Guild Wars 2

Rednik.3809:

Astralporing.1957:

It’s far more likely to happen in the current situation. Insights could be farmed on VG alone, but having a legendary armor will mean you have finished all of the bosses in the first raid.

And 90% of next raid LFG requirements will be “full legendary armor or kick”. Wooo, I’m already see that friendly raiding community.

Frankly I don’t see how it is any different than what we have already seen in dungeons. People also used to ask for “for full ascended berserker 5k AP speedclear, ping or kick”…..It is the exact same deal in pugs situation: players want it fast, so they set requirements. The thing is you can promote your own group if you don’t adhere to this kind of mentality

Rednik.3809:

Hypairion.9210:

This thread is actually pretty funny. The less the people raid, the more they are talking about the toxic raiding community. Maybe you should let actual raider speak about their community…
I pugged a lot of dungeons, and a lot of raids (when I’m not with my guild), and it’s weird because the raiding community is much nicer…

Raiding communities are always toxic if you are not in raiding guild or at least in static. This is pretty much a rule, for almost any MMO, because pug raids are usually made by people who barely fit for a leading role. Competent raid leader is rare beast, and they are never staying on pug raid level for long.

But PUGs aren’t a measurement for the raiding community in general. Most raiders are nice but can get pretty toxic towards people aren’t the target audience or don’t want to fit in and just play the game mode for the rewards unless the whole group only plays for the reward.

Raids are about social groups, beating challenging content together, organisation and preparation.

If you want a smooth raiding experience open your own group or find a nice guild to raid with. Otherwise there will always be bad apples that stand out from the nice groups.

PUGs will be PUGs, there are always toxic people in PUGs regardless of the game mode.

Astralporing.1957:

I can with 100% certainty say, that it wouldn’t be the case. Why? Because i have yet to see anyone asking for legendary weapons.

Because legendary weapons aren’t a relevant selection criteria. Legendary insights and legendary armor are, and will be, selection criteria for raid leaders to select people out with.

Ohoni.6057:
Again, if raids were completely optional, in the way I mean that, not in the way you mean that, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but since they aren’t, it is a problem.

They are completly optional. Your problem is that there are rewards you like inside the raid wings, but you don’t want to spend the effort of getting them.

Again, if raids were completely optional, in the way I mean that, not in the way you mean that, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but since they aren’t, it is a problem.

Most raiders welcome new players if they are willing to learn. The toxic raider mentality is a mythos, made up by people who wanted to get carried and got declined by raiders.

Many are nice, so long as you’re willing to play on their terms, learn the game how they think it should be. But as this thread shows, suggest that maybe hardcore raids are NOT the endgoal for every player, and that maybe other activities can be equally rewarding, and the knives come out. Raiders can be pretty cool, so long as everyone agrees that they are the top dogs and deserve to be so. Suggest that they are merely the equal of any other player in the game, regardless of their personal skill, and they tend to snap.

ArenaNet said, raids are tuned with ascended in mind. Expert players proof you can beat them with ~45-50% less damage. So the raid is perfectly tuned for the middle-ground with ascended equipment.

Again, showing that some players can beat the content with less than intended gear proves nothing more than that some players can beat the content with less than intended gear. It proves nothing so far as the tuning goes for less capable players. I mean, take a staircase and say “this staircase is meant to take 10 seconds to climb. I’m so great, I can climb it in four seconds!” Well that’s great and all, good for you, but that doesn’t mean that someone with bad legs will have any easier time reaching the top.

First you have to define a player type to which you tune the easy mode. That alone takes a long time.
Yeah players like being involved making decisions. They are not cool with livetesting and experiencing bugs, which will happen if you change mechanics.

One, there’s no reason why there should be significant bugs, since every aspect of the easy mode would be based on the original version or existing assets, no new assets that could bug in strange ways. Even so, the original raid beta were buggy, they shut them down in, what, a couple of hours? I’m sure players looking for an easy mode could put up with a little initial instability so long as they were made aware in advance that the tuning was not final. If they release it as “here it is, it’s done” and it’s a buggy mess then of course there would be a little outcry from the fringes, but if they announce it as an open beta, and it plays like an open beta, the community will be fine. And even if it is a horrendous mess for weeks, if and when they get it into shape, and word drips out that it is in good shape, the community at large will return to it anew. Hell, people are playing dungeons again. In 2016!

That ‘four-way axis’ appeared as bad players tried to fit the game to their needs instead of trying to get better. Casual = low time, irregular shedule.

Be that as may, the four way axis is a very real thing that actual game developers keep in mind. The “casual skill” players are not any lesser than the “hardcore skill” players, they just enjoy a different sort of gaming experience. The “hardcore skills” experience is not inherently better than the casual one, it’s just a different way to play. It only becomes an issue when people try to make out like hardcore skill play is somehow infinitely superior to casual skill play. It’s all a game, everyone’s playing, everyone’s no better than anyone else.

Raids are not part of the core of GW2, it’s a tiny part of the whole game. The core is still the same.

And the problem is that this tiny part is receiving the best prizes and most interesting new story and gameplay content, rather than the core of the game where everyone else is. You know what would fix that? An easy mode that offered a slow, but reasonable path to those rewards.

And I suppose you pugged à lot in gw2 to back up your claim ? I mean, some week, I pug each night (because i’m borred, sometimes), and I’ve yet to witness the toxic behaviour you’re talking about. But maybe we put diffent meanings in “toxic”.

One night my guild almost broke up because some of the players were on TS and some were not, and the ones that were not (including the guild leader) were being encouraged to get on coms, and blew up and started kicking people from the guild. There was a great deal of drama but eventually everyone settled down. It was still a mess and we did lose several players.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, if raids were completely optional, in the way I mean that, not in the way you mean that, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but since they aren’t, it is a problem.

They are. You just want the rewards. It is always about rewards with that topic, never about the game mode.

Many are nice, so long as you’re willing to play on their terms, learn the game how they think it should be. But as this thread shows, suggest that maybe hardcore raids are NOT the endgoal for every player, and that maybe other activities can be equally rewarding, and the knives come out. Raiders can be pretty cool, so long as everyone agrees that they are the top dogs and deserve to be so. Suggest that they are merely the equal of any other player in the game, regardless of their personal skill, and they tend to snap.

Hardcore raids still don’t exist in GW2. They are fairly casual.
It’s fine that not all people want to raid and most of them can also accept that they can’t get the raid rewards. And there are people like you who don’t want to raid but still want the rewards.
But if they want to raid they have to accept that they need to fit in the group they want to play with or open their own group.
People that tend to snap can mostly be found on the lower skilled end of the raiding community or in PUGs.

Again, showing that some players can beat the content with less than intended gear proves nothing more than that some players can beat the content with less than intended gear. It proves nothing so far as the tuning goes for less capable players. I mean, take a staircase and say “this staircase is meant to take 10 seconds to climb. I’m so great, I can climb it in four seconds!” Well that’s great and all, good for you, but that doesn’t mean that someone with bad legs will have any easier time reaching the top.

The people you are referring to are below the middle-ground in terms of skill.

One, there’s no reason why there should be significant bugs, since every aspect of the easy mode would be based on the original version or existing assets, no new assets that could bug in strange ways. Even so, the original raid beta were buggy, they shut them down in, what, a couple of hours? I’m sure players looking for an easy mode could put up with a little initial instability so long as they were made aware in advance that the tuning was not final. If they release it as “here it is, it’s done” and it’s a buggy mess then of course there would be a little outcry from the fringes, but if they announce it as an open beta, and it plays like an open beta, the community will be fine. And even if it is a horrendous mess for weeks, if and when they get it into shape, and word drips out that it is in good shape, the community at large will return to it anew. Hell, people are playing dungeons again. In 2016!

And wasting precious developer time on a not needed feature.
Open betas were PR-activities in most games the last years. Most players don’t even know what beta status descripes. I guess you missed the kittenstorm during the raid test in the HoT beta where the commander interface crashed the server.

Be that as may, the four way axis is a very real thing that actual game developers keep in mind. The “casual skill” players are not any lesser than the “hardcore skill” players, they just enjoy a different sort of gaming experience. The “hardcore skills” experience is not inherently better than the casual one, it’s just a different way to play. It only becomes an issue when people try to make out like hardcore skill play is somehow infinitely superior to casual skill play. It’s all a game, everyone’s playing, everyone’s no better than anyone else.

It isn’t a problem that people play that way. It becomes a problem if players like that expect that everything is tuned to fit them.
If you don’t like the package raids provides, don’t play them.

And the problem is that this tiny part is receiving the best prizes and most interesting new story and gameplay content, rather than the core of the game where everyone else is. You know what would fix that? An easy mode that offered a slow, but reasonable path to those rewards.

Best prizes?
Gold gain is non-existent unless you have the wings on farm status. Even then it’s just medicore.
Ascended equipment is easier to aquire with fractals and crafting.
Legendary armor still has the same stats as ascended.
So what price is better than the things you can get in open world except the item color of the armor, if you like purple more than pink?

You can experience the story in an empty instance. Everything regarding the story (which is fairly minor after 2 wings) can be found there.

And I suppose you pugged à lot in gw2 to back up your claim ? I mean, some week, I pug each night (because i’m borred, sometimes), and I’ve yet to witness the toxic behaviour you’re talking about. But maybe we put diffent meanings in “toxic”.

One night my guild almost broke up because some of the players were on TS and some were not, and the ones that were not (including the guild leader) were being encouraged to get on coms, and blew up and started kicking people from the guild. There was a great deal of drama but eventually everyone settled down. It was still a mess and we did lose several players.

Thats a problem with individual people, not the raids itself or the raid community in general.

Put a different set of Legendary Armor outside of raids.

We can presume there is a decent amount of players who simply dislike raids yet would like the utility of it.

And actually if I think about it, I can think of a certain game-mode that has been largely starving for some sort of end-game goal other than ramming gates for days.

Boom, put a very long but plausible Legendary Armor in WvW, which takes weeks maybe months of dedicated WvW to accomplish both off-WvW season and during WvW season.

It’s an entirely separate entity from Raids, matching how SPvP and Fractals have the divide in their backpieces.

Whereas Legendary Weapons are the more general long-term goals of any regular player who dabbles in open-world or crafting or etc. Putting Legendaries behind each different mode as an end-game reward further demonstrates the mechanisms behind the original Legendary equipment where you needed to do everything in the game (well except SPvP, though they finally made tokens out of SPvP necessary).

As for the actual balance of this non-existent WvW legendary armor acquisition, that’s still in the air, I don’t think I need to come up with an example system here right now.

