Guild Wars 2

It’s so funny to read this thread, full of people who think that they understand raiding model better than Blizzard do.
WotLK was most successful addon ever, and it was first addon where they introduced four different raid difficulties without gutting class balance like they do in Cata and next addons. But hey, introducing hard and easy modes it’s a heresy, because forum experts saying so.

Swagger.1459:

@texzero

The answer is that raid leaders can choose to have different difficulty settings for their team…. Easier mode, normal mode and extreme mode… All with matching rewards… So a guild leader could run raid introductions for inexperience members to “wean” them into raiding. Once comfortable, and enjoying the content, they could run the “normal” modes with them, and eventually get to the point where guilds are running extreme mode for the ultimate challenge.

This is all very similar to how spvp is setup… Hot-join is a perfect place for inexperienced players to start. Then players can go to unranked… Then ranked… Then do leagues… Then try to make it on tournament teams…

The different arena modes were designed to cater to all different competitive players and interest levels… The devs didn’t just make 1 arena mode did they? No, and that was intentionally designed with the varying skill levels and interest levels in mind.

This is a video game for enjoyment, and what I speak of are options for all players who paid their $50-$100 for the exact same product… Being accommodating is just smart business, and anet will get to that point with raids just like they are reevaluating the grind and time commitments required in parts of the game.

The biggest problem I have with easy mode raids is that the rewards would NEED to be 0 magnetite shards and 0 unique items/skins for me to not feel completely cheated, if that is really the case, I still feel as if developer time would be completely wasted. Maybe if neither of those things were a factor I could get behind this just so you guys would be possibly satisfied.

Ohoni.6057:

Since it’d just be number tweaks anyways, they could course correct in a simple hotfix over the first few days, no problems.

Stop saying it’s a number tweak, it’s not. Even YOU describe something that is NOT just a numbers tweak.

Ideally it would not be so easy to trivialize that you could completely ignore the mechanics, but rather just easy enough

Not easy, but easy. And you are calling it a simple numbers tweak. Just the amount of testing this would require to find this proper spot of easy but not easy is not trivial.

I never said wipes would be impossible, just far less likely.

Why? So players simply brute force through it? See the Colossus Rumblus example, who even remembers that you can stay inside his bubble to avoid his aoe? Or let’s take a look at the amazing revamped Shatterer: what’s the point in breaking his bar (other than the Achievement)? None whatsoever, his Shard Storm is a joke and does nothing. You want the iconic attacks of the Raid Bosses to be like Shatterer’s shard storm and Colossus Rumblus roof collapse, I find that completely unreasonable.

If the player is still hopeless, they’re still hopeless, but they’d be even more hopeless if they’d never done easy mode, and would take longer to catch up.

There is no “catch up” if easy mode is done in a completely different way than normal mode. If there was a hard version of Shatterer that wipes everyone if you don’t break his bar, playing the normal version would NOT help at all with it, if anything you’d just ignore the bar in hard mode and cause a failure.

A different encounter altogether is a much better option for an “easy mode” anyway. It can happen, as I said in the other thread, when/if there is an actual need for it and the raiding base is diffused enough on multiple raids and it’s hard to find groups for the older ones (unless there are new things to do in them too).

As an example, instead of doing an AoE KO with World Erosion, Gorseval could do a massive storm attack like Lupicus. An “easy mode”, if ever implemented, needs to be a well thought out piece of content, with its own mechanics and ideas. Not a “the same as normal but with reduced damage/hp”. You can’t make a 1-hit KO into a non-1-hit KO and call it the SAME, they are NOT the same.

Rednik.3809:

It’s so funny to read this thread, full of people who think that they understand raiding model better than Blizzard do.
WotLK was most successful addon ever, and it was first addon where they introduced four different raid difficulties without gutting class balance like they do in Cata and next addons. But hey, introducing hard and easy modes it’s a heresy, because forum experts saying so.

I was under the impression that WotLK didn’t have the first ever Raid for WoW. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe as only time will tell, different difficulties might be needed for the Raids when we get enough of them and the Raiding community is spread among them. But now that we don’t even have a single complete Raid? How many difficulties did WoW start with?

If/when that time comes, instead of 5 people working on Raids they can get 20 or 50 so they can do not just 1 more difficulty but 5 difficulties. Right now the Raiding dev team is small. Right now the raiding population is small. Right now the amount of Raids we have is small.

Ohoni.6057:

I could totally understand your points if this were a significant overhaul, with some skilled removed entirely and other skills added to replace them with different effects, but this really would be “copy->paste, subtract 30% from the damage on this ability, subtract 10% from the damage on that, etc.”

Asking for a new mode with a different level of rewards, disavowing them from achievements, having a different mode to zone-in from, properly distinguishing the two different modes so players don’t get confused, adding different lock-out timers, and rebalancing the bosses to work with easy mode (outright removing or redesigning things like Firestorm, World Eater and Sacrifice) and applying this to every raid released sounds pretty significant to me.

What a load of nonsense. I ran story in GW1 loads of times. I ran story dungeons multiple times for the story. I even did personal story multiple times.

I’m talking about GW2, the game that this is a board to. I have never heard of anyone that runs story mode dungeons more than once per character, or even that much now that you don’t need to.

Any lessened version of the same raid interferes with discovering the raid on it’s own when mechanics are the same. It makes it easier and easymode becomes a standard training level.

Currently most of the story can be explored by people entering raids that other players have unlocked, and then exploring the dead zone. Having “easy mode” would not make that any easier. If this still bothers you, then it’s a “why are you hitting yourself?” issue, if it bothers you to play easy mode, then you never have to play easy mode, you can stick with hard mode until it works out for you. Just understand that plenty of people do not view it the same way, would not feel the same sort of disappointment you express, and would NEVER view playing through easy mode as a “bad thing.”

maddoctor.2738:

I was under the impression that WotLK didn’t have the first ever Raid for WoW. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe as only time will tell, different difficulties might be needed for the Raids when we get enough of them and the Raiding community is spread among them. But now that we don’t even have a single complete Raid? How many difficulties did WoW start with?

That doesn’t mean that GW2 must walk same way as WoW did, just to see same things, make same mistakes and learn same lessons.

maddoctor.2738:

If/when that time comes, instead of 5 people working on Raids they can get 20 or 50 so they can do not just 1 more difficulty but 5 difficulties. Right now the Raiding dev team is small. Right now the raiding population is small. Right now the amount of Raids we have is small.

More difficulties means more people doing raids, more players means more popularity, more popularity means more attention and larger dev team. Making content for minority without trying to attract more people is a dead end.

The biggest problem I have with easy mode raids is that the rewards would NEED to be 0 magnetite shards and 0 unique items/skins for me to not feel completely cheated,

That’s a pity, but I really don’t see how anything can be done about that. The raids would need to have decent rewards for people to repeatedly play them, even in easy mode. You would still get far higher amounts of rewards in hard mode, but if you can’t be satisfied with that, then you’ll just have to be unsatisfied.

Stop saying it’s a number tweak, it’s not. Even YOU describe something that is NOT just a numbers tweak.

Go through the list of things I said. I said lower some HP (#s), lower the damage on certain attacks (#s). Ok, I’m not exactly sure how Gorseval’s, blast damage is classified, or how their systems are set up, but I am imagining that it is an ability, and that abilities are a list of stats, similar to the fan-made “make your own skill” apps. It would list things like damage, and have slots where you can slot in various traits, like “unblockable” or “piercing.” So maybe they would have to add or remove some traits from the ability as well, but nothing I’ve suggested is a “new” ability, it’s all stuff that exists in other skills, so cutting and pasting those over should not be that hard.

Not easy, but easy.

