Guild Wars 2

+1 Great post.

I have nothing to add to that

Exactly. If a hardcore guild group can do a full clear of the wing in ~40min, a casual group can do it, too. All it takes is a larger amount of tries and maybe aim for one boss per evening instead of all 3 bosses in one session.

Great post. The group I am with have spent a total of 9-10 hours on Vale Guardian so far over three nights. You could call us hardcore casuals. The second night we made it to the enrage timer for the first time. The third night we did a much better job getting through the early phases of the fight more regularly and got the boss to 15-20% on our best effort. Really hoping we can get him down this week.

@Risng Dusk

You’re right; Raids take time, effort, and dedication to clear them. For the more hardcore player like myself the difficulty and skill expectations for the fights was very well received and enjoyed.

There’s still a couple of issues though:

First off, our in-game LFG tool doesn’t work that great when it comes to filling up 10 man teams. What we have now is a person or two breaking off from the squad to post an LFG and having people join on the parent squad. Though after a few trial and errors said person is locked out of LFG from too may posts so someone else has to fill the recruiting role.

Secondly, and most importantly, there is more than one type of a casual player. That’s great to hear that you refer to yourself as a casual, but here I see you are more than involved in the forums so at the very least you have somewhat of a good idea of what the “norm” is regarding strategy, builds, and whatnots relating to how to lead a successful raid regardless of your in-game play time.

What about the casual player who doesn’t have the same luxury of being able to be online as much be it playing the game or just being able to read up on it: a student who’s slaving away at dozens of school hours a week, the travelling business professional, or the parent who just recently had a child?

Normally, I wouldn’t bring up such silly examples, but hasn’t one of this game’s biggest selling point continuously been that it caters to casual players? I’m not saying that Raids have to be scrapped entirely, but Raids don’t really work well with folks that have scheduling conflicts. I understand that Raids can eventually be completed by everyone with practice, but that can take hours upon hours. As exaggerated as this sounds, not everyone is going to be able to put in the time commitment to overcome to skill challenge.

Why not design something like Challenge Modes/Motes where the initial difficulty is somewhere close to Fractals, but the rewards accrue at a drastically slower rate if not limiting reward availability compared to what “Hard Mode” offers. That way there’s less pressure to devote so much time (for the folks who honestly can’t afford it) while still offering an incentive and fair compensation to those that put in the time and effort to improve their skill and gameplay.

Ultimately, if Raids was implemented with the casual folks (by my definition) in mind being cut off I would say the line is very well noticed.

Hardcore players should really stop posting about what is or is not suitable content for casual players. The fact that you can finish something under a minute, naked, with one hand only and wearing blindfold, does not mean it is doable for average casual player.

The average casual player never reads forums btw, so arguing with them in forum is fairly useless. If they don’t like the content, they simply stop playing.

FogLeg.9354:

Hardcore players should really stop posting about what is or is not suitable content for casual players. The fact that you can finish something under a minute, naked, with one hand only and wearing blindfold, does not mean it is doable for average casual player.

The average casual player never reads forums btw, so arguing with them in forum is fairly useless. If they don’t like the content, they simply stop playing.

So everybody able to do what you can’t is an Elite player and anyone under you is a casual? I’ll need to give the good news to my friend with whom I kill the Vale Guardian with that after all he’s an elite hardcore players. His wife and 3 kids will be astonished since he only play 10 hours per week.

I learn everyday on these forums.

savacli.8172:

Normally, I wouldn’t bring up such silly examples, but hasn’t one of this game’s biggest selling point continuously been that it caters to casual players? I’m not saying that Raids have to be scrapped entirely, but Raids don’t really work well with folks that have scheduling conflicts. I understand that Raids can eventually be completed by everyone with practice, but that can take hours upon hours. As exaggerated as this sounds, not everyone is going to be able to put in the time commitment to overcome to skill challenge.

99% of the game is for casual. Fractal are a mess, but they are way more casual now with only 1 islands instead of 4. The only content that is a bit harder and need a bit more playtime is raid. As time pass, this too will get easier and easier. Strategy will get more and more known to the general public. Build will be available online. Pugs will know the content more and more, making it available for more and more people.

Dude using some weird magi gear and telling that he is casual. Something is wrong if you need to make new gear just to clear content. Would be nice if gaming skills would mean more than class and gear.

People who complain about raiding are usually the ones that pug along with 9 more players, have a terrible experience due to lack of coordination, then come to the forums and kitten about how poorly raids are implemented, about how YOU MUST ABSOLUTELY HAVE 5 ASCENDED SETS in order to BE allowed to join a pug group, and other sorts of bullkitten. In fact, feel free to check the forum list, to see how many bad players complain about non valid points.

People need to understand what you wrote OP. Raids can ABSOLUTELY be done in full exotics, if there EXISTS coordination between players. That’s the whole paradigm of raiding. Lesser gear high skill/coordination WILL complete a raid, while HIGH gear and total chaos will make raiding a horrible experience. Raiding should be done with friends, guildies, people around yourself that don’t annoy the hell out of you in the first place.

In a few months, when the raids are going to be casually farmed by the most part of the playerbase, the raiding experience of a new raider will improve a lot, because chances are, in those other 9 pugs 5 know the raid, and 2-3 have already ran it at least once.

Raiding is implemented very well in this game, you can literally do it without a single ascended part in your squad whatsoever, you just need coordination.

Note: all my points refer to a well-composed 10 man squad. I’m not talking about tank and 9 condies for gorseval squad, but i’m talking about something that isn’t 10 zerker warriors camping greatsword. Peace y’all, well said OP
+1

I suspect that a lot of the complaints come from players whose gripe about dungeons were about exclusion. It seemed like they wanted to get into whichever PuG was recruiting at the exact second they wanted to find a group, but didn’t want to change their builds and gear to adapt to the meta.

Now, Anet has changed its focus with regard to harder content. Raids are designed to reward players who do vary up their builds, and who want to find the best tactics to succeed. One goal of the entire HoT expansion was to make content that encouraged players to vary up their builds and use more of the options provided.

It’s likely that the reaction to raids is — at least in part due to resistance to change with regard to “playing like one wants.” People get attached to their builds and don’t want to change. Since this was one of the primary presenting complaints about the dungeon meta, this reaction was only to be expected.

Sure, some players complaining now will adapt, and others will give up. I expect the complaints to die down. I also expect that over time, players who adapt and overcome will be able to beat at least the easier raid bosses. However, I also expect bosses to get a bit harder as people progress, and for them to encourage different build options.

Even though I’m far from a hardcore (challenge) player, I hope that ANet sticks to its agenda and continues to push the envelope with raids. Since I believe the source of a lot of the complaints is rooted in, “It’s too hard but I want the L. Armor.”, it’s my guess that ANet will eventually generate a second set of L. Armor that can be gotten via other content. If they do, it should be a different skin. Such a reward might be good way to breathe new life into the existing HoT zone events, and to encourage repetition of new, non-raid content that gets introduced via LW.

