outside the raids react to their presence.

No you’re wrong, the drop coincided with HOT, when many things went wrong. Raids are probably the best thing with HOT. I didn’t know, except on forum, any people claiming that because of raids, they stopped playing. Again, on the contrary, without raid, you would probably see a bigger drop-off (and no new content btw, since raid team is a small team)

Hypairion.9210:

Ohoni.6057:

Really, your hate on raid made you think silly things…how can you tell that the drop is due to raids? I think that without raids, the drop would have been much more important, so raids saved the PVE in this game.

The drop-off coincided with the release of the raids. I don’t think it could be much clearer than that. And the player rates for raids are not large enough to have any impact on the game’s bottom line. Any impact they do have is on how players outside the raids react to their presence.

No you’re wrong, the drop coincided with HOT, when many things went wrong. Raids are probably the best thing with HOT. I didn’t know, except on forum, any people claiming that because of raids, they stopped playing. Again, on the contrary, without raid, you would probably see a bigger drop-off (and no new content btw, since raid team is a small team)

Exactly, 1000 times this!

No you’re wrong, the drop coincided with HOT, when many things went wrong. Raids are probably the best thing with HOT.

You liked raids. That does not mean that the community liked raids. The dropoff happened AFTER HoT came out, around the time of wing 2.

Again, on the contrary, without raid, you would probably see a bigger drop-off (and no new content btw, since raid team is a small team)

Again, no, because the number of people playing raids is not large enough to matter in terms of dropoffs. And if they hadn’t have made the Forsaken Thicket into a raid map, they could have taken that same terrain and enemies and balanced it out as an open map, or as a series of single player (small team) story missions, which would have helped during the content drought. Raid proponents keep talking about how it’s a “small team,” but the size of the team is entirely irrelevant, what matters is what they actually produced, and regardless of their team size, they produced a significant amount of game content when no one else was.

You liked raids. That does not mean that the community liked raids. The dropoff happened AFTER HoT came out, around the time of wing 2.

you dislike raid, that doesn’t mean the community doesn’t like raid. If think you’re just looking for some arguments against raid without any rationnality, because of your feeling about all of this.

Again, no, because the number of people playing raids is not large enough to matter in terms of dropoffs. And if they hadn’t have made the Forsaken Thicket into a raid map, they could have taken that same terrain and enemies and balanced it out as an open map, or as a series of single player (small team) story missions, which would have helped during the content drought. Raid proponents keep talking about how it’s a “small team,” but the size of the team is entirely irrelevant, what matters is what they actually produced, and regardless of their team size, they produced a significant amount of game content when no one else was.

you have numbers? you know precisely why people left? they all told you “raids are so bad, i prefer to leave the game” ? Raid team is small and productive, yes. Maybe you should complain about other team that are not productive enough for you. Again, all i see about you is jealousy because you see people enjoying the game, and you’re not, so you’re here trying to destroy that part of the game so all people be like you.

The interesting part will be Q3 2016 that’s when the LS3 started and I hope to see that graph going up. The one sure mistake they did with Raids is not releasing LS3 sooner.

Ohoni.6057:

No you’re wrong, the drop coincided with HOT, when many things went wrong. Raids are probably the best thing with HOT.

You liked raids. That does not mean that the community liked raids. The dropoff happened AFTER HoT came out, around the time of wing 2.

Again, on the contrary, without raid, you would probably see a bigger drop-off (and no new content btw, since raid team is a small team)

Again, no, because the number of people playing raids is not large enough to matter in terms of dropoffs. And if they hadn’t have made the Forsaken Thicket into a raid map, they could have taken that same terrain and enemies and balanced it out as an open map, or as a series of single player (small team) story missions, which would have helped during the content drought. Raid proponents keep talking about how it’s a “small team,” but the size of the team is entirely irrelevant, what matters is what they actually produced, and regardless of their team size, they produced a significant amount of game content when no one else was.

