Guild Wars 2

The problem is with tank gear you could just lame out all the content and win, even if it would take 3 hours to beat all bosses.
What could happen is rise the timer a bit (I think the timer is fine for Vale, I can’t say much about the rest) but a timer need to exist.

Perhaps after 8 minutes the boss would do a special attack, become harder, deny you of an achievement or loot, anything but asking you to start over for the 10th time.

Good idea, but i think there’s a lot of masochists ingame. They want a spanking and keep going back for more.
Besides, they’ll probably never scale the difficulty back since “see ? it’s possible.” is enough to convince certain people that it should stay that way.

I disagree. The timer is there to force the raid to bring enough dps. DPS comes at expense of survivability. Thus the timer is a skill check – can the raid survive AND do enough damage at the same time.

Now I also think that countdown timers are boring and can be done away with using either massive regen on the boss (equal to the minimum amount of total raid DPS you require) or stacking a debuff on a raid that becomes lethal regardless of your gear set after enough stacks are reached. However the concept of a time limit is there for a reason.

There is kind of a line to be had though. The length of a rage timer is debatable, but it needs to exist to force people to learn their rotations and stay on point.

Without the timer you can take as long as you want and make as many mistakes as you want and turns into only a test of suitability instead of both suitability and damage.

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

Lets wait a month and see how things are still going. It’s too soon for any posts like this….

Pls call it “God dungeon” because Raid is not for casual player. Obviously, the number of people going down after the raid were released. They may feel bad because they must inescapably adapt themselves to the requirements of the system . They have to find new gear sets. It seems that they need to start over again.

Thanks for the replies.

Like I said, I have nothing about the content being extremely hard, it could be even harder. I just don’t like fighting a clock. As someone else said it’s kinda breaking the immersion. Some other mechanic could be in place in order to prevent people from using bunker build, like a aoe skill that does double the damage against people with high toughness after 8 minutes.

I don’t really see what would be the problem of having people take 4 hours to finish the raid if they want. It’s not like you get a precursor at the end and the reward resets weekly.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

To the argument against a full defense team cheese moding everything without a timer: so what? Its going to take them an incredibly longer time, and I cant imagine anyone doing it that way would be having much fun. In which way would it impact people on a large scale? Do you think it would replace the zerk meta in its “zerk or kick” mentality? Do you really think there would be enough players willing to take that much more time in a raid for that to happen?

I feel the timer would be fine If they didn’t equal losing. I’ve come to adapt with the berserker meta, at least there is more than one set.

Rauderi.8706:

Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

This. Some will argue that you can have that “go go go!” moment with a timer, but there’s a difference between pulling off a kill at the last second vs. pulling off a kill a few seconds into an increased amount of damage. The latter feels fantastic, the former just feels cheap, and gimmicky (but that’s what Anet is good at unfortunately. They don’t seem to be able to survive without RNG and gimmicks).

Xillllix.3485:

Hi Anet,
I enjoyed trying the raids last night, was good content and I like the difficulty.

However when thinking about it I think the timers on bosses is a bad idea.
I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

Perhaps after 8 minutes the boss would do a special attack, become harder, deny you of an achievement or loot, anything but asking you to start over for the 10th time.

Hard content is fun but not when you’re fighting the clock more than the actual content.

That’s just my opinion,
Thanks

Technically you are fighting the content – the clock can be taken away (eg. not shown) and after a set amount the boss does what he does now – 200% damage and kills you easily.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

This is exactly what people asked when they asked for the trinity – any trinity set-up is like this.

As few tanks and healers as possible to stay alive with everyone else going for as much damage as possible.

How is this a surprise?

Highly experienced players were used because guess what – it’s supposed to be hard. If they had used average players and balanced raids using regular or average players guess what we’d have? dungeons 2.0.

They already tried this – to balance content around the average player – we got dungeons – which obviously degenerated into speed clears for profit and the zerker meta. People shouted and screamed and said they wanted a change.