Rising Dusk.2408:

This means that many pub groups will opt to require ascended because “why not”.

You can never trust those kitten ed ‘pub’ groups…they’re always drunk and causing trouble.

~.^

Junkpile.7439:

Dude using some weird magi gear and telling that he is casual. Something is wrong if you need to make new gear just to clear content. Would be nice if gaming skills would mean more than class and gear.

Skill > gear. Not that a good group comp and appropriate gear is neglectable, but understanding mechanics, playing your class well, proper positioning, dodging the right attacks etc. etc. are THE most important things when comes to succeeding in raids. I have people in my group that are not in full ascended gear and we beat VG consistently with over 2 min. left on the timer.

Besides that, I think a lot of people misuse the term “casual” for when they actually mean “bad player”. Playing the game casually =/= being a bad player. Neither does playing the game hardcore mean you automatically are a particularly outstanding player.

Raids are for people willing to learn, to improve and coordinate with their teammates. Whether or not you are casual or hardcore has very little to do with that in my experience.

Junkpile.7439:

Dude using some weird magi gear and telling that he is casual. Something is wrong if you need to make new gear just to clear content. Would be nice if gaming skills would mean more than class and gear.

Since when is magi weird ? it cost 500 k karma for a full exo set… nothing really hard to get.
Gear is obviously important in the game, else we would all play naked. But it is the same in every MMO.
Class is important in the synergy but there is no mandatory comp to beat the raid. Sure if you only have 3 mesmer as condi dealer you may face some troubles but almost every class can have a condi build that does enough damage … with the right gear ofc. Conversely there are several builds for every class to fit in a raid but again your gear has to reflect your role : offensive stat for dps, Toughness as main for tank and healing as main for healer. Well there is space for some adjustments but it is a good start which seems not so hard to achieve. You may not be THE OPTIMAL META TEAM but before being faster than the others one has to focus on beating the encounter first.

yep, having to grind the Silverwastes for 100+ hours just to save up enough gold for ascended gear and then having to wait 3+ months to get enough laurels for ascended trinkets sure sounds casual friendly.

And that´s just to gear one char.

ChrizZcE.5981:

yep, having to grind the Silverwastes for 100+ hours just to save up enough gold for ascended gear and then having to wait 3+ months to get enough laurels for ascended trinkets sure sounds casual friendly.

And that´s just to gear one char.

100+ hours in the silverwastes for ascended? Farming materials gives around 15g/ hour. Salvaging stuff on the TP gives around 80g/ hour, around 200 if you buy order everything. That 5 min crafting daily gives around 12-14 gold. Farming fractals gives 10-15g an hour.

Also, let’s not forget that you can get ascended drops for every single game mode in the game. This is why the game seems hard in terms of gearing. Because people have no ideea how easy getting gold is. How much time have you spent researching how to get gold in GW2? Around 2 vids on youtube right? Serves you right, go back to your 100 hours in SW, that’s why casuals are going to complain and smart ones are gonna keep enjoying the game

Glad to hear this is ringing true with lots of you all. Thanks for the posts.

savacli.8172:

First off, our in-game LFG tool doesn’t work that great when it comes to filling up 10 man teams. What we have now is a person or two breaking off from the squad to post an LFG and having people join on the parent squad. Though after a few trial and errors said person is locked out of LFG from too may posts so someone else has to fill the recruiting role.

This will be addressed, I am willing to bet. There is no tech for it right now, but they definitely know we want it.

savacli.8172:

What about the casual player who doesn’t have the same luxury of being able to be online as much be it playing the game or just being able to read up on it: a student who’s slaving away at dozens of school hours a week, the travelling business professional, or the parent who just recently had a child?

Interestingly, I am the “traveling business professional” you pointed out there. I spend less than 30 minutes of time on the forums in a day, and play for fewer than 2 hours a day if I play at all. The difference is, ultimately, in attitude and willingness to learn.

savacli.8172:

I’m not saying that Raids have to be scrapped entirely, but Raids don’t really work well with folks that have scheduling conflicts. I understand that Raids can eventually be completed by everyone with practice, but that can take hours upon hours. As exaggerated as this sounds, not everyone is going to be able to put in the time commitment to overcome to skill challenge.

I want to point out that in my guild’s case, we have invested 1-2 hours a day on assorted different days of a number of weeks to get to where we are. We’re not scheduling 4 hour sessions, we’re just playing for an hour and change when people are most available. It’s been pretty easy, and we have people with children, full time jobs, the works. The difference is that we all want to participate in this content together, so we’re motivated to find some time. If a person isn’t motivated or doesn’t care that much, well they won’t find much success in raids or a lot of things in games.

savacli.8172:

Why not design something like Challenge Modes/Motes where the initial difficulty is somewhere close to Fractals, but the rewards accrue at a drastically slower rate if not limiting reward availability compared to what “Hard Mode” offers. That way there’s less pressure to devote so much time (for the folks who honestly can’t afford it) while still offering an incentive and fair compensation to those that put in the time and effort to improve their skill and gameplay.

Because then the content is trivialized and less exciting when you do win. It’s just a thing you do with little thought or incentive or excitement associated with. The anticipation of doing this super hard challenge way out of our normal skill range as a group is my guild’s favorite part. I know if there were an easier mode, they’d all want to do it because “path of least resistance”, and then we wouldn’t have nearly as much fun.

FogLeg.9354:

Hardcore players should really stop posting about what is or is not suitable content for casual players. The fact that you can finish something under a minute, naked, with one hand only and wearing blindfold, does not mean it is doable for average casual player.

Honestly, my takeaway here is that I’m flattered at being mistaken as a hardcore player!

FogLeg.9354:

The average casual player never reads forums btw, so arguing with them in forum is fairly useless. If they don’t like the content, they simply stop playing.

You say that, and yet I can count a dozen threads in the top two pages of this forum with dozens of individual posts from different people complaining about raids on the grounds of being a casual.

Raizen.7981:

ChrizZcE.5981:

yep, having to grind the Silverwastes for 100+ hours just to save up enough gold for ascended gear and then having to wait 3+ months to get enough laurels for ascended trinkets sure sounds casual friendly.

And that´s just to gear one char.

100+ hours in the silverwastes for ascended? Farming materials gives around 15g/ hour. Salvaging stuff on the TP gives around 80g/ hour, around 200 if you buy order everything. That 5 min crafting daily gives around 12-14 gold. Farming fractals gives 10-15g an hour.

Also, let’s not forget that you can get ascended drops for every single game mode in the game. This is why the game seems hard in terms of gearing. Because people have no ideea how easy getting gold is. How much time have you spent researching how to get gold in GW2? Around 2 vids on youtube right? Serves you right, go back to your 100 hours in SW, that’s why casuals are going to complain and smart ones are gonna keep enjoying the game

200g/hour?