Sykper.6583:

Put a different set of Legendary Armor outside of raids.

We can presume there is a decent amount of players who simply dislike raids yet would like the utility of it.

And actually if I think about it, I can think of a certain game-mode that has been largely starving for some sort of end-game goal other than ramming gates for days.

Boom, put a very long but plausible Legendary Armor in WvW, which takes weeks maybe months of dedicated WvW to accomplish both off-WvW season and during WvW season.

It’s an entirely separate entity from Raids, matching how SPvP and Fractals have the divide in their backpieces.

Whereas Legendary Weapons are the more general long-term goals of any regular player who dabbles in open-world or crafting or etc. Putting Legendaries behind each different mode as an end-game reward further demonstrates the mechanisms behind the original Legendary equipment where you needed to do everything in the game (well except SPvP, though they finally made tokens out of SPvP necessary).

As for the actual balance of this non-existent WvW legendary armor acquisition, that’s still in the air, I don’t think I need to come up with an example system here right now.

This was suggested multiple times this thread. But Ohoni still wants an easy mode raid to aquire the armor, most likely because he doesn’t play WvW either.

They are. You just want the rewards. It is always about rewards with that topic, never about the game mode.

It’s about rewards when we’re talking about rewards, it’s about gameplay when we’re talking about gameplay, when we’re talking about raids in general it’s about both, because both are important. Don’t act the innocent in that, you’re fighting just as hard to keep those rewards exclusive to hard mode raiding as I am trying to open them up to more players.

Hardcore raids still don’t exist in GW2. They are fairly casual.

They are hardcore for GW2, which is a distinction that matters regardless of how they may stack up to other games.

It’s fine that not all people want to raid and most of them can also accept that they can’t get the raid rewards. And there are people like you who don’t want to raid but still want the rewards.
But if they want to raid they have to accept that they need to fit in the group they want to play with or open their own group.
People that tend to snap can mostly be found on the lower skilled end of the raiding community or in PUGs.

And this is why easy mode raids are a good thing, because it allows players to participate who are not well suited, for whatever reason, to the conditions you believe are important to a “good” raid.

The people you are referring to are below the middle-ground in terms of skill.

Cite.

I guess you missed the kittenstorm during the raid test in the HoT beta where the commander interface crashed the server.

No, I saw it, I just don’t see that being an issue here. 1. There shouldn’t be any new tech, so no reason for anything to actually crash. Worst case would just be that it would either be way harder or way easier than people expected. 2. The raid beta was a bigger deal because there were so few beta opportunities before launch and everyone wanted to get in there, and due to the crash, a lot of people weren’t able. This isn’t as big a deal for easy mode, since the existing raids have already been there, there’s nothing “new” about them, there’s no prestige associated with “beating easy mode first!,” they are a convenience factor, so players would be a bit more laid back about it all. “It’s ready when it’s ready.”

It isn’t a problem that people play that way. It becomes a problem if players like that expect that everything is tuned to fit them.

but what if they do make up the overwhelming majority of the game’s population? Shouldn’t the game be tuned to suit the overwhelming majority of the game’s population?

If you don’t like the package raids provides, don’t play them.

Give me an alternative way to play the maps and earn the rewards currently attached to raids and you have a deal. Maybe some sort of “easy mode.”

Until then, no, I’m not accepting a Hobson’s choice as an acceptable resolution.

Best prizes?
Gold gain is non-existent unless you have the wings on farm status. Even then it’s just medicore.
Ascended equipment is easier to aquire with fractals and crafting.
Legendary armor still has the same stats as ascended.
So what price is better than the things you can get in open world except the item color of the armor, if you like purple more than pink?

Look, if the rewards are important enough for you to say that I can’t have them then clearly they are important enough that I should be justifiably upset at having them excluded from me. Pick one and stick with it. Again, I’m totally fine with them bumping the QUANTITY of raid rewards to make them more attractive to people who claim to enjoy raiding but won’t actually do it without proper bribes. What I’m opposed to is raids having exclusive access to any quality of rewards that cannot be earned elsewhere. If you want more loot, fine, whatever, don’t care. If you want better loot, no.

You can experience the story in an empty instance. Everything regarding the story (which is fairly minor after 2 wings) can be found there.

But you can’t open an empty instance without someone else doing it for you. And empty instances don’t have the boss fights. I want the boss fights, just not with the insta-wipe penalties.

“But without those penalties the boss fights aren’t any fun!”

For you, perhaps, but we are different people with different tastes, and if I say they would be fun for me, you’re just going to have to accept that.

Thats a problem with individual people, not the raids itself or the raid community in general.

And yet it wouldn’t have happened without the raid, or if the raid had not been so demanding that lack fo coms was making a difference in our performance.

This was suggested multiple times this thread. But Ohoni still wants an easy mode raid to aquire the armor, most likely because he doesn’t play WvW either.

As I’ve said, I’d be fine with it being available in WvW, and in PvP, but it also needs to be available through some other PvE means, not just raids. PvEers who don’t want to raid don’t want to raid any more than WvWers who don’t want to raid, so why should they be blocked out? The alternate PvE method wouldn’t have to be easy mode raids, I just think that if you’re going to have an alternate method and you’re going to have easy mode raids, then combining the two seems by far the simplest solution.

Ohoni.6057:

This was suggested multiple times this thread. But Ohoni still wants an easy mode raid to aquire the armor, most likely because he doesn’t play WvW either.

As I’ve said, I’d be fine with it being available in WvW, and in PvP, but it also needs to be available through some other PvE means, not just raids. PvEers who don’t want to raid don’t want to raid any more than WvWers who don’t want to raid, so why should they be blocked out? The alternate PvE method wouldn’t have to be easy mode raids, I just think that if you’re going to have an alternate method and you’re going to have easy mode raids, then combining the two seems by far the simplest solution.

Irrelevant. There is already a pve way to have legendary armor. Just to be fair, it would be normal WvW and pvp have it next. Then, after, another pve way could be implemented. Asking for a 2nd pve way before all is just greedy and selfish.

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

I can with 100% certainty say, that it wouldn’t be the case. Why? Because i have yet to see anyone asking for legendary weapons.

Because legendary weapons aren’t a relevant selection criteria. Legendary insights and legendary armor are, and will be, selection criteria for raid leaders to select people out with.

They are now, but they wouldn’t be in the example you brought up. Easy mode, instead of causing it, would prevent it from happening.

Hypairion.9210:

Irrelevant. There is already a pve way to have legendary armor. Just to be fair, it would be normal WvW and pvp have it next. Then, after, another pve way could be implemented. Asking for a 2nd pve way before all is just greedy and selfish.

Nah, just practical. Another way that is wildly different than the current one, and includes a separate legendary set is far less likely to happen than splitting current raids into easy and hard modes. If i want to see any alternate way to obtain any legendary armor before next expac, easy mode with raid armor seems to be the only solution that has any chance of happening.

Ohoni.6057:

They are. You just want the rewards. It is always about rewards with that topic, never about the game mode.

It’s about rewards when we’re talking about rewards, it’s about gameplay when we’re talking about gameplay, when we’re talking about raids in general it’s about both, because both are important. Don’t act the innocent in that, you’re fighting just as hard to keep those rewards exclusive to hard mode raiding as I am trying to open them up to more players.

Hardcore raids still don’t exist in GW2. They are fairly casual.

They are hardcore for GW2, which is a distinction that matters regardless of how they may stack up to other games.

And this is why easy mode raids are a good thing, because it allows players to participate who are not well suited, for whatever reason, to the conditions you believe are important to a “good” raid.

Raids are designed as a coorperative, social activity. Your proposed easy mode difficulty goes completly against it.

The people you are referring to are below the middle-ground in terms of skill.

Cite.

Maybe you should start bringing numbers to your claims. You started it after all.

No, I saw it, I just don’t see that being an issue here. 1. There shouldn’t be any new tech, so no reason for anything to actually crash. Worst case would just be that it would either be way harder or way easier than people expected. 2. The raid beta was a bigger deal because there were so few beta opportunities before launch and everyone wanted to get in there, and due to the crash, a lot of people weren’t able. This isn’t as big a deal for easy mode, since the existing raids have already been there, there’s nothing “new” about them, there’s no prestige associated with “beating easy mode first!,” they are a convenience factor, so players would be a bit more laid back about it all. “It’s ready when it’s ready.”

Doesn’t matter. It will end in a kittenstorm if bugs appear while livetesting.

It isn’t a problem that people play that way. It becomes a problem if players like that expect that everything is tuned to fit them.

but what if they do make up the overwhelming majority of the game’s population? Shouldn’t the game be tuned to suit the overwhelming majority of the game’s population?

I can play the same game.
Cite.
If forums are in any form representativ, your position is even smaller populated than the raiders position.

Also: raid participation is higher than expected.

Give me an alternative way to play the maps and earn the rewards currently attached to raids and you have a deal. Maybe some sort of “easy mode.”

Until then, no, I’m not accepting a Hobson’s choice as an acceptable resolution.

Look, if the rewards are important enough for you to say that I can’t have them then clearly they are important enough that I should be justifiably upset at having them excluded from me. Pick one and stick with it. Again, I’m totally fine with them bumping the QUANTITY of raid rewards to make them more attractive to people who claim to enjoy raiding but won’t actually do it without proper bribes. What I’m opposed to is raids having exclusive access to any quality of rewards that cannot be earned elsewhere. If you want more loot, fine, whatever, don’t care. If you want better loot, no.

Is there a flag on your account that prevents you from getting raid loot? No? So the only thing preventing you from getting it is yourself.

You can’t increase the quantity in ascended drops without crashing the market for T7 materials. There are already too many sources for ascended equipment without crafting.
Legendary armor is not better than ascended.
Thats the charm of GW2 raids, the loot is not better than things you can get from other sources.

But you can’t open an empty instance without someone else doing it for you. And empty instances don’t have the boss fights. I want the boss fights, just not with the insta-wipe penalties.

“But without those penalties the boss fights aren’t any fun!”

Boss fights are not the same if you can ignore the mechanics.

Thats a problem with individual people, not the raids itself or the raid community in general.

And yet it wouldn’t have happened without the raid, or if the raid had not been so demanding that lack fo coms was making a difference in our performance. [/quote]

You can complete it without voice communication and nobody forced your guild into the raid. It is the persons own fault. Nobody else.

Raids are designed as a social activity with preperation and organisation. If you don’t like it you are not the target audience and there is plenty of other content with their own exclusive rewards. It is not the game modes fault that people can’t handle this requirements in a multiplayer game.

Astralporing.1957:

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

I can with 100% certainty say, that it wouldn’t be the case. Why? Because i have yet to see anyone asking for legendary weapons.