Wow, so much wrong things in one post. Really Ohoni, you know that is not true. The whole Forsaken Thicket has the size of maybe a third of one of the HoT-maps (not border-wise – content-wise!) without having map events that fit to each other, triggering together, ending with a deep story and and and.
If the implementation of one single map would be as easy as and not as complex as raids don’t you think we would have had more maps till now?
It cost over half a year to rebalance 4 maps after the HoT-launch desaster. Are you guys really wondering why there hasn’t been almost any content at all during this time and some months more?
Raids are straight linear therefore easier to develop and easier to balance + they were already designed and just needed to be tested. The promise of bringing out 1 raid at the HoT-launch has also failed: The first wing came out 1 month after launch and the rest many months later!

And yes, you have to compare team sizes: If over 100 people are working on LS3 and open world content and they wouldn’t be as productive as the small raid team with around 4-6 people don’t you think we would have seen Anet firing people and recruit more productive designers? Following your assumptions the raid team is either filled with hardcore high performers or the rest of the team is totally underperforming. I doubt both scenarios!

What also speaks totally against your so called “theory” (it is not worth to be called like this): We would have seen many complaints about raids in the general forum and the statement of people: “I leave this game because raids destroyed it.”
This was never a thing. The thing was, we had complaints about the HoT-maps, their grind and difficulty + complexity. None of that had to do with raids. The content was there but many players didn’t like it the way it was implemented. With the patch in april we saw a huge amount of positive feedback. Unfortunately, again it took Anet so long to do something right.

And yes, you have to compare team sizes: If over 100 people are working on LS3 and open world content and they wouldn’t be as productive as the small raid team with around 4-6 people don’t you think we would have seen Anet firing people and recruit more productive designers?

I really feel like I shouldn’t have to point this out again but the people working on raids was never “4-6 people”. That’s some weird myth based on a misunderstanding. That is the core raid team, sure, the people who work on nothing but raids day after day, but it’s not as if everything you see in those raids is 100% hand crafted by those people. The art was done by people in the art department, the sounds by people in the audio department, we don’t know total numbers, but likely a couple dozen people had their hands on at least portions of the raid.

And again, IF the raids were designed by only a handful of people, then they are clearly exceptional developers, and could have produced an equivalent amount of non-raid content if given that task instead. It’s nothing to do with the size of the team, it’s about what content they actually produce, and they produced a lot.

What also speaks totally against your so called “theory” (it is not worth to be called like this): We would have seen many complaints about raids in the general forum and the statement of people: “I leave this game because raids destroyed it.”

And there were some, but the forums are only a tiny portion of the playerbase, and not a representative sampling. People participating on the forums do not necessarily indicate what the game’s overall population believes.

Ohoni.6057:

1) Open world is for everyone… This by its very nature contradicts your own goal of having it be challenging.

Not true. Adding challenge to an open world is challenging, but far from impossible. We’ve even seen attempt at it in the form of the Marrionette, HoloScarlet, Vinewrath, etc. I think that the important things to successfully adding challenge to open world is:

The sheer fact that you found any of those challenging is…..depressing.
None of that was challenging.

Ohoni.6057:

I really feel like I shouldn’t have to point this out again but the people working on raids was never “4-6 people”. That’s some weird myth based on a misunderstanding. That is the core raid team, sure, the people who work on nothing but raids day after day, but it’s not as if everything you see in those raids is 100% hand crafted by those people. The art was done by people in the art department, the sounds by people in the audio department, we don’t know total numbers, but likely a couple dozen people had their hands on at least portions of the raid.

It is irrelevant that some people helped here or were involved there because Anet already stated that no other content has been delayed or deleted for it. You are evading the key points by bringing that in once again.

Ohoni.6057:

And again, IF the raids were designed by only a handful of people, then they are clearly exceptional developers, and could have produced an equivalent amount of non-raid content if given that task instead. It’s nothing to do with the size of the team, it’s about what content they actually produce, and they produced a lot.

Sry, you have no clue what you are talking about. Look at a raid wing: It’s a linear tube. One thing is triggered right after the other has been done. Only this thing is a overwhelming difference to an area of an open world map which has to synergize with many things inside it.
Of course this small team did a good job but they haven’t had to deal with complex event triggers and many more so they could focus on designing boss for boss.
Additionally the wings weren’t designed from the scratch when the previous one was finished. Most of the work was done during the HoT developing phase.