I´ll have whatever you´re smoking.

I think the problem is people are categorizing themselves as “casual players” vs “hardcore players”. By putting your play style in a box, your instantly throwing yourself in 1 side of the pool mentally.

Everyone who plays video games should know that there is a easy setting, normal setting, and hard setting. When Raids were introduced, it was told to the entire community this would be hard challenging content because it is what people have been complaining about on the GW2 forum about not enough hard challenges to overcome.

That means out of the box, Raids are “HARD” content… “Challenging” content. Anyone I think, who whines about the difficulty setting should not be playing Raids because its not made to be easy mode.

Also if were going to throw around the terms casual vs hardcore players, if Raids were made easier, their would be no content for the hardcore PvE’ers to go.

Most people quit Gw2 due to a lack of motivation to get better gear. As much as people don’t like to hear it, people actually do enjoy grinding for power, as long as its reasonable.

Raids is the introduction to that concept.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Raizen.7981:

ChrizZcE.5981:

yep, having to grind the Silverwastes for 100+ hours just to save up enough gold for ascended gear and then having to wait 3+ months to get enough laurels for ascended trinkets sure sounds casual friendly.

And that´s just to gear one char.

100+ hours in the silverwastes for ascended? Farming materials gives around 15g/ hour. Salvaging stuff on the TP gives around 80g/ hour, around 200 if you buy order everything. That 5 min crafting daily gives around 12-14 gold. Farming fractals gives 10-15g an hour.

Also, let’s not forget that you can get ascended drops for every single game mode in the game. This is why the game seems hard in terms of gearing. Because people have no ideea how easy getting gold is. How much time have you spent researching how to get gold in GW2? Around 2 vids on youtube right? Serves you right, go back to your 100 hours in SW, that’s why casuals are going to complain and smart ones are gonna keep enjoying the game

200g/hour?

I´ll have whatever you´re smoking.

I’m smoking a Viper(Yassith’s) ascended set done in 13 hours of game time

Rising Dusk.2408:

Interestingly, I am the “traveling business professional” you pointed out there. I spend less than 30 minutes of time on the forums in a day, and play for fewer than 2 hours a day if I play at all. The difference is, ultimately, in attitude and willingness to learn.

You are also passionate about the game as much as I am which is why we’re both business professionals (me working upwards of 60+ hours a week) but are deciding to make time to keep current with the game’s newly introduced challenges. However, I would argue folks like you and I are the exception and not an accurate portrayal of the average business profession for that example. On any typical MMO, I would expect that level of effort to keep current else risk falling behind while others advance. With GW2, I’ve experienced difference.

When I have to travel overseas for work I am situated in remote locations where the most advanced piece of technology is a black and white TV. So, I was very thrilled when I came back home after a few months and could pick up the game and feel like I didn’t fall behind. I understand that the rest of the game still operates to this theme, but Raids are one thing that you simply can’t just walk back into. In other words, I expect to put in a tremendous amount of effort should I have to take a hiatus again. For the dedicated player it’s a joy. For the casual it’d be a chore, and odds are they walked away to do something else that’s within their time/skill constraints

Rising Dusk.2408:

I want to point out that in my guild’s case, we have invested 1-2 hours a day on assorted different days of a number of weeks to get to where we are. We’re not scheduling 4 hour sessions, we’re just playing for an hour and change when people are most available. It’s been pretty easy, and we have people with children, full time jobs, the works. The difference is that we all want to participate in this content together, so we’re motivated to find some time. If a person isn’t motivated or doesn’t care that much, well they won’t find much success in raids or a lot of things in games.

The moment you decided to find time to practice is when you went beyond the call on an average player. To me, I see the casual player as someone who came across GW2 and picked up the game because it was a cheap buy and found it interesting. Though the moment a Steam sale goes live I expect that same player to chase after the next shiny object. Should he come back to GW2 I don’t think he’d have much luck finding a group because he probably doesn’t have the right gear let alone the experience necessary to bypass that check.

Ultimately, I think the topic you and I are disagreeing on is the definition of what a casual player is versus someone who doesn’t play the game to the extent that an elitist does. It’s not black and white (elitist and casual player, respectively), and there’s a lot of grey area in between. Where I see you and I falling into is that grey area where we have IRL responsibilities but still make time to attend the game regularly. The elitists being those who eat, live, and breathe GW2. The casuals being those who are the “shiny-chasers” or cannot commit to regular game participation for whatever reason.

With that definition in mind, I cannot agree that Raids are casual friendly. For committed/dedicated players, yes, I’d agree with you there; Raids are definitely and reasonably within their bounds. The elitist….well, they’re off eating a heaping bowl of GW2-O’s

Great and insightful post OP, much needed in these dire times! As Ive said before, remember dungeons, people were frustrated because they were hard at the time, many meant that paths couldnt be solo in PuGs and a year later it was easy. Raids just came out, people need to look at them as a longterm progression, it’s basically the same mechanics but upped in every way.. we’ve had our fill with dungeons and should be prepared.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Because then the content is trivialized and less exciting when you do win. It’s just a thing you do with little thought or incentive or excitement associated with.

Absolute bullkitten. If it wasn’t, then scaled difficulty would be flawed in all video games and only video games that take an extreme approach like Dark Souls would be the quintessence of excitement and fun.

But it’s not. It’s the complete reverse. Scaled difficulty is the norm in video games and cases like Dark Souls are the extreme.

When I beat Diablo 3 on Inferno Difficulty, I didn’t let out a long sigh and proclaim “IF and ONLY IF this game contained this singular level of difficulty that exlcuded players I have never met from completing the game at a level of their choosing, THEN AND ONLY THEN could I start to begin feeling satisfaction from completing this challenging difficulty and begin to enjoy the exclusive loot I received by doing so.”

It felt actually really awesome, because it was established in the Diablo 3 that Inferno mode, at least, pre-patch was really difficult and if you had completed it, you did so via hard work and skill which was deserving of a level of respect. Much the same that would happen if GW2 raids had a “softcore” and “hardcore” mode; plenty of room for elitisism and feelings of self superiority in that division while still allowing players to make choices as to what level they want to approach the content.

“Raid” content released at a singular level of difficulty is a pretty outdated MMO concept. WoW stopped releasing raid content that only catered to their hardcore community a long time ago. I mean, what is this? Everquest? Will the next expansion introduce the Plane Of Fear? Do I get to stay up to 4am trying to retrieve my corpse before it decays and I lose everything I have worked towards?

When WoW introduced the LFR system which added a casual version of difficulty, the trivialization of the hardcore modes and diminishment of fun did not happen. In fact, despite the failure that was the WoD expansion, when polled about what players liked about the expansion, the main response was the degree of difficulty and the excellent design of the hardcore raid modes.