Because legendary weapons aren’t a relevant selection criteria. Legendary insights and legendary armor are, and will be, selection criteria for raid leaders to select people out with.

They are now, but they wouldn’t be in the example you brought up. In fact, easy mode, instead of causing it, would prevent it from happening.

Hypairion.9210:

Irrelevant. There is already a pve way to have legendary armor. Just to be fair, it would be normal WvW and pvp have it next. Then, after, another pve way could be implemented. Asking for a 2nd pve way before all is just greedy and selfish.

Nah, just practical. Another way that is wildly different than the current one, and includes a separate legendary set is far less likely to happen than splitting current raids into easy and hard modes. If i want to see any alternate way to obtain any legendary armor before next expac, easy mode with raid armor seems to be the only solution that has any chance of happening.

The only reason legendary armor will used as an experience indicator is the fact, that you need legendary insights during the crafting process.

And the fact that there should be an alternative PvE way before anything else shows again that it is only about the rewards not about seeing the content or fair distribution of legendary armor across the game.

If easy mode had any training effect people could play easy mode to see the content and advance to normal mode if they want the armor. But won’t happen.

I’d like to bring up something that I haven’t seen being discussed yet here, but I think it’s a major point against exclusive rewards being available through an easy mode.

even before we could try out raids, anet said raids will be balanced around Ascended armors, meaning the vast majority of raiders made an investment to craft at least one set just to be as efficient as possible. They’ve bought expensive runes, Time gated stat combinations etc, etc. As a chrono I’d also like to point out the sigil which was 200 g for a long period of time.

Now at the moment the armor & exclusive skins “require” this kind of financial commitment, but if we make an easy mode that doesn’t have any kind of requirement to get everything available in raids now , that means the easy raiders could just skip a 800-1000 g (or a lot more in case of more professions) investment to get the legendary armor. I think this would be kind of a big issue

Scipio.3204:

I’d like to bring up something that I haven’t seen being discussed yet here, but I think it’s a major point against exclusive rewards being available through an easy mode.

even before we could try out raids, anet said raids will be balanced around Ascended armors, meaning the vast majority of raiders made an investment to craft at least one set just to be as efficient as possible. They’ve bought expensive runes, Time gated stat combinations etc, etc. As a chrono I’d also like to point out the sigil which was 200 g for a long period of time.

Now at the moment the armor & exclusive skins “require” this kind of financial commitment, but if we make an easy mode that doesn’t have any kind of requirement to get everything available in raids now , that means the easy raiders could just skip a 800-1000 g (or a lot more in case of more professions) investment to get the legendary armor. I think this would be kind of a big issue

Not according to Ohoni, because it would take more time in easy mode….

Miellyn.6847:

And the fact that there should be an alternative PvE way before anything else shows again that it is only about the rewards not about seeing the content or fair distribution of legendary armor across the game.

Learn to read. I never said there should be an alternate PvE way before anything else. I said that if there will be an alternate way, the easy mode one is the most likely to happen. Simply because it would require the least work on the devs part.

At this moment saying that the alternate way must not be PvE is the same as saying that you don’t want to see any alternatives for years.

Scipio.3204:

Now at the moment the armor & exclusive skins “require” this kind of financial commitment, but if we make an easy mode that doesn’t have any kind of requirement to get everything available in raids now , that means the easy raiders could just skip a 800-1000 g (or a lot more in case of more professions) investment to get the legendary armor. I think this would be kind of a big issue

According to the very same raiders, no such requirement actually exists, so that would make it a non-issue for them, wouldn’kitten

@Miellyn
Also, yes, it would take longer.

Astralporing.1957:

They are now, but they wouldn’t be in the example you brought up. Easy mode, instead of causing it, would prevent it from happening.

The issue is not that legendary insights and armor are a selection criteria.

Astralporing.1957:

According to the very same raiders, no such requirement actually exists, so that would make it a non-issue for them, wouldn’kitten

I am a raider with multiple professions with full ascended, each and every one crafted for the sole reason of raiding , so yeah , I’d find an issue with it. It’s not just skill gate you want to pass if you want rewards with easy mode raiding, but also you would bypass a lot of financial gate, which is, let’s face it, most of a legendary.

I don’t see this being compensated by having to easy raid more than in “hard” for the rewards.

Scipio.3204:

I am a raider with multiple professions with full ascended, each and every one crafted for the sole reason of raiding , so yeah , I’d find an issue with it.

Every time i brought up ascended requirement in any discussion, i got told by raiders that “ascended aren’t needed, you can perfectly do the content in exotics”.
My opinion? If raids aren’t gear gatet, the problem you brought up doesn’t exist. If they are gear gated, then ascended are in fact required, and so must be made more easily acquirable.

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

They are now, but they wouldn’t be in the example you brought up. Easy mode, instead of causing it, would prevent it from happening.

The issue is not that legendary insights and armor are a selection criteria.

Not sure why you now say that, because you were the one that brought it up as an issue.

To quote: “If you make legendary armor quickly and easily accessible, it no longer becomes a bonus, it becomes mandatory.”. Those are your words, not mine.

Only when i pointed out that this is far less likely to happen when the armor is more widely accessible (because it wouldn’t be in a different position than legendary weapons then, and they definitely aren’t used for that) , and in fact is a real danger in the situation as it is now, it suddenly stopped being an issue to you.

Astralporing.1957:

Not sure why you now say that, because you were the one that brought it up as an issue.

Having selection criteria is not an issue. Having raid insights or legendary armor (effectively raid badges) as selection criteria is not a bad thing.

Reducing selection criteria to general availability through extended grind is an issue. With the selection criterias being opened you don’t know who is good and who is bad so you raise the selection criterias to the point where anyone who hasn’t done the grind gets the boot regardless of their ability. This is bad.

We’ve gone around in so many circles in this thread, I’m getting dizzy. Sign me up for closing it.

It’s become abundantly clear that the people who want easy mode raids only want the legendary armor. When you ask them to describe the content they want in the abstract it sounds awfully similar to dungeons, fractals, and world bosses.

For some reason, some people in this thread are against exclusive rewards in any form. Despite that every game mode has them.

I’m also finding that many of the pro-easy mode side are being argumentative just for the sake of it. Please lay out your proposal for an easy mode raid, with a reward structure, and we can talk about. No reason to quibble over side points.

Some people like hard content. Some people like easy content. Some people like exclusive rewards. Some people don’t. Well, the game has something here for everyone. Hard content. Easy content. Easily accessible cool skins. Cool skins not tied to a particular game mode. Cool skins that are tied to a game mode.

This is what the game is all about. Something for everyone. And that’s what makes this game so great. As someone above said, welcome to guild wars 2.

Absurdo.8309:

We’ve gone around in so many circles in this thread, I’m getting dizzy. Sign me up for closing it.

It’s become abundantly clear that the people who want easy mode raids only want the legendary armor. When you ask them to describe the content they want in the abstract it sounds awfully similar to dungeons, fractals, and world bosses.

For some reason, some people in this thread are against exclusive rewards in any form. Despite that every game mode has them.

I’m also finding that many of the pro-easy mode side are being argumentative just for the sake of it. Please lay out your proposal for an easy mode raid, with a reward structure, and we can talk about. No reason to quibble over side points.

Some people like hard content. Some people like easy content. Some people like exclusive rewards. Some people don’t. Well, the game has something here for everyone. Hard content. Easy content. Easily accessible cool skins. Cool skins not tied to a particular game mode. Cool skins that are tied to a game mode.

This is what the game is all about. Something for everyone. And that’s what makes this game so great. As someone above said, welcome to guild wars 2.

2 thumbs up for me

The problem is Easy Mode proponents want “encounters that are beatable within 1 or 2 tries for everyone,” these types of encounters already exist in GW2, raids do not need to be adapted to fill that role (and I beleive it would hurt future raid development if we did).

They want the story, here it is, [SPOILERS, do not click the links if you don’t want spoilers] :

And finally they want the rewards, which you can already get by doing the raid as is.

All of their complaints have been answered but they still would rather spend hours quoting and complaining rather than spend that time constructively getting the raid done for themselves, the absurd combination of laziness and focus these people have brought to bear is a marvel in its own right but its time to stop.

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

Not sure why you now say that, because you were the one that brought it up as an issue.

Having selection criteria is not an issue. Having raid insights or legendary armor (effectively raid badges) as selection criteria is not a bad thing.

Reducing selection criteria to general availability through extended grind is an issue. With the selection criterias being opened you don’t know who is good and who is bad so you raise the selection criterias to the point where anyone who hasn’t done the grind gets the boot regardless of their ability. This is bad.

Anyone not meeting the selection criteria are getting boot now regardless of their ability, because no group that sets such criterias is going to interview/test those that won’t pass them. There will be requirements of full legendary set + insights if nothing changes.

If easy mode were made however, legendary armor would stop being such a criteria at all, because it would be pointless to use it as such.

Coulter.2315:

All of their complaints have been answered but they still would rather spend hours quoting and complaining rather than spend that time constructively getting the raid done for themselves

That’s because making suggestions on forums cannot be less constructive than engaging in an activity that drains all the fun and joy from the game.
And because the “complaints” have not been answered at all.

Astralporing.1957:

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

Not sure why you now say that, because you were the one that brought it up as an issue.

Having selection criteria is not an issue. Having raid insights or legendary armor (effectively raid badges) as selection criteria is not a bad thing.

Reducing selection criteria to general availability through extended grind is an issue. With the selection criterias being opened you don’t know who is good and who is bad so you raise the selection criterias to the point where anyone who hasn’t done the grind gets the boot regardless of their ability. This is bad.

Anyone not meeting the selection criteria are getting boot now regardless of their ability, because no group that sets such criterias is going to interview/test those that won’t pass them. There will be requirements of full legendary set + insights if nothing changes.

If easy mode were made however, legendary armor would stop being such a criteria at all, because it would be pointless to use it as such.

Coulter.2315:

All of their complaints have been answered but they still would rather spend hours quoting and complaining rather than spend that time constructively getting the raid done for themselves

That’s because making suggestions on forums cannot be less constructive than engaging in an activity that drains all the fun and joy from the game.
And because the “complaints” have not been answered at all.

It’s honestly a bit difficult to address your position, because I’m not 100% sure what it is. You seem to be against raids in general, but I’m not sure why you want an easy mode.