Raids are this change.

I understand what you’re saying – raids are so finely tuned now that if you miss certain timers you can be 5 minutes away from the fight’s “end” and still know you’re going to fail.

What’s missing is that excitement of “are we going to make it? Are we going to beat it by the skin of our teeth?” – that doesn’t happen in Raids now. If you don’t hit certain markers you’ll know with 90% certainty that you have failed – even 2-3 minutes into the fight.

The situation you’re describing is definitely more rewarding and more fun -but it would also make things much much easier for skilled players and would generate a lot of unwanted behavior.

For example – I predicted that if raids weren’t so finely tuned as to require all 10 people to be at 100% for the entire length of the fight ( which seems to be the case now) you’ll quickly see raid spots for sale.
100g a piece for example – and people would pay for it – but that would be a very bad PR situation for Anet and the community would be up in arms.

The thing is – Anet can’t stop it – you can’t stop people making arrangements outside the game and then raiding together – only that 1 person is just now pulling his weight and will at a later point pay someone else for the run.

It’s inevitable – and to avoid this they went with the all 10 on point all the time situation.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

If there was a trinity, wouldn’t that be the case as well? How about in GW1? Also be aware that build does not equate to only stat composition. Traits and utilities also count including weapon choice.

The first boss has been beaten in about six min. There’s plenty of flexibility. Once more and more people start doing the other parts of the wing, we’ll see if the same can be said for those.

I still don’t agree with the usage of immersion breaking. I’m not disagreeing or agreeing with your explanation of your complaint, I just don’t agree with using that phrase to refer to it.

Edit: typo

Stand The Wall.6987:

To the argument against a full defense team cheese moding everything without a timer: so what? Its going to take them an incredibly longer time, and I cant imagine anyone doing it that way would be having much fun. In which way would it impact people on a large scale? Do you think it would replace the zerk meta in its “zerk or kick” mentality? Do you really think there would be enough players willing to take that much more time in a raid for that to happen?

Except most players that play for reward only would most likely prefer to have a clear successful run that they can schedule and know they’ll get it done then try 10231 times and fail and have to try again and lose people and so on.

After I’ve beaten raids normally for the challenge the first time around I would rather spend 2-3 hours per boss in a raid knowing i’ll succeed 100% then doing them “normally” again.

Because certainty, predictability and scheduling are things people go for.
I’m willing to bet you most raid groups would end up doing it this way – and Anet knows it.

Look at Mossman – a fight that’s not hard at all compared to Raids – and yet most groups preferred to pull him under water where he could do nothing, autoattack him and tab out. Even groups with people that could have easily beaten him on land quicker chose to do this.

They are just doing what ever other raid in MMO history has done. Or at least, modern raids (I haven’t fact-checked the mechanics of every single raid in a game :P).

Enrage timers (as they are usually called) are there to make people think hard about group composition. In trinity-based games, this usually means “no stacking 50 healers and negating all damage/mechanics.”

They (enrage timers) make sense if you imagine the following scenario: A new wing has just been released and five guilds are all vying for world first completion. Guilds 1 through 4 spend time working out group comp and start banging their heads against the boss. With no enrage timers, Guild 5 could say “screw strategy, we’re just going to outheal the damage.” Guild 1 spends 6 hours on boss one and finally beats him. Guild 5 spends 30 minutes on a single attempt, but kills boss one on the first try.

In theory, in this scenario, Guilds 1 through 5 could all stack healers and cheese boss one. But then it’s a competition of who starts first, rather than who uses better skill and strategy.

If all you’re thinking about is Guilds 50-100 who came late to the party, then timers seem kind of inconsequential. After all, the raids have long been cleared and the competitive part doesn’t matter a whole lot. But in terms of competition, it’s important to ensure that guilds have as few ways as possible to get an unfair advantage.

