Guild Wars 2

This is gw2efficiency’s table of magnetite shards. Assuming people don’t spend them as soon as they get them, if you are making an argument for how ‘most players have never even set foot into raids’, you’ll need to explain how more than 50% of the playerbase who’ve clocked a few thousand hours into the game – the ‘veterans’ that have supposedly been driven away in hordes by the raid content – have a few shards in their wallet.

If you don’t like the content, it’s fine. There’s other content for you to enjoy. I started this game one week after launch and I’ve never entered a PVP match. Should I have quit the game when they had the PVP seasons, PVP-exclusive skins, or devoted their resources into the Skyhammer and Capricorn maps? My neighbour does a few things that really, really irk me. Does this mean I’ll have to pack up all my things and move house?

The reluctance to experience raid content is largely driven by players who have to overcome their mindset that the raid experience is necessarily going to be like XYZ. If you spend 15 minutes in teamspeak with any static team, you know it’s a fun experience for people. Otherwise no one would be doing it.

Is there room for improvement? Always. So many have been suggested. Have an ‘easy mode’ for raid bosses with fewer mechanics and a more forgiving enrage timer, which gives you a legendary insight fragment and combine 5 fragments into one legendary insight. Have a LFG tab thing dedicated to guilds and static teams looking to recruit potential new raiders. Give alacrity, might-stacking capabilities and power/precision-enhancing traits to other classes. Make boons shared squad-wide in raid instances only and double HP of bosses to compensate for the inevitable 3 boon-givers 7 DPS meta.

But if you’ve never tried broccoli before and absolutely hate it and will never ever give it a go, there’s no improvements that anyone else can make that will make you put one in your mouth.

This is gw2efficiency’s table of magnetite shards. Assuming people don’t spend them as soon as they get them, if you are making an argument for how ‘most players have never even set foot into raids’, you’ll need to explain how more than 50% of the playerbase who’ve clocked a few thousand hours into the game – the ‘veterans’ that have supposedly been driven away in hordes by the raid content – have a few shards in their wallet.

You do understand that GW2 Efficiency does not track most players, right? It only tracks players who have chosen to give them their information. Since the people most likely to give GW2 their information are those sorts of “highly invested” players, the mini-maxers, meta builders, etc., any results you find on Efficiency will always skew in favor of the hardcore, the PvPers, the Raiders, the wealthy, basically any significant category of achievement, you’ll find a higher percentage of them on Efficiency than in the general population.

Also for the record, I have a couple dozen shards myself, I just can’t spend them on anything ankitten ot likely to get any more any time soon, so “some amount of shards” is no sign that players are actually enjoying the content.

The reluctance to experience raid content is largely driven by players who have to overcome their mindset that the raid experience is necessarily going to be like XYZ. If you spend 15 minutes in teamspeak with any static team, you know it’s a fun experience for people. Otherwise no one would be doing it.

Except that it’s not a fun experience. It might be fun for you, but that doesn’t mean that other players will have just as much fun with it. Resistance to raids has nothing to do with “not giving it a chance.”

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

This is gw2efficiency’s table of magnetite shards

There is a gw2e table for LI, which is much more accurate representation because shards can be actually spent.

Rednik.3809:

CptAurellian.9537:

Your insistence on that nonsensical claim is almost impressive. But it’s getting old, so you should try something else. Stuff like Earth is flat, for example …

Ofc. I’m wrong, everything is fine, there was a tons of new content for everyone to enjoy, and these NCsoft numbers are just statistical error.

I’m not sure what numbers you are looking at? Q3 of this year was the lowest of the year. Q3 also had no raid releases but it did have 2 LS3 releases.

That obviously means that the living story is the reason for the revenue drop and raids were the reason for greater revenue (than currently) in the past quarters. This means we should obviously take everyone off of the living story team and focus solely on releasing more raids.

See how it feels when you take anecdotal evidence and try and foolishly use it for causation?

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

This is gw2efficiency’s table of magnetite shards. Assuming people don’t spend them as soon as they get them, if you are making an argument for how ‘most players have never even set foot into raids’, you’ll need to explain how more than 50% of the playerbase who’ve clocked a few thousand hours into the game – the ‘veterans’ that have supposedly been driven away in hordes by the raid content – have a few shards in their wallet.

If you don’t like the content, it’s fine. There’s other content for you to enjoy. I started this game one week after launch and I’ve never entered a PVP match. Should I have quit the game when they had the PVP seasons, PVP-exclusive skins, or devoted their resources into the Skyhammer and Capricorn maps? My neighbour does a few things that really, really irk me. Does this mean I’ll have to pack up all my things and move house?

The reluctance to experience raid content is largely driven by players who have to overcome their mindset that the raid experience is necessarily going to be like XYZ. If you spend 15 minutes in teamspeak with any static team, you know it’s a fun experience for people. Otherwise no one would be doing it.

Is there room for improvement? Always. So many have been suggested. Have an ‘easy mode’ for raid bosses with fewer mechanics and a more forgiving enrage timer, which gives you a legendary insight fragment and combine 5 fragments into one legendary insight. Have a LFG tab thing dedicated to guilds and static teams looking to recruit potential new raiders. Give alacrity, might-stacking capabilities and power/precision-enhancing traits to other classes. Make boons shared squad-wide in raid instances only and double HP of bosses to compensate for the inevitable 3 boon-givers 7 DPS meta.

But if you’ve never tried broccoli before and absolutely hate it and will never ever give it a go, there’s no improvements that anyone else can make that will make you put one in your mouth.

Nailed it mate, bang on! And good on ya for doing what so many others aren’t, staying on topic. Rednik, let it go and quit having a go at folks. Whats happening here is people are trying to improve something, not tear it down.
And the points made in the “improvements” paragraph are bang on as well. Easy mode?…kk, maybe not but the other bits would really be a huge boost to playing.
So lets keep more of this type of feedback coming guys, maybe it will get something accomplished?
Oh, and by the way….I love broccoli!! fav veggie!!

Ohoni.6057

Except that it’s not a fun experience. It might be fun for you, but that doesn’t mean that other players will have just as much fun with it. Resistance to raids has nothing to do with “not giving it a chance.”

Really? You are making that argument? That’s ANY game anywhere and not even anywhere near to what is trying to be discussed here. As mentioned before I like many do not PVP, never have and most likely never will. But does the game suck or is it not fun…not even close.

Really? You are making that argument? That’s ANY game anywhere and not even anywhere near to what is trying to be discussed here. As mentioned before I like many do not PVP, never have and most likely never will. But does the game suck or is it not fun…not even close.

Some people make the argument that those who claim to not enjoy raiding just haven’t given it enough of a chance, and that if they were only to drink the Koolaide, they would love it as much as raiders do. Now you might recognize that as completely ridiculous, but I was pointing it out for those who actually believe that.

I’m totally fine with there being parts of the game that I don’t enjoy, so long as 1. they don’t block off relevant in-game lore (which raids do, PvP and WvW do not), and 2. They do not block off access to rewards that interest me. Both PvP and WvW do block off access to some rewards, but gaining access to them is MUCH easier than gaining access to raid-locked rewards, so while it may not be pleasant, it’s at least relatively quick and accessible when compared to raids.

They could do better in ALL of these areas at making sure that desirable rewards are not locked off behind undesirable content, but failure in one area does not in any way justify failure in another, so “but they do this in some other part of the game” is never any excuse.

deleted, i think my api is gone bonkers

Ohoni.6057:

Really? You are making that argument? That’s ANY game anywhere and not even anywhere near to what is trying to be discussed here. As mentioned before I like many do not PVP, never have and most likely never will. But does the game suck or is it not fun…not even close.

