The LFR in That game literally had you specify what you were, a DPS, a Healer, or a Tank, and slotted you in a LFG automatically for that particular instance. You waited, then got notified when the raid was very close to filling up, and whammo you are all grouped together, tiny symbols of tank, healer, dps next to the corresponding pugs whom you grouped with.
You didn’t know what skill level these other people were running at, but you went through the instance anyways, the difficulty was tuned assuming this.
It took all the effort out of finding a group for raiding, the raids themselves were drastically reduced in difficulty so the players who randomly pugged with one another got a good experience “raiding” and everyone was happy…until the realization that Ghostcrawler spoke of came to light.
It took away the essence of raiding, as realizing that fighting something with trivialized mechanics diminished the effect of fighting the real thing, AND the so-called raiders who attempted to climb out of LFR did so at the expense of their fellow player. They were not adapting as intended to harder difficulties, and the encounters did not have that authenticity as finally killing the boss on its normal difficulty, as a LFR raider, did not have the same FIRST KILL experience.
The LFR raids were the easiest difficulty imaginable bent on trying to get all the players interested in raiding even a tiny bit, a space to go into. What ended up happening was the butchering of Raiding as a whole.
So please, tell us again how GW2 can possibly come up with a system as conforming and welcoming as LFR, yet still keep up the quality raiders have come to expect so far from Arenanet?
Because when the Design Lead of the ‘End of Raiding’ LFR tells you that kind of system that promotes bringing more players in was his worst kitten mistake, you god kitten know any solution similar to it will have very similar results.
The LFR in That game literally had you specify what you were, a DPS, a Healer, or a Tank, and slotted you in a LFG automatically for that particular instance. You waited, then got notified when the raid was very close to filling up, and whammo you are all grouped together, tiny symbols of tank, healer, dps next to the corresponding pugs whom you grouped with.
You didn’t know what skill level these other people were running at, but you went through the instance anyways, the difficulty was tuned assuming this.
It took all the effort out of finding a group for raiding, the raids themselves were drastically reduced in difficulty so the players who randomly pugged with one another got a good experience “raiding” and everyone was happy…until the realization that Ghostcrawler spoke of came to light.
It took away the essence of raiding, as realizing that fighting something with trivialized mechanics diminished the effect of fighting the real thing, AND the so-called raiders who attempted to climb out of LFR did so at the expense of their fellow player. They were not adapting as intended to harder difficulties, and the encounters did not have that authenticity as finally killing the boss on its normal difficulty, as a LFR raider, did not have the same FIRST KILL experience.
The LFR raids were the easiest difficulty imaginable bent on trying to get all the players interested in raiding even a tiny bit, a space to go into. What ended up happening was the butchering of Raiding as a whole.
So please, tell us again how GW2 can possibly come up with a system as conforming and welcoming as LFR, yet still keep up the quality raiders have come to expect so far from Arenanet?
Because when the Design Lead of the ‘End of Raiding’ LFR tells you that kind of system that promotes bringing more players in was his worst kitten mistake, you god kitten know any solution similar to it will have very similar results.
The group finder in this game is very well done and doesn’t work anything like the LFR system from WoW.
The problem with the LFR system in WoW is that it throws 10 or 25 people randomly together based solely on their roles in the raid (tank, healer, dps) with no other considerations or functionality (other than a gear check, which is irrelevant to this conversation). That is the part that he probably feels takes the epic feel from raids.
Multiple difficulties exist in that game outside of LFR (they are two different concepts). Flex raiding has nothing to do with LFR. Those concepts do not suffer from the random and forced grouping that exist with the WoW LFR system. In the GW2 system, there is still a group lead that initiates the formation of a group. There is still a way to communicate group needs and see what you’re getting into before starting.
So, yes – WoW could do LFR much better (by, possibly, mirroring the group finder from GW2), but that has nothing to do with multiple difficulties or flexible group sizes. Those concepts have proven to value added in games like WoW (which is why they still exist in those games) – and they would be value additive in GW2.
The quote from the ex-WoW executive is, most likely, not applicable here (because again, it is about the LFR system – which has major disadvantages when compared to the group finder tool in GW2 – and not about the concept of multi-difficulty raids).
