Guild Wars 2

I want to be clear, I love the raids.

I think these are a vast improvement and much missing piece of Guild Wars 2’s “end game content”.

On the other hand there are a number of things that road in on the coattails of Heart of Thorns that make Raids a dubious piece of the game’s standing content.

Hours Played:
If a person is playing 30 hours of Guild Wars 2 a night they are averaging 4.285 hours a day on this game.
Most people raiding right now are putting that many hours a night into just the first boss. *no other single piece of Guild Wars 2’s content is afforded so much time and energy.

Time Devotion Respective to Raids and The Rest of the Game:
Raids are basically the end all be all for those who can and will be doing them. This is not the fault of those people doing raids , but it rather a very disturbing shift in the Anet development from having all of the game getting equal priority to raids having the potential to be the only additional content.

Evidence Raids May be Toxic-Gaming-Changing Content as They Are Currently:
- Ascended Gear is now the necessary meta.
- Raids are much easier for those who have multi-ascended gear sets.
- One character with Legendary Armor set and multiple Legendary Weapons is the same as, but less expensive than the same player with 2 or 3 Ascended Gear sets
- Ascended Gear from Fractals was nerfed tin-foil hat territory for its drop rate
- The nerf on Ascended Gear drop rates mean the only means for acquiring Ascended Gear is crafting.
- Crafting Ascended Gear requires gold
- The _only source of liquid gold was Dungeons
- Dungeon gold was removed
- The only source for liquid gold is the Gem Store
- It doesn’t matter how much you want Ascended Gear even if you Gem Store to get the Damask because dungeons are the only reliable source for Empyreal Shards.
- Ascended Gear has effectively been removed from the game for those who don’t already have it.

…

- for all the reasons above the game is now either that you have already Ascended Gear or you pay Anet 2800 ish gems to trade for enough money to access Damask in a reasonable amount of time to continue playing with those you already play with or sit yourself out for the next three months while you find the silk to start on ascended gear because you won’t find the gold for it.
- Anet’s has the potential to make a lot more money with this nerf on gold and Ascended Gear meta than they are or did from Heart of Thorns itself.

The vast majority of new players, players with only a little time to actually do the tiny amount of available farming, or simply aren’t yet aware of how to get Ascended by in game means will revert to the Gem Store for the most certain and clear solution.

Certainly posting on the forums is not likely to be a good place to ask because the amount of trolls on here that will say, “Learn to play” fail to realize saying that simultaneously is saying, “I don’t value your time, money, or effort to learn this post represents so kitten-off.” Just a few days after raids have released and we’re already seeing players saying, “No noobs” in the LFG.

Why is the word “noob” even allowed there?

Could There Be Other Content?:
I want to stress again that while I am in support of these raids there is a lot of talk among causal players and players staring the Ascended Gear situation with the question:

“Did Anet just pull a giant money grab on us?”

Because it does look that way. Those players that already have Ascended Gear, were doing Arah and Fractals Frequently, had been commanded, and mentoring well before Heart of Thorns put out the idea are going to be just fine with raids by and large. Most of them have already got more Ascended than they really knew what to do with.

Another range of players really form the middle class of this game. They either started playing a couple years ago or were here at the beginning, but just didn’t understand that dungeons were not World of Warcraft’s toxic raids – instead being a money farm. Thus, you have those players in the paragraph above who realized early there was a ton of things super easy to get early on in the game from Ascended Armor to Precursors just so long as you did dungeons all the time.
Anet nerfed that aspect of the gold situation a little more than a year ago now and thus formed this middle class who were simply those players that suddenly slammed into a formerly non-existent glass ceiling.

Then came the Ascended Crafting situation. Damask prices continued to skyrocket, but most players of Guild Wars 2 are here specifically because we hate the elitist jack-kittenry that has been raiding and dungeon content in every other mmo. The sexism, the racism, the elitism, and all the other toxic crud that comes up when a few players are afforded not just the best stuff in the game but eventually the game because they will reliably chase a carrot on a stick for tokens to get armor, to get tokens to get new armor with +5 more stats than their previous armor. And the rest of the community… gets… looked down on for not wanting to do this.