The thing about raids is, despite technically being Player versus Environment, the reality is that they are more like Player versus Environment vs. Player versus Environment. In other words, they are an indirect competition between groups, rather than the direct competition that is PvP.

I see what you’re saying Labjax but I can’t really agree.

I doubt most players are motivated by this PvEvPvE mentality – very few people who play the game even care about the forums and very few of those on the forums care about world first and best all time records.

People are doing GW2 raids because of the rewards – Raids would have probably been a flop in this game if they weren’t tied to legendary armor.
I mean – without the reward incentive there I would have done them – but not on day 1 – I would have done them when the meta was well established, when groups consistently beat them – because there would have been no rush.

With Legendary armor as a means to motivate me however – I’ve been trying over and over in order to get close and have my reward.

Since this reward is the primary motivator – its scarcity is one of the biggest reasons it has value.
At the start of the game legendary weapons were rare – and thus desirable. They were a status symbol – they meant something.
Now – since legendary weapons have become easy to get – and since it’s become apparent to everyone that you can just buy them with cash – that has disappeared. Likewise my desire to make new legendary weapons of the old Generation 1 type has disappeared – and while I could easily afford 2-3 more I’ve decided to not go for it and just go with the new ones or the armor – because it’s the prestige that I’m after.

If people can just do raids slowly with little threat it becomes a farm – it becomes a “who’s got 4 hours on hand to slowly grind the boss down” contest. It wouldn’t be about skill – and the prestige would be gone.

Harper.4173:

I see what you’re saying Labjax but I can’t really agree.

I doubt most players are motivated by this PvEvPvE mentality – very few people who play the game even care about the forums and very few of those on the forums care about world first and best all time records.

People are doing GW2 raids because of the rewards – Raids would have probably been a flop in this game if they weren’t tied to legendary armor.
I mean – without the reward incentive there I would have done them – but not on day 1 – I would have done them when the meta was well established, when groups consistently beat them – because there would have been no rush.

With Legendary armor as a means to motivate me however – I’ve been trying over and over in order to get close and have my reward.

Since this reward is the primary motivator – its scarcity is one of the biggest reasons it has value.
At the start of the game legendary weapons were rare – and thus desirable. They were a status symbol – they meant something.
Now – since legendary weapons have become easy to get – and since it’s become apparent to everyone that you can just buy them with cash – that has disappeared. Likewise my desire to make new legendary weapons of the old Generation 1 type has disappeared – and while I could easily afford 2-3 more I’ve decided to not go for it and just go with the new ones or the armor – because it’s the prestige that I’m after.

If people can just do raids slowly with little threat it becomes a farm – it becomes a “who’s got 4 hours on hand to slowly grind the boss down” contest. It wouldn’t be about skill – and the prestige would be gone.

I’m not sure which part you’re agreeing with or disagreeing with. It seems like you’re in favor of timers, but for different reasons?

Exactly – I am in favor of timers but not because they offer exclusivity of “first” or “second” but because they offer exclusivity in rewards.

By existing timers make sure only the very best have access to the unique visual rewards that will be legendary armor. And that armor will be highly desirable because not many will have it.

Unlike first or second place and clear times – this is a much more palpable reason- and one that will most likely resonate with more players.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

I think you mean 1 tank in berserker gear and one piece of knight gear, and 2 healers in viper gear.

Or at least that’s what we ended up running in the only group I was in that managed to get past the first boss.

Staying alive was surprisingly not a huge issue.

In addition to some of the other points made in defense of timers, they serve a purpose in fulfilling a particular design intent. Anet’s intent to break the so-called “zerker” meta was not antipathy towards glass setups, it was a reaction to the fact that players were demanding all-glass gear for everyone in the group. Replacing one singular prefix gear meta with a different one one was not their intent.

What do we have with what we’ve heard of/seen so far in raids? We see a mechanic that calls for toughness gear, one that calls for Condi and one for glass (whether it be Condi or direct) and maybe one that calls for Healing Power. Afaik, jury’s still out on that last one.

