Guild Wars 2

Long post incoming. Ive spent the weekend thinking about this and most of this morning arranging those ideas and thoughts into this post. I know there will be people out there who hate and disagree with every word, but I believe these things need to be said. I would also welcome ongoing dialogue about these topics. For many of us, raids are not in a good place and changes are needed.

As of this week, raiding has been in GW2 for approximately one year. Nothing has created more ill will and division in the game more than raids. Recent forum activity is the best evidence of that.

Where the issue started
I think we need to take a realistic look at how raiding is implemented in this game, the good and the bad, and then – hopefully – inspire some real and productive discussion about how they can better fit into the current game without their current negative baggage.

The problem, imo, started with marketing. Part of the goal with Heart of Thorns was obviously to bring new players into Guild Wars 2. They should be commended for that goal, but I think their efforts were a little too shortsighted. 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, they decided to implement raids. The word raid itself evoked visions of hardcore experiences from other games – players who had bled fighting Yogg Saron or Ragnaros in WoW would see it as something new in the game.

Adding raids was a good idea in theory, but I don’t think the developers ever looked past the marketing appeal to consider what raids would do to the game – or to consider anything other than the tired raid model used by EVERY OTHER MMO out there. Bringing in new players is good – but not when it changes fundamental philosophies that long-term existing players have come to count on. In trying to expand their market appeal, they forgot their base. Theory was good, implementation was severely lacking.

Playstyle diversity and the road to boring play
Probably the biggest impact the current raiding model is having on the game is what I call the Stepford Wife syndrome. Balancing an entire game mode around the top end performing professions inevitably leads to the majority of players playing – and even eventually looking (because of Legendary Armor) – the same. Right now, you either play to the meta or you have to struggle horrendously to even find a group to raid with.

My biggest worry now is that, to fix that, Anet will make the problem even worse. The only real way – in the current model – they can ensure every profession has an equal place is to make them all equal. Give more professions access to alacrity, might stacking, comparable dps/utility balance, etc. The problem with that approach is that the end result is rangers who play like necromancers and engineers who play like elementalists – there would be no unique feel to the professions any longer. That would be a major blow to the game.

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(continued from above)

Broken storylines
Another big issue with the current raiding model is the inevitable fragmentation of the storyline – and disenfranchising of lore/story focused players. I know a lot of raiders disagree, but – for me – the first raid was the introduction of the story in Season Three – and definitely our primary encounter with the new antagonists.

There are a lot of people who love this game primarily for the story experience. Making it difficult to experience that story inevitably leads to disenfranchised players.

And, even worse, I do not see it getting better in the future. I really don’t know how they can use the current raid model to tell part of the Tyrian story without excluding many people who actually enjoy the story. I realize some devs tried to justify it by saying “you can go into a cleared instance,” or by adding the story as text descriptions to an NPC, but both of these ignore a simple truth – we do not want to be told the story, we want to experience the story (we are playing a video game, not reading a book or watching a movie).

Watering down non-raid content
This one is a little more subtle, but is still an issue. By calling raids “challenging” it seems as if they are giving themselves permission to forgo adding any challenge to the rest of the open world game. Even the so called open world raid bosses – the unbound guardian and sloth in Ember Bay – are jokes. The sloth especially is a pale shadow of its raid counterpart – with ZERO mechanics other than a timer (in the form of the slublings it eats). It just moves in a circle and takes damage. To say that they are giving players a taste of raiding in that fight is beyond insulting. The same is true of the lackluster fights in the living story steps they have given us so far (the latest was just a zerg of mobs similar to most open world events).

Just as bad – and probably one of the absolute worst things that came from raiding – is that Arenanet has completely abandoned other PVE group content above 5 players. A recent thread on Reddit showed us that there are zero plans for new guild missions in the foreseeable future. Given the popularity of missions when they first came out (much more than raids, imo), that is unforgivable.

Fracturing the playerbase
Yes, raids are controversial. They split the pve community into groups – one of which looks down on anything other than raiding as “kiddie content” and the other that is envious of the experience (fight mechanics, story, etc) of raids. Yes, they could partake in that content as easily as any raider, but in the current model, that means potentially compromising and changing the things they love most about their characters and how they play (they petty much have to subscribe to the Stepford Wife program in order to keep raids from being frustrating and un-fun). When your primary source of joy in the game comes from making your character unique and your own (or at least achieving the illusion of such), asking players to give that up is a really big deal.

As recently as two weeks ago, I saw this fracturing – the ill feeling between divergent groups – devastate a sister guild’s raid group. While the guild (which has more than 400 members and been around since almost the beginning of GW1, btw) remains strong, it will feel the ill will and discord from that implosion for a really long time.

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.

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.

Please respect each others’ opinions and need for open conversation
I realize this was a long rant – and some will dismiss it out of hand as unnecessary or stupid, but it is something that I do care a lot about (obviously). It is something that we need to make sure developers and other players alike are aware of and can weigh in on – for as long as it is an issue to people in the game.

I like what you said.

Personally I find the issue of what the challenge is. Fractals does it better, where the mechanics are harder and more punishing than just a DPS race under a timer. That’s just my thoughts and really hope they take it into consideration for future raid content.

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

We had so many options in the past before HoT came out, everything was cool but now it isn’t, I have to play Fresh Air Tempest or Chronotank because if I don’t I’m getting rejected by people in raids, guild or PUGs.

I already said it but they have to get back to dungeons and do more fractals without previous content rehash (Chaos Isle is cheap to me, the only new content was Thaumanova Reactor in 2013).

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

They’re beatable without those… People are too blinded by the meta to do other things though. I haven’t read a single guide or watched a single video about raid content so I don’t know metas or anything when I would raid.

Warcry.1596:

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

They’re beatable without those… People are too blinded by the meta to do other things though. I haven’t read a single guide or watched a single video about raid content so I don’t know metas or anything when I would raid.

This and also the legendary insights issue.

What dilemma is that?

Disagree.

Just going to point out why this is wrong in as short a post as i can.

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

2) Story…. Wow is this ever off the mark. The start of “season 3” actually happened long before this in the OOW storyline to save Demi Beetlestone from her own fathers attempted assassination plot. It’s furthered in season 2 and the raid doesn’t in any way give you more or less info as it is a self contained side story.

3) Balancing has and will always be a top down approach. This isn’t because of some voodoo it’s because you always want to trim down the power while showing some love to some of the middle of the table skills so that the relative power of each becomes roughly even.

4) The only thing fracturing the players are those that feel the forums need to have the same horse beat to death, or actively go out of there way not to be team players. Frankly put there’s still plenty of content for them to enjoy if that’s their preferred playstyle.