Some people make the argument that those who claim to not enjoy raiding just haven’t given it enough of a chance, and that if they were only to drink the Koolaide, they would love it as much as raiders do. Now you might recognize that as completely ridiculous, but I was pointing it out for those who actually believe that.

I’m totally fine with there being parts of the game that I don’t enjoy, so long as 1. they don’t block off relevant in-game lore (which raids do, PvP and WvW do not), and 2. They do not block off access to rewards that interest me. Both PvP and WvW do block off access to some rewards, but gaining access to them is MUCH easier than gaining access to raid-locked rewards, so while it may not be pleasant, it’s at least relatively quick and accessible when compared to raids.

They could do better in ALL of these areas at making sure that desirable rewards are not locked off behind undesirable content, but failure in one area does not in any way justify failure in another, so “but they do this in some other part of the game” is never any excuse.

1. Pending how good you were at PvP, the time gate behind the PvP legendary backpiece was much longer than getting 150 LI. This also was a single piece versus needing 150 for 6 pieces. 30 LI is definitely quicker, but that isn’t really important.

2. “Making sure that desirable rewards are not locked off behind undesirable content” – this sounds like you are stating it as a fact, when it is your opinion. Personally, a reward is only desirable to me if it is locked behind some sort of challenging content. Otherwise I don’t find it desirable.

“I’m totally fine with there being parts of the game that I don’t enjoy, so long as 1. they don’t block off relevant in-game lore (which raids do, PvP and WvW do not), and 2. They do not block off access to rewards that interest me. Both PvP and WvW do block off access to some rewards, but gaining access to them is MUCH easier than gaining access to raid-locked rewards, so while it may not be pleasant, it’s at least relatively quick and accessible when compared to raids.”

2 very valid and good points and I have to agree with you on this for sure.

Alright continuing where I left off from the OP’s List…

Blaeys.3102:

Fracturing the playerbase

The PvE community has already been split for some time, well before raids. You easily saw it with the toxicity in ‘Berserker Meta only’ groups that refused non-meta. Certainly you can point out that guilds could just group up together, run whatever, and more or less complete said same content at their own pace, and that’s fine and dandy!

However, there was a massive void of actual challenge in the game, which put off the game’s potential for a PvE End-Game. Adversity adds depth, challenge promotes ingenuity and growth of the player to his character in question. Players grew terribly complacent with the status quo of dull encounters that threatened them in no way, shape, or form.

This was unhealthy for a game like GW2 that had the majority of its casual player-base who would eventually grow tired of the same easy game despite all the ‘special’ iterations or illusions of ‘interesting encounters’. HoT was the abrupt point where GW2 needed to get people out of their comfort zone, realize that maybe perhaps full signets for 99% of the game wasn’t a great idea.

Let alone if we talk about Raids, the apex or epitome of proving what you can do with your character. I want to know honestly from some of these players who cry out against Raids now, if they truly believe they ‘loved’ the way they could play their characters, that they were comfortable spending hundreds of hours not worrying about their stats, build, utilities…typical things you would normally see any regular MMO player worry about. And why do they feel like Raids which make up such a small insignificant amount of content in the game currently, are a smack to the face when I bet you they haven’t even come close to exploring all the other casual content in the game.

It is never a good thing to start enjoying the ‘stale sameness’, you need to create ‘dynamic content’ that addresses everyone. And realize that not everyone will like all the content, and that’s fine.

Blaeys.3102:

How to fix it
There are topics that Arenanet has indicated they feel have run their course on the forums, and I will respect that here. All I will say is look to the raiding CDI with Chris Whitesides that started 2 years ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first). I think the solutions are there – proposed by active players of the game.

It’s heavily ironic that you posted that CDI. Most of the suggestions with relation to the raids we have now, indicated that they needed to be instanced and difficult. There was also the prospect of ‘Guild Open World Events’ that came from the thread as well. From my own memory of looking through the CDI back when it was being created, by far the largest spoken individuals desired the content you refuse to accept in its current iteration today.

There were a few suggestions about scaling, mode splitting, maybe boss buffs or nerfs-

Funnily enough, a lot of the discussion before raids were even on the table about how raids would be implemented, has been going on since then. And the same folks who still can’t accept the current iteration of raiding have continued to post since then.

Blaeys.3102:

Unfortunately, imo, Anet went into that discussion having already decided what raids in GW2 would look like. They wanted validation more than discussion. Despite that, there are a lot of great ideas in that thread (and many since then) that would make sense in the game – that would address these issues – and that I for one would love to see discussed in more detail.

You can’t honestly say that and you know it. ‘Having already decided’ is just a concession that you want to accept as the truth, when in reality the majority of the discussion in that CDI helped fixate and address the current concerns we have today. By concerns, I mean there are no issues. Raids are working as we, and Arenanet, intended them.

Blaeys.3102:

Please respect each others’ opinions and need for open conversation

I don’t even mind an open discussion on this, this conversation has just been going on for…well I suppose since that CDI came out. Probably one of the longest discussions in GW2 history.

I know very well that you were vocal back then, and I know you likely seek a sort of ‘After-CDI’ to see where the next steps will be. But I don’t know if that would be a good use of our time overall. Think about it:

- Bits and Pieces from different authors in that thread were put together to create the raids we have today, Arenanet definitely wanted to challenge the playerbase through a sort of instanced content, but wanted to see and gauge what we felt about it first.

- They created an implementation, a unique raid experience where even in failure you can gain currency. Unique encounter mechanics, trash and puzzles, and overall the return of challenging content to GW2.

- Against what was the current status quo for ‘challenge’ in the game, Arenanet specifically mentioned that the interest in the raiding experience was higher than anticipated. They had a line where the content they derived from the most vocal forum posters, including some from TTS and other well-known guilds, and the content passed and then some.

So their two-year plan paid off in their eyes, yet they are aware of what worked and did not work in Forsaken Thicket. They are improving on the small content that has its intended audience, much like all other content in this game has an intended audience…and you seek to justify changing it completely by diverting resources away from what makes it work right now, to more implementations of the same content everyone has been playing for ages now.

Raids are not blocking “relevant in-game lore”. Someone who is saying that has never dealt with raids and their lore profoundly.
The story is kinda non-existent and has no impact on every other story outside of raids. Only people having no clue of raids could make such statement. It’s a little side story and just a filler to not run through emptyness and kill some mobs without any connection to each other. Lore hunter would be disappointed if they would go in just for the lore experience.

But nevermind, keep going with wrong assumptions and statements. I also like the “sales-gate” about raids being the evil. Forum hasn’t been entertaining like this since months.

1. Pending how good you were at PvP, the time gate behind the PvP legendary backpiece was much longer than getting 150 LI.

Time gate? Maybe, but who cares? The actual effort gate was WAY lower. And besides, what do you have to show for 150LI right now? Nothing! So the actual time gate to getting actual Legendary Armor is at least 3-6 months higher than The Ascension.

2. “Making sure that desirable rewards are not locked off behind undesirable content” – this sounds like you are stating it as a fact, when it is your opinion. Personally, a reward is only desirable to me if it is locked behind some sort of challenging content. Otherwise I don’t find it desirable.

Then they shouldn’t waste desirable content by putting it behind such things. I mean, if I care about it whether it’s locked behind challenging content or not, and you only desire it if it’s locked behind challenging content, then they should obviously NEVER lock it behind desirable content, and instead, for people like you, have completely undesirable rewards that are locked behind challenging content, because you’ll enjoy those exactly as much.

Let alone if we talk about Raids, the apex or epitome of proving what you can do with your character. I want to know honestly from some of these players who cry out against Raids now, if they truly believe they ‘loved’ the way they could play their characters, that they were comfortable spending hundreds of hours not worrying about their stats, build, utilities…typical things you would normally see any regular MMO player worry about.