And yeah, I think they were doin something for the open world scene: Unbound guardian and Sloth. Raid alike encounters on a map, n’est-ce pas?

You are focussing too hard on raids while ignoring the past of releasing new maps till LS3: Southsun Cove, Dry Top, Silverwastse….and nothing more…over years! The HoT maps were 4 from one whole expansion – even though they have 3 “floors/areas” the overall output of maps is brutally minuscule since launch of GW2. Bloodstone Fen small and boring after some days, maximal one week. Not to speak from the last release, a joke for me!
It’s obvious that designing a new map needs heavy ressources and is difficult to release fast.
We had the same discussion years ago when content was lacking before LS2 and afterwards. It has 0.0% to do with raids. Unfortunately this company is not big enough to hand out more stuff.

Ohoni.6057:

And there were some, but the forums are only a tiny portion of the playerbase, and not a representative sampling. People participating on the forums do not necessarily indicate what the game’s overall population believes.

No, there were none!
Completely bs, it isn’t even logical!
“I leave my one and only game because I don’t like a content niche I don’t play.”
How smart would that be? That would be a childish attitude. Sry, utter nonsense, I do believe that the average GW2 player is smarter than that.

@TexZero: whether or not content is challenging to you is largely irrelevant. It should be commonly understood when something is called a “challenge” outside of a personal opinion, that it is being meant in an objective and not subjective way. 8-bit older games were objectively challenging for instance, in that you died from a single hit: you were required a full streak of jumping over enemies or obstacles in order to succeed. This does not take into account who is playing, it is inherently handicapping to have ‘1 HP’ to whomever attempts, no matter if the person believes it to be or not a handicap.

That said, things like taking 5k ticks from Mordrem Wyverns should indeed be called challenging because of that, regardless of what your personal experience with the encounter is. Chances are, you also consider an encounter like Matthias relatively easy now that you have trained it and ran many times over. That you don’t realize the encounter did not change at all and remains the same as when you had no experience, that should be depressing. You cannot print over your personal experience to decide what is and what isn’t appropriately challenging content. To be fair, this is the same mistake on the other end of this topic: people claiming raids are too hard are actually claiming it’s too hard for them, when they would do a better job by just pointing out which mechanics are objectively an unnecessary handicap, such as the enrage timer.

The drop-off coincided with the release of the raids. I don’t think it could be much clearer than that.

Confirmation bias at work.

Sry, you have no clue what you are talking about. Look at a raid wing: It’s a linear tube. One thing is triggered right after the other has been done. Only this thing is a overwhelming difference to an area of an open world map which has to synergize with many things inside it.

What are you talking about? Look at Ember Bay. What do you have there? There is the Dom pre, which launches the Dom boss. There is the Karka Pre escort, which launches the Karka boss. There is the Sloth food collection, which launches the escort, which launches the boss. There is the Jade pre, which launches the Jade boss. There is the Wurm pre, which launches the Wurm boss. Then there are about a dozen or so small and unrelated events like Convergences and Destroyers. Outside of those specific linkages, there are no connections whatsoever from event to event, they each just do their own thing. You could as easily do the same with the raid wings, just have a VG on a loop, a Goreseval on a loop, a River of Souls that is open most of the time but is an event every half hour or so, etc.

Additionally the wings weren’t designed from the scratch when the previous one was finished. Most of the work was done during the HoT developing phase.

So what? They still could have spent that time on content for everyone, and it would have been available within the same timeframe.

Nobody ever dropped a game because they added a mode that you can play it or not ( its not mandatory). Like other games that add “Brawl Mode”, a lot of people dont like it so they just ignore it and play what they like. A lot of people dont like WvWvW will they quit every time something come to WvW??
Players that dont like raid just play other things. I find funny people that complain that things like BSF are too easy then ask for easy raids.
And to finish, again you and the same people with the same arguments? Closing threads are not enough?

Ohoni.6057:

…

You already told it to yourself: All the things have to coexist on one single map with mechanics being active at the same time while they aren’t in a raid wing.
Not to mention way more space you can move on while following a narrow path in the raid tube, way more different enemy types while actual raids have a handful with HoT-mechanics (!) and open world map designs are richer in details and depths than raids. Also the story is intensive compared to some sentences and notes laying on the ground of the raid path.
You really shouldn’t compare the raid with an open world map especially not when you haven’t travelled through the raid and beaten all encounters as you have already declared to the audience here.