Raids could very well demonstrate that the Devs don’t quite understand what exclusionary content is.

Or worse, do and are slowly marginalizing players who just don’t understand why the “game” aspect of Guild Wars 2 evaporated into “waste your time and money on ascended gear so you can have the chance of being acknowledged by those players that do and are now on their way to legendary gear”.

Trolling Me for QQing:
Couldn’t care less.
I have Ascended Gear.
I have enough Ascended Gear and more on the way to suit the roles I need to fulfill.
I’ll be just fine.
It’s everyone who doesn’t I’m pointing this out for.

Can someone beat these bosses with a full exotic group, please? Just to prove a point.

I agree with many of your concerns. The game is headed into very dark territory, similar to what was seen with Wild Star, and the clueless developers have a chance of alienating their core audience.

Consider this: Guild Wars 2, the game that became popular because of its minimal time investment requirement to participate in content, has a “new to max” grind that surpasses much of the traditional MMO competition, such as FFXIV. For a fresh 80 on a new account to acquire the gear required in raids (full ascended for any serious group) the grind is quite severe, and very much against the spirit of GW2.

The difficulty of raids is not the issue, but the price of entry, especially since ANet stands to make a huge profit from time-strapped customers, is.

How and when did this reversal occur? The scheming to force Gem sales is almost Nexon-esque.

“dungeons are the only reliable source for Empyreal Shards”

So not true. Go capture some camps in WvW or play EoTM. You will be swimming in it.

Ascended armor isn’t that big of a difference. (like 2% or something)

Ascended weapons are the biggest difference (for power damage) and it’s not that bad to get one ascended weapon for your main class.
Ascended trinkets are a good upgrade and aren’t that hard to get. If you’re condi you can get them all from LWS2 story. You can any type of amulet from HoT story. Or you can spend laurels on them (save up and don’t waste em). Or you can get them from fractal chests (rings mainly).

Also execution makes a much bigger difference than gear. Bringing the correct classes, positioning correctly, not getting downed, not getting teleported, keeping speed mushroom buff, doing your rotation correctly etc etc will make a much larger difference than ascended gear.

Eirdyne.9843:

Hours Played:
If a person is playing 30 hours of Guild Wars 2 a night they are averaging 4.285 hours a day on this game.

Evidence Raids May be Toxic-Gaming-Changing Content as They Are Currently:

Point 1: If someone is playing 30 hours a night on a planet that only has 24 hours in a day that means some one is a Timelord and as a huge Doctor Who fan I want to meet them.

Point 2: This is my fear.

Can’t you buy Ascended items from a Raid merchant?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3t8k3l/raid_vendor_item_list/

http://imgur.com/a/WfxTA

Telemin.7380:

“dungeons are the only reliable source for Empyreal Shards”

So not true. Go capture some camps in WvW or play EoTM. You will be swimming in it.

You can also make a 15 min tour of those round chest that are in Cursed Shore, Malchors Leap and Straits of Devistation and the two simple jump puzzles in Caledon Forest and Metrica Province. You can net around 40 with ease. And each Alt can farm the same chest too.

See Rune’s of Orr for list.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_basic_chests

you get tons of emperial fragments from capturing camps in wvw.

Eirdyne.9843:

If a person is playing 30 hours of Guild Wars 2 a night […]

Most people raiding right now are putting that many hours a night into just the first boss.