Now then, is there a problem with Raids ? In my own opinion, no. There is however a problem with community tools and guilds still. I’m still adamant that adding a proper training mode (not easy, not rewards based) but strictly training is need. Additionally, finding a guild needs to be more fluid than check the forums or go to the guilds 3rd party site or read their map chat spam.

Fixing those will move players to where they want to be to do the content they desire to do, with people who are of the same playstyle/timezone/mindset they are and will completely shut down the outcry of but im a solo player and LFG never picks me because Q reason.

Awesome post! The previous 10 “raid rant” posts on the front page went a bit dull, so now we can go around in circles again in this brand new rant post!

I loled at the part where you say that “open world raid bosses” are not challenging enough. After so many requests to dumb down raid to an open world level where you can just 1-1-1 to win, the community finally got what it wanted, and it’s not challenging enough?

TexZero.7910:

Disagree.

Just going to point out why this is wrong in as short a post as i can.

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

2) Story…. Wow is this ever off the mark. The start of “season 3” actually happened long before this in the OOW storyline to save Demi Beetlestone from her own fathers attempted assassination plot. It’s furthered in season 2 and the raid doesn’t in any way give you more or less info as it is a self contained side story.

3) Balancing has and will always be a top down approach. This isn’t because of some voodoo it’s because you always want to trim down the power while showing some love to some of the middle of the table skills so that the relative power of each becomes roughly even.

4) The only thing fracturing the players are those that feel the forums need to have the same horse beat to death, or actively go out of there way not to be team players. Frankly put there’s still plenty of content for them to enjoy if that’s their preferred playstyle.

Now then, is there a problem with Raids ? In my own opinion, no. There is however a problem with community tools and guilds still. I’m still adamant that adding a proper training mode (not easy, not rewards based) but strictly training is need. Additionally, finding a guild needs to be more fluid than check the forums or go to the guilds 3rd party site or read their map chat spam.

Fixing those will move players to where they want to be to do the content they desire to do, with people who are of the same playstyle/timezone/mindset they are and will completely shut down the outcry of but im a solo player and LFG never picks me because Q reason.

Thank you for disagreeing and debating in a level headed manner. You bring up some really good points, some of which I definitely agree with.

You are right that there is no secret science to the balance issue – it is something inherent in any MMO where this kind of content exists. I would counter by saying that I think Arenanet has done a better job of bringing variety between professions into the game while still keeping them playable and even competitive throughout the game. However, part of how they did that (for the first 3 years) was by taking it into account during content development as much as profession/build development.

Raids are really the first step – in PVE anyway – away from that approach, and while I believe implementing challenging content is important, I do not believe that it has to mirror what other games have done. The mechanics and systems exist in this game to implement gameplay that works differently – that truly (and realistically, keeping all things, including the community, in mind) offers the raiding experience to a wider array of playstyles. In fact, I think it is critical to the game mode’s long term success.

I respect that you disagree, and again, definitely respect that you do so in a civil manner.

Another Thought -

I think a decent subpoint for discussion is how they can better achieve that balance without watering down the different professions. For example:

- boon sharing between 10 players. While this doesn’t solve everything, it would lessen the demand for doubling up on professions like chronos and warriors.

There are a lot of aspects to this conversation – to how we can make raids more appealing and less frustrating for players.

I also think a lot of people would be very interested in how you would see the training mode working. I know I would.

Finally, to the point of challenge in open world. Yes, there is a cap on how challenging it can be (although I stand by my comments that they are currently too easy) – but, regardless, the mechanics need to at least be INTERESTING (which the sloth in Ember Bay definitely is not).

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

I think this stems more from players perceptions of what a raid should be. GW2 arguably tried to step out of the box and have their raids not require a holy trinity. The problem here is any non GW2 players who are raiders already have a perception of what a raid should be and what classes they will need to succeed.

In my opinion, this is why we see such a heavy reliance on the meta. A typical raid requires 1-2 tanks, 1-2 healers and the rest is filled with dps when talking about raids in other games. So now, when those raiders come into GW2 and see there isn’t a trinity, they try to use the meta to prop up a pseudo trinity in its place – Chrono (tank), druid (healer), warrior (buffbot dps) – to maintain efficiency.

Another thing that I think hurts raids in general is that they are such a fundamental shift in the “everyone can play anything” philosophy players have been familiar with over the past 3 years. Now suddenly we have content that is vastly harder than anything ever put in game with skins, and rewards locked behind the mode. Not a big deal if you can get equivalent stuff by crafting or playing open world PvE/WvW/sPvP etc, but because raids don’t have that gear treadmill everyone is familiar with, players who can’t/won’t raid for whatever reason are feeling slighted. Skins are a big draw in a game that somehow has the nickname fashion wars… so when you gate legendary armor, white mantle skins etc behind an already controversial mode it’s no wonder people are upset.

Blaeys.3102:

(continued from above)

Broken storylines
Another big issue with the current raiding model is the inevitable fragmentation of the storyline – and disenfranchising of lore/story focused players. I know a lot of raiders disagree, but – for me – the first raid was the introduction of the story in Season Three – and definitely our primary encounter with the new antagonists.

There are a lot of people who love this game primarily for the story experience. Making it difficult to experience that story inevitably leads to disenfranchised players.

And, even worse, I do not see it getting better in the future. I really don’t know how they can use the current raid model to tell part of the Tyrian story without excluding many people who actually enjoy the story. I realize some devs tried to justify it by saying “you can go into a cleared instance,” or by adding the story as text descriptions to an NPC, but both of these ignore a simple truth – we do not want to be told the story, we want to experience the story (we are playing a video game, not reading a book or watching a movie).

Watering down non-raid content
This one is a little more subtle, but is still an issue. By calling raids “challenging” it seems as if they are giving themselves permission to forgo adding any challenge to the rest of the open world game. Even the so called open world raid bosses – the unbound guardian and sloth in Ember Bay – are jokes. The sloth especially is a pale shadow of its raid counterpart – with ZERO mechanics other than a timer (in the form of the slublings it eats). It just moves in a circle and takes damage. To say that they are giving players a taste of raiding in that fight is beyond insulting. The same is true of the lackluster fights in the living story steps they have given us so far (the latest was just a zerg of mobs similar to most open world events).

Just as bad – and probably one of the absolute worst things that came from raiding – is that Arenanet has completely abandoned other PVE group content above 5 players. A recent thread on Reddit showed us that there are zero plans for new guild missions in the foreseeable future. Given the popularity of missions when they first came out (much more than raids, imo), that is unforgivable.

These two are my main issues.

HoT brought us basically no challenging single player content at all. The original dungeons and Living World Season 1/2 achievements kind of filled that role, while remaining inclusive due to the ability to bring in other people to help if you really needed it.