Ohoni.6057:

So what? They still could have spent that time on content for everyone, and it would have been available within the same timeframe.

Let’s assume we wouldn’t have had raids. I’ll give you the shot!
How many additional maps would be outta there? While I say 1 more because the whole raid with 9 bosses won’t even come close to a comparison of a complete HoT map. More is unrealistic as hell – keep in mind the release of all the new maps in the past I mentioned in my previous post.
So, one map plus to the content we have now.

First of all: A another big amount of players wouldn’t play this game any longer. Why is that so? The reason is simple: It doesn’t matter if we have 1 map more on the field. Sh_t’s getting boring. Those open world maps are a source of replayable content but just a little one besides the farmed ones – on the contrary to raids which are repeated like dungeons were in the past and/or fractals now. Dungeons and fractals kept many players in the game. I think many of the non-raiding people which definitely haven’t belong to the playerbase regularly running dungeons underestimate this amount of players. Before HoT, lots of players were only logging in for running dungeons & fractals, nothing more because the game was boring or hasn’t given any reason for them to play more.
Those farm maps like AB are the content played by people running for legendaries or other treasures that cost gold. I doubt that you support those heavily because if so, you wouldn’t complain, there are enough of them to earn gold. No need for an additional one. I suppose you want “real” content. Content that Anet cannot bring as fast as you, some folks here, me and the core of GW2 players are wanting.

It’s undeniable that even with one map plus we would have the tremendous complaint in the general forum about the lack of content. Not only from the ones who are raiding atm.

That’s the good thing raids have brought to this game but I tell you something: Despite having raids in the game, players still leaving this game because the 3 wings are not enough. I haven’t logged in since 3 weeks now and I was playing daily before, btw. without raids I would have thrown the game away way earlier. . I “played” (maybe I should use another word for it) Ember Bay two days – not more. Bloodstone Fen a week, maybe a parts of a second one. I doubt that another map would have been more successful. Lore/story? Fine, played once, was ok. Not more. I don’t think an additional map would keep me or any other players far longer in the game than raids did because they are solid repeatable content. Those maps aren’t.

In the end, raids are not your main concern. The issue is that – I mentioned above – Anet is too small for a company to hand out enough content to the playerbase.
The assumption to make more players pleased with one map plus than giving a raid to the raid audience is doubtful. Maybe this would have held for a month and then the complaints of content drought would rise again.
It becomes even more doubtful when Anet stated that raids were a success in their eyes. They have the numbers of players in contrast to us.

Nobody ever dropped a game because they added a mode that you can play it or not ( its not mandatory). Like other games that add “Brawl Mode”, a lot of people dont like it so they just ignore it and play what they like. A lot of people dont like WvWvW will they quit every time something come to WvW??
Players that dont like raid just play other things. I find funny people that complain that things like BSF are too easy then ask for easy raids.

People drop games when they feel they have no means of progressing their goals. When you set in things like Legendary armor, and people want that, but the only way to get it is through content that they will not do, then they get disgruntled. And they may not ragequit on the forums, but they do play less, and less, and eventually stop. You can’t tell people in a game “that’s not for you,” and expect them to like it.

maxwelgm.4315:

@TexZero: whether or not content is challenging to you is largely irrelevant. It should be commonly understood when something is called a “challenge” outside of a personal opinion, that it is being meant in an objective and not subjective way. 8-bit older games were objectively challenging for instance, in that you died from a single hit: you were required a full streak of jumping over enemies or obstacles in order to succeed. This does not take into account who is playing, it is inherently handicapping to have ‘1 HP’ to whomever attempts, no matter if the person believes it to be or not a handicap.

That said, things like taking 5k ticks from Mordrem Wyverns should indeed be called challenging because of that, regardless of what your personal experience with the encounter is. Chances are, you also consider an encounter like Matthias relatively easy now that you have trained it and ran many times over. That you don’t realize the encounter did not change at all and remains the same as when you had no experience, that should be depressing. You cannot print over your personal experience to decide what is and what isn’t appropriately challenging content. To be fair, this is the same mistake on the other end of this topic: people claiming raids are too hard are actually claiming it’s too hard for them, when they would do a better job by just pointing out which mechanics are objectively an unnecessary handicap, such as the enrage timer.