So, in addition to the other reasons for a timer, it is a tool to move group content closer to a meta in which different roles are emphasized, with players making best use of more of the game’s mechanics.

I personally love the raids, timer included! Note that the timer is not a ‘game over’, it’s simply an enrage. Yes, the boss hits like a truck, but a group with stronger support can still hold out for a little while longer.

After around 2 hours doing our first real guild attempt today and getting the boss down to 15% HP, we’re all pretty stoked by the challenge. It’s not about constantly getting big rewards for content, it’s about the content being rewarding in its own right! I would rather spend 2 hours without earning a single copper in raids than 2 hours in silverwastes chest farming. Plus, when we do, as a guild, nail the mechanics (I fully expect we’ll beat the first boss next time we group up and since we’ve been consistently improving I wouldn’t imagine it would be a one off) down, we can then reap the rewards of our hard work by consistently beating the content.

If failing dozens of times perfecting a composition, learning together, and working with each other to get your team in sync with each other doesn’t appeal to you, then raids are not, and should not, be for you. Wait until they fix fractals and have your ad hoc ‘guaranteed success’ fun there Yes, it’s annoying if you don’t have a guild that you can raid with, but this is an MMO! There SHOULD be content specifically for guilds or organised friend groups. If everything is puggable, it makes it far less fun for those, such as my guild, who enjoy challenging content. It’s not like we’re even ‘ermagerd super 1337 players’ either! We’re just a team of decent to good players who banded together to make a raid group.

IMO, raids = good, timer = good, but could be improved.

Like Comfy, my guild did a few hours but 30% was the best we got. As we mastered the mechanics, we got faster and faster, and in the end lost due to a lack of DPS. I know for certain that two specific DPS were slacking, both of whom were PUG players to fill the numbers (one of them kept being vocal in /s mid-raidwhich had me on the verge of booting him).

It’s a challenge, and it’s a challenge people like. The big difference between GW2 and WoW for me though is the difference between optimal and sub-optimal DPS. If you muck up your rotation on WoW, you drop a fair bit of DPS, but on GW2? You cut it in half or worse. If you drop a bad field, miss with a vital AoE, or just simply use skills that don’t properly synergise, you’re seriously penalised for it.

I ran tank, very heavy tank, in Settler’s gear. I was basically invulnerable to everything (despite playing an ele, hurray for perma buffed prot), but the team obviously took a hit DPS-wise as a result of it. Ever since the raid I’ve been looking at how much toughness I can drop to maximise DPS and still be a very strong tank. It’s crunching numbers and… to be quite honest, I really enjoy it. The one thing I dislike is how costly it will be to switch around builds and test new tactics, etc. Never has legendary armour seemed as relevant as right now in these raids, heh.

My raid got 30% and we didn’t deserve to get the boss down, but we would have if he hadn’t hit enrage. I feel like an extra 2 minutes would be nice on Vale Guardian, but that’s just because he is the -first- boss and so a strict DPS race isn’t all that great an introduction. I believe the first group to get him down had like 1:30 to spare, so something MUST be going wrong, since 5% is all that lies between exotic and ascended gear.

simple solution would ve been a timer reset have the timer go to 5 mins after each phase thus keeping a dps check but not a too extreme one allowing more build combinations to be viable instead of everyone but 2 or 3 members to run full glass dps

Remember when we were hoping that raids would bring a use for alternative roles other than full zerker and maximum DPS builds?

HAHAHAHAHAHA. “Healing subclasses”. Wait, Let me go outside for this one, it’ll be too loud if I laugh about it inside! But don’t worry guys, we’ve got DPS condition builds now, so everything is good, since a whole 20% more players may now participate without getting instantly kicked from the group.

It would’ve all been soo good without the DPS check, but a DPS check is a DPS check and it can’t ever be anything else. Might as well bring on meters now.

Might as well be playing a MOBA at this point (without the adrenaline rush).