So if this social phenomena where everyone just automatically stopped having fun at higher difficulties because of the introduction of lower difficulties didn’t happen there, why would it happen here?

I’m happy that you find the level of difficulty to be acceptable, but that is your subjective opinion and it in no way establishes or proves that the current singular level of difficulty is acceptable for everybody in the community and anyone who disagrees are doing so from a place of laziness or deficiency.

And attempting to sweep this issue under the rug by being the self appointed arbiter of what is acceptable for everyone instead of just allowing multiple levels of difficulty that allow players to choose how much time and energy they want to invest in completing content for differing degrees of rewards is just pointless nonsense that goes against the philosophy of inclusivity that the game was built on.

People, including myself, who have posted on this subject are doing so from a place of increasing overall player satisfaction and introducing more choice to fit people’s playstyles. You have decreed this is nonsense, because of your subjective assessment that it’s really all just okay and we’re all wrong.

Any arguments that to substantiate this subjective view this via some objective “diminishing of fun and excitement” that is apparently going to happen if scaled difficulty is introduced is absolute nonsense.

I welcome your opinion and I welcome that you disagree with me. Continue to disagree with me on the merit that you subjectively think the raid content is fine. Just don’t try to justify it by using an argument that anyone who played more than 2 video games in their life would know has little merit in reality.

OP is absolutely correct. Having spent hours on 2/3 bosses they are not that mind bogglingly hard that casual players cannot complete them.

BUT there is a perception that Ascended, or at least 2/3 ascended is required. It’s not a completely unjustified perception either as the 2nd boss is a pretty hard DPS check and having certain Ascended gear will really really help you. Sure it can probably be done with everyone in full exotics but the level of play needed to do that is pretty high and not many can execute on that level so people putting groups together are safer in making the requirement that Ascended gear is required.

The problem with this is that Ascended costs SO kitten MUCH. It’s a huge barrier to entry for new players. It takes months for a new player to get to the level they need to be to even start raids.

This is the biggest problem with raids right now. Difficulty is fine, but so many are being locked out of content simply because of the huge gold sink Ascended is right now.

nacario.9417:

Great and insightful post OP, much needed in these dire times! As Ive said before, remember dungeons, people were frustrated because they were hard at the time, many meant that paths couldnt be solo in PuGs and a year later it was easy. Raids just came out, people need to look at them as a longterm progression, it’s basically the same mechanics but upped in every way.. we’ve had our fill with dungeons and should be prepared.

The key difference being with dungeons (and fractals) there was a generous margin for error, and the fault of one person didn’t necessarily contribute a wipe for the team.

In Raids, something as simple as missing a green spot levels the entire squad. Miss a second one in a row, and I’d be surprised to see even half the team still on their feet. Your boon stripper died? Good luck on the Boss Split. Tank got teleported? Hope he didn’t get ported to a dead/kill zone. And that’s just on the first fight alone.

There is margin for error, but it’s very minimal On top of that, some squads are pushing fights straight to the enrage timer so that a solid 8 minutes of not making detrimental mistakes.

savacli.8172:

The moment you decided to find time to practice is when you went beyond the call on an average player. To me, I see the casual player as someone who came across GW2 and picked up the game because it was a cheap buy and found it interesting. Though the moment a Steam sale goes live I expect that same player to chase after the next shiny object. Should he come back to GW2 I don’t think he’d have much luck finding a group because he probably doesn’t have the right gear let alone the experience necessary to bypass that check.

So we should make sure the game is for the most casual players all the time? What about the guy that play 20min per year. Did you think about him? How hardcore elitist the game is if that guy can’t experience all the content?

I’m exagerrating, but you get my point. It’s not like they changed everything in the game into raid and there is nothing in the game except raid. Jesus 2 months ago the game was fine, they added 1 raids and suddenly that,s all there is. I can’t play raid, so this game isn’t for casual anymore. That’s why we can’t have nice things because each time there is people screaming that not everybody can play it. From the casual mom with 2 kids and 2 hours on sathurday to the hardcore gamer that love GW2 and play 30-40 hours per weeks. Why can’t they both have content that they love? Or it need to be always about the casual 100% of the time?

Thaddeus.4891:

So we should make sure the game is for the most casual players all the time? What about the guy that play 20min per year. Did you think about him? How hardcore elitist the game is if that guy can’t experience all the content?

I’m exagerrating, but you get my point. It’s not like they changed everything in the game into raid and there is nothing in the game except raid. Jesus 2 months ago the game was fine, they added 1 raids and suddenly that,s all there is. I can’t play raid, so this game isn’t for casual anymore. That’s why we can’t have nice things because each time there is people screaming that not everybody can play it. From the casual mom with 2 kids and 2 hours on sathurday to the hardcore gamer that love GW2 and play 30-40 hours per weeks. Why can’t they both have content that they love? Or it need to be always about the casual 100% of the time?

Your argument is based on a faulty assumption that it HAS to be one or the other; either casual or hardcore.

About 300 other video games I could name if I really wanted to, but aren’t going prove that the same content can be released with varying levels of difficulty and still effectively sell to both markets.

MadRabbit.3179:

Your argument is based on a faulty assumption that it HAS to be one or the other; either casual or hardcore.

About 300 other video games I could name if I really wanted to, but aren’t going prove that the same content can be released with varying levels of difficulty and still effectively sell to both markets.

On that I agree. I would be for an easier mode with less rewards.

Pandabro.8743:

OP is absolutely correct. Having spent hours on 2/3 bosses they are not that mind bogglingly hard that casual players cannot complete them.

BUT there is a perception that Ascended, or at least 2/3 ascended is required. It’s not a completely unjustified perception either as the 2nd boss is a pretty hard DPS check and having certain Ascended gear will really really help you. Sure it can probably be done with everyone in full exotics but the level of play needed to do that is pretty high and not many can execute on that level so people putting groups together are safer in making the requirement that Ascended gear is required.

The problem with this is that Ascended costs SO kitten MUCH. It’s a huge barrier to entry for new players. It takes months for a new player to get to the level they need to be to even start raids.

This is the biggest problem with raids right now. Difficulty is fine, but so many are being locked out of content simply because of the huge gold sink Ascended is right now.

This spreadsheet breaks down Ascended vs Exotic for those curious about the exact advantage with Power builds.

In other words walking in with Ascended trinkets is about 4% damage increase.
Bringing in an Ascended weapon is another 6% ish.
Armor and all infusions slotted is about another 2% each in damage increase.

So those who have the time and resources for Ascended gear can easily walk in with a boosted 10% in damage over the exotic player. That’s not to say it’s impossible for an exotic team to clear the Raid bosses, but that’s an additional 10% in damage that the exotic team would have to come up with when compared to a similarly skilled team that is in ascended gear.