I get what you’re saying but, here’s where i am coming from.

Nothing in those fights, pushed me as a player, forced me to change any tactic or strategy, or required specific plans of attack. Even Marionette for all its praises was far from challenging. It was unique sure, it forced some players who face-rolled to rethink themselves but ultimately did nothing for those people whom already understood the game.

Now can the same be said for raids, sure.

But that doesn’t mean that raids themselves (save the events) aren’t the most challenging group content in this game. Problem here is people keep misusing and misunderstand that phrase. They see the singular word challenging and freak out. That’s not the case the challenge really is getting 10 people (or however many you want under that number) to work together and grow together. The even more “real” challenge is getting people out of the mindset that something that may be hard, needs to be nerfed. Sorry, that’s not the case, just because you find something hard doesn’t me you need a mode of that content to cater to your specific level of difficulty. Not only does that create more burdens for the developers, it ultimately degrades the quality of play and the quality of the mode itself.

You already told it to yourself: All the things have to coexist on one single map with mechanics being active at the same time while they aren’t in a raid wing.

Yes, but “coexisting on a map” is not a lift, in and of itself. They don’t interact with each other, they can all be happening at once, or not at the same time, the game goes on regardless. I could understand if it were a single complex chain, like Dragon’s Stand, but there’s no need for that.

Not to mention way more space you can move on while following a narrow path in the raid tube, way more different enemy types while actual raids have a handful with HoT-mechanics (!) and open world map designs are richer in details and depths than raids.

You’re talking about things they could add, not things they would need to add. They could have launched it pretty much exactly as it is. They could maybe choose to throw in a few existing mobs, whatever, but they wouldn’t have had to create much in the way of additional content. Dropping in the existing raid content as an open world map, even if it would not be as content rich as some other maps, would still be more casual PvE content than dropping them in as a Raid provided.

How many additional maps would be outta there? While I say 1 more because the whole raid with 9 bosses won’t even come close to a comparison of a complete HoT map.

Ok, one is fine. The raid map may be linear and windy, but the three wings combined takes up as much geography as any HoT map, and each is about the same size as Drytop or Bloodstone Fen.

First of all: A another big amount of players wouldn’t play this game any longer. Why is that so? The reason is simple: It doesn’t matter if we have 1 map more on the field. Sh_t’s getting boring. Those open world maps are a source of replayable content but just a little one besides the farmed ones – on the contrary to raids which are repeated like dungeons were in the past and/or fractals now.

People who would only play because of raids already wouldn’t be playing the game, because the game did without raids for years. People already playing and enjoying the game for what it is, did not in any way benefit from the addition of raids.

It’s undeniable that even with one map plus we would have the tremendous complaint in the general forum about the lack of content. Not only from the ones who are raiding atm.

That’s the good thing raids have brought to this game but I tell you something:

I agree with you that players do not like content droughts, but I don’t see how raids have helped that in any way, as the players impacted by the content drought mostly do no raid either. It’s like telling a room full of people “I know you’re all thirsty, so here’s some water for Fred. Everyone enjoy Fred drinking his water, doesn’t he look satisfied!”

Despite having raids in the game, players still leaving this game because the 3 wings are not enough. I haven’t logged in since 3 weeks now and I was playing daily before, btw. without raids I would have thrown the game away way earlier. .

So you agree that the current wings are not reason enough for raiders to keep playing? So what benefit is there to the devs splitting their focus to try and entice people to play, who really aren’t into most of what the game has to offer? Sure, they could keep creating content for raiders at the cost of everyone else, but the raiders will never think it’s enough anyway, and will just move on regardless. Why not instead focus that effort on the players who actually like the vast majority of the game for what it is?

It becomes even more doubtful when Anet stated that raids were a success in their eyes. They have the numbers of players in contrast to us.

Yes, but there’s also a thing called “positive spin,” companies are much quicker to admit to great success than to failure.

Hmm, well I guess I won’t ever get a response or counter to my argument about story.