Belzebu.3912:

The problem is with tank gear you could just lame out all the content and win, even if it would take 3 hours to beat all bosses.

And the problem with that would be .. what, exactly?

No, seriously, why do some people care so much how OTHERS complete content?

Rage timers are simply there to make the elitists feel good about themselves and be able to look down on those not as skillful at pressing 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-2-1-3-1-4 for minutes on end.

If someone or group can beat something in an hour let them, stop worrying about the ‘peen’ value of your phat lewt being devalued by the ‘casuals’ getting some too.

Nope, cry all you want.
Raids aren’t designed for everyone

Xillllix.3485:

Hi Anet,
I enjoyed trying the raids last night, was good content and I like the difficulty.

However when thinking about it I think the timers on bosses is a bad idea.
I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

Perhaps after 8 minutes the boss would do a special attack, become harder, deny you of an achievement or loot, anything but asking you to start over for the 10th time.

Hard content is fun but not when you’re fighting the clock more than the actual content.

That’s just my opinion,
Thanks

So,you tried raids last night,for the first time,and you come on the forums,sharing some thoughts and what should be fixed?

Not sure are you serious or you just trolling?Spend days in raid,then come and demand things.

Harper.4173:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

This is exactly what people asked when they asked for the trinity – any trinity set-up is like this.

As few tanks and healers as possible to stay alive with everyone else going for as much damage as possible.

How is this a surprise?

Highly experienced players were used because guess what – it’s supposed to be hard. If they had used average players and balanced raids using regular or average players guess what we’d have? dungeons 2.0.

They already tried this – to balance content around the average player – we got dungeons – which obviously degenerated into speed clears for profit and the zerker meta. People shouted and screamed and said they wanted a change.

Raids are this change.

I understand what you’re saying – raids are so finely tuned now that if you miss certain timers you can be 5 minutes away from the fight’s “end” and still know you’re going to fail.

What’s missing is that excitement of “are we going to make it? Are we going to beat it by the skin of our teeth?” – that doesn’t happen in Raids now. If you don’t hit certain markers you’ll know with 90% certainty that you have failed – even 2-3 minutes into the fight.

The situation you’re describing is definitely more rewarding and more fun -but it would also make things much much easier for skilled players and would generate a lot of unwanted behavior.

For example – I predicted that if raids weren’t so finely tuned as to require all 10 people to be at 100% for the entire length of the fight ( which seems to be the case now) you’ll quickly see raid spots for sale.
100g a piece for example – and people would pay for it – but that would be a very bad PR situation for Anet and the community would be up in arms.

The thing is – Anet can’t stop it – you can’t stop people making arrangements outside the game and then raiding together – only that 1 person is just now pulling his weight and will at a later point pay someone else for the run.

It’s inevitable – and to avoid this they went with the all 10 on point all the time situation.

One of the problems is that there is far too much gear choice, in this game.

In a game like WoW, you couldn’t abandon all survivability for DPS, even if you wanted to and (aside from some trinkets) you can’t choose a secondary stat over a primary one.

You have the gear for your amour weight and primary “power” stat and it has x amount of primary “power” stat (i.e. Agility/Intellect/Strength, depending on class) and y amount of Stamina on it; whether you would prefer either of those to be another stat, or not.

The content is then balanced around you having x amount of “power” and y amount of Stamina and the other two stats your armour generally provides, which can be more random, are only regarded as secondaries.

This makes it less of a gear type choice thing (as gear is more standard) and more of a learning the fight thing.

Which I tend to think is the way it should be.

Yes, gear ilevel is more important than it is here and people min/max etc., but it is far less widely varied in terms of its stats.

Also, re. “Raids are this change.” – well, raids are not supposed to be a change.

They are supposed to be one option out of many.

You’re not, as a game developer, when a few hardcore types say they want raids, supposed to go “Oh, so you want challenging content, do you? Well, have some very challenging raids and that is basically all you will be getting, so enjoy!”.