Made my day

“Ascended Gear is now the necessary meta.”
Armor not, weapon/trinkets yes.
“Ascended armor isn’t that big of a difference. (like 2% or something)”
0.7 – 0.5% difference. Yes. Between zero point five and zero point seven. People should use calculators a bit more.
“Ascended Gear from Fractals was nerfed tin-foil hat territory for its drop rate”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Upcoming-Fractal-Changes/first
“dungeons are the only reliable source for Empyreal Shards.”
Facepalm, really. Go, run some cf in SW. Boring, but you’ll get ~1000 shards/hour

OP, I appreciate your post, but there are some points that are just irrelevant if you keep in mind for which audience raids were introduced. They are NOT meant for everybody. They are the endgame, which was non-existent until HoT (we only had a gold-farm, like you pointed it out right, and in my opinion, people who participated in this so called timewaste should be rewarded in some way, even if it is in this way.)

Let me clarify this by asking you one essential question:
Do you want to attempt to do stuff that is meant to be the endgame content with gear you can simply buy off the TP for an amount of gold that you can easily farm in one day of playing (speaking of exotic gear), and after the “long and exhausting journey of gearing up in your fancy exotic gear”, do you want to be able to beat the endgame content in an easy peasy session of 2-3 hrs from not knowing what to do to killing it?
If you can answer this question with no, there is still hope.
Ascended armor is obtainable for 2+years, and honestly, if you haven’t managed to get the best armor for your characters in those 2 years, maybe you just aren’t meant for this type of content.
And of course: per piece ascended armor might just be +5/stat/piece, but in total you have a significant boost, which is certainly NOT ONLY 2-3%. It’s more. There is some spreadsheet, I recommend looking it up on google.
If you think getting the endgame content done in no time, and with any gear, is in any way good for the integrity of a game, or if you are not willing to spend that amount of time in order to get the challenge done, I recommend watching a move or reading a book. Both give you the content they are meant to deliver for much less effort.

I dont’t mean to offend, I just feel like these days every player has to q.q around, leaving Anet little to no space to move without stepping on some community-part’s feet. They broke the feet of the dungeon community already, let’s not make them trample around more

What’s always hilarious to me is that people who have never actually played Wildstar always bring it up about why raids alone are what killed it.

That game a myriad of problems with it long after launch

Uh, just fyi, the chest train in silverwastes is by far and away the best source of Empyreal/bloodstone/Dragonite.

Soon.5240:

Can’t you buy Ascended items from a Raid merchant?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3t8k3l/raid_vendor_item_list/

http://imgur.com/a/WfxTA

And how many Raid’s do need to get the Mastery to even get to the Merchant?

Eldbrand Charging.8902:

Soon.5240:

Can’t you buy Ascended items from a Raid merchant?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3t8k3l/raid_vendor_item_list/

http://imgur.com/a/WfxTA

And how many Raid’s do need to get the Mastery to even get to the Merchant?

I honestly don’t know. I was hoping someone who does Raids would answer. Raids hold no appeal for me. I’m just curious.

Kormeg.2469:

What’s always hilarious to me is that people who have never actually played Wildstar always bring it up about why raids alone are what killed it.

That game a myriad of problems with it long after launch

So true, in fact WS raids were pretty fun. If WS had launched with megaservers it would have been fine.

@OP: I, my wife, and 2 friends just came back to the game after years of absence. Within 2-3 months we have the ascended gear we need to raid, and I’ve formed a guild with 30 people in order fo us to all avoid pug’ing it. I feel like your post is a little alarmist.

Garimeth.8725:

Kormeg.2469:

What’s always hilarious to me is that people who have never actually played Wildstar always bring it up about why raids alone are what killed it.

That game a myriad of problems with it long after launch

So true, in fact WS raids were pretty fun. If WS had launched with megaservers it would have been fine.

@OP: I, my wife, and 2 friends just came back to the game after years of absence. Within 2-3 months we have the ascended gear we need to raid, and I’ve formed a guild with 30 people in order fo us to all avoid pug’ing it. I feel like your post is a little alarmist.

When was that? As the OP mentioned, getting ascended gear has gotten significantly harder* (edit, how could I miss this word? lol) with the HoT release and the changes to ingredients, gold income and fractal drop rates.