And yes, all complaints have been addressed in this thread. The main ones being 1) It’s too hard! (Answer: but there’s a ton of easy and medium tier content already in the game) and 2) But my legendary! (Answer: All game modes have exclusive rewards, legendaries are of questionable value, they are super expensive, and raiders generally support alternate methods to acquire legendaries, just not easy mode. )

Astralporing.1957:

Anyone not meeting the selection criteria are getting boot now regardless of their ability, because no group that sets such criterias is going to interview/test those that won’t pass them. There will be requirements of full legendary set + insights if nothing changes.

Which isn’t the problem I’m talking about.

I don’t want to get bogged down here because this is turning into a discussion about rewards.

Irrelevant. There is already a pve way to have legendary armor. Just to be fair, it would be normal WvW and pvp have it next. Then, after, another pve way could be implemented. Asking for a 2nd pve way before all is just greedy and selfish.

And I still say that raids are further removed from “PvE” than sPvP is from WvW. Just because ANet decided that sPvP and WvW are two distinct things doesn’t mean that they are actually all that different, they are both just ways of bashing on other players, just like how raids and open world are just ways of bashing on mobs.I’m not asking for a “second PvE way,” I’m asking for a FIRST PvE way.

I think that when they do add alternate methods, they shouldn’t just piecemeal it, one now, another “later,” they should put them all in at once so that everyone can get started. If we’re going to talk fairness though, PvP has absolutely zero need for Legendary armor, since they ignore all stats anyway, and WvW is such a tiny population that it doesn’t really matter. The point is to open it up to the largest population first, and “PvE who don’t raid” is a far larger group than WvW and PvP combined.

If forums are in any form representativ, your position is even smaller populated than the raiders position.

Seriously, what would ever lead you to believe that the forums are any form of representative? I’m genuinely curious on this.

You can’t increase the quantity in ascended drops without crashing the market for T7 materials. There are already too many sources for ascended equipment without crafting.
Legendary armor is not better than ascended.
Thats the charm of GW2 raids, the loot is not better than things you can get from other sources.

Again, if you tell me that the distinction of Legendary armor is not so important that I should get worked up about it then it’s not so important that you should fight to defend its exclusivity. Either agree that I should be able to get Legendary Armor from easy mode raiding or agree that it’s valuable enough that people can reasonably be upset about it being restricted from them.

And as for the state of the market, it doesn’t necessarily have to drop T7 mats, it can drop anything of value, so long as the total value of what drops adds up to an appropriate amount. And since the number of hard mode raiders is relatively small, and the rewards would have a weekly cap, I don’t think they would have a huge impact on most markets. There are plenty of material markets that could stand to lose some value.

Boss fights are not the same if you can ignore the mechanics.

No they aren’t, but they aren’t necessarily worse either. To many people, they are more fun that way because they are lower stress. And while you can ignore some of the mechanics, you don’t have to, so if you choose to you can play them identically to someone on hard mode, and if you play as well as they do, you would see identical results.

You can complete it without voice communication and nobody forced your guild into the raid. It is the persons own fault. Nobody else.

Raids are designed as a social activity with preperation and organisation. If you don’t like it you are not the target audience and there is plenty of other content with their own exclusive rewards. It is not the game modes fault that people can’t handle this requirements in a multiplayer game.

But again, it’s a situation that never would have occurred if 1. raids did not exist at all, and 2. the raid was not so strict that repeated failure was likely, causing people to look for explanations for that failure. It never happened in previous multiplayer content that was not so likely to fail.

Now at the moment the armor & exclusive skins “require” this kind of financial commitment, but if we make an easy mode that doesn’t have any kind of requirement to get everything available in raids now , that means the easy raiders could just skip a 800-1000 g (or a lot more in case of more professions) investment to get the legendary armor. I think this would be kind of a big issue

Yes, it would be great for all involved. Hooray!

It’s become abundantly clear that the people who want easy mode raids only want the legendary armor. When you ask them to describe the content they want in the abstract it sounds awfully similar to dungeons, fractals, and world bosses.

I’ve been very clear on what I want, and it sounds nothing like any of the dungeons, fractals, or world bosses that currently exist in the game, because none of those involve the environments or enemies of the raids. I mean, keep up your memes if you like, but it’s just ignoring the other side of the discussion, not providing counterpoint.

For some reason, some people in this thread are against exclusive rewards in any form. Despite that every game mode has them.

Yes.

I’m also finding that many of the pro-easy mode side are being argumentative just for the sake of it. Please lay out your proposal for an easy mode raid, with a reward structure, and we can talk about. No reason to quibble over side points.

Done, weeks ago.

Some people like hard content. Some people like easy content. Some people like exclusive rewards. Some people don’t. Well, the game has something here for everyone. Hard content. Easy content. Easily accessible cool skins. Cool skins not tied to a particular game mode. Cool skins that are tied to a game mode.

The problem is, “exclusive skins/no exclusive skins,” by their very nature cannot be in compromise. If there are any exclusive skins then the “no exclusive skins” camp can’t be happy with it, because those might be the skins they want. The only vague compromise would be if the only exclusive skins are so universally hideous that nobody would actually want to wear them except for the exclusivity value, but even that is highly subjective.

The problem is Easy Mode proponents want “encounters that are beatable within 1 or 2 tries for everyone,” these types of encounters already exist in GW2, raids do not need to be adapted to fill that role (and I beleive it would hurt future raid development if we did).

They do already exist in some form, but do not currently exist involving raid settings, encounters, and rewards. This is not a complex concept to understand, I’m not sure why so many of they feign bafflement over it.

they still would rather spend hours quoting and complaining rather than spend that time constructively getting the raid done for themselves,

Yes, which should lead you to believe that they have zero interest in “getting gud” and doing the raids in their current form, and that you are really wasting your time by repeatedly offering that as an alternative.

Ohoni.6057:

And I still say that raids are further removed from “PvE” than sPvP is from WvW.

Got anything to back this up?

Ohoni.6057:

I mean, keep up your memes if you like, but it’s just ignoring the other side of the discussion, not providing counterpoint.

Could you list your points please? I think they got lost.

Astralporing.1957:

Every time i brought up ascended requirement in any discussion, i got told by raiders that “ascended aren’t needed, you can perfectly do the content in exotics”.
My opinion? If raids aren’t gear gatet, the problem you brought up doesn’t exist. If they are gear gated, then ascended are in fact required, and so must be made more easily acquirable.

Just answer me this then. What do you think an average (succesful) Raider will say when we ask him/her “How much did you spend in preparation for raids?” It’s true, the game doesn’t have gear gate, however most raiders have at least one ascended set for the only reason of raiding, just to not bring their team down.

Honestly, I already find it too much to just skip the skill gate behind any reward, but to skip time & money gate at the same time ? I’m sorry I just don’t see this possible.

Also since I haven’t said my side yet: I think it was a mistake to put any kind of legendary behind raids, however exclusive skins are mandatory for every game mode. I wouldn’t mind at all if the functionality of the armor is available through any other mean.

Ohoni.6057:

Now at the moment the armor & exclusive skins “require” this kind of financial commitment, but if we make an easy mode that doesn’t have any kind of requirement to get everything available in raids now , that means the easy raiders could just skip a 800-1000 g (or a lot more in case of more professions) investment to get the legendary armor. I think this would be kind of a big issue

Yes, it would be great for all involved. Hooray!

I’m sorry , but after responses like this I don’t have anything constructive to add. Mods, sign me up for the closure of this thread

Got anything to back this up?

It’s entirely subjective. I can’t imagine anything that could back it up or disprove it.

I mean, keep up your memes if you like, but it’s just ignoring the other side of the discussion, not providing counterpoint.

Could you list your points please? I think they got lost.

Sure, for like the two dozenth time:

1. I would like a version of the existing Forsaken Thicket raid that is tuned to an easier level than the currently available one, accessible as an alternative mode for those that want to play it, ignorable by those that don’t.

2. This version would include all the settings, story elements, and encounters of the original raid versions, the only gameplay difference being in the tuning of the encounters.

3. While the current encounters can be beaten using sub-optimal builds, they are ostensibly tuned to expect Ascended gearing and meta builds. The new version would expect only Exotic gearing and non-meta builds, equivalent to a random selection of open world HoT-map capable players.

4. Bosses would behave identically to how they do in the existing raids, and launch all the same attacks, but the impacts of certain attacks and encounter effects would be reduced to deal less damage and to not cause immediate defeat where applicable, similar to how high level Fractals inflict massive amounts of Agony, while lower level versions do not. If you perform flawlessly, then the outcome would be identical to performing flawlessly in the hard mode raid. If you make mistakes, the outcome would be far lower chance of wiping than in the existing raids.

5. The goal would be for this content to have a chance of success roughly on par with existing dungeon and low level Fractal content. Wipes would be possible, just far less likely than in the existing raid, and not so dependent on constant perfection or meta builds.

6. The generic rewards for easy mode should be less than for hard mode, but still enough that it would justify running the raid on reset if one enjoyed doing so, equivalent to dungeon or fractal generic rewards.

7. The easy mode would provide some path towards the Envoy armor, designed to be slower to achieve than from hard mode, and taking a greater amount of overall effort. It would never be the quicker path, or take less effort than getting it through hard mode, it would merely be an option for those that cannot or do not want to participate in hard mode raids. This can either involve the easy mode being on a weekly lockout and requiring ~3 times as many weeks to complete the necessary objectives as it would take in the existing raids, or it could put the easy raid on a daily lockout and involve many more repetitions of it to gain the same amount of returns as the hard mode raid, the exact amount is flexible so long as the “time to complete” is not irrationally long and the amount of additional effort is not unreasonable.

8. If 7 is not provided, then entirely separate from the easy mode raid proposal, there would need to be some reasonable alternative PvE method of acquiring the Envoy armor via PvE activities.

Just answer me this then. What do you think an average (succesful) Raider will say when we ask him/her “How much did you spend in preparation for raids?” It’s true, the game doesn’t have gear gate, however most raiders have at least one ascended set for the only reason of raiding, just to not bring their team down.

I think most people who ever intended to raid already had a full set of Ascended. At most, they may have had to swap the stats around a bit. But either way, they get to keep that set of Ascended, ANet does not owe them anything if they decide to change the requirements for completing an easier version of the raid, or for earning Envoy armor. Even if they do become upset by this, the number of players upset would be massively overwhelmed by the number of players pleased that they no longer have to meet that threshold.

Ohoni.6057:

I think most people who ever intended to raid already had a full set of Ascended. At most, they may have had to swap the stats around a bit. But either way, they get to keep that set of Ascended, ANet does not owe them anything if they decide to change the requirements for completing an easier version of the raid, or for earning Envoy armor. Even if they do become upset by this, the number of players upset would be massively overwhelmed by the number of players pleased that they no longer have to meet that threshold.