Yes. That was the exact reason that I was playing Guild Wars 2, and NOT one of those many other games that obsess over such things.

And why do they feel like Raids which make up such a small insignificant amount of content in the game currently, are a smack to the face when I bet you they haven’t even come close to exploring all the other casual content in the game.

But I have explored all that other content. I’ve done all the other things. And raids are currently blocking me off from things that I’d like to have available.

Raids are not blocking “relevant in-game lore”. Someone who is saying that has never dealt with raids and their lore profoundly.

Wrong.

Ohoni.6057:

1. Pending how good you were at PvP, the time gate behind the PvP legendary backpiece was much longer than getting 150 LI.

Time gate? Maybe, but who cares? The actual effort gate was WAY lower. And besides, what do you have to show for 150LI right now? Nothing! So the actual time gate to getting actual Legendary Armor is at least 3-6 months higher than The Ascension.

2. “Making sure that desirable rewards are not locked off behind undesirable content” – this sounds like you are stating it as a fact, when it is your opinion. Personally, a reward is only desirable to me if it is locked behind some sort of challenging content. Otherwise I don’t find it desirable.

Then they shouldn’t waste desirable content by putting it behind such things. I mean, if I care about it whether it’s locked behind challenging content or not, and you only desire it if it’s locked behind challenging content, then they should obviously NEVER lock it behind desirable content, and instead, for people like you, have completely undesirable rewards that are locked behind challenging content, because you’ll enjoy those exactly as much.

Let alone if we talk about Raids, the apex or epitome of proving what you can do with your character. I want to know honestly from some of these players who cry out against Raids now, if they truly believe they ‘loved’ the way they could play their characters, that they were comfortable spending hundreds of hours not worrying about their stats, build, utilities…typical things you would normally see any regular MMO player worry about.

Yes. That was the exact reason that I was playing Guild Wars 2, and NOT one of those many other games that obsess over such things.

And why do they feel like Raids which make up such a small insignificant amount of content in the game currently, are a smack to the face when I bet you they haven’t even come close to exploring all the other casual content in the game.

But I have explored all that other content. I’ve done all the other things. And raids are currently blocking me off from things that I’d like to have available.

Raids are not blocking “relevant in-game lore”. Someone who is saying that has never dealt with raids and their lore profoundly.

Wrong.

1. Again for PvP that all depends on how successful you are. There are many people who find PvP way more difficult and more stressful than getting into raids. (most people TBH) 30 LI for 1 piece may end up being fast and less effort for them. You can’t argue that my time argument doesn’t count but then you account for ANET development time in your argument. The fact that it isn’t available yet has 0 relevance in relation to how difficult it is to aquire since we “know” the LI mats ahead of time.

2. We both know that argument doesn’t make sense for rewards. Maybe for me it would work, but there are probably lots of people in between you and I. The point I’m making is that you phrase your argument in a way that makes it sound like “Rewards should never be behind challenging content. If they are not behind challenging content, it is 100% always better”. This simply is not true. Maybe for your circumstances it would be better, but there are plenty of people whom it would be worse.

Yes. That was the exact reason that I was playing Guild Wars 2, and NOT one of those many other games that obsess over such things.

And the vast majority of this game doesn’t ask you to worry about such things. Game is still vastly superior to others in that regard. Not really sorry at all if some insignificant part of this game is not catered to your greedy selfish whim.

But I have explored all that other content. I’ve done all the other things. And raids are currently blocking me off from things that I’d like to have available.

Crafted every Legendary?
Done all the Masteries?
Gotten all those lovely ‘Skin list achievements’?
Have you been achievement hunting at all?
Created every profession and messed with every build?

I can keep going with this, but the funny thing is that if you have truly explored all other content, you are probably more hardcore than anyone else playing, because I doubt there’s a single person who has done everything casually in this game.

Wrong.

I assume you mean ‘Wrong’ as in “I was wrong, Bloodstone Fen lore can exist entirely on its own, the Living Story can outright ignore the Raid Lore.”

Because that is the only logical conclusion, unless you can rebuke my argument from page 1.

Go on! Try! Look up all the lore books, the scraps of paper, the NPCs, knock yourself out!

Torolan.5816:

I rather make the assumption that the number of incoming raiders is smaller than the number of casual players who left because they did not like the new direction of GW2. Anet already heavily backpeddaled with Hot and both of the new maps.

Disliking raids and disliking HoT/WvW/PvP are not the same thing. You link them, apparently, because you dislike both.

Rednik.3809:

All they had to do is just not pushing raids at expense of everyone else.

As a disinterested observer, I’d have to say that this seems way off base. One raid was promised with HoT. It was delivered in 3 pieces, with several months in between, precisely because a very small number of devs worked on the wings That’s not pushing raids at the expense of everything else, it’s delivering expansion content across nine months when the open PvE content was delivered all at once — then revamped at considerable expense in resources because people complained about it.

If you want a scapegoat for lack of attention to general PvE, you need look no further than ANet decisions that led to story episodes taking a tremendous amount of time/effort to produce. Why were those decisions made? Because PvE players complained about the quality of PvE delivery that took less time.

Please stop blaming raids for ANet revising their approach due to complaints that had nothing to do with raids.

1. Again for PvP that all depends on how successful you are. There are many people who find PvP way more difficult and more stressful than getting into raids.

I don’t know man, I HATE PvP, I wish PvP were completely shut down, and I still didn’t have any huge difficulty meeting the requirements for the Ascension. It took me four seasons rather than 2-3, and I hated every single step of the process, but it wasn’t actually hard or terribly stressful, and anyone who can find a coordinated group of ten people to regularly raid with would have a far easier time finding a coordinated group of five people that would make climbing the PvP ladders a cakewalk.

You know how they say “anything you can do, I can do better?” Well “any challenges to getting the Ascension, getting through raids is worse.”

But again, I AM in favor of them opening up more opitions for how one can earn PvP-base rewards, so in this case, even if you think the current options are awful, it does nothing to justify the raid rewards.

The fact that it isn’t available yet has 0 relevance in relation to how difficult it is to aquire since we “know” the LI mats ahead of time.

And the fact is that most of the timegate with The Ascension came from them having gaps between the seasons. If they hadn’t, then even one of the sub-standard players like me would have had The Ascension unlocked before anyone had 150LI.

“Rewards should never be behind challenging content. If they are not behind challenging content, it is 100% always better”.

This is true. They can be behind challenging content, but that should never be the only way to get them, since plenty of players do not enjoy challenging content, and those players play Guild Wars 2.

Crafted every Legendary?
Done all the Masteries?
Gotten all those lovely ‘Skin list achievements’?
Have you been achievement hunting at all?
Created every profession and messed with every build?

I’ve done all the stuff that’s interested me. Stuff that does not interest me is not relevant to me. There is no reason why I should have to do content that does not interest me in order to gain the right to be bothered by flaws in content that does interest me.

I assume you mean ‘Wrong’ as in “I was wrong, Bloodstone Fen lore can exist entirely on its own, the Living Story can outright ignore the Raid Lore.”

Yes, you were wrong, Forsaken Thicket lore is directly connected to Bloodstone Fen lore, and to Ember Bay lore, and so on. it’s all part of the same game world, and all the lore matters. There is no argument that can be made that the lore contained in the Forsaken Thicket is “irrelevant” to anyone.

ButterPeanut.9746:

I’m not sure what numbers you are looking at? Q3 of this year was the lowest of the year. Q3 also had no raid releases but it did have 2 LS3 releases.

Q3 almost stopped revenue falling, but that was still not enough. Which means anet should make more of content that was delivered in Q3. Simple.