I think you are trying to suggest a contradiction, but it only exists because you over-simplified my point. If you want to convey the original meaning, you’d have to at the very minimum write it as "Not too easy, but easy. " Yes, it would be easier, that’s the entire point of it, after all, but not so much easier that it’s trivial.

And you are calling it a simple numbers tweak. Just the amount of testing this would require to find this proper spot of easy but not easy is not trivial.

Perhaps, but testing is done by people outside the dev team, and making corrections after testing only takes a few keypresses. The hard part was the hard mode, making that precisely tuned. The easy mode is MUCH lower pressure, since the cost of failure is so low. It’s meant to be easy, so if it turns out to be a little too easy, then not a big deal, they can fix it later.

Remember, you can only run it weekly, the total payout is about 1/3 of a normal raid, possibly less, and zero credit is given for failure, so even in an absolute worst case scenario of players just roflstomping it (which I doubt would occur), the very worst that could happen is that some players could get a few Magnetite shards out of it in the first week. Since it’s just number tweaks, they could hot-patch in some quick corrections to any major exploits, or even temporarily disable it if they really cared. It’s not like the regular raids where if people could just swarm the thing in the first day then it would mean significant rewards changing hands and ruin the “prestige” of world firsts and the such.

Why? So players simply brute force through it? See the Colossus Rumblus example, who even remembers that you can stay inside his bubble to avoid his aoe? Or let’s take a look at the amazing revamped Shatterer: what’s the point in breaking his bar (other than the Achievement)? None whatsoever, his Shard Storm is a joke and does nothing. You want the iconic attacks of the Raid Bosses to be like Shatterer’s shard storm and Colossus Rumblus roof collapse, I find that completely unreasonable.

As I said, I don’t think it should be tuned to the point that you can brute force through things, at least not for the sort of players that aren’t ready for the hard mode yet. Getting caught by the big attacks would not be an unrecoverable wipe, but they would be something players would want to avoid. If you still cannot stand that, then don’t play the easy mode raid. At least you would have that option, while currently those that feel exactly as you do about the current raid boss attacks have no option but to deal with them anyway if they want to do the raids.

There is no “catch up” if easy mode is done in a completely different way than normal mode.

And my point is that a player playing easy mode with the goal of eventually playing hard would be trying to play it the same way. He just wouldn’t be as harshly punished for failing. And again, even if the players use completely different tactics, they would at least learn what the enemy’s tells are, you can continue to fail at arguing this all you like, but the fact remains that players would learn at least some skills that would apply to the hard raid.

Personally, I find it MUCH easier to learn things when there is low pressure, when I know it doesn’t matter too badly if I screw up. If I’m fighting an enemy where I know that I’m fine either way, I can usually dodge every attack he throws, through animation queues alone. If, on the other hand, I feel that I’m fighting for my life and amped up, then I have no consciousness of my actions, I do not remember tells, or even notice them sometimes, I’m just scrambling to stay in front of it. Doing things in a casual manner is a much more effective teaching method to me than failing at a harder version repeatedly.

If there was a hard version of Shatterer that wipes everyone if you don’t break his bar, playing the normal version would NOT help at all with it, if anything you’d just ignore the bar in hard mode and cause a failure.

But your example only works when you assume that everyone involved is a complete idiot, and if that’s the case then they’re going to wipe no matter what. If we instead assume that they are not complete idiots, then before doing hard mode they would have looked up the hard mode, and know that the break bar will kill them. Even if they didn’t, someone in the raid party should tell them that, knowing it’s something they might not know. And if they went into easy mode intending to go into hard mode some day, then even if they didn’t have to break the bar, they would attempt it anyway, just to practice for later.

So even if they do fail the breakbar completely, they would at least know what it was and roughly when it occured, which is more than any complete newb would. So again, it would always be an advantage, maybe not enough of an advantage to make their first hard mode attempt a success, but enough of one that that person, with all their pluses and minuses, would be able to complete the hard mode faster and easier than if easy mode hadn’t existed for them at all.

A different encounter altogether is a much better option for an “easy mode” anyway.

No. It would require way more work than anything I’ve suggested, and players would still feel that they were missing out. I WANT to experience all the same mechanics of the hard mode fight, I just don’t want to experience the frustration of missing one, or even worse having a team mate missing one, and causing several minutes of precise gameplay to go right out the window. I enjoy facing the mechanics, I absolutely hate the high stakes of failure, and ALWAYS will.

You can’t make a 1-hit KO into a non-1-hit KO and call it the SAME, they are NOT the same.

Maybe not, but that’s what I want anyway, whether you want to call it the same or not, that’s what I’d enjoy playing.

Rednik.3809:

maddoctor.2738:

If/when that time comes, instead of 5 people working on Raids they can get 20 or 50 so they can do not just 1 more difficulty but 5 difficulties. Right now the Raiding dev team is small. Right now the raiding population is small. Right now the amount of Raids we have is small.

More difficulties means more people doing raids, more players means more popularity, more popularity means more attention and larger dev team. Making content for minority without trying to attract more people is a dead end.

Larger dev team is the key here. If you’ve noticed the major argument against this easy mode is the dev team. By all means let’s make it a Raiding game with difficulties for everyone

Rednik.3809:

It’s so funny to read this thread, full of people who think that they understand raiding model better than Blizzard do.
WotLK was most successful addon ever, and it was first addon where they introduced four different raid difficulties without gutting class balance like they do in Cata and next addons. But hey, introducing hard and easy modes it’s a heresy, because forum experts saying so.

First off, WotLK was garbage compared to BC and even Vanilla. Second, normal mode in WotLK was comparable to what raiding is in this game. It wasn’t even until ToC that heroic was released which was quite a bit more challenging than how easy raiding is in GW2. Then Cata was released and they dropped LFR after Firelands. That is what destroyed WoW and raiding. WoW in its current state is absolutely awful. They were rewarding players for /afking and mindlessly ignoring mechanics. This game doesn’t need an easy mode. Players need to suck it up and either get good, or opt out of raiding. It’s really not that difficult of a concept. OK green circles pop up every so often! Stand in them! Okay fire is bad! Avoid fire! Okay I need to do this! Do this!

The problem is all these people who claim they are “casual” when in reality they are simply lazy. They want loot and they want it now. ANET WHERES MY LOOT BUTTON? Put the work in or no reward. SIMPLE.

Asking for a new mode with a different level of rewards, disavowing them from achievements, having a different mode to zone-in from, properly distinguishing the two different modes so players don’t get confused, adding different lock-out timers, and rebalancing the bosses to work with easy mode (outright removing or redesigning things like Firestorm, World Eater and Sacrifice) and applying this to every raid released sounds pretty significant to me.

Nope, not really when you break it down.

Step one, highlight the code for Spirit Vale. Press ctrl-C

Step two, click a nice place to put it, Press ctrl-V

Step three, rename the assets you would be changing and their associated variables (ie "SpiritValeMap_EZ, “Gorseval_EZ”, etc.) so as to avoid confusion.

Step four, tweak their stats as necessary.

Step five, take some code from the dungeons, and make it so that when you try to enter Spirit Vale, it pops up the Story/Explorable menu from dungeons, this time asking “Do you want to play Normal mode, or Easy mode?” (there are several other ways of doing this that already exist someplace in the game, this seems easiest but I’m sure they would use whatever is easiest to them).

It places you into the appropriate zone. The EZ versions of the mobs would have different loot tables than the normal ones, the same, but toned down to be lower drop rates. They would not relate to the existing achievements, so those would simply not trigger. This process shouldn’t take a person’s entire day to complete.

Now I have no idea the exact systems they use, so obviously that was just a vague example, but I’m reasonably certain that they have the tools to do something equivalent to what I just described with minimal hassles. To expect otherwise would be like boggling over a gravedigger who actually owns some form of earth-moving machinery, such as a shovel.