(edited by Blaeys.3102)
The group finder in this game is very well done and doesn’t work anything like the LFR system from WoW.
The problem with the LFR system in WoW is that it throws 10 or 25 people randomly together based solely on their roles in the raid (tank, healer, dps) with no other considerations or functionality (other than a gear check, which is irrelevant to this conversation). That is the part that he probably feels takes the epic feel from raids.
Agreed.
Multiple difficulties exist in that game outside of LFR (they are two different concepts). Flex raiding has nothing to do with LFR. Those concepts do not suffer from the random and forced grouping that exist with the WoW LFR system. In the GW2 system, there is still a group lead that initiates the formation of a group. There is still a way to communicate group needs and see what you’re getting into before starting.
Flex Raiding has other issues that have been discussed before. Encounters couldn’t be balanced properly by Blizzard themselves where one boss would be best done by say 12 raiders, yet you would bring under 10 for the next boss and so forth. It was a whole other travesty of encounter difficulty spikes and drops that make Flex raiding extremely painful to balance. It’s actually a very different system than what GW2 does with open-world event scaling. I don’t think it would be particularly difficult to implement scaling, but it would cause inconsistency with the encounters, mechanics would change based on group size, the amount of memorization of the potential different capabilities a boss can do at certain levels would be outrageous.
So, yes – WoW could do LFR much better (by, possibly, mirroring the group finder from GW2), but that has nothing to do with multiple difficulties or flexible group sizes. Those concepts have proven to value added in games like WoW (which is why they still exist in those games) – and they would be value additive in GW2.
The quote from the ex-WoW executive is, most likely, not applicable here (because again, it is about the LFR system – which has major disadvantages when compared to the group finder tool in GW2 – and not about the concept of multi-difficulty raids).
These two solutions by Blizzard, probably one of the best pioneers of raid design and theory given their experience, turned Raiding into something that it was not. They created headaches, confusion, took away from development, and killed Raiding. I would even argue these mistakes are exactly why FF14 has managed to become a contender in the market, because WoW flipped and tried reaching for a more casual audience when in reality the vast majority of casual players shouldn’t be forced to raid. I have a personal theory why they went that route though that makes more sense, but that’s another story.
My point is this, LFR, and Flex Raiding were both solutions that sought to bring players into raiding easily correct? A massive part of LFR and Flex Raiding, is that the actual encounters for both difficulties were passively easier than the normal mode. When you talk about implementing different difficulties, these methods were how Blizzard did it.
And they failed.
So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:
- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase
…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!
My point is this, LFR, and Flex Raiding were both solutions that sought to bring players into raiding easily correct? A massive part of LFR and Flex Raiding, is that the actual encounters for both difficulties were passively easier than the normal mode. When you talk about implementing different difficulties, these methods were how Blizzard did it.
And they failed.
So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:
- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!
Because they didn’t fail.
I was raiding when the early iterations of multi mode raiding were introduced to WoW. The vast majority of negative comments, imo (and unsurprisingly), were from the groups that were just generally anti-change – a phenomenon we see a lot in gaming and MMOs. There are people who will always be against change of any kind. This was exacerbated by the chest thumping crowd, who just wanted to brag that they raided “when it was really hard” (when the reality was different – difficulties between something like KT, Lich King vs Deathwing or Ragnaros were pretty comparable).
The reality is these game modes accomplished what they were designed for in that game – they opened raids up to more people – and probably kept the game alive.
While there is some validity to the “more dev resources,” they most definitely did not split the playerbase in WOW and wouldn’t here as well. To the point about first epic kill, I can tell you that players killing Deathwing (or whatever) in LFR or easier modes had more respect for the groups achieving first hardmode kills, not less – because they had an understanding of what those mechanics might look like in harder situations.
This is something that GW2 needs to do. It opens raids up as a REAL storytelling tool, allows for multiple playstyles and gives them another way to fill the gaps between bigger open world content drops.
(edited by Blaeys.3102)
Because they didn’t fail.
They did. Multiple difficulty modes introduced a crapton of organisational difficulties and stress into WoW raiding, but nothing positive.
So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:
- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!
Easy mode: remove timer for bosses.
Cost in term of development time : 2 days.
Add a small reward for the beginners in easy mode : 1 day to infinite amount of time.