So a casual player not only needs to get through the initial learning curve, but they may also have a harder time clearing the boss depending on the team’s overall gear quality.

MadRabbit.3179:

When I beat Diablo 3 on Inferno Difficulty, I didn’t let out a long sigh and proclaim “IF and ONLY IF this game contained this singular level of difficulty that exlcuded players I have never met from completing the game at a level of their choosing, THEN AND ONLY THEN could I start to begin feeling satisfaction from completing this challenging difficulty and begin to enjoy the exclusive loot I received by doing so.”

Not every game has difficulties like Diablo 3 where it’s so cleanly delineated. In those cases it’s easy to say “Well, there’s content for everyone at every difficulty scale”. GW2, however, does the same thing but across different content.

There is an entire open world with dozens of maps and dozens of world bosses all designed with the casual player in mind. There are fewer events that would pique the interest of a “difficulty seeker” than you can count on one hand. So where are the challenge mote / super difficult versions of all of those? The answer is that ANet doesn’t feel it is worth the massive time investment to develop that content and would rather create new content specifically tailored to that challenge-seeker crowd. The particular note was that the crowd has, for years, requested instanced challenging PvE for smaller scale groups. That’s exactly what ANet did; they created challenging content aimed at that group and for the experience those individuals want.

MadRabbit.3179:

So if this social phenomena where everyone just automatically stopped having fun at higher difficulties because of the introduction of lower difficulties didn’t happen there, why would it happen here?

Firstly, I never said that people wouldn’t have fun with easier difficulties. Secondly, the social phenomena happens everywhere. Dungeons are dead, and do you know why? Because why would people do dungeons, which are medium difficulty, for those rewards when you can do much easier content for better or similar rewards? Dungeons are fun for a lot of people, and yet thread after thread after thread get posted by people who feel they can’t do it because there’s no one to do them with and their friends lost interest. That’s exactly what will happen here with raids. You introduce an easy mode, and even with reduced rewards most players will just do the easy mode and now suddenly you have fewer people doing the hard mode, people can’t find pub groups for it, the pub groups that do it have harsher requirements for players, and casual guilds (like mine) shy away from the more stressful, harder mode.

I can speak for my guild when I say that if you added an easier difficulty people would want to do it instead of the current difficulty. They would no longer push themselves to get better, they would no longer tweak their builds or change classes for the good of the group, and that moment of immense excitement at overcoming the hardest PvE content in the game would no longer be there. It’s not the same as Diablo 3, and while I’m sure ANet could make it work to not lose players and make the general reddit polling numbers happy, it would hurt my experience and the experience of the hundreds of friends I have who do this content with or around me a lot.

MadRabbit.3179:

People, including myself, who have posted on this subject are doing so from a place of increasing overall player satisfaction and introducing more choice to fit people’s playstyles. You have decreed this is nonsense, because of your subjective assessment that it’s really all just okay and we’re all wrong.

It’s not nonsense, I just don’t think you’ve given the content a fair chance. You’re right, though, that having more modes would make more people happy. More is always better. I don’t think, however, that it is a valuable use of the developers’ time. I would rather they work on future raid wings aimed at the challenge seekers and allow the other dozens of content teams at ANet to handle creating content for the casual crowd. This simultaneously helps address the issue I presented above. The best plan of action is for ANet to stay the course.

Thaddeus.4891:

savacli.8172:

The moment you decided to find time to practice is when you went beyond the call on an average player. To me, I see the casual player as someone who came across GW2 and picked up the game because it was a cheap buy and found it interesting. Though the moment a Steam sale goes live I expect that same player to chase after the next shiny object. Should he come back to GW2 I don’t think he’d have much luck finding a group because he probably doesn’t have the right gear let alone the experience necessary to bypass that check.

So we should make sure the game is for the most casual players all the time? What about the guy that play 20min per year. Did you think about him? How hardcore elitist the game is if that guy can’t experience all the content?

I’m exagerrating, but you get my point. It’s not like they changed everything in the game into raid and there is nothing in the game except raid. Jesus 2 months ago the game was fine, they added 1 raids and suddenly that,s all there is. I can’t play raid, so this game isn’t for casual anymore. That’s why we can’t have nice things because each time there is people screaming that not everybody can play it. From the casual mom with 2 kids and 2 hours on sathurday to the hardcore gamer that love GW2 and play 30-40 hours per weeks. Why can’t they both have content that they love? Or it need to be always about the casual 100% of the time?

Err, not quite. I’d like to see Raids move in a direction similar to fractals (the good ol’ version) to where casual players aren’t necessarily excluded, but they should appropriately get wrecked if they walked into a Raid difficulty equating to Fractals 50 (pre-HoT).

My gripe is that there’s a clear division now, and it’s disheartening when I can’t even bring in one of my guildies who love the game but do not have the time to come practice with us. They eventually give up their spot in the group because they think after several hours of trying they were holding us down (admittedly, they were making regular mistakes) or felt discouraged that they weren’t making any progress. This is even more insult to injury after we complete the raid 1-2 attempts after that person was replaced.

Some of you would see that and think, “That’s just motivation for that guild member to get better.” when in reality I’ve seen fewer and fewer people return because they don’t think they’re good enough. That’s the part I don’t like about Raids. In any other content I can help someone through the content, and have them walk away making them feel accomplished and empowered. But what the kitten do I do with people who I see time and time again giving up on themselves while they see others succeed. I expect that from other games but not GW2.

Edit: The reason I plea for a Easy mode or tier’d Raids is because it will serve as a crutch. Again, pointing back to fractals even though there was an “easy” mode the general player base opted for the higher levels because of the increased availability of rewards (ascended boxes notably). Now, I’m not gonna throw someone straight to the sharks if they want a chance at a box, but it’s a whole lot easier to crutch them into the hardcore content if I had an easy mode rather than have said person eaten alive.

P.S. I realize that Easy mode or whatever will never happen; I’m just voicing my 2 copper that Raids are not casual friendly.

savacli.8172:

Some of you would see that and think, “That’s just motivation for that guild member to get better.” when in reality I’ve seen fewer and fewer people return because they don’t think they’re good enough. That’s the part I don’t like about Raids. In any other content I can help someone through the content, and have them walk away making them feel accomplished and empowered. But what the kitten do I do with people who I see time and time again giving up on themselves while they see others succeed. I expect that from other games but not GW2.

I think it really depends on the person. I hate to be that guy, but I don’t think everything in the game should be designed for everyone. I know a ton of people who avoid unranked and ranked PvP like the plague because the expectations are so high and the stress runs high. They’ll never experience those close games of team versus team in the intended conquest format, and that’s okay. They can still experience PvP in hotjoin however they like should they choose.