I’m sure Anet and NCSoft appreciate how a bunch of uneducated and biased stranges on their forums perform analysis of their business plan and draw conclusions about how certain element of the game affects the revenue, although I believe they already have experts taking care of that, not to mention they have much more data available than the aforementioned forum warriors.

I’m sure Anet and NCSoft appreciate how a bunch of uneducated and biased stranges on their forums perform analysis of their business plan and draw conclusions about how certain element of the game affects the revenue, although I believe they already have experts taking care of that, not to mention they have much more data available than the aforementioned forum warriors.

We’re forced to game-theory their future development plans because they insist on keeping that actual plans a secret from us. When they don’t give us much to work with or hope for the future, we’re forced to do our best to make our own hope.

Ohoni.6057:

We’re forced to game-theory their future development plans because they insist on keeping that actual plans a secret from us. When they don’t give us much to work with or hope for the future, we’re forced to do our best to make our own hope.

PVP: we have 2 brand new maps, one of them is in public testing, the 5th Season of PVP is fast approaching us. PVP wise we have lots of information on what they are working on and what is coming.

WVW: They got a poll where they actually asked the community where to focus: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Poll-Next-Project-Priority-Closed We know what they are working on and we get regular beta tests of new features (which are sometimes a disaster like the deployable cannons)

Raid: There is a new portal in the Aerodrome being built. There is confirmation that “future raids won’t always have 3 wings”, we need ~6 more hidden achievements to progress the legendary and each Wing has 3 achievements. It’s really safe to assume that a new Raid wing is coming to finish the collection

Living world: If I recall they said one release every 2 months, so Episode 3 will be coming very soon. They also said the episodes will be bigger than before and probably also have new maps. If they keep up one episode every 2 months, it would mean 1 new release every month with rotation between seasonal/festival and LS releases.

Fractals: From the wiki on the new fractal:

The Chaos Fractal is not a single, complete story, but part of the start of a new arc that will parallel the main Season 3 plot.

So more fractals are coming too during the LS3

What more do you expect from their future plans other than a clear outline of what’s coming?

I’ve done all the stuff that’s interested me. Stuff that does not interest me is not relevant to me. There is no reason why I should have to do content that does not interest me in order to gain the right to be bothered by flaws in content that does interest me.

The Raid rewards interest you, not the raid itself. That’s the big difference and exactly why you want to change raids to be more aligned with your interests at the expense of others. It’s no different than all the other content you state here that you don’t do. You just really want the rewards in this case.

And since the reward structure in this game has always through theme, or the kind of content, created different branches to earn each different reward, Raids are not changing the formula here.

Yes, you were wrong, Forsaken Thicket lore is directly connected to Bloodstone Fen lore, and to Ember Bay lore, and so on. it’s all part of the same game world, and all the lore matters. There is no argument that can be made that the lore contained in the Forsaken Thicket is “irrelevant” to anyone.

It is absolutely irrelevant to the casual gamer who is not interested in raiding, it does not change anything on how the current game lore played out. You haven’t come up with any counter here to my argument, nor do I suspect you actually care about the lore unless you can use it as a weak tool to convince Arenanet to open up raids to people like yourself who don’t care for the current one.

Your arguments at this point have boiled down to simply that the raid rewards interest you enough that you want to demolish the current working system to get what you want. And you are willing to incorrectly invoke arguments like ‘The lore is critical to the casual gamer understanding what is going on’ when I and many others have pointed out the issues with that reasoning.

Sykper.6583:

I’ve done all the stuff that’s interested me. Stuff that does not interest me is not relevant to me. There is no reason why I should have to do content that does not interest me in order to gain the right to be bothered by flaws in content that does interest me.

The Raid rewards interest you, not the raid itself. That’s the big difference and exactly why you want to change raids to be more aligned with your interests at the expense of others. It’s no different than all the other content you state here that you don’t do. You just really want the rewards in this case.

And since the reward structure in this game has always through theme, or the kind of content, created different branches to earn each different reward, Raids are not changing the formula here.

Yes, you were wrong, Forsaken Thicket lore is directly connected to Bloodstone Fen lore, and to Ember Bay lore, and so on. it’s all part of the same game world, and all the lore matters. There is no argument that can be made that the lore contained in the Forsaken Thicket is “irrelevant” to anyone.

It is absolutely irrelevant to the casual gamer who is not interested in raiding, it does not change anything on how the current game lore played out. You haven’t come up with any counter here to my argument, nor do I suspect you actually care about the lore unless you can use it as a weak tool to convince Arenanet to open up raids to people like yourself who don’t care for the current one.

Your arguments at this point have boiled down to simply that the raid rewards interest you enough that you want to demolish the current working system to get what you want. And you are willing to incorrectly invoke arguments like ‘The lore is critical to the casual gamer understanding what is going on’ when I and many others have pointed out the issues with that reasoning.

so much this, i couldn’t have said it better ^^

Tarasicodissa.7084:

I’m sure Anet and NCSoft appreciate how a bunch of uneducated and biased stranges on their forums perform analysis of their business plan and draw conclusions about how certain element of the game affects the revenue, although I believe they already have experts taking care of that, not to mention they have much more data available than the aforementioned forum warriors.

We sharing our opinions here. Raid praising group already was represented too disproportionally high on forums and reddit, and this most probably made devs think that raids are really that much popular and no more content needed.

Rednik.3809:

Tarasicodissa.7084:

I’m sure Anet and NCSoft appreciate how a bunch of uneducated and biased stranges on their forums perform analysis of their business plan and draw conclusions about how certain element of the game affects the revenue, although I believe they already have experts taking care of that, not to mention they have much more data available than the aforementioned forum warriors.

We sharing our opinions here. Raid praising group already was represented too disproportionally high on forums and reddit, and this most probably made devs think that raids are really that much popular and no more content needed.

Could you stop thinking that raid at the only content developped by Anet? that’s so wrong…pvp map, dev polls about wvw, LS, fract etc…all of these show that you’re just wrong and totally biaised.

Rednik.3809:

There is a gw2e table for LI, which is much more accurate representation because shards can be actually spent.

Yes but people who have tried and failed VG, Escort or whatever would have gotten a handful of shards and no LI. And there’s nothing you can spend shards on that only costs less than 10 shards. The statement that most players have never set foot in the Forsaken Thicket is not supported by the shards data. If however the claim is that most people have not managed to defeat a raid encounter, then the LI data does support this. However, given that raids are designed to not hand LIs out to people autoattacking while watching the latest episode of Westworld, this is probably working as intended.

Ohoni.6057:

Except that it’s not a fun experience. It might be fun for you, but that doesn’t mean that other players will have just as much fun with it.

If you read my post at all, you would know that I said it’s fun for the people who do this in static groups. That’s why they keep doing it. Whether it’s fun for experienced PuGs or training runs is another matter entirely. It’s not fun for you and the OP – most people commenting in this thread can see that. Most people commenting in this thread respect that. But if you enjoy WvW and I don’t, but I am ‘forced’ to do WvW because I ‘need’ a Gift of Battle or whatever, it doesn’t necessitate me writing over and over again asking developers to rework WvW to suit my tastes.

If you can respect that PvPers, WvWers, achievement hunters, jumping puzzle fans, fractal/dungeon runners etc. have their niche areas of the game that they enjoy, then raiders should be extended the same courtesy and respect as has been extended to these aficionados of other GW2 content. If you dislike white you can paint your own walls yellow, but it is impolite to splatter yellow paint on everyone else’s walls.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Torolan.5816:

I rather make the assumption that the number of incoming raiders is smaller than the number of casual players who left because they did not like the new direction of GW2. Anet already heavily backpeddaled with Hot and both of the new maps.