Since Heart of Thorns, pretty much nothing at all has been added. We’ve had no new dungeons, barely any fractals, break bars that for a lot of classes can be near impossible to break solo where originally you could work them down to 1 stack of defiance and then save your last CC to interrupt a high impact attack (Mainly colossus rumblus, since Grast was kind of inconsistent), and the new Living Story achievements have been a complete joke.

Very well thought out post overall. Speaking as a non raider -

My biggest thought on raids is the time commitment involved. Its not a bad thing, it should take time to get rewards from raids and learn the fights ofc. Its more of the time to find groups to go with, especially if you are new to raiding and will make mistakes. Everywhere I hear/read about getting started with raids, they all talk about the time commitment the first few times. An hour+ to find a group of semicompetent players, and then a few hours trying for the kill, in the end to possibly wipe anyway. Wiping doesn’t bother me. Spending time learning the mechanics doesn’t bother me, but the time to find a group is possibly the biggest barrier to me.

I don’t usually have that much time to play GW2 at a time, and when I do I prefer to not waste an hour or more trying to find a group that won’t kick me when I make a mistake or if I don’t have any LI yet. If ANet could somehow do something to fix this (even though I know they can’t), it would be great and would motivate me to actually raid, along with a lot of other people I imagine.

I disagree with a lot of points in the OP, but that’s fine.

• In my opinion, raids have been nothing but positive for the game. A number of people in my guild, for instance, actually log in more than 5 minutes a week now because raids are their favorite in-game content. ANet should consider raids a great success.
• ANet should never make open world content hard. Look at HoT’s marginally medium difficulty maps and the level of complaints they engendered. Open world content and story content should always be easy.
• ANet’s current tangential story approach to raids is great, and I hope they continue it going forward.
• Complaints about the “meta” are crazy in my opinion; I have beaten every single raid boss with non-meta builds and non-meta compositions in every single patch context since they’ve come out. If you’re worried about pub groups, there is literally nothing ANet could do to get rid of the idea of a “meta” from the way players play games.

Warcry.1596:

Personally I find the issue of what the challenge is. Fractals does it better, where the mechanics are harder and more punishing than just a DPS race under a timer. That’s just my thoughts and really hope they take it into consideration for future raid content.

I yolo fractals daily and it’s a snoozefest because of how easy it is. Raids actually maintain my attention because single mistakes can kill teams. They are already heading in the right direction with the changes to Swampland by making the content more raid-like and actually providing an introduction to the complexity of raid mechanics in a dialed back context.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I disagree with a lot of points in the OP, but that’s fine.

• In my opinion, raids have been nothing but positive for the game. A number of people in my guild, for instance, actually log in more than 5 minutes a week now because raids are their favorite in-game content. ANet should consider raids a great success.
• ANet should never make open world content hard. Look at HoT’s marginally medium difficulty maps and the level of complaints they engendered. Open world content and story content should always be easy.
• ANet’s current tangential story approach to raids is great, and I hope they continue it going forward.
• Complaints about the “meta” are crazy in my opinion; I have beaten every single raid boss with non-meta builds and non-meta compositions in every single patch context since they’ve come out. If you’re worried about pub groups, there is literally nothing ANet could do to get rid of the idea of a “meta” from the way players play games.

Warcry.1596:

Personally I find the issue of what the challenge is. Fractals does it better, where the mechanics are harder and more punishing than just a DPS race under a timer. That’s just my thoughts and really hope they take it into consideration for future raid content.

I yolo fractals daily and it’s a snoozefest because of how easy it is. Raids actually maintain my attention because single mistakes can kill teams. They are already heading in the right direction with the changes to Swampland by making the content more raid-like and actually providing an introduction to the complexity of raid mechanics in a dialed back context.

I agree with a lot of what you say – and, despite the inherent negative tone in my original post, I do believe there have been some positive aspects to the introduction of raiding.

The biggest, by far, is that raiding has reinvigorated a portion of the playerbase – and probably even brought some new people into the game. I see that as clearly as I see the issues I raise above.

As far as the meta is concerned, you are right that every profession can beat every raid boss currently in the game – on multiple builds. I don’t think anyone that has actually raided believes differently. The problem is, for the average player or new raider, choosing to play off meta will almost always prove to be a major handicap – partly because of the disparity between the top and bottom professions in terms of performance/utility and partly because of the general attitude of the game’s population (especially pugs). Yes, we can make the statement that raids are possible on on classes, but the reality in game isn’t quite that black or white.

As far as open world difficulty, as I said above, I may have used the wrong language. There is definitely a limit to how challenging open world can be – I should have said “interesting.” Unfortunately, their attempts to reproduce raid bosses in the open world (most notably the sloth) resulted in an extremely boring encounter with almost no mechanics whatsoever (I will never understand why they didn’t at least try to bring some of the mechanics to the raid fight out with that sloth).

Thanks for calling me out on those points and continuing the discussion.

About raids themselves: Doing away with enrage timers would solve most issues by allowing people to cheese every encounter with 10 minstrel tempests and taking 40 min to down VG, but it has been somehow implied that having a limited timer in a game that already pushes for full damage builds (every defense is active rather than passive i.e toughness is kitten) is absolutely necessary to keep the content “challenging”. I don’t see how this would keep qT and other optimization specialized guilds in coming up with the very same meta and the very same rotations we already have, while everyone else would just bulk up and do their weekly raids however they wanted to.

About open world: It is not like the timer matters for most fights anyway; you die long before Sabetha can even enrage due to all the flak going around, Sloth builds up on millions of Slublings, etc. There is absolutely no reason for the DPS check. The mechanics could and should also be reused on open world; Bosses like Axemaster in Verdant Brink already have CC checks, it would do no harm to have green circle-ish mechanics and fixation on open world bosses, as well as volatile poison checks, etc. It would make fights funnier, which is a better word than “challenging”, as it probably is less offensive to the ones seeking to differ themselves from “open world people”, and would also get everyone to learn. Furthermore, I don’t remember ever seeing complaints about nerfing open world content before, other than the Chak Gerent when it was bugged; I don’t believe people ever went mad about open world PvE being hard, let alone to the level people go mad over raids.

About buffing 10 people at once: This would enforce a meta of 3 support classes and 7 tempests, stacked for maximum DPS. It would allow more people to sucessfully complete the encounters because the DPS checks would be that more lenient, but it would not do anything to actually change the fact that it’s a DPS check instead of a mechanics check (it would actually undo many mechanics, as KC for example could potentially die regardless of caring about rifts, and Sloth would not come into one single lap).