Ohoni.6057:

Go through the list of things I said. I said lower some HP (#s), lower the damage on certain attacks (#s).

How much lower? It still needs to be balanced, it still needs to be tested, and there still needs to be a lot of development time on it. It sounds simple “let’s lower a value” but in reality it’s not.

Getting caught by the big attacks would not be an unrecoverable wipe, but they would be something players would want to avoid.

And that’s where the whole “balance” issue comes into play. You make it sound easy, it’s not.

you can continue to fail at arguing this all you like, but the fact remains that players would learn at least some skills that would apply to the hard raid.

Not really that’s not a “fact”. Have you ever done a single dungeon path with a “meta zerker” person? You know those kind of people who expect to get certain buffs and expect bosses to die before they do? If you haven’t, good for you. If you have you’d know that this “learning” you are talking about doesn’t even work with the same content.

But your example only works when you assume that everyone involved is a complete idiot, and if that’s the case then they’re going to wipe no matter what.

So what’s the point of the “Easy mode” as training if you need someone to tell you to break it in the first place? Look you can do this easy mode but in hard mode you will do different things… yay for training.

No. It would require way more work than anything I’ve suggested, and players would still feel that they were missing out.

Why take a half-attempted at piece of content and not get a complete package? It would require more work yes, but it would also lead to a much better experience for everyone. IF the Raids succeed enough and their dev team grows well, then why not, they can do 5 different difficulty settings. 5-man, 10-man, 20-man whatever-man versions, hard mode, easy mode, normal mode, insane mode, whatever mode. What people are missing here is that this is our first ever Raid, for all we know it might flop and by the time Wing 3 is released they scrap the whole idea of Raids completely.

It’s NEW and while it’s NEW it needs to be fresh.

I WANT to experience all the same mechanics of the hard mode fight, I just don’t want to experience the frustration of missing one, or even worse having a team mate missing one, and causing several minutes of precise gameplay to go right out the window. I enjoy facing the mechanics, I absolutely hate the high stakes of failure, and ALWAYS will.

No you don’t want to experience the SAME mechanics, if you change said mechanics to be easier they stop being the SAME. It’s the difference between a mechanics heavy fight and a fight that deals with damage/hp mostly.

Ohoni.6057:

Step one, highlight the code for Spirit Vale. Press ctrl-C

Step two, click a nice place to put it, Press ctrl-V

LMFAO,

Anyone play WoW’s expansion, WoD? They announced they’d release flying mounts halfway through in Draenor. It ended up taking them months and a lot of the players were literally like “WHY all you have to do is flip a switch!”

The above statement reminded me of that soo much hahah “Press ctrl-C”

Edit: Dang it maddoctor. Now it’s the post above his.

Avarice.2791:

First off, WotLK was garbage compared to BC and even Vanilla. Second, normal mode in WotLK was comparable to what raiding is in this game. It wasn’t even until ToC that heroic was released which was quite a bit more challenging than how easy raiding is in GW2.

First, it’s your opinion, because numbers saying that you are wrong. Second, normal WoW raids was easy even for a complete newcomer, because trinity making everything much more simpler, and stat inflation due to gear trademill + constant boss nerfs simplifies them even further.

Then Cata was released and they dropped LFG after Firelands. That is what destroyed WoW and raiding.

First, it was LFR, not LFG. LFG was introduced in WotLK and was amazingly successful, GW2 dungeons could use something like that. Second, WoW was killed not by LFR, but by the class balance, where unique class features was removed with every big update.

maddoctor.2738:

Ohoni.6057:

Go through the list of things I said. I said lower some HP (#s), lower the damage on certain attacks (#s).

How much lower? It still needs to be balanced, it still needs to be tested, and there still needs to be a lot of development time on it. It sounds simple “let’s lower a value” but in reality it’s not.

Getting caught by the big attacks would not be an unrecoverable wipe, but they would be something players would want to avoid.

And that’s where the whole “balance” issue comes into play. You make it sound easy, it’s not.

you can continue to fail at arguing this all you like, but the fact remains that players would learn at least some skills that would apply to the hard raid.

Not really that’s not a “fact”. Have you ever done a single dungeon path with a “meta zerker” person? You know those kind of people who expect to get certain buffs and expect bosses to die before they do? If you haven’t, good for you. If you have you’d know that this “learning” you are talking about doesn’t even work with the same content.

But your example only works when you assume that everyone involved is a complete idiot, and if that’s the case then they’re going to wipe no matter what.

So what’s the point of the “Easy mode” as training if you need someone to tell you to break it in the first place? Look you can do this easy mode but in hard mode you will do different things… yay for training.

No. It would require way more work than anything I’ve suggested, and players would still feel that they were missing out.

Why take a half-attempted at piece of content and not get a complete package? It would require more work yes, but it would also lead to a much better experience for everyone. IF the Raids succeed enough and their dev team grows well, then why not, they can do 5 different difficulty settings. 5-man, 10-man, 20-man whatever-man versions, hard mode, easy mode, normal mode, insane mode, whatever mode. What people are missing here is that this is our first ever Raid, for all we know it might flop and by the time Wing 3 is released they scrap the whole idea of Raids completely.

It’s NEW and while it’s NEW it needs to be fresh.

I WANT to experience all the same mechanics of the hard mode fight, I just don’t want to experience the frustration of missing one, or even worse having a team mate missing one, and causing several minutes of precise gameplay to go right out the window. I enjoy facing the mechanics, I absolutely hate the high stakes of failure, and ALWAYS will.

No you don’t want to experience the SAME mechanics, if you change said mechanics to be easier they stop being the SAME. It’s the difference between a mechanics heavy fight and a fight that deals with damage/hp mostly.

I’ve updated my op, y’all should take a look.

Ohoni.6057:

Nope, not really when you break it down.

Wait, you’re right. I simplified it more:

• Step 1: Come up with an idea.
• Step 2: ??? (Stuff & thangs)
• Step 3: Difficulty settings are fully implemented with zero effort.

Rednik.3809:

Avarice.2791:

First off, WotLK was garbage compared to BC and even Vanilla. Second, normal mode in WotLK was comparable to what raiding is in this game. It wasn’t even until ToC that heroic was released which was quite a bit more challenging than how easy raiding is in GW2.

First, it’s your opinion, because numbers saying that you are wrong. Second, normal WoW raids was easy even for a complete newcomer, because trinity making everything much more simpler, and stat inflation due to gear trademill + constant boss nerfs simplifies them even further.

It is funny and sad that you started off with an opinion, and when someone else suggests otherwise you claim numbers. Especially during a time when WoW was riding the success story that was BC and was becoming more popular.

Please validate that claim with proof (naturally comparing against the numbers from BC), and then provide some proof that the raids in WotLK were superior in design and quality to the previous expansion and naturally Vanilla.

It’ll be fun to see you show how a nerfed/revamped Naxx and the horrendous raid known as Trial of the Crusader were superior to say Black Temple.

Rednik.3809:

Avarice.2791:

Then Cata was released and they dropped LFG after Firelands. That is what destroyed WoW and raiding.

First, it was LFR, not LFG. LFG was introduced in WotLK and was amazingly successful, GW2 dungeons could use something like that. Second, WoW was killed not by LFR, but by the class balance, where unique class features was removed with every big update.

Whatever sort of high horse you are on, is eliminated when you call an expansion an ‘add-on’.

Yes, LFG was introduced in WotLK, and I can attest personally that while it was convenient in making groups…it created a fairly toxic environment for players who would consistently judge everyone they grouped with based on previous experienced runs. My god if you ever had a slow clear of Gundrak or even Nexus, the language used would put GW2 SPvP map chat to shame.