The same is true of raids, where people can still enjoy team instanced PvE in Fractals or even dungeons (technically they’re still there). In my guild, some people do give up on raids. They just lack the ability to meet the mechanical skill requirements… and that’s okay! We bring them along to fractals and stuff, and they have a blast! Part of it is working with the person as an individual so they’re doing the things they want to within their ability, and part of it is, well, the expectations of the player.

I have friends who spent weeks throwing themselves at the Mad King’s Clocktower failing and never winning… Does there really need to be an easy mode of the jumping puzzle to cater to them, or couldn’t they just go do another jumping puzzle? I mean, that’s what they ended up doing, and it all turned out okay. Ultimately, though, the people who persevered and finished it had that moment of satisfaction knowing they beat the hardest JP in the game… and that’s a critical GW2 memory for them. This same architecture is everywhere in GW2 already, and to be entirely honest I think it’s great.

savacli.8172:

Edit: The reason I plea for a Easy mode or tier’d Raids is because it will serve as a crutch. Again, pointing back to fractals even though there was an “easy” mode the general player base opted for the higher levels because of the increased availability of rewards (ascended boxes notably). Now, I’m not gonna throw someone straight to the sharks if they want a chance at a box, but it’s a whole lot easier to crutch them into the hardcore content if I had an easy mode rather than have said person eaten alive.

P.S. I realize that Easy mode or whatever will never happen; I’m just voicing my 2 copper that Raids are not casual friendly.

Like I said several time. I agree with the easy mode with nerfed reward parallel with the current raid.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I think it really depends on the person. I hate to be that guy, but I don’t think everything in the game should be designed for everyone. I know a ton of people who avoid unranked and ranked PvP like the plague because the expectations are so high and the stress runs high. They’ll never experience those close games of team versus team in the intended conquest format, and that’s okay. They can still experience PvP in hotjoin however they like should they choose.

I agree with 99% of what you are saying Dusk. But not on that. You said it yourself. Someone can play ranked, unranked or even hotjoin depending on what they choose. But they all can experience conquest PvP on their level. Nobody is telling them go in EoTM for easy mode PvP.

Same should be true for raids. Nobody should tell them go in dungeon or fractal if you want easy mode because they are not the same type of content. Like Ranked, Unranked and Hot join, there should be different level of difficulty for raids too. Just like there is several difficulty level in fractal.

It was my opinion back when we didn’t even know what was this challenging group content. You can’t make a content that will have the right difficulty for everybody. So the ideal solution is to make different level of difficulty.

And I disagree that would diminish the value of the effort we make. Lets just give you an exemple. Back when fractal was lauch, people were putting video of them doing level 80 and it was impressive and those people had pride of doing it. The fact that some people were doing fractal 10 didn’t devalued that.

Same with league. When I’m gonna see someone in diamond or legendary division I’m gonna be impress and their achivement won’t be devaluated because I also can play in PvP League, just 2 or 3 division under them.

If I’m able to kill the raid in normal mode, I’m gonna be proud of myself. This won’t be devaluated by someone killing the raid in easy mode.

I haven’t stuck my toe into raids as yet (primarily because I just have not had that much time to play).

We got a bit of a mixed bag from Anet, when it came to describing whether or not the content would be casual or pug friendly. On one hand they said it would not be puggable, and yet at the same time made the comment that it would be akin to UW or FoW, which…were very much puggable.

I figure its too early to tell definitively at this point, but I don’t personally expect it to be any worse then UW or HM DoA, both of which people claimed where not pug friendly as well. Just takes time, and patience.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Not every game has difficulties like Diablo 3 where it’s so cleanly delineated. In those cases it’s easy to say “Well, there’s content for everyone at every difficulty scale”. GW2, however, does the same thing but across different content.

There is an entire open world with dozens of maps and dozens of world bosses all designed with the casual player in mind. There are fewer events that would pique the interest of a “difficulty seeker” than you can count on one hand. So where are the challenge mote / super difficult versions of all of those? The answer is that ANet doesn’t feel it is worth the massive time investment to develop that content and would rather create new content specifically tailored to that challenge-seeker crowd. The particular note was that the crowd has, for years, requested instanced challenging PvE for smaller scale groups. That’s exactly what ANet did; they created challenging content aimed at that group and for the experience those individuals want.

Fair enough, but on this point we are going to have to disagree.

One, I don’t agree with the model of singular difficulty for the many reasons I’ve stated.

Two, just because I am activating for an easier difficulty on raids, does not mean I don’t want harder difficulties on other content. I was psyched when they announced a harder version of the dungeons awhile back and was disappointed when they didn’t follow through on it.

Three, just because, I want an easier difficulty does not equate to me wanting there NOT to be challenging content. I do. I really do. I just want it to be done in a way that satisfies that challenge without, by proxy, making the experience of the content exclusive.

Firstly, I never said that people wouldn’t have fun with easier difficulties. Secondly, the social phenomena happens everywhere. Dungeons are dead, and do you know why? Because why would people do dungeons, which are medium difficulty, for those rewards when you can do much easier content for better or similar rewards? Dungeons are fun for a lot of people, and yet thread after thread after thread get posted by people who feel they can’t do it because there’s no one to do them with and their friends lost interest.

Apples to oranges and a whole lot of straw. You are using a model of singular difficulty which is too easy with zero incentive in form of rewards to debunk a model of scaled difficulty with progressively better rewards.

It just has nothing at all to do with what we are talking about, because I am not advocating that model at all.

A proper reference would be fractals which do implement the model of scaled difficulty and progressive awards are still actively being played. Yes, the implementation is broken, but the current problems are not representative of the model as a whole. Once the rewards and scaling issues are fixed, fractals will have even more activity.

That’s exactly what will happen here with raids. You introduce an easy mode, and even with reduced rewards most players will just do the easy mode and now suddenly you have fewer people doing the hard mode, people can’t find pub groups for it, the pub groups that do it have harsher requirements for players, and casual guilds (like mine) shy away from the more stressful, harder mode.

What reference are using for this behavorial prediction? It’s clearly not dungeons, because I’ve already demonstrated how they are not germane to this discussion due to their singular level of difficulty and broken rewards model. Why would your “casual” guild who by definition want to play easier content be a representation of the entire community?

I, personally, can think of a number of examples that disprove this prediction. The number of people playing 1-20 fractals are not overwhelming in comparison to the people playing 20-50. The number of groups in each category are relatively equal in prime time. I have no issue finding a group for 20-50s, because EVERYONE is playing the easy mode that is available.

Diablo 3, once again, with a working scaled difficulty model and a working rewards model, proves the exact opposite. It is the lower difficulties that have zero players as players continually master each stage of the content and move on to higher levels in order to obtain the exclusive rewards. I could not find a group for normal mode right now if I tried.

I can speak for my guild when I say that if you added an easier difficulty people would want to do it instead of the current difficulty. They would no longer push themselves to get better, they would no longer tweak their builds or change classes for the good of the group, and that moment of immense excitement at overcoming the hardest PvE content in the game would no longer be there.