About rewards: I agree that this is indeed all about having rewards locked behind raids. When you claim that people can get stuff elsewhere, you have to remember Anet’s own claim that developing armor is the most time intensive work they have, in detriment of literally everything else. So this is the bulk of their work, and guess which content is going to be graced with legendary armor first? I wouldn’t mind if there was no legendary armor to strive for, and they instead released 9 or 10 new sets across every other piece of content, but they chose a single legendary set for raids, and so it is natural that people want their slice of the cake. It is also natural that they want to keep getting cake slices the same way they have been doing for years already, which is going into content with whatever build they wanted and eventually getting it. Like many others who do raid and get their LI’s, I don’t believe cake should be given so freely and actually enjoy what raids have to offer, but I don’t think it’s somehow “wrong” or impossible to understand, that people in general are surprised by the sudden shift in content.

EDIT: I have perhaps overlooked that people do complain about HoT content being hard to navigate; these are not complaints about the content though, what most people find annoying is how they can’t run around without being CC’d to hell and back and crippled and what not. Another common complaint about PvE is that many champions are redundant: current event ones and some that spawn on HoT have no reason to be champion quality because there is no great mass of players doing them anymore. So what people really want is for these specific encounters to be demoted to Elite or something similar. This is by no means in discord with buffing encounters like Sloth and Unbound Guardian that are still popular and done by many everyday, and would remain so even after introducing more mechanics, I believe.

I can touch on a few other things later, but I heavily disagree with your assessment of supposed story link and I want to get it out of the way first. To quote a previous response I made on that topic:

Here’s the best indicator that proves the raid is inconsequential to the story.

Pretend the Forsaken Thicket never existed. Bloodstone Fen and the Living Story Season 3 Episodes play out exactly as they should have. No content lost, the notes still refer to key figures like Matthias who we will never meet, so on and so forth. Bennett will still give you the background on the non-existent raid area that’s somewhere nearby that no player will ever reach, but a group did go there and discover the events. He won’t ever actually refer to you being his savior as a nod for raiders who went into this raid, but just another group that did it.

Does the Living Story and Lore hold up 100% without Forsaken Thicket?

The answer will be yes, players might be curious still, there would be more intrique, perhaps speculation about what lies North of Verdant Brink. Hell we can go through a few dozen scenarios, maybe the community would consider that we would be heading north instead of south for the next map.

But, the Living Story lore does not need Forsaken Thicket, there are no glaring holes in the story, even things like the Lazarus Reveal would still be hinted through the notes we find in the Bloodstone Fen, and what Squad Leader Bennett mentions.

You are welcome to believe what you want, but the fact is that Bloodstone Fen still holds up 100% if Forsaken Thicket never existed.

Feel free to look into any tidbit of lore in the Fen, any of the notes and revelations about key figures you would find in the raid today. None of them have an impact on the Fen, Bennett who is the closest you will find, will not care in the hypothetical above, about. He will simply be someone who was there, and you were not part of this ‘side-story’.

Lazarus’s condition before the raid, and after the raid, remained the same. No one knew if he was alive or dead, that speculation was literally said at the end of the Forsaken Thicket.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Warcry.1596:

Personally I find the issue of what the challenge is. Fractals does it better, where the mechanics are harder and more punishing than just a DPS race under a timer. That’s just my thoughts and really hope they take it into consideration for future raid content.

I yolo fractals daily and it’s a snoozefest because of how easy it is. Raids actually maintain my attention because single mistakes can kill teams. They are already heading in the right direction with the changes to Swampland by making the content more raid-like and actually providing an introduction to the complexity of raid mechanics in a dialed back context.

I didn’t mean to make it sound like the raid was NOT challenging, I just think it’s challenging in the wrong way. The challenge is mostly artificial, and not due to the fight itself. I get WHY it’s that way, because due to time limits all 10 people need to do the thing (the thing being whatever mechanics are necessary for that particular fight) or it’s often no good, as opposed to in Fractals where, at least in terms of final bosses of each fractal, as long as one person is alive it is soloable. That’s my gripe, and I get bored with timers, it forces me to go quick and not enjoy myself because at one point in time for whatever reason it was decided that how quickly content is beaten is how you determine the skill of a player in “high end” content. I’m no record setter, I have no desire to be, if I was I wouldn’t play power necro in 99% of the content I play (the 1% being PvP). My goal is to beat content the way I enjoy, and so far I have, I just wish it were possible for others to as well =/

My take? ANet should never have catered raids to the convenience crowd. They should have been aimed at purpose-built groups of skilled players who like what the content entails. Many of the OP’s complaints hinge around the idea that raids should be as he envisions them while also being accessible to random groups of PuG’s. I freely admit that my attitude is enabled by my own belief that, in an MMO, some types of content are not for me, nor should they be.

I get that convenience raids are not going to go away, and thus neither will these complaints. However, I lament the trend in MMO’s that every thing has to be convenient. If players had to seek the like-minded to participate in raids, they could tailor the experience to their own liking. That takes work, though.

OP you are describing a predictable process . The New fresh content gets figured out after trying and discovering plenty of builds/comps/strats and it becomes a routine.

If you join a group that wants easy kills as part of a routine Yeah they wont like you playing a yolo build that you might enjoy and you will be a liability. Other groups that want to try stuff out would Welcome you though.

Also you are contributing the watered downed content to raids without sufficient evidence. I would argue the negative reactions to HOT maps are the reason. Moreover some of the most difficult open world maps and story achievements launched just before raids.

I just think you are to negative, even though there is room for improvement.

Blaeys.3102

Unfortunately, imo, Anet went into that discussion having already decided what raids in GW2 would look like

good, because if they would always listen to some people that dislike something others like and would try to appeal to every customer with all of the content they create, that would be horrible!

they create content for everyone – that does not mean that all content is for everyone, it means that there is content for everyone.

arenanet created raids because many players asked for challenging content.

there is content for pvp’ers, there is content for ppl that want to enjoy pvp in a large-environment (wvw) there is content for open world fans, there is content for small groups and there is content for casual guilds etcetcetc.

there is content for EVERYONE. but there was no challenging content (besides creating yourself a challenge by doing something in a hard way – like dungeons. those were a little challenging at release, but you could simply play 5 super tanky bearbow rangers to solve them without any effort, only speedrunning/soloing them was a challenge).

thats why raids got implemented. because players asked for it and it was missing in the game. they asked for content where you can’t simply put on a “easy mode” and 111 all enemies down.
it maybe wasn’t you that asked (obviously…), but many others.

sorry, but your attitude is a little bit egoistic. not everything has to be the way YOU like it. there are other people playing gw2 too, not everyone likes the same things

making all content appeal to everyone is nearly impossible. some will always like it, some will always dislike it. thats why they create different content that appeals to different players.