That’s the thing though, LFG actually made going through a dungeon worse for the community. It was no longer something engaging, you formed up with random people almost immediately without conversing really, everyone knew what to do, and if something went even slightly wrong there was rage, toggles for kicking, etc. I tanked for a lot of groups during that time, and I missed the authenticity of doing a dungeon formed with a group you talked with while waiting on the last DPS or heal.

Ok, can we get rid of the WoW talk? It has nothing to do with the topic at hand at this point.

Ohoni.6057:

What a load of nonsense. I ran story in GW1 loads of times. I ran story dungeons multiple times for the story. I even did personal story multiple times.

I’m talking about GW2, the game that this is a board to. I have never heard of anyone that runs story mode dungeons more than once per character, or even that much now that you don’t need to.

Well I was talking about GW2 dungeons and story. So now you have heard about it. But now you added characters as if that’s much different and gives so much different rewards. But yeah I played through story dungeons more than once with the same character. I even did story multiple times, or events just for the story. Hell I even restarted the story with glints lair in it because of nostalgic reasons and the load of books in the priory to just read them.

If anything is missing, to me, its more story, not more rewards.

Any lessened version of the same raid interferes with discovering the raid on it’s own when mechanics are the same. It makes it easier and easymode becomes a standard training level.

Currently most of the story can be explored by people entering raids that other players have unlocked, and then exploring the dead zone. Having “easy mode” would not make that any easier. If this still bothers you, then it’s a “why are you hitting yourself?” issue, if it bothers you to play easy mode, then you never have to play easy mode, you can stick with hard mode until it works out for you. Just understand that plenty of people do not view it the same way, would not feel the same sort of disappointment you express, and would NEVER view playing through easy mode as a “bad thing.”

You didn’t read that correctly. Please try again. (Though not surprising if you just quote what you want to and manipulate and strawman argument the whole time)
Easy mode isnt a bad thing. But it does interfere with the current mode if mechanics are the same or similar like you suggested. To say otherwise is just incorrect. This is not to argue against any easy mode, but it does mean it’s not just that easy to make an enjoyable easy mode that doesn’t alter the perception of raids. Not to mention that future raids will then be expected to have said easymodes as well. Which means in the long run less raids because people want an easy mode.

Other than that, what I said was that, even if you leave all encounters out, the zone gets quite empty and the story progression through the raid area is fairly barebones in that regards. Sure, you can tack on some lesser raid reward or other reward to make it worth running, but you would be effectively trying to sweeten the content artificially with rewards, while still not having a nice experience.

In many respects, you could say it’s the same as people saying that adding better rewards to WvW doesn’t make WvW better. Though, thats game mode balance wise at least nicer. And really, casual easy PvE already has loads of rewards to it. Adding raid rewards to the huge list of PvE rewards isn’t really nescessary.

What you really should ask for is nice PvE content that is fun on its own accord. And to make the argument that raids aren’t PvE casual content is probably a better argument to push ArenaNet to make living world 3 faster or maybe just better, than to stall them making a half baked easy raid that really doesn’t add all that much story and fun at all.

That’s not to say it shouldn’t be done at all, but since there’s limited resources, it’s better for ArenaNet to make great content with their time. This means mostly that said raid easymode would require quite a bit of balancing and additions to not interfere with the premise and idea of the raids themselves.

Infact it should be similar to SAB infantile mode. Which really just skips everything as well. But also required some amount of dev work. It wouldn’t reallybe rewarding or that enjoyable, but it would keep some people in the story loop. Which works great for parody content, but not sure if that works as well for raids.

Hello everyone!
I know this is probably not straight on topic but the ideas posted here were superb, that’s why I’d really love to see it being implemented in other aspects as well.

Easy mode raids you say? Excellent idea!

Can that be implemented on WvW as well? I feel like myself and plenty of my friends are being excluded from it due to complicated builds and armor sets we’d have to acquire and to be fair we are pretty busy with Fotm and Raids so there is not much time for competitive WvW. Could anet somehow implement PvE version of WvW so that we, PvE players can experience the fun people have in WvW? Like special map where gear and armor doesn’t matter, probably has a door or 2 we can break and every now and then a zerg arives so we can wipe it. Also needs to have commanders. So basically it stays the same but people who are really hardcore in WvW can pick the usual version and people who just want to experience WvW but are somehow kept away from it(due to gear, time,…) get to pick this easy version?

Also same idea could apply to PvP. Can they make a PvP where you actually go against NPC’s so I don’t have to play meta builds and actually use that much skills, preferably get carried yet still achieve legendary backpiece?

Thanks for many wonderful ideas and I am looking forward of what Anet thinks of it.

…..

How much lower? It still needs to be balanced, it still needs to be tested, and there still needs to be a lot of development time on it. It sounds simple “let’s lower a value” but in reality it’s not.

I’m sure they can make easier estimates than I could, since they likely went through a lot of variations in the hard mode testing, and probably know exactly what values were “not as high as they wanted, but still somewhat challenging.” In any case, it’s all a matter of tuning. Whatever damage you’d need to deal near-fatal damage to a raid-ready non-tank in full Ascended gear, take that damage and tune it down to deal about that much damage to a less meta character in full exotic. And again, testing time does not take time out of the developers schedules. It would be a thing, but not a relevant thing.

Not really that’s not a “fact”. Have you ever done a single dungeon path with a “meta zerker” person? You know those kind of people who expect to get certain buffs and expect bosses to die before they do? If you haven’t, good for you. If you have you’d know that this “learning” you are talking about doesn’t even work with the same content.

But again, even if that player fails because he has misconceptions, he STILL knows the general mechanics better than someone who’s never done it before in any form. You repeatedly say “the easy mode people won’t crush hard mode out of the gate, this is a Problem!” To which I keep replying “I know that, but that’s not the point. Nobody expects them to crush hard mode out of the gate, but they will at least learn skills that are applicable to hard mode, especially if they go into easy mode with the GOAL of using it to train for hard mode, having studied potential differences and how to pretend they don’t exist while doing easy mode.”

So what’s the point of the “Easy mode” as training if you need someone to tell you to break it in the first place? Look you can do this easy mode but in hard mode you will do different things… yay for training.

Have you ever trained for anything in your life? Most training involves less than lethal variations. They don’t take fresh military recruits, hand them a gun and drop them in a warzone until they become a soldier (well, not here they don’t, at least). Basically, players can go into easy mode with different expectations.

If they go into easy mode as the final goal, that they just want to get through it ASAP and get their minimal reward, then they might do things in a way that is completely incompatible with hard mode, and learn skills that mostly don’t apply to hard mode. If they’re paying attention though, they will at least start to pick up the things the boss does, which would be identical to the hard mode version, and while they wouldn’t know what to do about them, they would at least recognize them, and with a little education, could apply that knowledge to the hard mode.

On the other hand, if they go into easy mode with the goal of learning, then they’ll have already studied hard mode and learned all the strategies, they will “know” what to do in hard mode, but of course knowing with your head and knowing in actual practice are two very different things. So if they go into easy mode as if it were hard mode, then they will try their hardest to avoid every nasty effect, even if they can strictly get away with taking it.They will master the timing of moves, which will be identical, and be able to avoid all of them as well as any hard mode player, even though they won’t have to, because they know they’ll need that skill later. Their training will be just as good as repeatedly failing on hard mode, with the only difference being that when they screw up, it’s a snap on the wrist rather than a wipe, and they will get their reward instead of hard mode “pity tokens.”

Why take a half-attempted at piece of content and not get a complete package? It would require more work yes, but it would also lead to a much better experience for everyone.