Okay, whoopedity dooooo. They want to do easy content. So what?

Your solution is apparently to have one mode of difficulty to force them to play the way you think they should play instead of how they want to play.

Choice involves the consequence of people not necessarily doing what you want to do. Adults respect that instead of advocating for something that essentially forces them to play how you want them to in order to play at all.

And that’s not a straw man; that is literally what you are doing with that sentence.

It’s not the same as Diablo 3, and while I’m sure ANet could make it work to not lose players and make the general reddit polling numbers happy, it would hurt my experience and the experience of the hundreds of friends I have who do this content with or around me a lot.

The model I am proposing is exactly like Diablo 3 and the success it has had has disproved some of the things you are saying are going to happen.

And since enhancing your experience essentially involves including only one difficulty level that by your own words forces your friends who don’t want to do challenging content to do challenging content if they want to play at all, you are kind of coming off as a selfish donkey who’s quality of experience I don’t give two kittens about anymore than I care how tired you are of heaving me vocalize my opinion on this forums.

It’s not nonsense, I just don’t think you’ve given the content a fair chance. You’re right, though, that having more modes would make more people happy. More is always better. I don’t think, however, that it is a valuable use of the developers’ time. I would rather they work on future raid wings aimed at the challenge seekers and allow the other dozens of content teams at ANet to handle creating content for the casual crowd. This simultaneously helps address the issue I presented above. The best plan of action is for ANet to stay the course.

Okay, so you say it’s not nonsense, tell me I am not giving the content a fair chance, but then immediately in the next sentence agree that the model I am proposing as an alternative to the model I am not giving a fair chance would make more people happy and be better.

So since you have conceded that the model is better, I should hear no more arguments about how it’s not going to work or going to be detrimental to the game.

We’ll just have to disagree in our subjective opinions of what is a valuable use of development time as I find things we both agree increase overall player happiness and make the game better to be valuable.

Thaddeus.4891:

I agree with 99% of what you are saying Dusk. But not on that. You said it yourself. Someone can play ranked, unranked or even hotjoin depending on what they choose. But they all can experience conquest PvP on their level. Nobody is telling them go in EoTM for easy mode PvP.

Same should be true for raids. Nobody should tell them go in dungeon or fractal if you want easy mode because they are not the same type of content. Like Ranked, Unranked and Hot join, there should be different level of difficulty for raids too. Just like there is several difficulty level in fractal.

It was my opinion back when we didn’t even know what was this challenging group content. You can’t make a content that will have the right difficulty for everybody. So the ideal solution is to make different level of difficulty.

And I disagree that would diminish the value of the effort we make. Lets just give you an exemple. Back when fractal was lauch, people were putting video of them doing level 80 and it was impressive and those people had pride of doing it. The fact that some people were doing fractal 10 didn’t devalued that.

Same with league. When I’m gonna see someone in diamond or legendary division I’m gonna be impress and their achivement won’t be devaluated because I also can play in PvP League, just 2 or 3 division under them.

If I’m able to kill the raid in normal mode, I’m gonna be proud of myself. This won’t be devaluated by someone killing the raid in easy mode.

I suck at PvP…like terribly horrible at PvP. So, with that in mind I stay away from anything other than Hot Join or friendly pre-organized matches. I’ll never get that fancy Roman numeral by my name, BUT I can still experience the same content as the League-ers do.

It’s very humbling to have some of my friends and guild mates play with me on “easy” mode, and I get to return the favor by cheering them on as they compete for much higher stakes and rewards. The same could be reciprocated in PvE. In that case it would be me helping a lesser skilled guildie while I take on the tougher challenges for better rewards; we’d still be playing the same content. It’d almost be an insult to tell that guildie to go play Fractals since they such at raids.

[sarcasm] It’s okay though since Fractals are kinda like Raids! [/sarcasm]

I am that guy that believes that everything is in this game should be designed for everyone.

Thaddeus.4891:

I agree with 99% of what you are saying Dusk. But not on that. You said it yourself. Someone can play ranked, unranked or even hotjoin depending on what they choose. But they all can experience conquest PvP on their level. Nobody is telling them go in EoTM for easy mode PvP.

That’s fair, it is different in that they’re still playing conquest just at a much different level. I’ll concede that wasn’t a good analogy.

Thaddeus.4891:

And I disagree that would diminish the value of the effort we make. Lets just give you an exemple. Back when fractal was lauch, people were putting video of them doing level 80 and it was impressive and those people had pride of doing it. The fact that some people were doing fractal 10 didn’t devalued that.

You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. Beating easy mode raids won’t devalue beating a higher difficulty raid; that doesn’t even make sense. I’m saying that the lower difficulty raid won’t require nearly the same level as iteration as the higher difficulty one, and thus the people beating the easier one will experience the elation of overcoming a difficult activity because they’ll just breeze through it. That is against the design paradigm of raids; the whole point was to create difficult content that feels personally rewarding to beat.

Regardless of that, though, I think balancing everything against two different difficulty modes for raids will add far too much time cost to the developers. It would limit their ability to create new raid wings to support it, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.

During LS1, ANet has stated that Marionette was their attempt at pushing people to learn how to play better. I feel similar attempt has been made with raids. However, for this to work the raids have to start at the current difficulty level (low) and then ramp up the difficulty.

Large portion of population will be too put off by the sudden jump in difficulty on entry to try getting better because they’ll simply feel that the plank is set too high for them. Gradual increase in difficulty will also allow for easier development of raid teams, and their improvement as a whole and not individuals.

The other part is lack of individual progress tracking tools. Yes, damage meters. Again. Currently there is no way for me to see if my damage is improving or not by swapping gear/consumables/traits in any measurable way. Best we can do is theorycraft which can be quite inaccurate for some of the more mechanically challenging encounters.

Finally, I think that trying to lump people into either ‘casual’ or ‘hardcore’ category does not work. Personal skill level, ability to learn, class knowledge, ability to function as part of the team, willingness to fail, amount of time the person can play, the maximum stretch of uninterrupted gameplay, internet connection and a number of other factors seem to somehow be distilled down to calling someone hardcore or casual. The result ends up being entirely too subjective and open for interpretation.

Thaddeus.4891:

FogLeg.9354:

Hardcore players should really stop posting about what is or is not suitable content for casual players. The fact that you can finish something under a minute, naked, with one hand only and wearing blindfold, does not mean it is doable for average casual player.

The average casual player never reads forums btw, so arguing with them in forum is fairly useless. If they don’t like the content, they simply stop playing.

So everybody able to do what you can’t is an Elite player and anyone under you is a casual? I’ll need to give the good news to my friend with whom I kill the Vale Guardian with that after all he’s an elite hardcore players. His wife and 3 kids will be astonished since he only play 10 hours per week.

I learn everyday on these forums.