You are right that in the last year, there has been a lot of talk about content being too challenging, whether that is in open world or raids or fractals or any other pve content. However I believe that this is a product of psychology. People are a lot more likely to be vocal when they are unhappy about something. With HoT, a lot of content that is more challenging than vanilla gameplay was introduced. The people who enjoy this content are relatively quiet because they are happy. The people who don’t are loud.

I remember very clearly the discussions before HoT and how this was flipped around. At the time, dungeons and fractals were the hardest content, and for many of the players they were far too easy. The people who didn’t crave the challenge where quiet and the people who did were loud.

When I first went into an HoT beta, I got completely owned by a lone smokescale, and that excited me. When they announced new features of the expansion, I got excited but it was never enough to sell me on it because they hadn’t revealed what ‘Challenging Group Content’ was yet. So many people were just waiting to hear about that because that is what they were missing from this game and that is what they craved.

One of your assertions was that raids were created to bring new players in, and I disagree with that. They certainly might have attracted a few, but I think they were designed to keep the interest of a key demographic of players who were very vocal and dedicated to the game, but were losing interest because they needed a bigger challenge.

You did have some great points, but I think that when evaluating how healthy raids are for the game, there is a lot more to it. Raids have kept a very dedicated population interested, which has led to some very ingenious theorycrafting and some amazing builds that push the limits of what is possible. They have led to detailed build guides and strategies that are available to people who don’t want to craft their own builds. They have invigorated a number of in game communities with a fun activity to rally behind.

There is certainly kittenociated with raids, but that is not new to the game. Dungeon runs could be exclusive before. There were plenty of people selling fractal paths. Some of that translated to raids and may have gotten worse but I believe the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

Sigh, the mods just closed all these QQ topics and you open another one? You know as well as anyone that everything has been discussed before. I’m pretty sure devs skip this stuff these days. It’s the same few ppl saying the same stuff for the 1000th time.

Fluffy.1932:

You did have some great points, but I think that when evaluating how healthy raids are for the game, there is a lot more to it. Raids have kept a very dedicated population interested, which has led to some very ingenious theorycrafting and some amazing builds that push the limits of what is possible. They have led to detailed build guides and strategies that are available to people who don’t want to craft their own builds. They have invigorated a number of in game communities with a fun activity to rally behind.

I think you are 100% correct in this assessment and I am very glad you brought it up. Alongside the (imo) bad, raiding has brought a lot of good to the game as well. It’s important to discuss what is working as much as what may not be.

So do you think they should stop making raids or is there a way to make hard team content without causing these problems?

Seems like it either has to be easy enough for every build to work, which gets boring(open world)
Or there has to be hard endgame stuff that naturally create strict meta and trinity

Maybe there is another option which requires amazing balance, class design, and content design. But I think Anet is doing pretty well there so far.

Maybe the hardest content in the game should not be something where you organize teams based on builds. So if you have a bad build then only you suffer. aka make open world harder.

but not when it changes fundamental philosophies that long-term existing players have come to count on.

i am one of the long-term existing players, playing since the beta.
i was so glad that raids made it finally into the game, it was a stepping stone.

some people even came back because of raiding. for many of those long-term players it was already too late tho. i asked several of my ex-speedclear guys who enjoyed doing teamwork / soloing stuff / doing harder content…those who like having a challenge…

…guess what. most said it is way too late and they won’t come back now.

and just to say it again: it is not the raids fault that there is no other new content / harder content for in between normal stuff and raids, content for guilds, solo and whatever else there can be.

that + whatever the other guys already said….1000 times in 100 threads. its enough.
please close that topic off.

even a dead horse can’t take that many punches…it doesn’t even look like a horse anymore, its just a bloody pulp.

and tbh: anet knows that they kittened up the balance big time.
hopefully we see some changes in the future so it will get better again.

It’s a shame raid bosses were not designed to consider the player class complement the boss is fighting against in determining their fight tactics against the players. It’s time some AI (b-trees, neural net tactic tree, etc.) was actually put in MMOs rather than the 20 year old technology of stacked mechanics against the clock.

^

/15charsofblack

IonoI.3956:

So do you think they should stop making raids or is there a way to make hard team content without causing these problems?

Seems like it either has to be easy enough for every build to work, which gets boring(open world)
Or there has to be hard endgame stuff that naturally create strict meta and trinity

Maybe there is another option which requires amazing balance, class design, and content design. But I think Anet is doing pretty well there so far.

Maybe the hardest content in the game should not be something where you organize teams based on builds. So if you have a bad build then only you suffer. aka make open world harder.

I definitely don’t believe the answer is to stop making raids. And I even agree that the fights and encounters in the raids are interesting and fun. I just think there are issues that need to be kept in mind as raids are developed – such as profession and build diversity.

When it comes to that part of the GW2 experience, raids are not in a good place. The meta is too focused on a tiny number of professions and builds – and, whether people want to admit it or not, the meta is pretty much what raiding is all about now, especially for pugs.

The last thing I want to see is design decisions focused on that meta – or the pure math of raiding – destroy or even diminish the complexity and variety in this game, which could very easily happen. At the same time, I think something needs to change to bring more variety and options into raiding. I admit I don’t have a good solution to the issue – which is exactly why I think that it is worth discussing.

Blaeys.3102:

When it comes to that part of the GW2 experience, raids are not in a good place. The meta is too focused on a tiny number of professions and builds – and, whether people want to admit it or not, the meta is pretty much what raiding is all about now, especially for pugs.

Found the problem. Designing challenging content requires coordination and teamplay. Naturally those that want success will emulate what works….

Odd how those who want success, but want diversity, never seem to be the types to lead by their own merits ?

I can’t help but wonder why, or how many of these “meta” complaints would be solved if the “non-meta” crowd worked together for a change.

Warcry.1596:

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

They’re beatable without those… People are too blinded by the meta to do other things though. I haven’t read a single guide or watched a single video about raid content so I don’t know metas or anything when I would raid.

I don’t get how people who profess not to know anything about raids or care a hoot about raids, form opinions on how to beat them.

In general when designing a game, I’d try to make it less focused on passive numbers, and more on active abilities, usually referred to as utilities. for example blink, reflect, rise(necro) are utilities, while global boons like fury and quickness are too number focused.

gw2 has quite a few fun utilities across all classes, but they are just not as good as all the buffs like spotter, 25 might, fury, quickness, banners and so on. Your effectiveness in a fight should be more like pvp, where it matters what you do, and not what your stats are.

The duration of boons and buffs should be reduced. It should be impossible to keep any of them on 100% of the time. Instead, they should be used as part of a combo. basilisk venom is a good example: it increases the cc of your team only when you need it.

Many of the traits that give a dps increase should be replaced with something more class specific. Making a build shouldn’t be about how many +10 damage traits you can find, but more about which traits will be more useful. Damage buffs do nothing to make blocks, invis, blinks, pulls, or range any better.