No, it would take more work to get a REDUCED experience for the people that participate in it. It should tell you something that what you suggest is only being asked for by the people who DON’T want it. The people who actually do want an alternative do NOT want what you offer.

What people are missing here is that this is our first ever Raid, for all we know it might flop and by the time Wing 3 is released they scrap the whole idea of Raids completely.

Maybe, not really relevant to my point. My point is that they should take a few hours and make a version of these raids that people can be playing now. If they want to do something more complicated later, and there’s any actual demand for it (rather than just sockpuppet demand), then sure, make whatever weird variations they want, but I have no interest in that at the moment. I want to play the exact same mechanics that are currently offered, because they sound like fun, except for the massive dying all the time.

No you don’t want to experience the SAME mechanics, if you change said mechanics to be easier they stop being the SAME.

Look, I made clear what it is I want, there’s no point quibbling about what you want to call what it is I want. I want to fight Sabetha. When I fight Sabetha, I want her to pull out that flamethrower and mow it in a circle around the platform. When she does that, I want to try my very best to avoid getting hit by it. The only difference I want, is that when I inevitably fail to avoid it from time to time, I don’t want to be permanently out of the fight, I want to maybe just be downed or something, and the surviving team members can pick me back up and we can keep fighting. I’ll know I screwed up, I’ll try to do better the next time, but I’ll do so without the crushing frustration of failing at the entire attempt. That is what I want, so can we please stop trying to tell me what I want, and accept that I likely know that better than you do?

Anyone play WoW’s expansion, WoD? They announced they’d release flying mounts halfway through in Draenor. It ended up taking them months and a lot of the players were literally like “WHY all you have to do is flip a switch!”

The above statement reminded me of that soo much hahah “Press ctrl-C”

Adding flying mounts to a map would take a lot more work than copying and pasting a dungeon to make a separate instance of it.

Wait, you’re right. I simplified it more:

Step 1: Come up with an idea.
Step 2: ??? (Stuff & thangs)
Step 3: Difficulty settings are fully implemented with zero effort.

You do understand that the sillier you guys get about it, the more it telegraphs that you’ve realized you’re on the wrong side of this?

Well I was talking about GW2 dungeons and story. So now you have heard about it. But now you added characters as if that’s much different and gives so much different rewards.

Well, it used to be that you’d need to run story dungeon once on each character that you wanted to run explorable with, so yeah, plenty of people did that with at least a few characters, but that’s no longer necessary.

But it does interfere with the current mode if mechanics are the same or similar like you suggested. To say otherwise is just incorrect.

How so? The existing mode would be left completely untouched. Only the new, easier mode would have any alteration to it.

Not to mention that future raids will then be expected to have said easymodes as well. Which means in the long run less raids because people want an easy mode.

But again, the effort to produce each easy mode should be negligible, it’s the hard modes that are, well, hard, because they require more precise tuning to satisfy their target audiences, while easy modes can be a lot more loose about it. Of course all later raids should have easy modes, but I do not expect this to postpone their launch dates by even a week.

Other than that, what I said was that, even if you leave all encounters out, the zone gets quite empty and the story progression through the raid area is fairly barebones in that regards. Sure, you can tack on some lesser raid reward or other reward to make it worth running, but you would be effectively trying to sweeten the content artificially with rewards, while still not having a nice experience.

I’m not asking for a “not nice experience” The experience I described would be plenty of fun. Considerably more fun than the hard mode raid for players who do not enjoy the life-or-death risk levels the current raid provides. It wouldn’t be everyone’s thing, but I think it would appeal to more GW2 players than the current raid does, to anyone that has ever enjoyed Fractals or standard dungeons but feels the current raids are too high pressure.

What you really should ask for is nice PvE content that is fun on its own accord.

How about you ask for what you’d like to see, and I’ll ask for what I’d like to see? I’d like to see more new PvE content of any stripe, sure, but that’s an entirely separate argument, because entirely regardless of how much new PvE content is added, I STILL want an easier version of the existing raids, using the exact same mechanics, only with reduced penalties for missing them.

Infact it should be similar to SAB infantile mode.

I’m actually aiming more towards SAB “Normal” mode as the target, with the current raids being “Tribulation mode.” I don’t think there’s a need for an “Infantile mode” equivalent.

Sykper.6583:

It is funny and sad that you started off with an opinion, and when someone else suggests otherwise you claim numbers. Especially during a time when WoW was riding the success story that was BC and was becoming more popular.

It’s pretty much instant in google, but if you want…

Sykper.6583:

It’ll be fun to see you show how a nerfed/revamped Naxx and the horrendous raid known as Trial of the Crusader were superior to say Black Temple.

Class mechanics, plain and simple. Almost all classes got more tools and more complex rotations in WotLK. Also it’s quite funny to see how you “forgot” to mention Ulduar and especially IC.

Sykper.6583:

That’s the thing though, LFG actually made going through a dungeon worse for the community. It was no longer something engaging, you formed up with random people almost immediately without conversing really, everyone knew what to do, and if something went even slightly wrong there was rage, toggles for kicking, etc. I tanked for a lot of groups during that time, and I missed the authenticity of doing a dungeon formed with a group you talked with while waiting on the last DPS or heal.

Oh yeah, that evil, community-crushing-social-aspect-killing LFG… though for some weird reason everybody immediately switched to it and all complains was on forums only. Probably because most players want to play the game instead of waiting and chatting.

The problem with the people who claim this is unneeded, a stupid idea, or simply say learn to play, is that such a mode would not affect you in the least. You would still have your precious hard mode. Remember, you don’t have to play the easy mode – just like you tell everyone who doesn’t like the current raid that they have other modes of play. So get off your elitist high tower. Players who go through the easier mode will learn to do the raid and may actually come out of it ready to do the harder mode.

I, for one, still haven’t been in a successful group. But I’ll probably keep trying.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m sure they can make easier estimates than I could, since they likely went through a lot of variations in the hard mode testing, and probably know exactly what values were “not as high as they wanted, but still somewhat challenging.”

There are attacks that deal “your hit points” in damage… it’s not 100 damage, it’s not 1000 damage, it’s X where X is your current hit points. You cannot reduce their damage or they stop being 1-hit KO attacks, for obvious reasons. You are saying everything as if it’s the easiest thing to tweak some numbers but what you still don’t understand is the mechanic aspect of the fight. Remove the mechanic and you remove the fight itself, it’s that simple.

But again, even if that player fails because he has misconceptions, he STILL knows the general mechanics better than someone who’s never done it before in any form.

They know how to bypass the mechanic, not how to counter it.

Have you ever trained for anything in your life? Most training involves less than lethal variations.

We ALREADY HAVE training, it’s called the Open World, it’s called the Personal Story, it’s called Dungeons and it’s called Fractals. There is more than enough training in the game to teach you how to play, how to get a good build, how to dodge, how to do anything. And for Vale Guardian you get all the training you need fighting the trash mobs before the boss.

No, it would take more work to get a REDUCED experience for the people that participate in it. It should tell you something that what you suggest is only being asked for by the people who DON’T want it. The people who actually do want an alternative do NOT want what you offer.

Isn’t nerfing the damage of 1-hit KO attacks a REDUCED experience as well?

My point is that they should take a few hours and make a version of these raids that people can be playing now.

IT won’t take a “few hours” we’ve been over this already.

That is what I want, so can we please stop trying to tell me what I want, and accept that I likely know that better than you do?

That’s a “reduced” experience you want, if the Flamewall attack of Sabetha doesn’t insta-kill you then it’s not Sabetha’s flamewall. That’s why IF you are going to make a different difficulty setting she needs to do something else, something different that actually DEALS damage and doesn’t 1-shot kill people.