You’re supposed, if you add them at all, to add them as an added extra; not as the be all and end all.

Because, unless you also provide an LFR type version, most people will either never do them at all, or will never complete them.

ITA with you re. the undesirability of people selling raid (or dungeon, or fractal) spots BTW and I guess making raids require near-perfection, from everyone, is one way of preventing that.

But, honestly, I think the only way to get rid of it (as far as possible), in general, is to make it against the rules and ban anyone who is found to be doing it.

Because, even though you may be able to deal with the problem in this way, in the case of raids, you can’t make everything in the game extremely challenging, otherwise you simply won’t have many players left.

I personally think the timers is just a sign of raids being a new thing for Arenanet.

Compare raid design with WoW ( because if there’s one thing wow does amazing, its raid encounter design ). They manage to create very difficult boss based only around mechanics, and enrage timer are VERY rarely a cause for wipe nowadays, because they design mechanics as a way to kill raid teams that don’t have enough damage.

But they didn’t do that since the start. They had quite a few bosses that were tied to enrage timer in the past. They just became better at designing the bosses.

And I believe Arenanet will become better too. I just hope they already know they can do that.

Nephziel.6053:

Nope, cry all you want.
Raids aren’t designed for everyone

I don’t raid, have no desire to, just despise some of the elitists that do and post on forums.

Tigaseye.2047:

One of the problems is that there is far too much gear choice, in this game.

In a game like WoW, you couldn’t abandon all survivability for DPS, even if you wanted to and (aside from some trinkets) you can’t choose a secondary stat over a primary one.

You have the gear for your amour weight and primary “power” stat and it has x amount of primary “power” stat (i.e. Agility/Intellect/Strength, depending on class) and y amount of Stamina on it; whether you would prefer either of those to be another stat, or not.

The content is then balanced around you having x amount of “power” and y amount of Stamina and the other two stats your armour generally provides, which can be more random, are only regarded as secondaries.

This makes it less of a gear type choice thing (as gear is more standard) and more of a learning the fight thing.

Which I tend to think is the way it should be.

Yes, gear ilevel is more important than it is here and people min/max etc., but it is far less widely varied in terms of its stats.

Also, re. “Raids are this change.” – well, raids are not supposed to be a change.

They are supposed to be one option out of many.

You’re not, as a game developer, when a few hardcore types say they want raids, supposed to go “Oh, so you want challenging content, do you? Well, have some very challenging raids and that is basically all you will be getting, so enjoy!”.

You’re supposed, if you add them at all, to add them as an added extra; not as the be all and end all.

Because, unless you also provide an LFR type version, most people will either never do them at all, or will never complete them.

ITA with you re. the undesirability of people selling raid (or dungeon, or fractal) spots BTW and I guess making raids require near-perfection, from everyone, is one way of preventing that.

But, honestly, I think the only way to get rid of it (as far as possible), in general, is to make it against the rules and ban anyone who is found to be doing it.

Because, even though you may be able to deal with the problem in this way, in the case of raids, you can’t make everything in the game extremely challenging, otherwise you simply won’t have many players left.

First and foremost this isn’t WoW – stop bringing WoW up. If you want this game to be more like WoW then I might suggest that you’re in the wrong place.

You can’t abandon all survivability in GW2 either – you still have base stats that give you toughness, vitality and also your mandatory healing skill.
This is the way this game works compared to others – because in GW2 you have dodges – that make up for the lost “stat survivability”.

The way raids are currently tuned it’s still a “learning the fight thing” but on top of that there’s also a “perform perfectly” thing.
Because even with full glass parties with the minimal amount of tank and healer if you are unable to perform on point 100% of the time you’ll probably fail the encounter.

The thing is – with the timer there ticking away you can’t hide behind tanky gear or gear with “more survivability” to hide from your mistakes.
The timer means you have to go glass or go home – and the glass gear means that understanding the fight is not enough – you must do it flawlessly or you’ll wipe.