Your point is just because some raiders completed a gate long time ago it doesn’t count? Also I wouldn’t bring up opinions and assumptions as counterpoints.

Ohoni.6057:

And yet Ascended does not have the same stats as Exotic, and before, that was ok, but now the raids makes it very difficult for players without Ascended to win. Yes, some groups have been able to win with far less, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Cough fractals cough… The raid bosses are not considered hard dps checks and I have cleared them plenty of times with groups far from optimal. I say full ascended and optimized comps are the exception.

. . . for you. You really need to preface all of those statements with “for me,” because they really are just your opinion for how YOU enjoy playing games. The same is not true for every player. If you feel this way, then you probably shouldn’t play easy mode raids. You’re welcome to, of course, but I don’t think you’d enjoy them. But just because you wouldn’t enjoy them has zero bearing on whether other people would enjoy them.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Again, no, they do not have a fair choice, they only have a Hobson’s choice, to either “do the content that you don’t enjoy” or “never get that thing you want.” There needs to be a third option “do something that you can enjoy AND get that thing you want.”

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

If people want to learn hard mode, then they can do so, and easy mode would be a great tool for that. But what you need to understand is that easy mode can’t JUST be a tool for people on their way to hard mode, it must be able to stand on its own two feet as a valid gameplay mode of its own, because plenty of players will never want to advance to hard mode, and that is totally fine. Hard mode is not and should not be for everyone. It is not “the goal,” it is just another gameplay mode that some people enjoy and others do not. If people want to play hard mode, then they have it available, but if people don’t want to ever play hard mode, there is not something wrong with them that needs fixing.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

Outfits are a complete waste of time regardless of what happens with raids. If your argument is that people getting Legendary armor would cut into their Outfit sales though, then wouldn’t that mean that raiders would be their worst customers, and should not be at all supported?

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

You just said two completely opposite things.

You basically said “GW2 is known for not being grindy, so it’s a good thing that raiders have to grind against the raid until they beat it.”

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yeah, not everyone feels that way. The players that feel that “increasingly more challenging content” is a good thing DID leave the game, and mostly didn’t come back. The customers that made GW2 successful over the past three years are the players who DON’T believe that, who DON’T want “increasingly more challenging content” to keep them entertained, they just want novel content, content that is of roughly the same difficulty as the existing stuff, only more of it and in more interesting combinations.

The raid encounters are novel, they offer a whole bunch of new mechanics to work against, but in their current form, if you screw up the mechanics then you wipe and reset, which is frustrating and anti-fun. An easy mode would allow players to tackle those mechanics without the frustration of wipe and reset. Novel content, not challenging content.

Again, if you do like challenging content, hard mode is there for you, but stop pretending that everyone wants that on any level.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding. I do know for a fact its in human nature to solve riddles, problems and understand mechanics, again this is objective not subjective. At the same time we will always pick the path of least resistance and want as many riches as possible. This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

I am not pretending, you are pretending about a hard mode that does not exist. We only have 1 mode.

But the time gate itself will be time gated. With current raids you’re expected to spend many consecutive hours challenging the bosses until eventually you might get them on farm, that is the “bot-like grinder” activity you talk about. With easy mode, you might only spend an hour or so a day running raids, and then it would be locked out for that day or week so you’d do something else. It would take longer overall, but require a much smaller time commitment in the short term, so it would appeal to players who “have more important things to do.” Nobody is suggesting a mode where you could easy mode raid for eight hours a day.

Where do you get these numbers from? I spend 2-4 hours a week to clear the wings. There is no time gate its a skill gate. One that most of my guildies can pass after a couple of attempts.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

This is not a problem that needs a solution. The playerbase does not want to improve and does not have to. General content should be balanced on the idea that they have not. More challenging optional content can be included, but is not the priority.

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play. Again all this talk about a playerbase, yet the vast majority of players that I know like improving and progressing. Did you dare I say exclude them from your player base O.O.

The fact remains that anything you can buy your way through has ZERO prestige.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

and yet you are in favor of the existing raids, which are exactly that.

Ask yourself whether what you are saying is true…. Hint its not.

In other MMOs, not in GW2, which is why people love GW2.

So this whole thread isnt about you wanting to improve your wardrobe and add a new legendary armor to the mix?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

Except for you and a handfull of others, I don’t know any players that have problems with legendary armors being locked behind raids. And I wont say anything more on the matter.

DutchRiders.2871:

Ohoni.6057:

And yet Ascended does not have the same stats as Exotic, and before, that was ok, but now the raids makes it very difficult for players without Ascended to win. Yes, some groups have been able to win with far less, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Cough fractals cough… The raid bosses are not considered hard dps checks and I have cleared them plenty of times with groups far from optimal. I say full ascended and optimized comps are the exception.

. . . for you. You really need to preface all of those statements with “for me,” because they really are just your opinion for how YOU enjoy playing games. The same is not true for every player. If you feel this way, then you probably shouldn’t play easy mode raids. You’re welcome to, of course, but I don’t think you’d enjoy them. But just because you wouldn’t enjoy them has zero bearing on whether other people would enjoy them.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Again, no, they do not have a fair choice, they only have a Hobson’s choice, to either “do the content that you don’t enjoy” or “never get that thing you want.” There needs to be a third option “do something that you can enjoy AND get that thing you want.”

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

If people want to learn hard mode, then they can do so, and easy mode would be a great tool for that. But what you need to understand is that easy mode can’t JUST be a tool for people on their way to hard mode, it must be able to stand on its own two feet as a valid gameplay mode of its own, because plenty of players will never want to advance to hard mode, and that is totally fine. Hard mode is not and should not be for everyone. It is not “the goal,” it is just another gameplay mode that some people enjoy and others do not. If people want to play hard mode, then they have it available, but if people don’t want to ever play hard mode, there is not something wrong with them that needs fixing.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

Outfits are a complete waste of time regardless of what happens with raids. If your argument is that people getting Legendary armor would cut into their Outfit sales though, then wouldn’t that mean that raiders would be their worst customers, and should not be at all supported?

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

You just said two completely opposite things.

You basically said “GW2 is known for not being grindy, so it’s a good thing that raiders have to grind against the raid until they beat it.”

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yeah, not everyone feels that way. The players that feel that “increasingly more challenging content” is a good thing DID leave the game, and mostly didn’t come back. The customers that made GW2 successful over the past three years are the players who DON’T believe that, who DON’T want “increasingly more challenging content” to keep them entertained, they just want novel content, content that is of roughly the same difficulty as the existing stuff, only more of it and in more interesting combinations.

The raid encounters are novel, they offer a whole bunch of new mechanics to work against, but in their current form, if you screw up the mechanics then you wipe and reset, which is frustrating and anti-fun. An easy mode would allow players to tackle those mechanics without the frustration of wipe and reset. Novel content, not challenging content.

Again, if you do like challenging content, hard mode is there for you, but stop pretending that everyone wants that on any level.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding. I do know for a fact its in human nature to solve riddles, problems and understand mechanics, again this is objective not subjective. At the same time we will always pick the path of least resistance and want as many riches as possible. This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

I am not pretending, you are pretending about a hard mode that does not exist. We only have 1 mode.

But the time gate itself will be time gated. With current raids you’re expected to spend many consecutive hours challenging the bosses until eventually you might get them on farm, that is the “bot-like grinder” activity you talk about. With easy mode, you might only spend an hour or so a day running raids, and then it would be locked out for that day or week so you’d do something else. It would take longer overall, but require a much smaller time commitment in the short term, so it would appeal to players who “have more important things to do.” Nobody is suggesting a mode where you could easy mode raid for eight hours a day.

Where do you get these numbers from? I spend 2-4 hours a week to clear the wings. There is no time gate its a skill gate. One that most of my guildies can pass after a couple of attempts.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

This is not a problem that needs a solution. The playerbase does not want to improve and does not have to. General content should be balanced on the idea that they have not. More challenging optional content can be included, but is not the priority.

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play. Again all this talk about a playerbase, yet the vast majority of players that I know like improving and progressing. Did you dare I say exclude them from your player base O.O.

The fact remains that anything you can buy your way through has ZERO prestige.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

and yet you are in favor of the existing raids, which are exactly that.

Ask yourself whether what you are saying is true…. Hint its not.

In other MMOs, not in GW2, which is why people love GW2.

So this whole thread isnt about you wanting to improve your wardrobe and add a new legendary armor to the mix?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

Except for you and a handfull of others, I don’t know any players that have problems with legendary armors being locked behind raids. And I wont say anything more on the matter.

LA being locked behind raids would only be a problem if it provided stats that are superior to ascended….Since it is not, I think it is safe to say that we can close this thread now

Your point is just because some raiders completed a gate long time ago it doesn’t count? Also I wouldn’t bring up opinions and assumptions as counterpoints.

My point is that it’s not a gate in the first place. As Meillyn said, people have beaten the raid bosses in greens. If you wanted Ascended, and got Ascended, then good for you, but ANet does not owe you anything if they introduce a different mode that does not require it.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Yeah, nobody’s asking for that. We’re asking for two difficulty levels, one tuned to be very high challenge, for those that seek it, and another tuned to equivalent difficulty to the rest of the game, for people who are generally satisfied with the difficulty of the rest of the game. This is not a preposterous request, no matter how many times you insist that it is.

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

None of these are valid options. 1. We don’t even know if Envoy armor will be available for purchase, and buying raid runs is straight up cheating. You might do that, but I will not. 2. I have tried to enjoy raids in their current form, I am incapable of doing so. 3. That brings me no closer to getting this specific reward, we aren’t talking about other rewards, we’re talking about this one.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

Not exactly, although I’m not opposed to that. Specifically, you are saying that if a player only likes ONE part of the game, he should be able to get ALL rewards from that. That wasn’t my position. My position was that there should be multiple options, to make it more likely that of the several options, at least one of them would be favorable. If you only like ONE thing, then maybe you won’t be able to get everything you’d want, but if you enjoy a lot of different things about the game, you should be able to find at least one path to your goal.

But sure, ideally every activity that currently offers some amount of reward could be the path to any reward you want, given enough perseverance. I think that’s a less likely short term goal though, so let’s stick with easy mode raids for now.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

then they shouldn’t have to. There’s no inherent value in players advancing, and it’s a net negative if they do not enjoy the experience. Let players advance at their own rates, if they want to improve, give them options to improve. If they are comfortable where they are at, provide novel experiences at that level. There is no reason why players should be at any level that they do not want to be.