Boss are still hard enough but you don’t have to play zerker/viper to succeed. You can learn the mechanics.
Happy end.
Just an idea…
Because they didn’t fail.
They failed the community which they built raids conceptually around. It was a middle finger to them.
I was raiding when the early iterations of multi mode raiding were introduced to WoW…
You talk about it a bit later on, but Blizzard didn’t fail at delivering the hardest content when they could, the ‘Hard-Mode’ or ‘True Intended Difficulty’ of some of the raids such as ICC Lich King or Ulduar 0 Watcher were by far some of the hardest raid content delivered at the time.
The issue is that developing and balancing even two different difficulties cost time and resources, the Raiding in WotLK where the difficulties were first introduced brought about the lowest amount of raids overall at the time in an expansion, plus rehashed content (Naxxramus) AND conceptually the worst raid imo that was Trial of the Crusader, just straight up bosses no trash, navigation, etc.
These are not issues you have spoken about, that you refuse to touch on. I absolutely refuse to accept any easier difficulty options that cause these issues. And they will cause these issues, regardless of what you and I can come up with.
The reality is these game modes accomplished what they were designed for in that game – they opened raids up to more people – and probably kept the game alive.
While there is some validity to the “more dev resources,” they most definitely did not split the playerbase in WOW and wouldn’t here as well. To the point about first epic kill, I can tell you that players killing Deathwing (or whatever) in LFR or easier modes had more respect for the groups achieving first hardmode kills, not less – because they had an understanding of what those mechanics might look like in harder situations.
This is something that GW2 needs to do. It opens raids up as a REAL storytelling tool, allows for multiple playstyles and gives them another way to fill the gaps between bigger open world content drops.
Two things.
WoW was a vertical gear treadmill, you needed to get geared to continue doing the content. That very concept in mind is why both you and I agree that WoW did need to come up with something to get players to play raid content. I don’t agree at all with the butchering of Raid content development in WoW to get players to do the raids, but they had no choice. There were literally statistical issues with a character trying to do a raid undergeared.
That’s why I can understand, but still despise, what Blizzard did with their Raiding. So when you say it kept the game alive, I can agree with it to some extent, it was a systematic issue with how they designed the game from the ground up that lead to such a dilemma.
…None of this is a problem with GW2. As we continue to state, GW2 does not have a vertical treadmill. This wipes out that hurdle completely.
The second thing, you mention that Raids would be a great storytelling tool.
I heavily disagree on this, because of in-game examples like Dungeon Story Modes. These unrewarding story-modes are 5 man instances built with GW2 Main Story in them, and years later that kind of content is obsolete. It’s easy to see why Veterans are not doing them, but as GW2 grows why aren’t new players getting involved?
You can argue that the rewards aren’t good enough and that may be. But the biggest reason I find against this is that the largest part of the PvE in this game, can be done as a very solo experience with some Open-World ambient assistance with events. I can do story-related activities in this game on my own, between Story Episodes and/or general exploration of open-world maps.
The moment you force story into an instanced content like Raids, much like how you do Dungeons, kittenes off Lore Hounds, and it forces a playstyle contrary to much of the content in this game. This is why Arenanet made the change to Arah Story for the finale of the first Personal Story to a Solo Instance…
Raids absolutely should not be in this game a medium to tell Story. They can allow side-stories that have no direct collusion with the plot, but if we force players who might not even like grouping up with others to do this Raid just for Living Story reasons so to speak, we then put ourselves much into WoW’s vertical progression system for Lore reasons rather than Gear.
So, nope, never, absolutely not, DO NOT put main story into raids, do not FORCE players to group for main storyline. Don’t repeat Story-Mode Dungeons.
So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:
- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!
Easy mode: remove timer for bosses.
Going to stop you right there. There’s been threads discussing why removing the enrage timer is a bad idea, and why it won’t train anyone on proper mechanics if they walk in as tanky as they could be and ignore the critical ones.
Furthermore, you pulled the ‘time’ numbers out of the nether, you have zero idea how long any of the changes can take, nor what bugs might be introduced.
So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:
- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!
Easy mode: remove timer for bosses.
Cost in term of development time : 2 days.
Add a small reward for the beginners in easy mode : 1 day to infinite amount of time.