Not sure I understand what the “when was that?” was in reference to, but if you meant when did we return to the game it was 2-3 months ago.

Garimeth.8725:

Not sure I understand what the “when was that?” was in reference to, but if you meant when did we return to the game it was 2-3 months ago.

Yeah that’s what I was referring to, since getting ascended gear is substantially harder now. Not that I am siding with or arguing against any of the OPs points, I just wanted to point this out.

Veydar.5017:

Garimeth.8725:

Not sure I understand what the “when was that?” was in reference to, but if you meant when did we return to the game it was 2-3 months ago.

Yeah that’s what I was referring to, since getting ascended gear is substantially harder now. Not that I am siding with or arguing against any of the OPs points, I just wanted to point his out.

I see in the interest of clarity, I don’t have ascended armor, I have ascended weapons and jewelry/trinkets/accessories.

I’m sorry but saying Ascended gear is now necessary, or even that it makes things easier, is completely false. The percentage increase in effectiveness between ascended and exotic is barely noticeable no matter what content you’re running, and raids are no exception. I’ve tank/healed on the same character perfectly through Vale Guardian several times without ascended and never even got downed. My DPS characters are exclusively in exotics as well, and definitely pull their fair share. If someone is telling you you need or should even care about ascended equipment, they are wrong.

Knowing the fight mechanics, and having an organized group that has a well thought out, cohesive strategy based on said mechanics is so much more important that I’d reckon you could do the fights in masterwork and be fine so long as you all knew what you’re doing. I don’t need to reckon for exotics though, I’ve seen firsthand that that works just fine.

Ascended gear was necessary since the day ANET introduced it because only Ascended gear gave Agony Resistance.

Telemin.7380:

“dungeons are the only reliable source for Empyreal Shards”

So not true. Go capture some camps in WvW or play EoTM. You will be swimming in it.

True. But look at the experience numbers:
– Level 1 to Level 80 4,860,359 xp
– Central Tyria. 11,430,000 for the Pact Commander track. Another 12,700,000 for legendary crafting.

Given how much XP is required, I don’t see how anything that doesn’t progress mastery tracks could be considered a viable option.

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Eirdyne.9843:

Hours Played:
If a person is playing 30 hours of Guild Wars 2 a night they are averaging 4.285 hours a day on this game.

Evidence Raids May be Toxic-Gaming-Changing Content as They Are Currently:

Point 1: If someone is playing 30 hours a night on a planet that only has 24 hours in a day that means some one is a Timelord and as a huge Doctor Who fan I want to meet them..

Most people know that “week” was probably intended. Just a typo. Especially since the writer said “4.285 hours a day” right after it.

The OP just missed completely the point…

RedBaron.6058:

The OP just missed completely the point…

It’s not the OP who missed the point…

butch.8136:

Can someone beat these bosses with a full exotic group, please? Just to prove a point.

I beat vale guardian with exotic armor/weapons and rare trinkets. GG anet.

and yes, you only need to beat vale guardian ONE time to get access to the merchant, and you can easily hit the weekly cap via failures (i hit the weekly cap in 3 days via failures, with maybe a 5 hour a day investment in the raid, tops)

What’s the weekly cap?

105 Magnetite-Shards

i totally agree! I remember when the game came out and sold it like a different MMO, saying that it was about skill and esthetics, meant to have fun and no farming! Now i have to stop playing because i dont have much time to play, and the time i have i want to spend it playing! ,not farming in old zones killing the same mobs and crafting unending components just to get 1 piece of gear…

The problem (at least mine) is that for Exotic gear, you just had to play in the end zones and do some dungeons and you could craft it really fast and enjoy the game. For ascended gear, i open the crafting panel and when i look at all the things i need … i end up closing it and doing pvp… i mean , you need a lot of gold to buy everything or you have to spend your time farming, which ruins the spirit of the game!