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

I’m not sure your point here. Customers have value in so far as they contribute to ANet’s bottom line. Customers that spend more are worth more than those who spend less, and that’s the ONLY distinction between players that matter. My only point was, highly skilled players are of no more value to the game than low skilled players, they are not deserving of superior rewards or attention from the developers. Outside of how much money each player spends, all players are equal.

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yes, but whether you enjoy repeating simplistic tasks more than you enjoy repeating complex tasks is entirely subjective. To me, novel experiences matter. If I fight a boss, get him to 90% health, die, repeat, repeat, repeat, then that is awful. It is MORE awful to me if that was a difficult fight in which I had to pay attention, because I’d need to stay fully engaged in the encounter. If I am going to be fully engaged in an encounter, then I want to do it once or twice in a row and then move on to something completely different, not repeat it many times in a row. If I’m going to repeat something over and over, then I would prefer it to be a low engagement activity, so I can put my mind on autopilot and focus on something else instead.

So to you, maybe grinding against a difficult raid encounter over and over until you win is fun, and grinding an easy to complete encounter over and over is not fun, to me, the opposite is true. Ideally, you could play your version and I could play mine and we could both be happy.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding.

Are you aware of something called “self-selection bias?” It basically means that people tend to surround themselves with like-minded people, and then when those like-minded people express similar thoughts to what you were thinking, you take that to mean that most people think that way too. You happen to know a lot of people who enjoy the same sort of content you do, since you likely met most of them doing the sort of content you like. It should come as no surprise that they share similar views with you, but that does not mean that the general population does.

I have heard of a lot of players who left GW2 early on when it lacked the hardcore raiding experience they were looking for. And maybe some of them have since come back. But over the intervening three years, GW2 did just fine with one of the most healthy communities in MMOs, and according to sales figures HoT uptake hasn’t been sensational, so it’s unlikely that a massive flood of new players came in and bought HoT for the raiding. There is no reasonable evidence that the majority of GW2’s active players enjoy the current state of raiding.

This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

Personally, I’d love that, but there is none of that in the current raids. The current raids have nothing to do with clever thinking, they have to do with precise movement of the controls, precise rotations of skill usage, putting together a meta build that is useful to the party, and hoping that everyone else on the team does the same. It requires no actual human intelligence, just a talent for going through the motions.

It would actually be cool to have more content that requires each player to figure things out on his own, but that’s what Jumping Puzzles are for.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

Why shouldn’kitten

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play.

Yeah, a lot of the other players in this thread seem to have missed the last three years of GW2 as well. No, that’s not what this game is about. This game is about capping out fairly easily, and then playing whatever content you enjoy, at all sorts of difficulty levels, and all of them being roughly equally rewarding. If you enjoy challenging stuff, do challenging stuff. If you don’t enjoy challenging stuff, that’s great! You don’t have to do challenging stuff and you won’t be missing out on much. HoT and the raids sort of broke that compact with the players that we’d been living under since launch, so some of us are understandably upset about it.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

Oh, you know that for a fact? Never?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

That’s not my point, but if you’d like to fight for me then go right ahead. I’ll continue to fight for the GW2 playerbase.

LA being locked behind raids would only be a problem if it provided stats that are superior to ascended….Since it is not, I think it is safe to say that we can close this thread now

LA being locked behind raids being a problem has nothing whatsoever to do with stats. At all. If that is the only reason that would cause you to be concerned about it then that’s fine, but you have no control over why any other player would feel concerned about it.

That’s not my point, but if you’d like to fight for me then go right ahead. I’ll continue to fight for the GW2 playerbase.

I’d just like to nip this in the bud right here.

You are not ‘fighting’ for the GW2 playerbase. I have observed your arguments for a long time now, and you keep claiming this. But how many people really agree with you? Even the people backing you up don’t have the exact same stance you do.

It’s incredibly dishonest to claim you’re fighting for a playerbase that has so many different opinions liable to change at any given time. You’re not even fighting for a majority, most likely – you’re fighting for a minority as much as you claim the raiders are.

Please don’t put words in other people’s mouths and claim that they’d be happy with the ability to acquire legendary armor in easy-mode raids, or even the implementation of easy-mode raids themselves.

I think this ‘discussion’ (it’s not so much a discussion as it is a case study of how stubborn people are even when they know they’re not going to get anything out of it, just for the sake of having the last word) would actually be better if you admitted you’re in it for personal reasons.

I for one, can begrudgingly respect someone who admits their motives, instead of hiding behind some seemingly-noble cause. We’re all selfish. It’s human nature.

That is all I have to say. Oh, and moderators, if you are reading this, my suggestion would be to close it.

The previous thread did not go anywhere. And whoever opened it again was basically just itching for an argument, given how similar the arguments have been. Unproductive and inflammatory. It serves no one to keep this open under the guise of ‘discussion’.

You are not ‘fighting’ for the GW2 playerbase. I have observed your arguments for a long time now, and you keep claiming this. But how many people really agree with you? Even the people backing you up don’t have the exact same stance you do.

In this thread. On the raiding forum. Of the game’s forums. None of which are representative of any larger body.

It’s incredibly dishonest to claim you’re fighting for a playerbase that has so many different opinions liable to change at any given time. You’re not even fighting for a majority, most likely – you’re fighting for a minority as much as you claim the raiders are.

There is an off chance that the group I’m fighting for would make up less than 49% of the players, that’s possible, but unlikely. There is no way that it would make up less players than those that are currently raiding, or seriously interested in raiding in its current form.

Again though, as I’ve said time and time again, if I am wrong about that, if my views do only reflect my own position and not that of the larger majority, then I do not want them to act on anything I’ve proposed here. Everything I argue for I do so ONLY in confidence that it would be appreciated by more players than would dislike the change, but only ANet is in any position to gauge the relative sizes.

As for those saying “close the thread,” you’re entirely unnecessary. If you no longer have anything to contribute, you don’t need the thread to be closed, you just need to stop posting. Simple as that and you’re done. But maybe other people have things to discuss on the topic, and it’s not for you to tell them that they shouldn’t have a place to do that.

There is an off chance that the group I’m fighting for would make up less than 49% of the players, that’s possible, but unlikely. There is no way that it would make up less players than those that are currently raiding, or seriously interested in raiding in its current form.

Again, you have numbers to back up your claims ? If not, please don’t make assumptions…everyone told you that you should give us numbers. We trust numbers, not your words

As for those saying “close the thread,” you’re entirely unnecessary. If you no longer have anything to contribute, you don’t need the thread to be closed, you just need to stop posting. Simple as that and you’re done. But maybe other people have things to discuss on the topic, and it’s not for you to tell them that they shouldn’t have a place to do that.

So you have something new to discuss ? Different argument, better arguments, than in the former 20 pages?
I don’t think so, I read your posts after all. You just want to have the last word, but you bring nothing new.
That’s why too, I ask moderator to close this thread. Everything was told about easy mode, the last pages are just you a few other arguing about legendary armor in easy mode, which is not the topic, and me and some other telling you why it’s à bad idea. No one will change his mind, so why keep discussing ?

Again, you have numbers to back up your claims ? If not, please don’t make assumptions…everyone told you that you should give us numbers. We trust numbers, not your words

Everyone tells me that I should give numbers because they know that I can’t, they can’t NOBODY can, and they’d like me to shut up. Numbers are impossible to provide because we have no means of determining numbers. But we can make reasoned estimates, Fermi calculations based on known factors.

For example, how the game sold in the first place, how the expansion sold, how many people ANet has told us were playing the game at various times, and what was going on at those times. We know how many people are on LFG at various times for various activities, how many are standing around outside the raid portal, and how full those maps seem to be. How active open world maps are. How active guild chat on raiding guilds are in finding full parties. How many Ghostly Infusions have found their way onto the open market (double digits, currently). How many people were playing the game for years with no raiding, verses how many more are playing now that it has raiding. We have vague data on all of these points, and can use them to form a general picture as to what Guild Wars 2 players do with their time, and what they do not.

Of course this would all be easier if ANet were more transparent about player numbers and activities, but they aren’t so we have to make do. That does not mean that we have to completely ignore common sense combinations of data. So far all we’ve heard is that as of a month or so ago, raid participation was higher than in other MMOs. This is not shocking data, given that other MMOs typically have very low raider participation, far lower than player discussion of raids on outside forums would indicate, and the raids are relatively new, so lots of players are giving them a fair shot, but perhaps deciding that they are not interested, so overall participation is likely the highest it will ever be right now.

If the numbers are in the 50% of PvE players or more range, then that might be enough. Even 25% or more of PvE players might be a bare minimum to justify the system with minimal changes. But if it’s less than that, then they really should work to provide alternatives for the remaining players.

Anyway, until then neither side can provide numbers, so I just have to press forward on the assumption that the numbers back my position, and again, if that is wrong, ANet knows it, and as they are the ones to decide, they would decide to do nothing. Basically, if you are right, and the numbers do not back me up, then you have nothing to worry about and do not need to spend so much time trying to shut me up.

Continuing to insist that I’m definitely completely wrong on this one is just a sign of insecurity in your position.

So you have something new to discuss ? Different argument, better arguments, than in the former 20 pages?
I don’t think so, I read your posts after all. You just want to have the last word, but you bring nothing new.
That’s why too, I ask moderator to close this thread.

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in this? You as well have said nothing original in tens of pages, and you as well want to have the last word, you’d just like to lock the door behind you.

Everything was told about easy mode, the last pages are just you a few other arguing about legendary armor in easy mode, which is not the topic, and me and some other telling you why it’s à bad idea.

Like it or not, so long as Legendary armor is only available by interacting with raids, Legendary armor is intrinsically tied with raids. Want people to stop talking about Legendary armor in raid discussions? Provide ways to acquire it outside of raids.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, you have numbers to back up your claims ? If not, please don’t make assumptions…everyone told you that you should give us numbers. We trust numbers, not your words

Everyone tells me that I should give numbers because they know that I can’t, they can’t NOBODY can, and they’d like me to shut up. Numbers are impossible to provide because we have no means of determining numbers. But we can make reasoned estimates, Fermi calculations based on known factors.

For example, how the game sold in the first place, how the expansion sold, how many people ANet has told us were playing the game at various times, and what was going on at those times. We know how many people are on LFG at various times for various activities, how many are standing around outside the raid portal, and how full those maps seem to be. How active open world maps are. How active guild chat on raiding guilds are in finding full parties. How many Ghostly Infusions have found their way onto the open market (double digits, currently). How many people were playing the game for years with no raiding, verses how many more are playing now that it has raiding. We have vague data on all of these points, and can use them to form a general picture as to what Guild Wars 2 players do with their time, and what they do not.