10 hours a week is actually quite a bit, and I’d doubt that the skill level between someone who spends a good portion of that 10 hours in raids versus a hardcore player that plays many more hours won’t be that big of a gap. Guy is lucky his wife lets him play for 10 hours a week with 3 kids haha! I’m lucky if I can scrape 4-5 hours a week with 2 kids.

Let me preface this by saying I have the eternal title.

Having said that, I have to disagree with almost everything you’ve said.

Gw2 raids are not casual friendly. Simply being able to post an LFG does not make it simple. From my experience, you would have to wait at least an hour before you could fill 9 spots and you will probably have people leaving while you are adding people from LFG. Then you will have more leavers after constant wipes. Anyone who has the time and patience for this, I would not classify as casual.

I also find it strange that raids are now supposed to be as hard as possible. Up until WoW: TBC, raids were all about having fun in a large party, with a few skilled players being able to carry the entire group.

And for some strange reason the definition of raids has changed into the hardest content possible where you wait dozens of hours for your dumbest teammate to learn the mechanics and then feel elated when they stop screwing up and generally never feel like doing it again.

I have to say i am enjoying the gallons of fresh tears every day.

The rage posts are quite a lovely example of how toxic the “casual” community can be.

Gewd.8125:

Let me preface this by saying I have the eternal title.

Having said that, I have to disagree with almost everything you’ve said.

Gw2 raids are not casual friendly. Simply being able to post an LFG does not make it simple. From my experience, you would have to wait at least an hour before you could fill 9 spots and you will probably have people leaving while you are adding people from LFG. Then you will have more leavers after constant wipes. Anyone who has the time and patience for this, I would not classify as casual.

I also find it strange that raids are now supposed to be as hard as possible. Up until WoW: TBC, raids were all about having fun in a large party, with a few skilled players being able to carry the entire group.

And for some strange reason raids has changed into the hardest content possible where you wait dozens of hours for your dumbest teammate to learn the mechanics and then feel elated when they stop screwing up and generally never feel like doing it again.

You must have some expensive rose tinted goggles there to paint vanilla WoW raids as hello kitty island adventures flowers and sunshine. Did you even do black wing lair?

1. Vaelastrasz alone was not idiot friendly, if you didn’t move off in time there goes the raid and that debuff had a tight timer. Sabetha’s bomb in comparison doesn’t even instantly down you.
2. Nothing in GW2 even comes close to Nefarian black and red let alone easier combos, don’t even try it
3. The amount of time you had to spend crafting EVERYONE onyxia scale cloaks WHICH WAS BASICALLY A HARD GATE dwarfs ascended armor grinding
4. SUPPRESSION ROOM
5. Do you know how much blood, sweat, and tears went into crafting that one person out of 40 of you the Hand of Ragnaros? Have you any IDEA how much easier legendary weapons in GW2 is?

Raiding in pre WoW TBC was a full time job of overworld mat gathering and 6 hours of raid attempts 4 days a week average, a raid admin to keep track of DKP and people, it was in no way casual friendly.

spoj.3175:

I have to say i am enjoying the gallons of fresh tears every day.

The rage posts are quite a lovely example of how toxic the “casual” community can be.

((gives spoj a beer))

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

spoj.3175:

I have to say i am enjoying the gallons of fresh tears every day.

The rage posts are quite a lovely example of how toxic the “casual” community can be.

/thread
15char

Gewd.8125:

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

and whats so hard about farming gear in GW2? you don’t even need to kill a 40 man boss for it to even be allowed to do other content . You can literally chop trees and mine nodes your way to BiS stats in GW2.

I
Don’t
Understand.
At
ALL

The first couple bosses in Molten Core still required a significant amount of time to learn in comparison to anything spirit vale.

This is the true side of the “casual/friendly” community. When there are numerous resources/guide available, new guilds recruiting for raid, and live streams of raid boss kills exist, the casual side just close their eyes and complain about how they have to put in efforts to complete. It is not a right to complete or even participate in raid. If you can’t do it for whatever reason, then find solutions instead of crying “elitism”.

There are reasons why raiding guilds require trial and gear check, and this thread shows exactly why those things are needed. “casuals/friendly players” are even more toxic than elitist players since they demand to be accepted into speed clear raid parties to complete the raid without even learning about class/gear/build mechanics. At least those “elitist” players beat the raid, create guides, and stream the process instead of qQing on the forum.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. Beating easy mode raids won’t devalue beating a higher difficulty raid; that doesn’t even make sense. I’m saying that the lower difficulty raid won’t require nearly the same level as iteration as the higher difficulty one, and thus the people beating the easier one will experience the elation of overcoming a difficult activity because they’ll just breeze through it. That is against the design paradigm of raids; the whole point was to create difficult content that feels personally rewarding to beat.

Regardless of that, though, I think balancing everything against two different difficulty modes for raids will add far too much time cost to the developers. It would limit their ability to create new raid wings to support it, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Ok i understand more now, but I still don’t agree with your point.

It depend on what easy mode mean. To me it would be only to remove the timers and add 2-4 updraft at Gorseval and that’s it.

The raid itself wouldn’t be too much easier since the mechanic are all intact. The only thing that change is that a full group of casual exotic guy will be able to do the raid with their main. They won’t have to change their profession because they don’t have a PS Warrior. They won’t have to spend 1 gold on nourishment and food. If they need to change their gear, they will be able to do so at a fraction of the price. They will still wipe like crazy because someone didn’t make the circle. They will still wipe if the tank screw up. But the gear barrier will be removed.

They wouldn,t have access to special rewards like the infusion, minis and legendary armor. But if they do their raid on a regular basis they will be able to gear 1 character in full ascended and with their knowledge takle the real raid.

And that way, the pressure on the devs is very very small. Removing a timer and adding 2-4 updraft is very small compare to creating another wing of the raid. Of course it’s not just that (the mode itself and reward rework), but you get my point.

Of course if we talk about an easy mode with half the HP, no timer and half the damage, then this isn’t a raid anymore. The goal here is only to remove the gear barrier for people that can’t afford it, or can’t afford a second set of ascended because their main build isn’t really good for raid.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Gewd.8125:

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

and whats so hard about farming gear in GW2? you don’t even need to kill a 40 man boss for it to even be allowed to do other content . You can literally chop trees and mine nodes your way to BiS stats in GW2.

I
Don’t
Understand.
At
ALL

The first couple bosses in Molten Core still required a significant amount of time to learn in comparison to anything spirit vale.

That´s the entire problem with the game.

I´d personally rather get my ascended gear by beating challenging content with other people than to spend night after night chopping wood for months on end just to save up enough gold for ascended gear.

The most skilled players that do the hardest content in the game are always broke while the people that run from chest to chest and hit “F” for hours everyday have the best in slot gear and the coolest looking chars.

It´s nuts.