Disliking raids and disliking HoT/WvW/PvP are not the same thing. You link them, apparently, because you dislike both.

My Silver Knight and Tiger ranks disagree with your assumption that I dislike wvw and don´t play pvp. i would be superhappy if Wvw was the endgame of GW2 for example, it very much reminds me of RvRvR from DAOc, but it has some visible flaws and has always been the stepchild.

I also have to agree with Ohoni that raiding is not fun for everyone who tried it. I tried both VG and Escort to see how it is and I find both of these events already tiresome and boring for multiple reasons. I would probably ragequit if I had to face the tougher mobs and wipe even more often for nothing.

What more do you expect from their future plans other than a clear outline of what’s coming?

A clear outline of what’s coming, but basically a lot of what you said above that is the sort of speculation we were talking about, guessing that because they put in a second raid door, for example, that this indicates a second raid will go there, rather than some other feature entirely. I think you’re correct there, but it’s always possible we’re both wrong on that, as they’ve confirmed nothing of the sort.

The Raid rewards interest you, not the raid itself.

As I’ve said repeatedly, both do. When I watch videos of the raids, they seem like potentially fun content, but the constant wipes absolutely ruin them for me as content. A version without the wipes would be a lot of fun.

I’m really not sure why, when I know for a fact most of you have read me say that at least a dozen times by now, you guys continue to forget that I’ve already made this very point before each time.

And since the reward structure in this game has always through theme, or the kind of content, created different branches to earn each different reward, Raids are not changing the formula here.

Just because a model works in some situations, does not mean that it works for all situations. The way they are currently set up, the barrier of entry for raiding is too high for most players, and so it is an unreasonable barrier of entry for Legendary armor. There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.

So no, I’m sorry, but “all the other game mode are jumping off a bridge, so why not raids too?” just doesn’t apply here. For that argument to make sense, raids would need to be much more accessible to the average player than they currently are.

It is absolutely irrelevant to the casual gamer who is not interested in raiding, it does not change anything on how the current game lore played out. You haven’t come up with any counter here to my argument, nor do I suspect you actually care about the lore unless you can use it as a weak tool to convince Arenanet to open up raids to people like yourself who don’t care for the current one.

Your argument counters itself by being factually incorrect in the first place.

The statement that most players have never set foot in the Forsaken Thicket is not supported by the shards data. If however the claim is that most people have not managed to defeat a raid encounter, then the LI data does support this. However, given that raids are designed to not hand LIs out to people autoattacking while watching the latest episode of Westworld, this is probably working as intended.

I don’t think it matters how many people entered the raids at least once, what matters is how many people actually completed them. If someone tried raids a few times and then left empty handed and never came back, that isn’t likely to represent a player who really had a blast doing raids. “We got them to try it at least once, but turns out they hated it” is not a ringing endorsement of a game mode. Their success should not be represented by how many people they got through the door, but by how many people they got to the other side.

But if you enjoy WvW and I don’t, but I am ‘forced’ to do WvW because I ‘need’ a Gift of Battle or whatever, it doesn’t necessitate me writing over and over again asking developers to rework WvW to suit my tastes.

Sure it does. This is a consumer product, and if you’re dissatisfied with an element, you have every right to express that displeasure and push for changes that you believe would make the game better for you, and people like you. It’s up to ANet to evaluate whether they feel they can make those changes in a way that benefits more players than it harms. I would fully support any changes that remove the need to WvW for a Gift of Battle, but that’s a different topic entirely.

If you can respect that PvPers, WvWers, achievement hunters, jumping puzzle fans, fractal/dungeon runners etc. have their niche areas of the game that they enjoy, then raiders should be extended the same courtesy and respect as has been extended to these aficionados of other GW2 content.

Again, to go back a few pages, I am totally fine with raiders having their own niche content that is for them and them alone, so long as the following conditions are also met:

1. That players who do not enjoy that level of difficulty also have their own variation on the content, so that they could experience the same lore and general combat encounters, without the unpleasant difficulty spike. Raiders would still have their hardcore version, this would be the festivus for the restofus.

2. That there be some alternate path to Envoy armor. It’s fine for raiders to have their own niche content, but only so long as there is no compelling reason for any other players to go there. If you do not enjoy raiding, then you should not have to raid, full stop. There should be no reason to raid other than an enjoyment of raiding. If you do not enjoy raiding, but want to get Envoy armor, then you should be able to pursue some other path to that goal. So long as raiders insist that Envoy armor can only be acquired through raiding, they cannot simultaneously claim that “this is just content for us, and if you don’t want to raid then you should just not raid.”

Ohoni.6057:

A clear outline of what’s coming, but basically a lot of what you said above that is the sort of speculation we were talking about, guessing that because they put in a second raid door, for example, that this indicates a second raid will go there, rather than some other feature entirely. I think you’re correct there, but it’s always possible we’re both wrong on that, as they’ve confirmed nothing of the sort.

They couldn’t give us an end time for Halloween so I don’t think they can give us more specific dates of more important things. Which is sad really

As I’ve said repeatedly, both do. When I watch videos of the raids, they seem like potentially fun content, but the constant wipes absolutely ruin them for me as content. A version without the wipes would be a lot of fun.

And again, you fail to comprehend that one of the core tenets of a raid, is that it is content you can likely wipe constantly to. That’s kind of a big selling point. Which is why we continue to say to you, that investing time and resources to developing a raid without wiping would be not fun for the audience it was intended for, it would create longer droughts for the audience it was intended for, and it would not be a RAID anymore.

So no, they should not make whatever this content is you are trying to get here, you would be better off asking the open world devs to create more open world content for you. That’s actually what you want and have an interest in.

Just because a model works in some situations, does not mean that it works for all situations. The way they are currently set up, the barrier of entry for raiding is too high for most players, and so it is an unreasonable barrier of entry for Legendary armor. There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.

So no, I’m sorry, but “all the other game mode are jumping off a bridge, so why not raids too?” just doesn’t apply here. For that argument to make sense, raids would need to be much more accessible to the average player than they currently are.

I really like how you have to inject your subjective opinion of the PvP armor and how it justifies why you can ignore content you aren’t interested in because it’s just flashy. I hope you understand how much of a hypocrite it makes you given you are doing the opposite with Legendary Armor in a mode you aren’t actually interested in but are pretending to be.

Anyways, the model you refer to here, isn’t a ‘some situation’ kind of deal. It’s happening everywhere in GW2. So why should Arenanet break away from their reward system just because of raids? For your selfish whims?

Your argument counters itself by being factually incorrect in the first place.

That’s a good one! Is that the excuse you come with all the time when you lose an argument, or just for me? Because you haven’t shown a kitten thing.

And again, you fail to comprehend that one of the core tenets of a raid, is that it is content you can likely wipe constantly to.

Yes, and for you that’s fun, and for me it’s not, so for you you should have that “Sisyphus-mode” version, and for me there should be a “have fun” version, and both of us can be happy because each of us has the version he enjoys. You would be no more intended to like my version than I was intended to like yours, but it’s ok because we’d each still have the version that we preferred.

I really like how you have to inject your subjective opinion of the PvP armor and how it justifies why you can ignore content you aren’t interested in because it’s just flashy.

“So no, I’m sorry, but “all the other game mode are jumping off a bridge, so why not raids too?” just doesn’t apply here. For that argument to make sense, raids would need to be much more accessible to the average player than they currently are.”

Look, if the argument you are making is “Glorious Hero armor should be made available through more methods,” then ok, make that argument and I will support you 100%, but that’s not my argument to make because it doesn’t personally bother me. I will not argue against you, but neither is it something that I care to spend my time working on.