Now its just like any other mmo in wich you play 5 hours a day or dont even bother in loging in

Ozzmatt.8062:

i totally agree! I remember when the game came out and sold it like a different MMO, saying that it was about skill and esthetics, meant to have fun and no farming! Now i have to stop playing because i dont have much time to play, and the time i have i want to spend it playing! ,not farming in old zones killing the same mobs and crafting unending components just to get 1 piece of gear…

The problem (at least mine) is that for Exotic gear, you just had to play in the end zones and do some dungeons and you could craft it really fast and enjoy the game. For ascended gear, i open the crafting panel and when i look at all the things i need … i end up closing it and doing pvp… i mean , you need a lot of gold to buy everything or you have to spend your time farming, which ruins the spirit of the game!

Now its just like any other mmo in wich you play 5 hours a day or dont even bother in loging in

I’ve gained sets of ascended armor by doing the content you just described. Of course it happened over one and a half year of play, but still I didnt have to craft it. I gained weapon chests from tequatl, armor from tripple trouble, from pvp, from fractals, basically content we were playing before Heart of Thorns. You could and can even swap the stats on ascended in the mystic forge, preventing the need to craft new, which is expensive.

If you have a problem with this, then you either need to rethink if you can enjoy content at a slower phase or if mmorpgs are for you. Level 80 is max, ascended is max.. if you get that then you’re go, unlike other mmos they dont increase Level and gear stats. Sure we have to get some masteries tied to the zones from now that u want to play in, but thats the only progression we get.. without this then what else is there to progress in?

Aside from raids, theres still a huge game out there to be enjoyed. Often I come across players who are a bit salty cuz they cant raid, but in the end it’s on their end because they didnt prep for raids, they didnt try to get into groups, they didnt understand that they had gameplay issues they needed to improve on. Raids are here to stay, either adapt or dont play it, the stats on gear in them are the same as the ascended you can gain by playing your normal type of content.

Ascended droprate in tequatl and fractal are barely reaching 0.5% imo. Ive done thousands of fractal in the latest months since they introduced ascended gear to it but still got only 1 ascended chest in fractal and not a single one from teq. It can drop indeed but its not a thing ppl would do only to get ascended. Specially who is used to pvp.
Hope the next update on fractal raise this to something like 10% or like that

Please. I am about as casual a player as they come. I work 60 hrs a week as an attorney, I play only when I have a little free time. Even I haven’t had trouble slowly acquiring ascended items.

If you don’t want to acquire them, fine. But you can’t complain about other people no wanting you to be the weakest link in their raid team.

Totally agree. I now deeply regret shelling out 200 EUR in preparation for HoT with big pre order pack, new costumes and all that.

Getting the base preorder pack (with char slot included for free) would have been an ok deal just for the first time exploration and leveling experience of HoT.

But the new HoT end-game style just feels the exact same way as running around like a hamster in the Apexis Dailies wheel… totally disappointing.

And more disheartening: This unneccessary and uninnovative 180° turn to 10 years outdated design philosophy obviously was made totally intentional not by accident.

Well played Arenanet… But the new end game design is making me loose all interest in the game rapidly by the day. I already am close to not being able to stand to log in only to see how many more hundred hours and gold all the carrots are at the moment.

Also Raids disappoint me a lot.
While the first raid wing is a good raid wing in terms for an outdated raid concept game.
The fact that it was chosen to add an outdated raid game concept to game that shined by introducing superior new design concepts to the genre totally baffles me.
Kind of a waste of developer and player time alike.

Alternate activities that made the core game shine so bright aside from legendary grinds are missing from the new content mostly.
Also old alternate content was just recently “disincentivised” to play. And even it wasn’t let’s be frank about it: the old content is now like 3 years around, time to move on.

I’ll be around awaiting what next will be heard about the ongoing PvE endgame design philosophy. Unfortunately there currently seems to be some kind of bunker down moment without any interesting being given out about what to expect next with coming patches or re-iterations of current HoT content.