And besides, if her attack wasn’t 1-shotting people it wouldn’t be so easy to avoid. It could be a rapid fire flame thrower like Sure Shot Samus for example, or a flame version of Frost that applies burning instead of chill, or cripple or whatever. If it’s not killing you instantly, there is no need to be so highly telegraphed, so slow and so freaking obvious. There are bosses (examples posted above) that have much better attacks if they are not supposed to 1-shot you.

Remove the 1-shot aspect and Sabetha’s flamewall is worse than Frost’s basic attack.

TexZero.7910:

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is taking anything away from you, only opening the opportunity up to others.

Except that they are taking away opportunities from people.

They are removing the ability to form bonds and friendships forged by raiding together and experiencing failure, and victory. They are also removing precious development time.

Additionally you guys have yet to answer how low the bar goes.

When is easier not easy enough, where do you draw the line ?
Do we have to make the content so easy, a blind player can complete it ? How about deaf ? How about missing the use of 1 arm, or 2 ? Where does the problem end ?…..

My entire premise is this, content by it’s very nature needs not to be designed for all but rather for all that want to do it. This is where you two, and others differ from myself. If people want to raid they will raid, they will put in the effort and they will succeed. I’m speaking here from personal experiences within my own guild.

You entire post here makes no sense. How does offering opportunity take it away? How does adding a chance for lesser skilled players to form groups(oh and form bonds at the same time) take away from their ability to do said forming bonds, playing together and failing and succeeding?

And as stated by ANeT – this content wasn’t designed for ALL players. It was designed for hardcore players. They catered to the elite, a small percentage, and anytime someone who doesn’t fit your description of hardcore(because they say they can’t do the current raid and such) you tell them to go play something else.

Well, you got your hard content – be satisfied. You also are getting more. So you, and other detractors, have yet to give any legitimate reason why there can’t be an easier mode. Time and cost are about the only reason and you don’t determine that, ANeT does.

I wish an ANeT dev was actually reading this to see what kind of game culture they have created. There’s the average player, faithful to the game, who just wants to be able to experience ALL of the game. And then there’s the elitist player who demands hard content or they will quit the game. Not to mention the elitist exclusionary attitude, selling success to get through the raid, and a overall nasty attitude many elitist hard mode players display.

@Heibi : They are not elite, they are nothing but a bunch of kittens who thinks they are “elite” just because they are doing raids. You cannot reason with them.
To be honest, cant wait for Anet to fail that much, until they will remain only with their so call “kittens elite”.

Regardless of which side of this argument you fall on, I think we can all agree – based on what we see in both the forums and in game – this topic has split the community and created a bit of a “rock and hard place” situation for ANET.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to actually respond and what they actual do.

Ohoni.6057:

But it does interfere with the current mode if mechanics are the same or similar like you suggested. To say otherwise is just incorrect.

How so? The existing mode would be left completely untouched. Only the new, easier mode would have any alteration to it.

It would be like a puzzlebook with two identical puzzles where one has half the solution filled in. Or at least that’s the problem in concept. You can not say that you can just ignore the half filled in puzzle. Because anyone would be tempted by using that one to solve the harder one. It’s simple psychology why that is different. Just saying that it’s different than just one mode. This doesn’t auto rule out any easy mode, but it would definitely be something they would need to discuss.

Not to mention that future raids will then be expected to have said easymodes as well. Which means in the long run less raids because people want an easy mode.

But again, the effort to produce each easy mode should be negligible, it’s the hard modes that are, well, hard, because they require more precise tuning to satisfy their target audiences, while easy modes can be a lot more loose about it. Of course all later raids should have easy modes, but I do not expect this to postpone their launch dates by even a week.

No development is negligible. Your predictions on how long this takes are unfounded. If ArenaNet can deliver this with very little time, ignoring all the design implications, if they actually want to make it that way. Even then saying it just takes a week means totally nothing. You just grasped that out of nowhere. I could say “But it takes a month!”, but I won’t because I at least know that I don’t know that.

What you really should ask for is nice PvE content that is fun on its own accord.

How about you ask for what you’d like to see, and I’ll ask for what I’d like to see? I’d like to see more new PvE content of any stripe, sure, but that’s an entirely separate argument, because entirely regardless of how much new PvE content is added, I STILL want an easier version of the existing raids, using the exact same mechanics, only with reduced penalties for missing them.

Which may or may not happen. It would change how raids will feel on a very fundamental level, alters the perception of raids and adds alot of unfocussed content. That’s basically all I’m saying. It might be better to request good PvE content in general. It was a mere suggestion.

@ Ohoni: Balancing isn’t easy. It is something you need to put work into it, especially for an Easy Mode for a Raid. You can’t just say " Take this and lower the Values ", because all it will do is to mess up the Encounter. Make it too easy and you have an Encounter where you can Skip the Mechanics. Just 50% Damage or lower for every messed up Green Circle at VG? If anything else is also lowered you can just ignore this.

Gorsevals World Eater not a Group Wipe? Well just tank it, put in one or two Skills for better Survival on Demand or, even better, a Shroud and you can flat out ignore it.
Matthias Sacrifice not a One Shot? Don’t bother, we can Rezz you and at the Meantime bash on the Boss

Same with Bombs, Volatile Poison Flamewalls etc, just reducing the Values or making them not One Shots, will make certain Mechanics useless, like the Regen Crystals on CoF P1 Boss.

You’ll need to know what to lower, in what Amount, what to do with certain Skills etc etc. Its not something you can just put in a few Hours in and say " This is Ready for Easy Mode" because with just a few Hours, you will just have an unbalanced Mess or even worse, LFR Difficulty for everyone.

You also need Testing and you need the right People for it. Raiders from Guilds that are going for World Firsts or things like No Updraft Gorse, are not the ones you want to test for Easy Mode, because these Players will just curbstomp this Mode, you need People who are just average at this Game to test this. Now find these Players who are just average and not too good or too bad.

You see Balancing isn’t easy and for a good Easy Mode you need to hit the Right Balance. Too easy and welcome LFR. Too hard and you can just go to normal Mode.

It is time for ANET to realize, despite their best intentions, that there is a real issue here – one that needs to be addressed and fixed sooner rather than later – even if it means postponing the third wing of the current raid.

And, to be clear, I do not think raiding itself is the issue here. The issue is about the general design and direction of the game itself. At launch, GW2 was a huge success. I believe a big part of that success came because the game offered a fresh content model that was in stark contrast to other AAA MMOs. It brought players together in huge open world activities (both in PVE and WvW). Within that world, there were a variety of challenges and fun things to do. Instanced content was seen as an aside – and always something that anyone could jump into at any time.

Raiding, in the form they have chosen to release it, turns the game away from that direction. It also happens to happen (by design or not) during the longest open world content drought the game has ever seen.

ANET needs to get back to that original philosophy of inclusion and community building. That doesnt mean that raids cannot have an ultra difficult mode – it just means that the ultra-difficult mode CANNOT be the only mode.

Earlier, I outlined a concept for scaling raids based on a simple gold/silver/bronze reward system (just like we saw at game launch) that would allow raids to retain that difficulty while still offering a path forward for the general population – all without making major (or in many cases, any) changes to how the current fights are designed or scaled.

I really do not see what harm it would do – and it really is time the ANET team accepted that something has to be done sooner rather than later. This is an amazing game that I play with many old and many new friends. I hope we are all still here 10 years from now.

Blaeys.3102:

Regardless of which side of this argument you fall on, I think we can all agree – based on what we see in both the forums and in game – this topic has split the community and created a bit of a “rock and hard place” situation for ANET.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to actually respond and what they actual do.

I agree.

I’m assuming they will do next to nothing considering the recent guild chat.

