I know Nightmare Court arc of the HoT story was cut from HoT development. It caused a huge missing piece of how did they end up joining the pact to confront the Mordremoth. There is also some other visibly cut content around Tangled Depth and Dragon Stand.
While it is impractical for Living Story or content patch to go into something like that now, I think it might be possible for a raid to tell their side of the story.
This way, not only would the HoT lore be more coherent, it would also create new content that people would want to play.
This game lacks difficulty levels in raids there is no easy mode LFR mode in this game as there is in WoW. So major story points like this should be excluded from raid content.
Before people tear my remarks down lfr is a difficulty setting like heroic or mythic. In Gw2 I’d expect a higher mythic like setting to be Guild only, heroic to be current status, and lfr to be for the experience and training rewards adjusted per setting. Before anyone goes the raids are easy as is route difficulty settings have nothing to do with actually difficulty. They make things fun because they reduce and contain toxic players. Easy mode will be ignored by toxic tryhards kicking people over dps and being rude they’ll instead want to go the normal route. The highest being locked by guild and no lfg function would provide something this game needs being guild prestige and guild teach and nurture future raiders while obviously kicking bad eggs from the guild.
This locks the worst of our community in the middle tier and toxic people keeping raid participation down by scaring away curious players would be a non issue. With this I’d be fine with locking story content behind raids toxic players are the death of any game and this one has done a poor job outside of the whole report deal but the sheer fact people have to report means there fun has already been soured and that reflects very badly on the game mode whether there reporting a toxic player in raids, pvp, dungeons, WVW, and so forth.
Sounds awesome! Although, I would also say that it could be possible that the Nightmare Court could still be operating in the jungle, trying to find a way to construct Twilight Arbor 2.0 or something of that nature (one with anti-cyber pirate defenses). I really miss that mind wrecking intimidation factor of the Nightmare Court and would love to see them return.
@Doam, we just can’t have one conversation about raids without spouting those myths about the community can we?
It’s hard to have a topic about raids without it becoming the same discussion, hope this one stays on topic.
@Topic: I really would like a raid about the nightmare court. We only had human raid bosses, so i hope we see raid with Char, Sylvari, Norn and Asura as raid bosses too.
I think we’re done seeing any new raid content regarding the HoT story. Forsaken Thicket was the HoT raid taking place after the story. Bastion of the Penitent has been confirmed to be a one wing only raid that’s mostly just about a side story. Given the time between the last wing of forsaken thicket and bastion, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see another raid before the next expansion, and I’m sure that whatever raid we get there will deal with matters regarding the second expansion.
You know normally i’d be against this on principal because it’s main story….
However, i can see this being used to bridge the divide if executed properly.
Scale things back and make this a complete novice raid scenario (the “easy mode”) if you will. Make it strictly about telling the story while having some fun fights that aren’t completely oppressive to people who have been reluctant to raiding(For clarity sake lets say its a lane fight akin to DS or a tower defense section). Let it be as rewarding to unlock the mastery track but not so much as to hand out new/unique skins/LI.
Then everyone can have their compromise and eat it too right ?
You know normally i’d be against this on principal because it’s main story….
However, i can see this being used to bridge the divide if executed properly.
Scale things back and make this a complete novice raid scenario (the “easy mode”) if you will. Make it strictly about telling the story while having some fun fights that aren’t completely oppressive to people who have been reluctant to raiding(For clarity sake lets say its a lane fight akin to DS or a tower defense section). Let it be as rewarding to unlock the mastery track but not so much as to hand out new/unique skins/LI.
Then everyone can have their compromise and eat it too right ?
Definitely this.
And I agree that, as long as it is tuned (or, even better, tiered) for everyone interested in the PVE story, then I think it would be a good fit for the game.
Raids should be considered another means through which developers can tell interesting and fun stories – as long as there is a way for everyone to realistically enjoy them regardless of playstyle, choice of profession, etc.
To summarize, I agree that the OP has a good idea. it would just require a little compromise in the design.
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