Uhmm…. Why do People think that the Timer is a Problem on the Raidbosses?
Removing a Timer doesn’t make a Boss easier. These Guys would still die to Mechanics like on our normal Boss Encounters.
Uhmm…. Why do People think that the Timer is a Problem on the Raidbosses?
Removing a Timer doesn’t make a Boss easier. These Guys would still die to Mechanics like on our normal Boss Encounters.
It doesn’t make the Raidboss easier directly, but it can make it so indirectly. By removing the pressure on keeping the certain dps level, it allows for more conservative builds and tactics, that put more emphasis on survival. It also lowers the stress level of players, which may cause them to make less mistakes.
TL;DR:
Removing a timer may cause players to make less mistakes, and makes those mistakes less deadly.
TL;DR:
Removing a timer may cause players to make less mistakes, and makes those mistakes less deadly.
But most of the bosses have “timers” other than the enrage timer, timed events that you must react to during the fight and those cause the wipes. The “dps checks” aren’t only about the overall timer of the encounter. And bosses that don’t have such dps checks will just be complete jokes without the enrage timer.
So there are two types of bosses, those who will be a complete joke without an enrage timer (like for example Vale Guardian), and those that won’t be any different if you remove the enrage timer (like Keep Construct).
TL;DR:
Removing a timer may cause players to make less mistakes, and makes those mistakes less deadly.But most of the bosses have “timers” other than the enrage timer, timed events that you must react to during the fight and those cause the wipes. The “dps checks” aren’t only about the overall timer of the encounter. And bosses that don’t have such dps checks will just be complete jokes without the enrage timer.
So there are two types of bosses, those who will be a complete joke without an enrage timer (like for example Vale Guardian), and those that won’t be any different if you remove the enrage timer (like Keep Construct).
You know what the answer will be to this right? “Just redesign bosses like KC for easy mode if enrage timer doesn’t do squat.”
Oh boy, more unexpected work to create a solution to a “problem” (if it even exists to begin with) that is blown way out of proportion (at least according to the forums).
TL;DR:
Removing a timer may cause players to make less mistakes, and makes those mistakes less deadly.
Sry as someone who is in a Raid-Training Guild and has raided with People new to Raids I can say this isn’t true.
People do mistakes because they are new to the Fight, don’t know how to deal with certain Mechanics, think they are the best on the Fight and stop giving 100%, overlapping Mechanics which then create arkward Situations, not paying Attention and well Panic.
I have raided quite a lot and never was the Enrage Timer the Cause of Mistakes
“To be clear, the goal of getting more players into raiding is a good one. But the way Raid Finder turned out removed, IMO anyway, a lot of the epicness of what made raiding raiding…”
Do we really need to say anything else?
Of course not. He clearly admitting that LFR expanded raiding community, and only downside was loss of “epicness”. I guess, by epicness he means 2% of vanilla raiders who ever seen Naxxramas.
“To be clear, the goal of getting more players into raiding is a good one. But the way Raid Finder turned out removed, IMO anyway, a lot of the epicness of what made raiding raiding…”
Do we really need to say anything else?
Of course not. He clearly admitting that LFR expanded raiding community, and only downside was loss of “epicness”. I guess, by epicness he means 2% of vanilla raiders who ever seen Naxxramas.
It didn’t expand the ‘raiding’ community, it brought a bad raiding solution to non-raiders while gutting the core raiding philosophy. Reflecting upon what they could have done instead, I believe they could have implemented more than these flat tiers of gear (and in some cases half tiers) and created incremental tiers, which would lie in a lot more raids of perhaps easier difficulty for some bosses.
They could have kept different encounters the same difficulty, but opt to instead have certain incremental raids be easy on itself rather than force an easy-mode/hard-mode option. What has bothered me to this day is Ulduar which took a vastly different approach from the other raids in WotLK.
Flexible encounter difficulty based on out-of-encounter or in-encounter actions.
It felt like a completely kitten Raid dev came in for Ulduar and made it a masterpiece. But then the same lazy raid dev who rehashed Naxx came up with his ingenious idea of ‘WHY NOT JUST HAVE STRAIGHT BOSSES’? And thus the Trial of the Crusader was born and raiders wept.
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