It’s that simple really – it’s not about just learning the fight – but being forced out of your comfort zone and made to perform perfectly there or fail

Raids are an option out of many – you are free to not raid.
I’m sure you know best about being a game developer since surely you must be one but this direction is the one they chose and I believe there’s a reason for it.
Without hardcore content your game will always be treated like “hello kitty adventure online” and I think somewhere along the line Anet decided they need to offer content to hardcore players as well.

I mean look at it this way – even with raids 90% of GW2’s content is still as casual friendly and casual oriented as it’s ever been. We simply have more variety now with content for hardcore and casual players alike.

And most people never doing them or completing them is perfectly fine.
Most people never PvP in GW2 – that doesn’t mean PvP should be an afterthought or that PvP should be shoved in a corner.

And you’re right – raid difficulty will counter selling for a time. When the top comps come out – with the best specs, best tactics and best way to do it – when people learn the hang of it I still think there will be room for selling – but we’ll have to see.

But, honestly, I think the only way to get rid of it (as far as possible), in general, is to make it against the rules and ban anyone who is found to be doing it.

Great idea there – now how will you do it?
How will you distinguish between a player that’s bought a run on a raid and is merely pretending to do stuff while just doodling waiting for others to carry him from a genuinely bad player that is just trying his butt off to manage.

How can you figure out that people have arranged a sell if the sell takes place outside the game for example on a 3rd party site – or via closed groups on some messenger platform.

Because, even though you may be able to deal with the problem in this way, in the case of raids, you can’t make everything in the game extremely challenging, otherwise you simply won’t have many players left.

It’s a good thing then that they haven’t made everything in the game extremely challenging – with Raids still being a minor portion of the game – which even with HoT tacked on remains in its majority faceroll easy.

KINGRPG.3492:

Pls call it “God dungeon” because Raid is not for casual player. Obviously, the number of people going down after the raid were released. They may feel bad because they must inescapably adapt themselves to the requirements of the system . They have to find new gear sets. It seems that they need to start over again.

I’d say the term “raid” in itself implies it isn’t for casual players, considering raids pretty much require getting on voice chat and coordinating with other people. Anything needing coordination that requires voice communication is no longer casual.

Sure you could do it without voice communication. But as the flood of “the raid is IMPOSSIBLE” threads have shown, it is not easy.

Xillllix.3485:

Hi Anet,
I enjoyed trying the raids last night, was good content and I like the difficulty.

However when thinking about it I think the timers on bosses is a bad idea.
I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

Perhaps after 8 minutes the boss would do a special attack, become harder, deny you of an achievement or loot, anything but asking you to start over for the 10th time.

Hard content is fun but not when you’re fighting the clock more than the actual content.

That’s just my opinion,
Thanks

Timers are part of the content — it’s a way of saying: “not only do you have to survive, you also have to dish out damage quickly — can you do it?”

Timers separate the characters in this game from the toons. I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea; I’m also sure it’s one of the things that makes Raids “elite” content, rather than standard fare.

• Raids ought to be for everyone.

No more so than sPvP is for everyone. Raids are for players who want a very challenging play experience coupled with exclusive rewards.

• All gear prefixes should be relevant in a dungeon/raid meta.

No. A prefix justifies its existence by enough players using it in one of the various game modes. It need not be considered useful at the pinnacle of play in every mode.

• ANet failed to break the “zerker” gear meta.

At least by appearances, they succeeded. Their intent was never to create an anything goes gear meta. Their intent was to create a meta wherein people who wanted to tank and heal were needed — and thus desired. They broke the everyone-wear-zerker meta which was obviously their intent.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• Raids ought to be for everyone.

No more so than sPvP is for everyone. Raids are for players who want a very challenging play experience coupled with exclusive rewards.

• All gear prefixes should be relevant in a dungeon/raid meta.