Of course this would all be easier if ANet were more transparent about player numbers and activities, but they aren’t so we have to make do. That does not mean that we have to completely ignore common sense combinations of data. So far all we’ve heard is that as of a month or so ago, raid participation was higher than in other MMOs. This is not shocking data, given that other MMOs typically have very low raider participation, far lower than player discussion of raids on outside forums would indicate, and the raids are relatively new, so lots of players are giving them a fair shot, but perhaps deciding that they are not interested, so overall participation is likely the highest it will ever be right now.

If the numbers are in the 50% of PvE players or more range, then that might be enough. Even 25% or more of PvE players might be a bare minimum to justify the system with minimal changes. But if it’s less than that, then they really should work to provide alternatives for the remaining players.

Anyway, until then neither side can provide numbers, so I just have to press forward on the assumption that the numbers back my position, and again, if that is wrong, ANet knows it, and as they are the ones to decide, they would decide to do nothing. Basically, if you are right, and the numbers do not back me up, then you have nothing to worry about and do not need to spend so much time trying to shut me up.

Continuing to insist that I’m definitely completely wrong on this one is just a sign of insecurity in your position.

So you have something new to discuss ? Different argument, better arguments, than in the former 20 pages?
I don’t think so, I read your posts after all. You just want to have the last word, but you bring nothing new.
That’s why too, I ask moderator to close this thread.

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in this? You as well have said nothing original in tens of pages, and you as well want to have the last word, you’d just like to lock the door behind you.

Everything was told about easy mode, the last pages are just you a few other arguing about legendary armor in easy mode, which is not the topic, and me and some other telling you why it’s à bad idea.

Like it or not, so long as Legendary armor is only available by interacting with raids, Legendary armor is intrinsically tied with raids. Want people to stop talking about Legendary armor in raid discussions? Provide ways to acquire it outside of raids.

So why do you still claim to argue for the playerbase or a majority if you have nothing? And why do you still make assumptions about develoment time if you have nothing?

And your last paragraph says it again. You don’ care about raids or the encounters. It’s about the shinies as always when the easy mode raid discussion appears.

Everyone tells me that I should give numbers because they know that I can’t, they can’t NOBODY can, and they’d like me to shut up. Numbers are impossible to provide because we have no means of determining numbers. But we can make reasoned estimates, Fermi calculations based on known factors.

[…]

Anyway, until then neither side can provide numbers, so I just have to press forward on the assumption that the numbers back my position, and again, if that is wrong, ANet knows it, and as they are the ones to decide, they would decide to do nothing. Basically, if you are right, and the numbers do not back me up, then you have nothing to worry about and do not need to spend so much time trying to shut me up.

so basically, your position is : you can’t prove i’m wrong so i will assume i’m right. ok… good presumption for an healthy conversation. But guess what, it works for me too. So again, does that help this topic? not at all…

Continuing to insist that I’m definitely completely wrong on this one is just a sign of insecurity in your position.

or just that i don’t like lies and false assumption, just because of some selfishness and greediness.

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in this? You as well have said nothing original in tens of pages, and you as well want to have the last word, you’d just like to lock the door behind you.

so you agree with me at least, there is nothing new in this topic for the last 20 pages. I guess it about time mods close it ^^

Like it or not, so long as Legendary armor is only available by interacting with raids, Legendary armor is intrinsically tied with raids. Want people to stop talking about Legendary armor in raid discussions? Provide ways to acquire it outside of raids.

this is a topic about raid difficulty settings, not about making legendary armor more accessible. Feel free to make another topic and leave the raid alone pls, especially when you don’t know a lot about it.

Ohoni.6057:

Your point is just because some raiders completed a gate long time ago it doesn’t count? Also I wouldn’t bring up opinions and assumptions as counterpoints.

My point is that it’s not a gate in the first place. As Meillyn said, people have beaten the raid bosses in greens. If you wanted Ascended, and got Ascended, then good for you, but ANet does not owe you anything if they introduce a different mode that does not require it.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Yeah, nobody’s asking for that. We’re asking for two difficulty levels, one tuned to be very high challenge, for those that seek it, and another tuned to equivalent difficulty to the rest of the game, for people who are generally satisfied with the difficulty of the rest of the game. This is not a preposterous request, no matter how many times you insist that it is.

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

None of these are valid options. 1. We don’t even know if Envoy armor will be available for purchase, and buying raid runs is straight up cheating. You might do that, but I will not. 2. I have tried to enjoy raids in their current form, I am incapable of doing so. 3. That brings me no closer to getting this specific reward, we aren’t talking about other rewards, we’re talking about this one.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

Not exactly, although I’m not opposed to that. Specifically, you are saying that if a player only likes ONE part of the game, he should be able to get ALL rewards from that. That wasn’t my position. My position was that there should be multiple options, to make it more likely that of the several options, at least one of them would be favorable. If you only like ONE thing, then maybe you won’t be able to get everything you’d want, but if you enjoy a lot of different things about the game, you should be able to find at least one path to your goal.

But sure, ideally every activity that currently offers some amount of reward could be the path to any reward you want, given enough perseverance. I think that’s a less likely short term goal though, so let’s stick with easy mode raids for now.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

then they shouldn’t have to. There’s no inherent value in players advancing, and it’s a net negative if they do not enjoy the experience. Let players advance at their own rates, if they want to improve, give them options to improve. If they are comfortable where they are at, provide novel experiences at that level. There is no reason why players should be at any level that they do not want to be.

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

I’m not sure your point here. Customers have value in so far as they contribute to ANet’s bottom line. Customers that spend more are worth more than those who spend less, and that’s the ONLY distinction between players that matter. My only point was, highly skilled players are of no more value to the game than low skilled players, they are not deserving of superior rewards or attention from the developers. Outside of how much money each player spends, all players are equal.

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yes, but whether you enjoy repeating simplistic tasks more than you enjoy repeating complex tasks is entirely subjective. To me, novel experiences matter. If I fight a boss, get him to 90% health, die, repeat, repeat, repeat, then that is awful. It is MORE awful to me if that was a difficult fight in which I had to pay attention, because I’d need to stay fully engaged in the encounter. If I am going to be fully engaged in an encounter, then I want to do it once or twice in a row and then move on to something completely different, not repeat it many times in a row. If I’m going to repeat something over and over, then I would prefer it to be a low engagement activity, so I can put my mind on autopilot and focus on something else instead.

So to you, maybe grinding against a difficult raid encounter over and over until you win is fun, and grinding an easy to complete encounter over and over is not fun, to me, the opposite is true. Ideally, you could play your version and I could play mine and we could both be happy.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding.

Are you aware of something called “self-selection bias?” It basically means that people tend to surround themselves with like-minded people, and then when those like-minded people express similar thoughts to what you were thinking, you take that to mean that most people think that way too. You happen to know a lot of people who enjoy the same sort of content you do, since you likely met most of them doing the sort of content you like. It should come as no surprise that they share similar views with you, but that does not mean that the general population does.

I have heard of a lot of players who left GW2 early on when it lacked the hardcore raiding experience they were looking for. And maybe some of them have since come back. But over the intervening three years, GW2 did just fine with one of the most healthy communities in MMOs, and according to sales figures HoT uptake hasn’t been sensational, so it’s unlikely that a massive flood of new players came in and bought HoT for the raiding. There is no reasonable evidence that the majority of GW2’s active players enjoy the current state of raiding.

This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

Personally, I’d love that, but there is none of that in the current raids. The current raids have nothing to do with clever thinking, they have to do with precise movement of the controls, precise rotations of skill usage, putting together a meta build that is useful to the party, and hoping that everyone else on the team does the same. It requires no actual human intelligence, just a talent for going through the motions.

It would actually be cool to have more content that requires each player to figure things out on his own, but that’s what Jumping Puzzles are for.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

Why shouldn’kitten

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play.

Yeah, a lot of the other players in this thread seem to have missed the last three years of GW2 as well. No, that’s not what this game is about. This game is about capping out fairly easily, and then playing whatever content you enjoy, at all sorts of difficulty levels, and all of them being roughly equally rewarding. If you enjoy challenging stuff, do challenging stuff. If you don’t enjoy challenging stuff, that’s great! You don’t have to do challenging stuff and you won’t be missing out on much. HoT and the raids sort of broke that compact with the players that we’d been living under since launch, so some of us are understandably upset about it.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

Oh, you know that for a fact? Never?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

That’s not my point, but if you’d like to fight for me then go right ahead. I’ll continue to fight for the GW2 playerbase.

LA being locked behind raids would only be a problem if it provided stats that are superior to ascended….Since it is not, I think it is safe to say that we can close this thread now

LA being locked behind raids being a problem has nothing whatsoever to do with stats. At all. If that is the only reason that would cause you to be concerned about it then that’s fine, but you have no control over why any other player would feel concerned about it.

If it has nothing to do with stats for you, then what is it all about for? What is so special about the armor that you want to cap out for? There is no need to “cap out” because there is no need to constantly grind for new armor in this game: in this regard I am pretty sure I crafted one ascended over the course of 9 months since I started playing this game one month and a half after his release….And you know what, I am also pretty sure that this armor is relevant in any part of the maps of GW2. If I really need to change my stats I can already do that with the mystic forge but nothing in GW2 expects you to constantly switch your stats because all foes will eventually die if you at least wear berserker stats. I really do think we have reached the best compromise possible between casual players who can reach the best gear possible without having to enter raids and the more hardcore players who will be awarded an extra stuff for beating raid wings. Furthermore I find it contradictory that you advocate for LA to be obtainable no matter the skill with easy raids, making people grind for a new armor in a wow-type kind of progression while you don’t want to turn GW2 into a wow clone.

So why do you still claim to argue for the playerbase or a majority if you have nothing? And why do you still make assumptions about develoment time if you have nothing?

I explained that in the very post you just quoted. Perhaps read it and you’ll have your answer.

And your last paragraph says it again. You don’ care about raids or the encounters. It’s about the shinies as always when the easy mode raid discussion appears.

Miellyn, once is a misunderstanding, twice, three times, four, and you’re just committing libel. You have raised this point numerous times and each time I have explained why it’s incorrect, why do you not tire of lying? The fact remains that while I certainly, obviously, and fully admittedly do care about the Envoy armor, no doubt about that, I ALSO care about the actual content of an easy mode raid itself, and you need to stop being in denial about that. Random asked me to lay out the points of what I am looking for, and each one of them is important to the whole.

so basically, your position is : you can’t prove i’m wrong so i will assume i’m right. ok… good presumption for an healthy conversation. But guess what, it works for me too. So again, does that help this topic? not at all…

But since we have no numbers, the discussion must be based on hypotheticals. I’ve made my stand on what I believe should happen IF a significant number of players do not enjoy the current raids. You have made proposals based on the idea that there are no such significant numbers. ANet has better access to determining the numbers, and they will decide what to do based on those numbers. Nobody on the outside can definitively determine the correct outcome, given the limited data available.

or just that i don’t like lies and false assumption, just because of some selfishness and greediness.