But if your argument is “Glorious Hero armor is hard to get, therefore it’s ok for Envoy armor to be hard to get,” well no, two wrongs don’t make a right. Them doing one bad thing does not justify them doing more bad things. If you believe that Envoy armor being hard to get is a good thing, then make that case, but you can’t do so by pointing to other flawed elements of the game.

I hope you understand how much of a hypocrite it makes you given you are doing the opposite with Legendary Armor in a mode you aren’t actually interested in but are pretending to be.

See, it’s this type of talk that bothers me. You are accusing me of being dishonest with you, and I suspect that a lot of others believe this as well. How can we have a reasonable discussion if we can’t even believe that the other person is accurately representing their own position? Everything I have said to you is 100% true. You can disagree that it matters that it is true, but please don’t be so disrespectful as to question whether the opinions I state are in fact my own opinions.

Anyways, the model you refer to here, isn’t a ‘some situation’ kind of deal. It’s happening everywhere in GW2. So why should Arenanet break away from their reward system just because of raids? For your selfish whims?

Because like I said, the raids are the straw that broke the camel’s back. The raids are the element with the requirements so much higher than most players are comfortable with that it moved from “annoyance” to “serious problem.” I may not have enjoyed earning The Ascension, I very much might not have enjoyed it, but at least it was a practical goal to work towards. I very much would prefer that they offered alternatives there, but could at least move forward in a lack of options. This does not apply to the Raids, which is why they are a larger issue.

Yes, and for you that’s fun, and for me it’s not, so for you you should have that “Sisyphus-mode” version, and for me there should be a “have fun” version, and both of us can be happy because each of us has the version he enjoys. You would be no more intended to like my version than I was intended to like yours, but it’s ok because we’d each still have the version that we preferred.

Because your version would directly impact the quality and quantity of the raider version. Because your version deviates significantly away from the intent of raid content in general. The mere existence of a ‘trivialized’ raid would obstruct future iterations of a kind of End-Game content.

All for the sake of rewards that you would have more success asking Arenanet to put elsewhere.

Look, if the argument you are making is “Glorious Hero armor should be made available through more methods,” then ok, make that argument and I will support you 100%, but that’s not my argument to make because it doesn’t personally bother me. I will not argue against you, but neither is it something that I care to spend my time working on.

It’s because you are taking your personal agenda, and generalizing it as something that is impacting everyone. You consistently state that you want an ‘easier’ mode raid because you believe it would get you and maybe a few folks alongside you the rewards and “similar” raid experience like the current content. But it won’t, It cannot come close.

This is why we keep coming back to this, you aren’t offering a reasonable solution for the end-game. An ‘Easy-mode’ for raiding isn’t reasonable.

But if your argument is “Glorious Hero armor is hard to get, therefore it’s ok for Envoy armor to be hard to get,” well no, two wrongs don’t make a right. Them doing one bad thing does not justify them doing more bad things. If you believe that Envoy armor being hard to get is a good thing, then make that case, but you can’t do so by pointing to other flawed elements of the game.

So now you are saying that the Glorious Hero’s acquisition is flawed? As I have stated before it is just like all other ‘content to reward’ checks in this game. You are the one directly opposing that system, so you should have been gung-ho on denying how to get the Glorious Hero’s from the get-go.

But you didn’t, which made you hypocritical.

See, it’s this type of talk that bothers me. You are accusing me of being dishonest with you, and I suspect that a lot of others believe this as well. How can we have a reasonable discussion if we can’t even believe that the other person is accurately representing their own position? Everything I have said to you is 100% true. You can disagree that it matters that it is true, but please don’t be so disrespectful as to question whether the opinions I state are in fact my own opinions.

Yet we consistently see the argument that ‘Because raiders want to keep their rewards in their content, that they too want to be a special snowflake’. It’s a two-way street, we have a fundamental difference in how the reward should be structured in GW2 in general, and from our perspective the way Raids have their rewards is much more aligned with how all the rewards in this game are delivered.

Including all the reasons I stated above, you are the one trying to bring out a complete overhaul to a system that has been more or less in place since launch. All over a small segment of PvE content in which it doesn’t have to stay with for too long.

Because like I said, the raids are the straw that broke the camel’s back. The raids are the element with the requirements so much higher than most players are comfortable with that it moved from “annoyance” to “serious problem.” I may not have enjoyed earning The Ascension, I very much might not have enjoyed it, but at least it was a practical goal to work towards. I very much would prefer that they offered alternatives there, but could at least move forward in a lack of options. This does not apply to the Raids, which is why they are a larger issue.

Then ask for it being accessible elsewhere, I still have not seen one single argument from you for putting a kind of Legendary Armor acquisition elsewhere in the game! Hell, we should just get a new set and put it into WvW, giving everything in the game a Legendary Component agenda!

Because your version would directly impact the quality and quantity of the raider version.

Nope.

Because your version deviates significantly away from the intent of raid content in general.

Working as intended, but irrelevant to you because it’s not for you.

The mere existence of a ‘trivialized’ raid would obstruct future iterations of a kind of End-Game content.

Nope.

All for the sake of rewards that you would have more success asking Arenanet to put elsewhere.

Nope, but that would be a nice bonus.

This is why we keep coming back to this, you aren’t offering a reasonable solution for the end-game. An ‘Easy-mode’ for raiding isn’t reasonable.

Why not? I get that you wouldn’t want to participate in it, but it’s not for you, so why should it bother you? You already have the version that is for you.

So now you are saying that the Glorious Hero’s acquisition is flawed?

I’ve already said that, just as I’ve always said that it’s not relevant to this discussion. If you want to talk about Glorious Hero acquisition, go to the PvP board.

You are the one directly opposing that system, so you should have been gung-ho on denying how to get the Glorious Hero’s from the get-go.

No, again, that’s not my concern. You want to portray that as hypocrisy , but that’s not how hypocrisy works. Hypocrisy does not mean that you aren’t allowed to care about anything unless you care about everything, it just means that you can’t care about two conflicting things. You could not, for example, say that the Glorious Hero armor is working great, but the Envoy armor is bad, that would be hypocritical. But you can say "they both are not working well, but I care about this one more, so this one is where I will spend my time. If you’d like to spend your time arguing about the other one, then I won’t get in your way, but it’s not my fight to fight. "

Yet we consistently see the argument that ‘Because raiders want to keep their rewards in their content, that they too want to be a special snowflake’.

Which is true, and not at all conflicting with anything else I’ve said (and not at all conflicting with anything you’ve said).

Then ask for it being accessible elsewhere, I still have not seen one single argument from you for putting a kind of Legendary Armor acquisition elsewhere in the game!

I have, but that hasn’t been the topic of discussion lately. Alternate locations for earning Envoy armor is a perfectly fine topic of discussion, and I fully support it, but that doesn’t reduce the value of anything else I’ve said.

Hell, we should just get a new set and put it into WvW, giving everything in the game a Legendary Component agenda!

To me, that would be no solution at all, as WvW is not an ideal location either, and a different set of armor would be a different set of armor. More locations is good, more armor is good, but still not what I’d like to see happen, and therefore not what I would advocate for.

Nope.

Pray tell, where would the resources for creating these easy modes come from? Are you implying that you want to strip open world devs away from open world?

Working as intended, but irrelevant to you because it’s not for you..

Degrades the reward for doing the much more difficult mode, divides the raiding community, no ‘transition’ or ‘training’ for the normal mode functionality…

Nope.

See my first response above.

Nope, but that would be a nice bonus.

Yep, that’s exactly why you are demanding an easier mode.

Why not? I get that you wouldn’t want to participate in it, but it’s not for you, so why should it bother you? You already have the version that is for you.

Because of reasons already stated above, in the past, all pointing out the unavoidable flaws of an easier mode.