A big part of build diversity comes from the pve encounter mechanics:
For example, what if there was a boss which moves around the room very fast, while stopping for a very short time at predictable spots(if the vg arena was 3x larger and vg moved 2x faster). With some good balance, you can have long range builds which can keep the boss in range most of the time while doing steady dps. You would also have high mobility builds which are able to keep up and do steady dps. There would also be high burst dps builds, who wait for the boss to stop moving to drop all their damage. In the end each of the 3 types does the same damage, but with very different playstiles. But in the current game the meta would be all ranged builds stacking in the center where they can stack every buff in the game with 100% uptime, because passive buffs are too strong.

summary:
classes and bosses should be designed so that your dps on the training golem has nothing to do with how effective you are in the rest of the game. After that, it should be balanced so that different builds do the same task in different ways, but with the same success.

Blaeys.3102:

…, but I believe these things need to be said. I would also welcome ongoing dialogue about these topics.

Aaaaand even before reading the post I already knew each of the things HAS BEEN said, at least a million times. I was right. Why do you keep making these posts?

For many of us, raids are not in a good place and changes are needed.

Because something doesn’t fit you personally, the developers are obliged to rework it so that you like it regardless of opinions of thousands of other players? I remember the times when gamers used to adapt to the games they play, instead of crying and whining until the developers make the game stupidly easy.

I’m starting to think none of these people even care about raids, they’re just bored to hell and spend their time trolling on forums, making up problems and then proposing how to solve these non-existent problems. If it wasn’t raids, they would surely find another topic they can beat to death and make 93164713177651 posts about.

My journey in raids was not easy but until now and overall I had so so much fun in raids.. Lots of laughers frustrations and satisfaction too upon killing each boss.
My last 9 months raids all purely pugs (weekly). The early days were with a few friends and other players whom I pick up along the way.
There been a lot of improvements done since raid was firstly introduced and the recent change to xera was great!! Making it more challenging. Thank you. I got my xera yesterday with pugs in second run without TS in a pug team. The fix for updraft and gliding in raids pteviously donr was good job too it helps tremendously for us with 400 average ping. The introduction of the LFG makes my pug raids so much easier than before. In the early days, I had to go to Facebook, forum and in game to recruit more players to fill up our raids roaster to 10 players so we have a team to train together. Now you can jump into any group and also making it easier to find players of the like to form long term training raids using the lfg. The lfg does work. I wouldn’t complain too much of what I get and I’m a happy customer.
Pug raids aren’t as easy life as those who has steady strong players team. The reason I hv to pug bcos I play when the other sleep. Still lfg has made it easier and possible for me. Some days it takes me 2 hours to clear all raid bosses .. Last week and this week wasn’t as good I spend 6 hours clearing all bosses (with breaks in between).. But omg it was still fun hehe. If I don’t clear the bosses I will try the next day but usually I get them on same day with pugs.
Yesterday I joined a group the leader kicked me out after asking can I play chrono I said no only druid tempest and necro. He kicked so that’s fine I just look for another bcos I’m not going to be able to play what he want. I don’t think I need to get upset over that small thing bcos my focus was a good team to clear raids and a team I can work well with. Majority of pugs are good. And in ts I don’t talk until at KC when I need to push core I will unmute my ts but usually speaks very little.
Raids is a different content it design for a certain group of people who can enjoy. Some times I go PvP or wvwvw for certain reason but there are ppl who camp there all the time bcos they enjoys that part of game.

Rising Dusk.2408:

• In my opinion, raids have been nothing but positive for the game. A number of people in my guild, for instance, actually log in more than 5 minutes a week now because raids are their favorite in-game content. ANet should consider raids a great success.

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.

I just wait for the new raid… i was late for the first… i don’t like a content when people start saying “learn the mechanics watch some videos on youtube”…. i’m fine skipping this one don’t read me wrong… i’m ok with all the raiders thoughts just it’s me that don’t like when things go this way… better wait a new content where all are newbs and where i “discover” new mechanics that one where i’ve to “learn” the mechanics “watching videos on youtube”… repeat: it is not a bad review about raids… just my personal thought and my personal reason of why i skip this first raid. I need to be like Colombo or Hernan Cortes: find a new land and kill all the native in there :P

Talindra.4958:

Raids is a different content it design for a certain group of people who can enjoy.

That is perfectly okay. As you have mentioned, there are other contents like that that are working fine. What is a problem is Anet making a lot of effort to make said content enticing also for people that definitely do not enjoy it.
That is what’s creating the division in the community, and what is generating all those threads.

Adding raids was a good idea in theory, but I don’t think the developers ever looked past the marketing appeal to consider what raids would do to the game – or to consider anything other than the tired raid model used by EVERY OTHER MMO out there.

Well said!

Honestly this is my main issue with GW2 raids : They are just a copy of what raids are in all other games. Each raid is merely a set of boss that you need to beat in a limited time. I’ll be rash but, as of this moment I’ve seen nothing “new” in the raid content that’s delivered in GW2.

I’ve always thought that the enraged timer is a nosense that break immersion and could be replaced by different mechanism that make the fight equally harder and logic.
If anything, as time pass, anything and anyone should lose some of their fighting abilities.

Another thing that irk me is this will to persistently design boss encounter in a way that player use personnal dps to kill every single boss… Come on! My sword look like a toothpick in front of the boss, Should I really be able to kill it with that? Can’t we have a fight design where we need to lead a boss to a trap? a fight design where we need to build siege weapon and protect them to take down a boss? Couldn’t we have some fight where we need to use some tools to keep a boss on level ground? Can’t we have a boss fight where an almost invincible boss ponce at us while slowly burning it’s own life?

It seem that we just can’t have originality. We are set to challenge each boss into their home turf, into their arena where they hold all their might. It seem that small fry all think that their boss just don’t need their help even when we are 10 against 1 or when they do, they seem to try to kill their boss at the same time than us by destroying the area where the boss trapped himself due to mechanisms…

I’m not saying that the current encounter are fondamentally poor in design but they feel to conventional. There is no diversity in these encounter, it’s just “learn the lethal mechanism and unleash your dps so that we don’t hit the time limit!” I think that focusing on this patern is what make raids boring. Ideally, they should create raid where each encounter ask for the players to focus on something different. Be it :
- killing the boss before thing turn ugly (what we got atm)
- force the boss to slowly kill himself
- survive in a dire situation until thing turn into your favor
- pin down a flying boss with external tool so that you can deal with it
… etc.
Each of these concepts can be done in different manner and have a deadly potential that is worth a raid encounter. Each of these concepts ask something different from the player which is not the “assassination setup” that we are stuck into thanks to the wow history.