I’m still hoping to hear news about dev’s striving to reinstate the core game’s base concepts that made it worth playing because it was different and addressed things in a way that no other dev dared to do.
But I’m also quite close to the edge… so don’t make your next big announcement a let down of the type “more apxis dailies coming”.

GW2 core was always a game that you could very well come back to event after an extended period even of lost interest. Anet should consider that customers that would leave because of an extended Pandaria/Draenor-style endgame design draught will not have any incetive to come back at a later time when they are set back by some weeks or months of not having done their daily gated grind fest.

If you park a Ferrari in a mall parking lot, and swing the doors open. People will want to look at it, sit on the supple leather, turn the key…maybe soak in the roar. Putting the raid in VB and not instanced causes this distraction.

This affects the rest of the new pve content.

You’re right raids aren’t for everyone, but putting in within everyone’s reach/sight line makes everyone think it is.

Put it at the top of the kittening canopy.

I don’t know why exactly but if you look at the map you will see that ANET put Sirit Valley as a new Map north of VB instead of an instance lidke the other dungeons. Maybe that has to do with 10 people rather than 5 ppl parties. Nonetheless, the fact that need 10 ppl causes too many people to stand at the Raid door and actually ruin VB experience. Not because everybody is doing Raids instead of events, this will soon back to normal IMO, but because people who want to reach T4 map in VB can no longer achieve that since you cannot reach full map to do it. There were always ppl on the map who is doing other things, but now this was taken to a whole new level.
Please implement a RAID LOBBY ASAP.
A simple instance for those who want to join a group for raid, OUTSIDE VB.
This would also join people from all Overflows into the same instance, making it easier to find people.

LegallyBinding.4937:

Please. I am about as casual a player as they come. I work 60 hrs a week as an attorney, I play only when I have a little free time. Even I haven’t had trouble slowly acquiring ascended items.

If you don’t want to acquire them, fine. But you can’t complain about other people no wanting you to be the weakest link in their raid team.

You work 60 hours a week, but you have the time to come on the forums and argue about ascended gear?

Hmm.

I smell hyperbole.

Labjax.2465:

You work 60 hours a week, but you have the time to come on the forums and argue about ascended gear?

Hmm.

I smell hyperbole.

60 hours to work
56 hours to sleep
49 hours to argue on forums
3 hours to learn what hyperbole means

it checks out.

RemiRome.8495:

Labjax.2465:

You work 60 hours a week, but you have the time to come on the forums and argue about ascended gear?

Hmm.

I smell hyperbole.

60 hours to work
56 hours to sleep
49 hours to argue on forums
3 hours to learn what hyperbole means

it checks out.

You forgot eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, grooming (assuming he bothers since he’s a lawyer), going to therapy for being a lawyer, rethinking his life, going to internet forums to argue.

No, wait, you’re right. It does check out.

Get it? Cause lawyers are stereotyped as having soulless jobs? I’m so funny.

But in all seriousness, I find it hard to believe. If I worked 60 hours a week as a lawyer, the last thing I’d want to do on my off time is argue on internet forums. I mean, I’ve seen stranger things, but ya know, it’s also frightfully easy to claim anything on the internet.

what??

I work 50 plus hours a week as a chef… I still have enough time to be able to have 19 characters many of them in ascended. run the occasional dungeon tour etc.

its not about how much time we put into it, its how well we spend our time doing it.

the hardest part for me is getting a group at 2 am.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

If you park a Ferrari in a mall parking lot, and swing the doors open. People will want to look at it, sit on the supple leather, turn the key…maybe soak in the roar. Putting the raid in VB and not instanced causes this distraction.

This affects the rest of the new pve content.

You’re right raids aren’t for everyone, but putting in within everyone’s reach/sight line makes everyone think it is.

Put it at the top of the kittening canopy.

Lmao that’s actually pretty funny. I’d dig it. Although like you said before, having it instanced is much easier, and allows people to do VB T4 attempts properly.

I just wanted to inform you all that, “I Lost The Game.”