I’ve already said that, just as I’ve always said that it’s not relevant to this discussion. If you want to talk about Glorious Hero acquisition, go to the PvP board.

You didn’t before until I brought it up, against your own words here:

There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.

You have zero issue with potentially EQUALLY difficult, no, rather a much harder to get armor set in a mode that you clearly did some content for (The Ascension). And yet now you seek to undermine Raids because you have an issue with getting a set of armor in them. And somehow you deny that you don’t have a bias here?

No, again, that’s not my concern. You want to portray that as hypocrisy , but that’s not how hypocrisy works.

…Mhmm.

Hypocrisy does not mean that you aren’t allowed to care about anything unless you care about everything, it just means that you can’t care about two conflicting things. You could not, for example, say that the Glorious Hero armor is working great, but the Envoy armor is bad, that would be hypocritical.

So when you say:

There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.

That’s you not disregarding a kind of armor that matches the exact scenario stated above? Because it certainly sounds like only when the reward is something you actually want will you care about how to acquire it.

But you can say "they both are not working well, but I care about this one more, so this one is where I will spend my time. If you’d like to spend your time arguing about the other one, then I won’t get in your way, but it’s not my fight to fight. "

That’s still holding a double-standard. You are only making these arguments to suit your own wants, without regard for other players. It’s quite definitively the ‘GIVE IT TO ME’ Attitude that once you are satisfied, who cares about anyone else?

Which is true, and not at all conflicting with anything else I’ve said (and not at all conflicting with anything you’ve said).

Good form, you call for some respectful discussion and then proceed to take it all back the next post. You are a real piece of work.

I have, but that hasn’t been the topic of discussion lately. Alternate locations for earning Envoy armor is a perfectly fine topic of discussion, and I fully support it, but that doesn’t reduce the value of anything else I’ve said.

The value of the other things you have suggested is far less, you would get nearly everyone I know on board with Legendary Armor elsewhere, instead of the insistent posts repeating the same thing ad infinitum.

To me, that would be no solution at all…

THAT. That is why we will always have an issue. Because your arguments have always been for your wants.

Ugh, I am going to back out of this mudslinging, just go ahead and retort or whatever. It’s deviated too far from the intent of the OP in this thread.

“Ugh, I am going to back out of this mudslinging, just go ahead and retort or whatever. It’s deviated too far from the intent of the OP in this thread.”

yea, sadly its gone down the WTF road.

“1. That players who do not enjoy that level of difficulty also have their own variation on the content, so that they could experience the same lore and general combat encounters, without the unpleasant difficulty spike. Raiders would still have their hardcore version, this would be the festivus for the restofus.”

Ok, easy fix then. Lets go the other way with this argument….make raids, dare I say it, HARDER! Yup, make a oh I dunno, say, Heroic mode, and have the special armor/rewards associated with such tied to completing them in that mode?
But seriously, with the comment above, that is what killed raids in WOW. Blizzard dumbed down raids and made them so everyone could do them, the dreaded LFR, and all you had to do was run along blindly,tag up,ignore any mechanics and still get the rewards. Sounds like that is what you want Ohoni and that’s not a good road to go down. Leave raids alone and let ANET focus on making all (or most)the classes more desirable and work on changing peoples mentality about meta or go home type of runs. I mean if people want to run with a pure “meta” setup that’s their call of course, just loosen up a bit folks, that’s all.

And here we are quote wars 2, electric boogaloo.

I’d say i was surprised but after those horse has been beaten, broken, brought out back, shot in the face, and beaten again it comes down to the same 4 posters claiming there’s something wrong.

At this point i’m inclined to believe there is something wrong, but it’s not something any mode or raid can ever fix. It’s a deeper ideological difference that no dev can ever fix and ultimately is on the player to do or move on.

I agree TexZero, and out of respect I wont quote you but yea, in line with what you posted all the way.

Fundamentally yes, different players have vastly different beliefs and expectations, and tend to lack empathy or the capacity for objectivity.

There seems to be a deliberate attempt to silence any criticism of raids though. I find this curious. And for what it’s worth, this forum is pretty dead without the more…. sensational topics.

Don’t misunderstand.

Despite my position, I have my own set of grievances with raiding, Forsaken Thicket was far from perfect. For instance, I am slightly concerned about the long-term, albeit I can see people still running the Thicket for more Ascended Gear, but there will come a time when some raiders get all the skins, or something of that nature.

Personally I have proposed something of a daily or weekly boss achievement, maybe something like ‘Wound Vale Guardian to Critical Health or Kill’ to get some extra gold or something. Coincidentally, another poster proposed something of ‘Vale Guardian takes 10% more damage this week’ on a rotation, or maybe the raid takes less damage from a particular boss that week to bring an incentive to raid at least the first boss. Again I don’t know how I feel about that, I would be leaning more towards the raid group doing more damage so that they still have to deal with many of the mechanics on a normal level, but even then I am fairly iffy.

I can’t actually decide IF there needs to be long-term rewards, the shards kind of pay for themselves when you can get ascended armor, weapons, trinkets in a cheaper way if you are dedicated to raiding, much like how Fractals do it.

Torolan.5816:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Torolan.5816:

I rather make the assumption that the number of incoming raiders is smaller than the number of casual players who left because they did not like the new direction of GW2. Anet already heavily backpeddaled with Hot and both of the new maps.

Disliking raids and disliking HoT/WvW/PvP are not the same thing. You link them, apparently, because you dislike both.

My Silver Knight and Tiger ranks disagree with your assumption that I dislike wvw and don´t play pvp. i would be superhappy if Wvw was the endgame of GW2 for example, it very much reminds me of RvRvR from DAOc, but it has some visible flaws and has always been the stepchild.

I also have to agree with Ohoni that raiding is not fun for everyone who tried it. I tried both VG and Escort to see how it is and I find both of these events already tiresome and boring for multiple reasons. I would probably ragequit if I had to face the tougher mobs and wipe even more often for nothing.

I misspoke. I meant to say that you link raids and HoT and (apparently) dislike both, perhaps including the DBL.

@ Skyper

I get what you’re saying. The new ANet seems to be going with the idea that content gets one reward pass. The old ANet’s life-support team for the original GW game got a lot of mileage out of old content with https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Zaishen_Challenge_Quest

Pray tell, where would the resources for creating these easy modes come from? Are you implying that you want to strip open world devs away from open world?

I can’t speculate on exactly where and when the devs would be taken from other projects. I’m confident that it can be done without meaningfully impacting development resources from other projects. Obviously it’s not worth “infinite resources,” if it would take a preposterous amount of time and effort to make it happen, then fair enough, not worth it, but I’d at least like to hear an explanation from the developers as to why this would take a ridiculous amount of man-hours, and what those people have accomplished instead. If it delays the next raid by a few days, or even a few weeks, well I’m sorry to make you wait soooooooo long, but I think it would be a petty reason to not do it.

Degrades the reward for doing the much more difficult mode, divides the raiding community, no ‘transition’ or ‘training’ for the normal mode functionality…

It doesn’t degrade the reward in any meaningful way. If it does degrade the reward for you then I don’t respect your reasons for feeling that way, and do not believe that your feelings on the matter should trump the feelings of those that don’t have those rewards at all.

As for “dividing the community,” all I can say is, “if you love someone, let them go. If they don’t return, they were never yours to begin with.” If easy mode raiding in any way reduces the population of the existing raids, then those players were never yours to begin with, and they are happier for the change.

And as for the “no training” part, we’ve been around and around on it, I know for a fact it would help me, I fully believe it would help others, many of you disagree, and fine, whatever, but even if it does end up serving zero training function, that is not the priority for having it in the first place.

Yep, that’s exactly why you are demanding an easier mode.