So you’ve switched to my side? Awesome, welcome aboard!

so you agree with me at least, there is nothing new in this topic for the last 20 pages. I guess it about time mods close it ^^

Again, they could, but soon after it falls off the front page someone else would just start a new one. If you really want this topic to go away permanently, then they need to actually make changes to the game that would resolve the underlying issues. “Do nothing” won’t accomplish that, however much you wish it would.

this is a topic about raid difficulty settings, not about making legendary armor more accessible. Feel free to make another topic and leave the raid alone pls, especially when you don’t know a lot about it.

The rewards attached to easy mode are certainly a part of discussing easy mode, and since the armor is an attached reward to the existing raids, discussions of whether they should be included in easy mode are a natural part of the discussion. Discussion of access to the armor, or other rewards, outside of the easy mode raid were the result of people claiming that easy mode raids should not contain access to the Legendary armor, which then begs the question, “well where else could it be then?”

Basically, if you’d like people to stop talking about Legendary armor as a factor of easy mode raids, then the solution is to just agree that they should be part of the easy mode raid reward mechanisms.

If it has nothing to do with stats for you, then what is it all about for? What is so special about the armor that you want to cap out for?

I’m interested in the skin. As I’ve noted before, it’s possible that the skin will be so ugly that I’ll want no part of it, but based on the hype surrounding the armor and previous efforts, I very much doubt that would be the case. I mean, I don’t love a ton of the Glorious armor, but there are several bits across the 18 pieces that I felt suited my characters.

It has nothing to do with the stats, I could take or leave that, although being able to swap stats would be a bit convenient, especially since I’m not so serious about it that I’d care about not being able to swap runes.

Again though, it’s not for you to tell me whether I can or cannot want the armor. If I tell you I do, then that’s the end of story, case closed, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.

Furthermore I find it contradictory that you advocate for LA to be obtainable no matter the skill with easy raids, making people grind for a new armor in a wow-type kind of progression while you don’t want to turn GW2 into a wow clone.

None of this made any sense.

But since we have no numbers, the discussion must be based on hypotheticals. I’ve made my stand on what I believe should happen IF a significant number of players do not enjoy the current raids. You have made proposals based on the idea that there are no such significant numbers. ANet has better access to determining the numbers, and they will decide what to do based on those numbers. Nobody on the outside can definitively determine the correct outcome, given the limited data available.

so what’s the point on keep talking about it? you made your claim, i made mine, and neither of us will change is mind.

So you’ve switched to my side? Awesome, welcome aboard!

indeed, i’m happy to see you agree with me. maybe you’ll stop beeing selfish and greedy then?

Again, they could, but soon after it falls off the front page someone else would just start a new one. If you really want this topic to go away permanently, then they need to actually make changes to the game that would resolve the underlying issues. “Do nothing” won’t accomplish that, however much you wish it would.

by someone else, you meen you or astral, that’s it? because so far i only see almost you. my point is everyone in this topic, at a moment, have talked about easy mode raid. we didn’t manage do reach an agreement, even in the teaching easy mode raid could provide because you don’t want to be teached.

then, all you’re talking about is reward, reward and reward. and by reward, you mean legendary armor (you don’t care about other raid reward, even if maybe part of the community you claim to talk for may be interested in something else).

The rewards attached to easy mode are certainly a part of discussing easy mode, and since the armor is an attached reward to the existing raids, discussions of whether they should be included in easy mode are a natural part of the discussion. Discussion of access to the armor, or other rewards, outside of the easy mode raid were the result of people claiming that easy mode raids should not contain access to the Legendary armor, which then begs the question, “well where else could it be then?”

a part? probably. but for you, it’s not a part, it’s the way to legendary armor easily. again, pls be honest. Raid lore can be easily achieved with easy mode, encounters, for you, don’t matter since you want to change the mechanics. Teaching and learning, you’re not interested in.

Basically, if you’d like people to stop talking about Legendary armor as a factor of easy mode raids, then the solution is to just agree that they should be part of the easy mode raid reward mechanisms.

but again, 20 pages ago talking about legendary armor in easy mode raid was a thing. So far, you bring nothing new on the topic. Bring something new, and we will read it. But stop recycling things you wrote 20 pages ago, again and again…for me, easy mode raid is not a solution. For you, yes. Anything else to add? if not, then this topic needs to die.

so what’s the point on keep talking about it? you made your claim, i made mine, and neither of us will change is mind.

And so long as no new points are raised, that can be the end of it, but as you are likely aware, someone is likely to raise some misconception or misstatement on the topic, and if so, I’ll address it to take that misconception off the board. It would be nice if I could just take comfort in the fact that I said my piece and that everyone who reads this thread will have read every word and fully understand it, but you yourself have proven that this does not work, by repeatedly asking me to restate a position I’ve already stated, or by claiming that I hold a position that I’ve already refuted several times.

If even you cannot be trusted to read and fully absorb the things that I know I’ve said at least 2-3 times since you started participating in this thread, then how can I assume that someone just joining the thread will fully research the topic before believing they have the full story? So unfortunately I do have to keep repeating myself, just to clear up misconceptions and misstatements that keep reoccurring.

indeed, i’m happy to see you agree with me. maybe you’ll stop beeing selfish and greedy then?

Oh, I never have been, we were talking about the raiders trying to horde the Legendary armor for themselves. My position has been that it should be available to as many players as possible. You see what I mean about people not listening and spreading misconceptions?

by someone else, you meen you or astral, that’s it? because so far i only see almost you.

Note that this thread chain was started by Swagger, and it is one of about a half dozen to a dozen threads started over the past couple months on similar topics, many of which ended up merged together. I’m a frequent poster, certainly, but so are you and a handful of others, that’s not relevant. No, I’m not likely to post another thread, at least not until some significant new wrinkle is announced, but I guarantee you that if this thread fell off the front page there would be another thread on a similar line of thinking within a couple weeks, especially after new details emerge on the topic.

then, all you’re talking about is reward, reward and reward. and by reward, you mean legendary armor

Again, I really only follow the conversation, I don’t really guide it. If YOU or one of the other pro-raiders discuss rewards, then of course I’m going to respond, but don’t act as though I’m the one that keeps bringing it up. Don’t say “. . . and of course the easy mode shouldn’t have access to Legendary armor,” and you won’t hear me say “of course it should, there’s no reason it shouldn’t.”

(you don’t care about other raid reward, even if maybe part of the community you claim to talk for may be interested in something else).

And they’re free to express that interest, but I’m not aware of any such groundswell for them, so I have nothing to base any commentary on.

a part? probably. but for you, it’s not a part, it’s the way to legendary armor easily. again, pls be honest.

Of course the rewards attached to a given gameplay mode are a part of that mode. This doesn’t even bear discussion.

Raid lore can be easily achieved with easy mode, encounters, for you, don’t matter since you want to change the mechanics. Teaching and learning, you’re not interested in.

See, again a misconception that I have shot down, from you in the past, and which would not need repeating if you had any interest in learning. As I have repeated time and again, the encounters DO matter to me, even IF the mechanics are lower stakes, because I ENJOY dealing with complex mechanics, even if they are low stakes, in fact MORE than if they were high stakes. When a simple mistake can lead to a wipe, then I’m too tense to ever enjoy anything about the encounter, while if a mistake is ok and I can keep going, then I can relax and just have fun with it, and typically perform far better than if it were do-or-die (I mean I avoid things more often, not that it just doesn’t matter if I don’t avoid them).

And no, teaching and learning are not personally important to me, because I’ll never enjoy the hard mode that they would be “teaching” for, but I’m aware that other people want other things, so I still do see the potential teaching value of the easy mode as being important, even if it has no real relevance to myself.

but again, 20 pages ago talking about legendary armor in easy mode raid was a thing. So far, you bring nothing new on the topic. Bring something new, and we will read it. But stop recycling things you wrote 20 pages ago, again and again…for me, easy mode raid is not a solution. For you, yes. Anything else to add? if not, then this topic needs to die.

Again, nothing is forcing you to keep posting if you do not believe you have anything constructive to add to the discussion.

Hypairion.9210:

but again, 20 pages ago talking about legendary armor in easy mode raid was a thing. So far, you bring nothing new on the topic. Bring something new, and we will read it. But stop recycling things you wrote 20 pages ago, again and again…for me, easy mode raid is not a solution. For you, yes. Anything else to add? if not, then this topic needs to die.

This topic needs to be alive for sole reason of being place for critical responses about raid system. Because last one with 29 pages of discussion was closed for no logical reason.

Rednik.3809:

This topic needs to be alive for sole reason of being place for critical responses about raid system. Because last one with 29 pages of discussion was closed for no logical reason.

It was closed for a good reason; it became the pointless tit-for-tat that it is right now.

Sarrs.4831:

It was closed for a good reason; it became the pointless tit-for-tat that it is right now.

And since when pointing on obvious flaws is pointless?

Rednik.3809:

Hypairion.9210:

but again, 20 pages ago talking about legendary armor in easy mode raid was a thing. So far, you bring nothing new on the topic. Bring something new, and we will read it. But stop recycling things you wrote 20 pages ago, again and again…for me, easy mode raid is not a solution. For you, yes. Anything else to add? if not, then this topic needs to die.

This topic needs to be alive for sole reason of being place for critical responses about raid system. Because last one with 29 pages of discussion was closed for no logical reason.

Until a mod chooses to close it because all posts are off topic or just things that were discussed 20 pages ago. You’re welcome.

Rednik.3809:

Sarrs.4831:

It was closed for a good reason; it became the pointless tit-for-tat that it is right now.

And since when pointing on obvious flaws is pointless?

What obvious flaws? Thats raids are working as intended? Or that you can’t get legendary armor outside of raids?

Hypairion.9210:

Again, they could, but soon after it falls off the front page someone else would just start a new one. If you really want this topic to go away permanently, then they need to actually make changes to the game that would resolve the underlying issues. “Do nothing” won’t accomplish that, however much you wish it would.

by someone else, you meen you or astral, that’s it? because so far i only see almost you.

Fun fact – i haven’s started a single Raid-related thread so far. Not sure about Ohoni (can’t check it due to merges), but at the moment at least i don’t see any that was started by him. Some of those threads were started by raiders, actually.