SidewayS.3789:

@Heibi : They are not elite, they are nothing but a bunch of kittens who thinks they are “elite” just because they are doing raids. You cannot reason with them.
To be honest, cant wait for Anet to fail that much, until they will remain only with their so call “kittens elite”.

Funny you should say this, because most people that raid are actually quite welcoming. PUG raiding is hell, but get together with a group of friends and learn. You are dissing “elite” when that is a label that non raiders in this thread have thrown out. You are generalizing something on your preconceptions. All that raiders ask is to have the little corner of the game while other people can have the rest of the game and everyone else is welcome to try and join. But I would say there is much entitlement from people that think that they should get everything in the game without any effort.

The main issue here is that people think that every part of the game should be catered to them. I agree that ANET has always said that all game modes should be accessible by everyone, and Raids fall into that category. You can do it in exotics, all you need is to practice if you desire.

Blaeys.3102:

It is time for ANET to realize, despite their best intentions, that there is a real issue here – one that needs to be addressed and fixed sooner rather than later – even if it means postponing the third wing of the current raid.

The release of this Raid, which comes in three parts is something that comes with the expansion. The development of all three wings was probably done together and that is why it is ready before Living Story which comes after the Story of HoT.

Blaeys.3102:

Raiding, in the form they have chosen to release it, turns the game away from that direction. It also happens to happen (by design or not) during the longest open world content drought the game has ever seen.

There is no drought, content is being released. The content itself might not be for the open world players but that is OK. Not every patch should be for everyone. I could on the same token say that raiders have had the absolutely longest drought of content. Since the launch of the game until November of 2015, over three and a half years, and complain there was no content. But that would be ridiculous, there was content just not the content I played.

Blaeys.3102:

Earlier, I outlined a concept for scaling raids based on a simple gold/silver/bronze reward system (just like we saw at game launch) that would allow raids to retain that difficulty while still offering a path forward for the general population – all without making major (or in many cases, any) changes to how the current fights are designed or scaled.

I really do not see what harm it would do – and it really is time the ANET team accepted that something has to be done sooner rather than later.

The harm it would do is that it would completely destroy the entire concept of Raiding. It is entirely based on the difficulty it has and by undermining that difficulty it would destroy everything they are built upon. Again, no one is excluded from raiding like in other games all it takes is the desire to do it.

They were always very good ad hiding their heads in the sand, that’s true.

Beorn Raukar.4328:

The harm it would do is that it would completely destroy the entire concept of Raiding. It is entirely based on the difficulty it has and by undermining that difficulty it would destroy everything they are built upon. Again, no one is excluded from raiding like in other games all it takes is the desire to do it.

This is your personal definition of raiding – nothing more. Googling MMO Raid, the best definition I found was “players banding together to succeed at a common goal- such as taking over territory, killing an opposing faction, or most commonly killing big scary internet monsters that drop coveted items.”

Even other MMOs with extensive raiding histories really dont go much further than that in defining the term.

The point is, the definition itself has nothing to do with difficulty. The idea that if it isn’t difficult, it cant be called a raid is silly.

What it should be is simple – a multi person (usually more than 5) instance with some fun fights inside – the one thing I’m sure we can all agree upon.

If there is a way to make that content accessible to all players – WITHOUT REDUCING THE DIFFICULTY of the experience you are currently having – then there is no down side. It doesn’t “corrupt the integrity” or “change the definition,” it simply adds more content to the game.

And, for the record, I am fully behind having difficult content in the game. In fact, I think there should a wider range of difficulties in all PVE areas of the game – from living story to open world to fractals to (yes) raids.

Coulter.2315:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Goatjugsoup.8637:

isnt that how we got to the state we are in now? people refusing to learn because there was no need to…
i am thoroughly against an easy mode, it would take away motivation to actually get better

Doesn’t fractals have an “easy mode”? I thought they started at level one and progressed to level 50? Does having easy fractals stop people from going on to level 50 or do they all stay at level 1?

Do people get burned out of fractals and consider them content to be avoided except for Swamp and dailies? Lets not do this to raids please..

Does that have anything to do with Fractals having level 1 difficulty?

An easy mode for raids should probably follow the dungeon story mode reward pattern. It can drop items, coin, etc, but not the unique raid rewards. You cannot get tokens in story mode so none of the unique raid rewards in easy mode.

And, again, all dev desources needed to implement easy mode should be drawn from te general open world resource pool, not the raid pool.

AliamRationem.5172:

LFR WAS responsible for damage to the WoW raiding community.

That’s actually highly debatable. People claiming opposite (that the LFG had a net positive effect on raiding and WoW in general) have an equally strong arguments. Well, actually stronger, since the only support for the former position is anectodal.

Astralporing.1957:

AliamRationem.5172:

LFR WAS responsible for damage to the WoW raiding community.

That’s actually highly debatable. People claiming opposite (that the LFG had a net positive effect on raiding and WoW in general) have an equally strong arguments. Well, actually stronger, since the only support for the former position is anectodal.

How is the opposite claim less anectdotal?

Currently the only hard facts of which I am aware in the matter of pre vs post LFR in WoW, is that the game was more popular and more profitable pre. I am not claiming causation here but what non-anectdotal facts are there to support the opposite claim you mention?

I’m not a raider, still new to the game but since i’ve been through some real competitive games (Dota, SC, WoT etc) all i can say is that i don’t mind an “easy mode” for raids, as long as the rewards are non-existent.
Good job u finished the 1st raid wing on easy mode.
Rewards: a couple of rares and 50 silver.

No shards, barely any exotics and ofc no ascended drops or ghostly infusions.

In a nutshell no rewards. This should be acceptable.

If people asking for difficulty options want to get rewards as well (even if they are lesser) then they are unreasonable and their comments should be taken as a joke.

I’re read every comment in this thread and want to add to/address a few…

AliamRationem.5172:

…I explained the harm from the perspective of a raid leader and guild master. It’s not something you would understand if you’ve never done progression raiding.

When they talk about burnout, they’re referring to progression raiding. This is the phase of raiding where you haven’t yet completed the content and raid nights consist of repeated failures with only incremental progress and little or no reward to show for it.

How easy do you really think it is to keep players showing up for that each week? And what do you suppose the impact on an already demoralized raid is when a critical player leaves and has to be replaced with someone who hasn’t put in any time practicing with the group?

That’s the true challenge of raiding and why it requires so much time. These guys who talk about how you only need an hour or two each week to raid are talking about farm content. Progression requires much more time and managing the logistics is the biggest challenge…

Lots of people talked WoW, so I’d like to add the GW2 perspective. This is my guild right now. We’re working hard and have been raiding together since Spirit Vale released, but this has been our experience almost every week since then. We raid casually, 2 nights a week for 2 hours (down from 3), and have downed VG & are finally getting close to downing Gors (15% lowest).

When we started, we had a full group of 10 regulars + a few backups. A fair number of those people have left GW2 for other games, and now we go week to week, unsure if we’ll actually be able to raid. If someone has work, takes a vacation, etc. we don’t raid. Pure and simple (not complaining, btw: we don’t pug).

I fully understand people being discouraged. I fully understand people not wanting to bang their heads against walls for hours on end with very little sense of progress. I fully understand people deciding that raids (and that experience) are not for them. I fully understand the frustration of having new people flowing into the group who lack raiding experience and feeling like we’re starting from scratch again.

Sometimes when we get the newer raiders into our groups, we bang our heads against VG for 2 hours and still don’t get him down. I get the frustration of the more experienced raiders (“we’ve taken down VG before, he’s not that hard!”) and I get the frustration of the newer raiders (“cut me some slack, I’ve not done this before/I don’t do this often”).