No. A prefix justifies its existence by enough players using it in one of the various game modes. It need not be considered useful at the pinnacle of play in every mode.

• ANet failed to break the “zerker” gear meta.

At least by appearances, they succeeded. Their intent was never to create an anything goes gear meta. Their intent was to create a meta wherein people who wanted to tank and heal were needed — and thus desired. They broke the everyone-wear-zerker meta which was obviously their intent.

I told people that this would happen and that Raids and the new direction Anet is taking will not be what they imagine it would be.
The zerker meta is dead – in the sense that not everyone wears full zerker now.
The glass meta is still here – and always will be – because of the way this game is designed. And this is exactly how it should be.

Yes Raids brought more build variety.
No this build variety will not be for the majority of players who complained that the zerker meta is terrible and it should be changed.

Because these players weren’t meta material back then and they won’t be meta material in Raids – at least not the majority of them.

Xillllix.3485:

I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

The clock is the content.

cafard.8953:

Xillllix.3485:

I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

The clock is the content.

They should just add a meteor falling from the sky and you must kill the boss before the meteor hits. It’ll make bads feel better about it, since it’s now part of the story.

cafard.8953:

Xillllix.3485:

I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

The clock is the content.

Any good game designer knows that having a clock isn’t the best way to make combat interesting.

Xillllix.3485:

cafard.8953:

Xillllix.3485:

I think a team shouldn’t be fighting the clock but instead the content.

The clock is the content.

Any good game designer knows that having a clock isn’t the best way to make combat interesting.

liadri has been often quoted as the best solo fight in gw2. every gauntlet boss had a timer.

good game design and timers are not mutually exclusive.

Instead of raising the ceiling on the content they lowered it. No matter how many clever mechanics they throw into the game they knew some players would never hit the ceiling skill level-wise, so they went in the opposite direction by throwing a timer cap on the content. Clever programming, and probably easier for them to apply.

Timer is good because it lets you know you need to improve. If you don’t want to improve than don’t expect ANET to make it easy for you and face roll for everyone else.

I think a healing mechanic for the boss would be a lot better you still need lots of dps, you still need to fight the mechanics and you dont have to fight a timer

Timers create artificial difficulty(AKA lazy design). They can work when there are locked in roles(holy trinity) as a means to test DPS since tanks/healers are constantly being tested, but in GW2 we don’t have those roles so it really only works to kill class/build diversity. They need to embrace what makes GW2 unique, otherwise players might as well go play WoW or FFXIV since they have far better raids.

I really hope they add mechanics that force raids to heal so much health per second on an NPC over the course of a fight, absorb X amount of damage, max out conditions on a boss or he wipes you, or to evade X amount of times. It would at least force people out of berserker or to see why timers like that in GW2 are fairly dumb.

As for those saying that full soldiers players would cheese the raids without timers, then build mechanics that require full concentration, as full concentration wains quickly in long battles. Players make mistakes and as the fight goes on those mistakes should add up. There are literally tons of examples of raids and mechanics to draw from, they just need to make sure they fit GW2.

Timers are not good—they are GREAT.

Warning: Unpopular Opinion

I’m sorry if some people thought they could have everyone throw on tank gear and stand still spamming 1111 for 2 hours per boss while a heal bot tops everyone off.

That playstyle does not deserve dibs on the best loot in the game.

ANet vowed that raids will be hard—and “run on player tears”—and they will stand by it. This thread is quite the example. Groups (without testing headstarts) have already cleared it days after release and everyone who has not has hours of REWARDING content ahead of them.

If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.

Here’s an idea. Just like in the Tequatl event timer, when you reach the split phase the clock stops.

Timers are the lesser of two evils.
without timers, to design a difficult encounter, they have to design around max defense. That means everyone would be tanks/healers. It also means anyone whose not would be dead.

The key here is they wanted it to be difficult, If they dont balance around high dps, it means they have to balance around high mitigation, and i dont think people really want that in this game