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

We had so many options in the past before HoT came out, everything was cool but now it isn’t, I have to play Fresh Air Tempest or Chronotank because if I don’t I’m getting rejected by people in raids, guild or PUGs.

I already said it but they have to get back to dungeons and do more fractals without previous content rehash (Chaos Isle is cheap to me, the only new content was Thaumanova Reactor in 2013).

I have said this since way back, and its a lot of the reason I don’t raid. Now, are they bad….dunno, having done several when doing them they are fun, its just getting into them is all. That’s what needs to be fixed.

Blaeys.3102:

“snip”

I would give it a +10 if it was possible! Well put mate. Yea, there will be haters but hopefully productive ones.

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:

1. Make sure that it’s not too disruptive to normal play. Set it off to the side so that players who don’t want to do it can get on with their normal play experience. Don’t require absolutely stacked up maps in order to stand a reasonable chance of success, instead scale the needs of the content to the people actively participating. The “attunement” model used in Fall of LA and Silverwastes is good for this, design it so that attuned players count towards scaling, non-attuned layers do not (but also get no rewards and cannot participate until they do attune).

2. Design the challenge to NOT be around whether the overall group succeeds, but rather about personal score. If you have dozens of players, over whom you have no real control, it’s unreasonable to design the encounter so that if not everyone works together perfectly, the entire thing collapses and nobody gets anything. The minimum bar for overall group success needs to be very low. “But where’s the challenge in that?!” Well the challenge is in some measure of personal contribution, challenging tasks that a player can choose to accomplish that up the difficulty but also the reward.

For example meleeing the Golem MKII is considerably more risky than ranging him, so why not have some stacking score bonus on you whenever you are within 600 range of his center, resulting in better reward at the end, and maybe some titles or other perks if you do it well?

Alternately, you can have an encounter where there are multiple tasks that need doing, some just zerging, some requiring personal skill and timing, and the latter offer higher individual perks.

3. When you do implement “challenge” rewards, you need to not alienate the players who don’t want challenge. They can’t be things exclusive to that challenge. Completing the challenge objectives should provide more reward, and maybe shorter paths to fancy unique rewards, but the more casual roles of the encounter still get the same types of loot, just less of it, and would still have a longer term path to acquiring the same rewards. Like say the challenging version would have a decent chance of dropping some unique item, and a large chunk of a currency that could be used to buy it, while the more casual players would still get a little currency. Like this is not an ideal example because the encounter is still not that hard, but say in Ember Bay, there was a cool unique item for 5,000 Petrified Wood, but if you melee the Jade Armor long enough then you not only get a chance of that item dropping, but also get 50 Petrified Wood each time (but probably a separate currency specific to items of this type).

Following those rules, I think you could make open world content that would be challenging to those that enjoy challenge, without alienating those who do not.

Also, one system that might work with this, if they can work the kinks out, is the new “infinite heart” system. I often use the EB Dominator fight as a quick way to complete the local Heart Quest, but what if it were the ONLY way to complete it? What if every task related to filling the bar could only be done during the event, different tasks filled it more, and if you failed to fill it, you’d need to wait for the next cycle, or maybe get nothing at all and it resets. Maybe have several tiers to it, each harder to fill, so if you wanted to max it out you’d need to do the hardest tasks, while if you just wanted to play casual you could diligently clear the first tier and get less reward.

Now obviously used in this way it shouldn’t be a “heart,” it shouldn’t be a part of map completion or anything, but the basic mechanic of “do certain things, bar increments, get a prize when it fills” is a great personal reward mechanism.

Dadnir.5038:

…

…

I like your ideas to mix it up a little even if I am not usually someone to dislike a mostly offensive team requirement and even the timers. We certainly need some new ideas.

My main concern is the balancing issue with an encounter where personal damage plays close to no role at all.
People min-max the kitten out of everything as we know. Parties fully geared in defensive gear, with even more healing thrown in, would either turn it into a joke or force the developers to balance the encounter around them which then meant said encounter would be close to impossible with different gear.
You’d essentially only change one debatably dumb meta for another. The current meta actually looks more versatile and open compared to something like that.

Personally, I would like to see a high toughness requirement for the tank. There should be a lot of damage that can not be avoided by a load of defensive tools such as provided to a mesmer.
This would then also require some good constant healing rather than burst healing. Some classes can even outperform a druid without too much trouble there. Burst healing is a totally different story of course.
They could then go with the idea that our puny weapons simply do not damage a huge enemy to noticeable degree but instead of having cannons or something similar give us some way to enlarge two or three of our players. It would be up to those guys to perform the PDS part close to perfection during the buff phase. It would be a huge let down to me if there was absolutely no requirement for any of the plalyer to even know a half way effective damage rotation.
I simply would not like an encounter where actual class skills play no role in damaging an enemy or avoiding damage from said enemy. My current favorite of all of the boss is Slothazor because of the requirement to use reflects and pulls on top of everything else.

Dadnir.5038:

Another thing that irk me is this will to persistently design boss encounter in a way that player use personnal dps to kill every single boss… Come on! My sword look like a toothpick in front of the boss, Should I really be able to kill it with that? Can’t we have a fight design where we need to lead a boss to a trap? a fight design where we need to build siege weapon and protect them to take down a boss? Couldn’t we have some fight where we need to use some tools to keep a boss on level ground? Can’t we have a boss fight where an almost invincible boss ponce at us while slowly burning it’s own life?

It seem that we just can’t have originality. We are set to challenge each boss into their home turf, into their arena where they hold all their might.

(part cut here to save space)

Ideally, they should create raid where each encounter ask for the players to focus on something different. Be it :
- killing the boss before thing turn ugly (what we got atm)
- force the boss to slowly kill himself
- survive in a dire situation until thing turn into your favor
- pin down a flying boss with external tool so that you can deal with it
… etc.
Each of these concepts can be done in different manner and have a deadly potential that is worth a raid encounter. Each of these concepts ask something different from the player which is not the “assassination setup” that we are stuck into thanks to the wow history.

+1 to this, couldn’t have said it better myself. Also your starting points on suggestions seems to closely mirror some previous-gen console games such as Shadow of the Colossus, I really liked the way some of those fights were designed bc they forced u to think outside the box and come up with solution rather than focus on dps or rotations to exclusion of all else. They also had really captivating opening scenes and original mechanics that you really had to use ur intuition and figure out for yourself rather than be told what to do or be forced to look at guides to understand them (or this would be used as last resort than the go-to option).