It’s hard for everyone involved. Burnout is a real risk in our guild right now. However, I don’t think they should introduce an easy mode of the raid that offers any sort of substantial reward. I’m in the camp of “training raids with 0 reward.”

That leads to:

Ohoni.6057:

Do you mean Story Mode? Nobody runs story mode more than once. It would not be worth them making a version of the raid that people would only run once. Having a reasonable level of reward gives people a reason to run it multiple times. People suggesting “zero reward” are just people who don’t want the mode to exist in the first place.

I’d like to see “easy mode” (and when I say easy, I mean raids rebalanced for however many is in your party) raids simply for training. If people really really need a reward beyond getting skilled enough to do the “real” raid, offer a shard per attempt. The ideal, for me, is to make an environment that is friendly to teaching and practice. As it stands now, if myself or anyone else wants to better themselves, they have to do so at the expense of a minimum of 9 other players. Having something like this would be really nice for those people who deal with the problem of “everyone is looking for experience, but I have none, so no one will take me, so I’ll never get the experience.”

I know this doesn’t match your particular problem, but it does offer you a (slow) way to work towards that armor you want. If, during those training raids, you do get to the point where you are ready for the “real” raids, you can hop right in with the experience you need.

However, I understand that this would take a lot of resources to produce (someone has to work on the coding & the back end, someone has to test, etc etc.) so I’m not holding my breath. I’m also not really expecting this to be a decent solution in your eyes either, since you seem to want something more rewarding than this, but less rewarding than regular raids. To me, that idea doesn’t provide any sort of incentive to get better… and I understand that not everyone wants to better themselves, but, in my opinion, I don’t think that mentality should be encouraged.

All of that said, you can get decent shards (slowly) if you bang your head against bosses each week. If you change perspective, tell yourself “I want to get shards and success doesn’t matter,” and join learner pug raids, you will accumulate them slowly. Been raiding since Spirit Vale released and have 500 now after all of our head banging.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes. Some people enjoy the situation you describe, failing over and over and over, but getting better each time, and eventually succeeding. That’s fine, if you enjoy that, knock yourself out, as many times as it takes to make you happy. I’ll wait. But not everyone is like that. Not everyone can enjoy that experience, not everyone feels that the catharsis of eventual victory is strong enough to make up for the annoyance of multiple failures. And that’s OK.

Different people are different, and different gameplay experiences benefit each of them. What makes you happy about raiding is not what would make everyone happy about raiding. It’s not that players like myself are just not giving your version a proper chance, and that if we did we would appreciate it as much as you do, it’s that different people are different, and we genuinely do not enjoy the same type of experiences that you do. For us, the lows are lower, and the highs are lower too, so it’s never worth it. NEVER.

& I totally sympathize with your point of view. I do. We’ve lost a fair amount of raiders because of this point of view, and its okay. Raids aren’t for them, currently, so they aren’t raiding (and are playing other games, honestly). For now, players like you and players who are trying to jump into raids with no experience suffer, but Anet currently has no plans for casual raids, nor 5 man raids (which would be closer to my suggestion for “easy” raids). Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nzule?context=10000

So, with our current reality, you are left with a few choices:
1.) change the way you view raids and shard accruement (change “banging your head against a wall” to “get shards in any way possible and screw success”)
or
2.) don’t raid and wait to see if they implement easy mode raids someday

At this point, they have seen the suggestion for easy mode raids.

And since effort on the raid team’s part been mentioned several times in the thread… remember, Salvation’s Pass only had 5-6 people working on it for 4 months. That’s very few people for such a heavy workload. An easy mode raid may actually be as easy as “one guy working on it for a few hours,” but considering they have already discussed easy modes and have yet to put anyone on the task, I would guess that it is more difficult (or they just aren’t willing to sacrifice the necessary developer because they want him/her elsewhere).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nwad9?context=10000

Editing this in, because it hits home in regards to developer’s efforts: “With all due respect, unless you’re a developer for GW2 you are not qualified to make a statement about the time needed, difficulty involved, or feasibility of such a feature.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Difficulty-settings/page/2#post6042466

For me an easy mode with identical mechanics, only less punishing, would just be a learning crutch. You could get the fight down in easy mode and then move onto hard mode. Which defeats the entire point of the content right there.

I have no problem with a “Story” mode. Where there are no mechanics. You just go in and fight the bosses. They wander around and hit you, you hit them. They die and you can progress the story. Not difficult, no green circles or teleports on VG. No eggs or world eater or smashes on Gorse. No bombs or cannons on Sabetha.

Otherwise you are just giving people a training mode. Part of the fun and challenge is having to learn the mechanics while doing the fight in “difficult” mode. Taking that away trivializes all of it.

Difficulty does not have to come from multiple modes or instances. GW2 has a really good system already in place – the gold/silver/bronze system we see in open world. In the case of the Vale Guardian, it might be as simple as

• 8 minute kill = gold (full rewards)

• 10 minute kill – silver (access to minis and standard ascended chests via) vendor

• more than 10 minute kill = bronze (no access to vendor – just a champ box like any other world kill).

I realize this could take more effort than I envision (not a programmer), but it is just one example of a middle ground between completely redoing instances to make them easier and doing nothing (and addressing the effort = reward arguments as well).

As always, really appreciate the openness and hard work the developers put into the game. Know that we wouldn’t be making noise if we didn’t care about GW2.

Malediktus.9250:

It already is for most “skill levels”. You just need to put in effort to learn the mechanics of the bosses.

hahahahhahahahhahahaha, go tell that to every group that didn’t invite me/kick me out because I didn’t have an eternal title.

Either Raids gets a difficulty setting or Raids doesn’t get lore anymore.

I do not want to risk being spoiled because I can’t find a group. I want to experience the lore for myself, not have reddit tell me what happened.

runeblade.7514:

Either Raids gets a difficulty setting or Raids doesn’t get lore anymore.

I do not want to risk being spoiled because I can’t find a group. I want to experience the lore for myself, not have reddit tell me what happened.

Then do raids the way they are now.

Rym.1469:

In general, I’m against it. Why? Because of what LFR (Looking For Raid) in WoW has become.

It gave people an option to basically netflix through all raids they wanted, with obviously nerfed rewards and everything was cool, but…
They didn’t see a point in raiding in “regular” mode whatsoever again, because they believed they’ve already seen and experienced the content, which besides textures being the same in LFR and Normal/Heroic/Mythic raiding is totally inadequate.

LFR purged the excitement behind raiding, the urge to actually experience what game has to offer. Blizzard tried to re-ignite the spark with many changes to “regular” version of raids and make starting a raid as easy as possible, but it doesn’t matter all that much and problem persists.

Give open, cleared instances to people who want to experience the lore, but don’t make bosses easier.

I don’t see whats wrong with LFR. After experiencing, GW2 raids so far. I rather be able to raid instead of playing the wait to play game.

Ohoni.6057:

Sure it was, you were discussing the rewards level. I suggested an amount.

But an unconstructive amount.

This should simply be analogous to dungeons. Easy mode dungeons aren’t done for loot, so I don’t think easy mode raids should be either. It’s a story thing.

Do you mean Story Mode? Nobody runs story mode more than once. It would not be worth them making a version of the raid that people would only run once. Having a reasonable level of reward gives people a reason to run it multiple times. People suggesting “zero reward” are just people who don’t want the mode to exist in the first place.

Yes I mean story mode. You put the cart before the horse my friend because there isn’t much support for making an easymode raid that you can get the same loot in the regular version.

Maybe I missed but, what kinds of rewards did you intend drop in this easymode raid? Certainly nothing equivalent to the regular version, which in that case would make me question the whole point of it.

For me, the only point of the easymode raid is to let people experience the story, not to reward them for being bad at the regular version of it.