OK then. Time for some short retorts, and for the record, the forum is not a great metric which to gauge in-game reality, I believe everyone can assert that all of us are on the most extreme end:

Blaeys.3102:

Where the issue started <snip>

Part of the goal of Heart of Thorns, or any expansion for that matter, is yes, to bring in new blood. Another part is to improve/expand upon the ‘Vanilla’ game of that time with new content in general, keep your veterans entertained. And to say that the game was ‘never’ challenging is completely off. Every single new content beginning with Karka, to the Watchwork minions, to the starting minions of Mordremoth was oozing with difficulty. Some of the early open world content in Orr was absolutely brutal, there was a lot of imbalanced bosses like Grenth or Baltazar who…well it wasn’t necessarily difficult as it was completely insane. The difficulty spiking was off for something in the open world, and Arenanet realized that the Open World Orr needed to be more accessible but still a bit threatening.

However that didn’t stop Arenanet from releasing content steadily that was different, and fairly painful. Toxic Alliance and the Tower of Nightmares were examples that we look upon now as being relatively OK, but were difficult for the time. And it kept us interested, and we as a playerbase adapted. Arenanet has improved on this and pushed out their vision for where they thought the playerbase was at with HoT and the open world there. But…as you saw, certain design and reward decisions plus some rather ridiculous boss design that we saw back in Old Orr made the new maps really awful for the general populace.

When we get down to it though, Arenanet has always, always wanted to challenge players, and not just throw out encounters you can press 1 to win with. This does not match what you envision GW2 to be. And for Raids to be added, is intended design to further meet this goal by providing those who want even more from the challenges Arenanet will hopefully continue to release with every patch. Heck, the Jade Constructs are some of the most brutal mobs you can fight if you fight more than one at a time, and they aren’t HoT exclusive, they came after.

Blaeys.3102:

Playstyle diversity and the road to boring play <snip>

I don’t see this being an issue, because the ‘issues’ if they did exist would only exist in the Raid Medium, where the team needs to have the skills and gear to meet the need of the encounter to succeed. Adding more ‘diversity’ to each of the professions skill-sets in order to give them roles they aren’t normally capable of, is actually the intended Design of the Elite Specializations.

IMO, Arenanet whiffed quite a few of these Elite specs, some are just straight upgrades. In order to resolve this, more and more Elite Specs need to be implemented to offer a choice for the player, and then when the raid comps start coming together with these choices, Arenanet simply has to employ unique mechanics for how each profession does each role. For instance, the difference between how a Ventari Rev heals as opposed to a Druid, or Tempest Auramancer.

You can’t have stale gameplay if there are different methods to getting the role done.

Blaeys.3102:

Broken storylines <snip>

I’ve already laid out my rebuttal on this.

Blaeys.3102:

Watering down non-raid content <snip>

Lots of things here, and apparently you don’t see the fitting irony in why Unbound and Queen existed. The ‘Available Guardian’ achievement wasn’t a clear enough hint? Arenanet categorically recognizes that the majority of the playerbase isn’t down for something worse than a Triple Trouble in the open world. The majority of the playerbase will scarcely pay attention to any given encounter unless they actually have to, if it is physically preventing them from winning. The consistent complaints about the Legendary Vinetooth are testament to this.

No, what Arenanet instead needs to work with, is giving the open world players the impression of a challenging foe, which can down a lot of players fairly easily…but still be able to be killed with some amount of teamwork, and a bit of skill to make things easier. Unbound Guardian can easily kill a few players on him, he’s not solo-able by any means but with the map alongside you, you can fight him, and you can hopefully not be someone getting downed all the time. Everyone enjoys this, and gets their daily bloodstones. And mobs like Unbound Guardian are still much, much harder than the core game. The general playerbase is getting better steadily, Arenanet has the skill metrics nicely tuned.

Stay tuned for more responses later

raids killed gw2.

because of raids more players drop out of the game.

its the fault of raids that there is no other content.

its anets fault that the community is dumb af.

can’t resist…..

Ohoni.6057:

People who would only play because of raids already wouldn’t be playing the game

I play only for raids. So does everyone else in my guild. Stop assuming crap that just isn’t true.