Just to offer some common and similar themes in that title I mentioned that seems to mirror what u said:

• aiming with bow and shooting arrow at vulnerable spots on a colossal giant, forcing him to be momentarily incapacitated and go into a crouch position whereupon u could then climb on his back and progress till the highest point (back of his head).
• boldly leading a charging stone dog creature in a maneuver that lead him to bash his head through a solid wall, thus stunning him momentarily.
• somehow climbing on top of a huge winged avian creature that tries to shake you off and discover vulnerable points on its body that lets u do lethal dmg to it. To add to this, you could periodically have gusts of wind that knock players off, as well as having minions spawn and have a forced fight phase using the creature’s enormous backside and winged platforms as the staging area. In between these phases you can introduce mechanics that throw u off (as mentioned) or require others to dodge at right time to prevent them from losing balance and falling to their death.

Another scenario I could envision (not entirely sure if it’s completely my idea), is what if there was a boss that had rampage mode or something similar. Players could would need to use stability since they would be thrown around like ragdolls otherwise, but even doing so they would eat a substantial amt of dmg, which would be unavoidable or even unhealable. The only way to pacify the boss or get him to take a break from his rampage mode would be for some players to get to specific locations in directions he was heading and use some sort of mechanism to shine a light in his eyes at the right moment, that would blind him and leave him incapacitated and vulnerable for a short period of time. Again, just an idea how to make fights intuitive rather than mostly linear as some of them are like kc, trio, and escort encounter atm.

Another point u made that I don’t necessarily agree with, where u say challenging bosses on their home arena is not a good idea. I would say it’s something unavoidable, even dungeons like arah force u to explore an area and fight bosses on their native turf where they are at their most lethal and cunning. The discomfort and sense of uneasiness is placed squarely on the mantle of the adventurer stepping into unfamiliar ground, as it should be. Otherwise what’s the challenge if it’s not in beating the adversary at his own game..

LuxAeterna.4621:

Warcry.1596:

Amineo.8951:

My complaint about raids is how it destroys the idea of the “no trinity” in GW2, because now there’s one: Chronomancer, PS Warrior and Druid. Basically if you don’t have these, you’re not getting anywhere aside the easy encounters like VG, Trio or Escort and that’s a big shame.

They’re beatable without those… People are too blinded by the meta to do other things though. I haven’t read a single guide or watched a single video about raid content so I don’t know metas or anything when I would raid.

I don’t get how people who profess not to know anything about raids or care a hoot about raids, form opinions on how to beat them.

I know how to beat them silly :p
I said I never read a guide on how to. Those two are not mutually exclusive. I was only offering a different take to the raid content, the person I quoted said he hates the “trinity aspect” of the raid in terms of Chrono Warrior Druid, I simply stated they are beatable without those things.

I never once said I don’t know anything about the content.

My main concern is the balancing issue with an encounter where personal damage plays close to no role at all.
People min-max the kitten out of everything as we know. Parties fully geared in defensive gear, with even more healing thrown in, would either turn it into a joke or force the developers to balance the encounter around them which then meant said encounter would be close to impossible with different gear.
You’d essentially only change one debatably dumb meta for another. The current meta actually looks more versatile and open compared to something like that.

What if they went with the sPvP model?

Do away with stat gearing entirely for raiding, treat raiding as a fully distinct game mode (it already is in many ways, since it’s accessed via a lobby like the Mists, and shares no terrain with other content).

Make it so that there is a “raid template” you can set just like the PvP templates. This would not only mean that for casual raiders they wouldn’t have to worry about buying complex gear specifically for the raid meta, but for raiders it would mean that they wouldn’t need to manually swap gear and traiting when shifting from raids to other PvE content.

And further, it would allow them more control over the meta, by just not offering medallions for stat combos that they consider to be “toxic,” such as overloading on glassy DPS or tanky healing.

I can see some people not liking it, but I think there are a lot of upsides to the deal.

Look, THAT topic again.

Do we really need the 100st raid rant thread?

It is literally another “raid thread”. Same “arguments”, same “suggestions”, same people posting the same things. Nothing new has been said and nothing new will be said. This is pretty much a meme at this point.

I do have one suggestion on how to actually end this sort of thread, permanently. Any of you guys who are soooooo tired of these threads, Gaile, if you’re out there, listen up, because this is really very simple:

Fix the underlying problem.

Simple as that. Fix the problem, and people will stop complaining about it. Now I know some of you believe that the problem is already fixed, but if that were the case, then people wouldn’t be complaining that there is a problem. Most of us used to think “hey, there aren’t any raids for me to play” was a problem that had been fixed since the beginning of the game and didn’t need any additional fixes, but then things changed, and now we have raiders around, so. . . there’s that.

Clearly people have issues with how things are currently working. Find a solution that genuinely satisfies their concerns in some way. Telling them to shut up will never cause an actual solution. You want them to shut up, create a solution that works for them, not just for you.

Ohoni.6057:

I do have one suggestion on how to actually end this sort of thread, permanently. Any of you guys who are soooooo tired of these threads, Gaile, if you’re out there, listen up, because this is really very simple:

Fix the underlying problem.

Simple as that. Fix the problem, and people will stop complaining about it. Now I know some of you believe that the problem is already fixed, but if that were the case, then people wouldn’t be complaining that there is a problem. Most of us used to think “hey, there aren’t any raids for me to play” was a problem that had been fixed since the beginning of the game and didn’t need any additional fixes, but then things changed, and now we have raiders around, so. . . there’s that.

Clearly people have issues with how things are currently working. Find a solution that genuinely satisfies their concerns in some way. Telling them to shut up will never cause an actual solution. You want them to shut up, create a solution that works for them, not just for you.

They can fix the problem if people will tell what the problem is.

This is not meant to be a rehash of old arguments. The point is to talk about the good and bad of raiding as players see them.

That is why I put a lot of thought into making the original post, which you will notice purposefully stays away from the topic of the closed threads.

Having an open discussion about what we find lacking or in need of fixing in raids is a productive use of the forums. And – as a few have said – when people feel strongly about something, they will find a way to keep the dialogue and conversation going (in fact, it is important they do so).

I do think there have been some decent points raised in this thread that we can discuss in greater detail. TexZero talked about balance being a top-down process, which I can see clearly. Now, how can we do that in a system where we have 9 professions, countless builds and a few mission critical tasks in raids. Another poster talked about the Wildstar model, where every profession is given one UNIQUE thing that they bring to raids – something that, on its own might seem absolutely critical to success.

How can we do that in GW2? Is there merit behind this idea of giving every profession one unique thing? Given that GW2 has more professions/builds than most raiding games, would it make sense to explore the idea of 25 man instead of 10 man raids? And, would that solve the underlying problem?

These are just a few of the directions this discussion can take. Stop looking at it as an argument with sides butting heads and start looking at it as people wanting to have a say in how raids evolve in the game. And, if you disagree with them, offer your own outlook and vision.

This could be an extremely positive conversation if we all took a step back and put in the effort.