I’ve given two reasons why I am demanding an easier mode. You keep insisting that only one of them matters to me. That is why you’re wrong.

I’ve already said that, just as I’ve always said that it’s not relevant to this discussion. If you want to talk about Glorious Hero acquisition, go to the PvP board.

You didn’t before until I brought it up, against your own words here:

I didn’t bring it up here because it isn’t relevant here, but I certainly have raised the point of Glorious Hero armor before in the past, and if you’d like to search the forums to back when it was first announced you can find those comments.

You have zero issue with potentially EQUALLY difficult, no, rather a much harder to get armor set in a mode that you clearly did some content for (The Ascension). And yet now you seek to undermine Raids because you have an issue with getting a set of armor in them. And somehow you deny that you don’t have a bias here?

Well look, it’s not like I’m ever going to get a piece of Glorious Hero armor, so it’s not like the issue is “I got mine, now I’m coming after yours,” I just don’t much care about getting Glorious Hero armor, so it’s not an issue for me. As I’ve said though, if you really want it for yourself, I would not stand in your way as you’re trying to stand in mine. And as I said, I worked hard for my Ascension, but I would welcome any move they made to make it more available to other players.

I am consistently in favor of any move to make skins more available to those players who want them, but that does not mean that I personally fight for every possible skin evenly, nor do I think it should be a reasonable expectation that I would. It’s like if someone comes to you to support a charity, and your comeback is “yeah, but why aren’t you supporting this other charity, you hypocrite?”

There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.

That’s you not disregarding a kind of armor that matches the exact scenario stated above? Because it certainly sounds like only when the reward is something you actually want will you care about how to acquire it.

Correct, it is not. I was making the point that GH armor was the only example of armor harder to get than Envoy’s, and it was only a minimal visual difference from the much easier to acquire Hero’s armor. I was NOT saying that I agreed with their choice to make GH armor that difficult to acquire, just that I did not personally see it as a big deal, given the minor differences.

How about this as a compromise then, they make alternate methods available to acquire Envoy and Experimental armors as we’ve seen them, either through easy mode raids or some other element of content entirely, but only raiders are allowed to have “Glorious Envoy” armor, which is identical to the existing ones, but covered in glitter?

Or, and this would be a great sacrifice but I’m prepared to make it in the name of peace, the raid Envoy armor could be like the ones they’ve already shown, while the non-raid Envoy armor would be the same, but without the totally awesome spikes on the shoulders, elbows, and calves?

That’s still holding a double-standard. You are only making these arguments to suit your own wants, without regard for other players. It’s quite definitively the ‘GIVE IT TO ME’ Attitude that once you are satisfied, who cares about anyone else?

Everyone has priorities, there’s no shame in that. I see you spending a lot of time trying to make sure that people who want easy mode raids don’t get what they want, but that doesn’t make you a hypocrite for not also spending the time to crush other people’s dreams. You’re free to obstruct the goals of as few or as many people as you care to. There is no obligation on you to crush ALL dreams or none of them.

The value of the other things you have suggested is far less, you would get nearly everyone I know on board with Legendary Armor elsewhere, instead of the insistent posts repeating the same thing ad infinitum.

That’s the Fractal backpack, which we haven’t even been talking about. But ok, let’s get on that then, alternate locations for Envoy Armor (because in the past a LOT of people seemed to take issue with that for various reasons), but that’s for a different discussion. The idea of easy mode raiding, however, is a separate issue, and one I’d like to see continue even if they were to mail every player Envoy armor for Wintersday.

THAT. That is why we will always have an issue. Because your arguments have always been for your wants.

As have yours. We each speak for ourselves. I fully believe that what I want in this would make a lot of other players happy, and have said repeatedly that if it would only make me happy then it’s not something they should do. I don’t see how that’s any different than your position on the matter, we just disagree over how many people we believe it would make happier, and/or the amount that we care whether those people are happier or not.

Ok, easy fix then. Lets go the other way with this argument….make raids, dare I say it, HARDER! Yup, make a oh I dunno, say, Heroic mode, and have the special armor/rewards associated with such tied to completing them in that mode?

“You just care about the rewards!!!”

No, seriously, if you want a harder mode, then sure, they can make that. It’s not the priority, since the existing mode is already much harder than the baseline for the rest of the game and an easier mode should come first, but after they get to work on an easy mode, they can work on a hard mode too. It should definitely not have unique skins to it, obviously, but it can have titles or nametag flair or whatever so that people can show off their virtual codpieces.

I’d say i was surprised but after those horse has been beaten, broken, brought out back, shot in the face, and beaten again it comes down to the same 4 posters claiming there’s something wrong.

I’m afraid it’s pretty much inevitable at this point, until such time as ANet actually adds meaningful content to the discussion by letting us know what they are working on to correct these flaws in the existing raid structure, and why. With the current lack of information, all we can do is speculate among ourselves.

It’s sad that the thread moved from an objective state of what are raid today and what are the mistake perceived by the players into a financial state debate about the game and an argument between a player that act like masochist elitist (enjoying wipe is masochism! yes it is!) and a greedy player (Sometime you must understand that the journey is what’s important, not what lie at the end of the road).

My opinion, that I already voiced, is that the raid lack originality and pigeonhole the player into the same old dps meta. What raids need is mechanisms that rely less on what the differents professions can give to a party and more on ambiant tools. GW2 is doing the same thing than their concurrents in raid and honnestly I’ve been long tired of the boss bashing logic emphasizing on killing before being killed. This kind of design is “ok” if it’s not overused but what’s sad is that it feel like this is the only way they know how to design an encounter.

Now, what’s done is done. Each new wings disappointed me by their design (not that the fight are not challenging but they do not ask us to think outside the box and force us to stick on the boring basis of each professions). I can live with these raid wings like they are now, but I want to be able to expect a little bit of originality in futur content.

Please just stop with the boring designs with more aoe more “kill before being killed!”. Design us less “killing content”! Every single thing should not end up in a killing spree. It’s often a lot more challenging to preserve a life than to end it.

Dadnir.5038:

(enjoying wipe is masochism! yes it is!) <> (Sometime you must understand that the journey is what’s important, not what lie at the end of the road).

Love the contradiction within one sentence. What’s the point of a boss that just rolls over to hand out his loot? The best bosses have always been those which were complex and required the raid weeks to months before we mastered them.

“The best bosses have always been those which were complex and required the raid weeks to months before we mastered them.”

Now thats raiding!! Raid team, takes many weeks to just get to Boss let alone kill it….many wipes, go back and try again.
Not do a pug once a week to get full clear and be done….

Don’t forget that mastering and killing a Raid Boss are two different Things but I agree. The next Bosses should be much harder and require more Effort to take them down. Like for the World first Teams, wiping for a few hundred Times before getting it done.

But TBH if the first Raid of GW2 would like that, with Bosses on Mythic Archimonde Level in Terms of difficulty, it would be too much of a culture Shock. The first Raid is there to introduce GW2 Players into Raiding, it don’t need to be really difficult, its Challenging but you can still mess up a few Things without wiping the entire Raid and I think the second one will also more like getting People more comfortable with Raiding but then Anet should amp up the difficulty of the next Raids

11/12/2016 – November 11 Patch Notes

Fixed Forum Bug, Thread should now show the Posts.

Obligatory Server Crash Fix otherwise we can’t call it Patch Notes.

“Mythic Archimonde Level in Terms of difficulty”…yeah!! Ouchies!!! tough fight that one. But I agree with what you said…it was a shock to me that GW2 raids weren’t like those mentioned. I was expecting some serious wipes, and have had a few but they are due more to people not mastering mechanics than the Boss being really tough. Sab for me is a stinker yet others blow past her, go figure!