Guild Wars 2

Rednik.3809:

Astralporing.1957:

Sure, because generally the players that have issues with raids are not doing them.

Such arguments always reminds me “you dont have a pile of money because you are too passive to find a 100k$ job”. Outcome of problem is not a source of problem.

Reading comprehension, pal. Your sentence has nothing to do with my response to Vince’s argument. But using it as a basis for analogy, Vince would be arguing, that money aren’t a problem, because they aren’t a problem to wealthy people. I merely reminded him that most people that have money problems are not wealthy. Why they are not wealthy is completely irrelevant in this case.

Vinceman.4572:

Astralporing.1957:

People have been asking for all dungeon paths to be made easier. And this actually happened, all of them got nerfed, most more than once.

(also, see the above note about aetherpath restrictiveness. It applies to Arah too)

Dungeons weren’t nerfed that much only little refinements were made, almost not to mention. The reason why dungeons are so easy has to do with power creep (restructure of zerker stats and introducing of elite specs due to HoT)

There was a huge nerf to almost every dungeon encounter when they disabled waypointing during combat to kill ress rushing strategy. Almost all dungeon bosses were brought down to compensate then.

Vinceman.4572:

The argument that TT belongs to LS1 and LS1 was terrible so TT hasn’t been liked is so absurd, I had to laugh when I read this, sry.

Nah, it’s not been liked because it’s just way too difficult to organize for a huge majority of players. I was just saying that LS1 story was so terrible, that many people were just not interested in the lore minutiae tied with it.

Vinceman.4572:

Also, even if TT is easier ppl still won’t play it, rewards are low. Most GW2 players play for loot compared to the time invested. The “walk of npc” in combination with fighting the worms just takes too long for 1g and a minimal chance of an asc box. Even without a preparation phase before the world boss wouldn’t be worth for the “farmers”.

That’s also true. Though the dfficulty was a deciding factor. Tequatl, where, after nerfs you usually can drop in few minutes before event and win without putting too much effort into organizing is way more popular.

Vinceman.4572:

Astralporing.1957:

Sure, because generally the players that have issues with raids are not doing them.

Yeah, ok.
I seriously doubt that those players who will try out raids will then start to complain hard about the timers.

Sure, most fo them won’t be complaining specifically about timers. Timers “just” add another layer to an already stressful information. With them, you know you have to do everything perfect, not because you couldn’t recover from mistakes, but because recovering from them will cost you precious time.

Generally, if you remove enrage, allow ressing, and remove any other fail-on-timer effects (so, for example, make updrafts on Gorse reactivate after a time), people will be able to take other mechanics more calmly.
Yeah, generally people fail due to mechanics, but quite often they fail because timer made them play in a way where they were prone to making more mistakes than usual.

Vinceman.4572:

Sorry, but this is pure nonsense. And it has been said so many times and it is true: Timers are nowwhere near a problem when facing the encounters.

They force everyone into dps mode, where every little mistake is significantly more punishing.They make people nervous, and cause them to rush things, which results in more mistakes.

I’d say that the timers are a primary problem of those encounters. It’s just not immediately obvious, because they mostly cause failure indirectly.

Sarrs.4831:

multiple modes is a damaging system in other MMOs and GW2’s systems would exacerbate those weaknesses

Some people keep saying that, but that’s just an opinion, there are no real arguments or data to support that statement.

Sarrs.4831:

yeah i’d be very surprised if it cost us a new dungeon considering dungeon development is discontinued :?

Yes. Exactly.

Sarrs.4831:

the actual worry is that because they need to spend time going back and creating these modes that the next expansion, which considering raiding’s great success a raid is likely to be a front-and-center feature, is going to be delayed.

If raids really are planned to be front-and-center feature of the next expac (which would be stupid), then it should be delayed. A second expac centered on hardcore minority after the first one has shown this wasn’t that bright an idea would be really bad for the game.

Sarrs.4831:

and if you want to turn this into a popularity contest, i’m sure the wvwers and pvpers in the game would all prefer to see the next expac asap

Well, they certainly deserve new content more than raiders.

Sarrs.4831:

Rednik.3809:

And I’d like to see new LS every 3 months, new dungeon+fractal every two and new raid with all wings every 6. Oh, and add more races, pve maps, emotions, activities, quests…
Too bad that in real world adding new mode to existing content costs less development time than making a full alternative from scratch. And because of that new mode is much more likely to happen instead.

mmos are long-term projects and short-term decisions like implementing easy modes because it consumes less resources are ultimately destructive in the long term. multiple difficulty modes are bad in the long term, and it isn’t a sane investment to make that sacrifice for the immediate

A year of content drought (year, because latest leaks seem to suggest we wont be getting LS3 this quarterly update) is not “short term”. Nor it is “immediate”.

Sarrs.4831:

also any resource expenditure argument doesn’t really make much sense, unless that resource expenditure would also add or return extra resources to the dev team. adding a mode at this point would do the opposite; with the current raid complete, the team has probably already been moved to accelerate other developments, either on the next expac or in live development. moving them back to create an easy mode would therefore slow down anything that they’ve been reassigned to. that means either future live content (very bad) or the next expac (bad)

From what we hear, they are doing raids, and only raids. Besides, reassingning 2 people from a team of 70 to work on this won’t slow down an already glacier pace in any visible way.

I would try the Siege the Stronghold encounter. It’s really forgiving and the first event of Wing 3. (Stronghold f the Faithful) You still need to organize for it but it has no enrage timer and you can take your time and be careful during it.

reikken.4961:

yeah, time commitment requirements are very low. 3 or 4 hours? I have never done that. The only reason you even spend more than 15 minutes is if you don’t know the fight

Ah, but how much time before you do know the fight? I know, that, for example, in raid teaching guilds, many-hour attempts that still end in failure to kill the boss are a common occurence.

@Nokaru: that’s a good suggestion, that’s indeed far more approachable encounter. You do need several raid veterans for it though (for the raid mastery to clear poison).

-yes i have provided arguments, multiple times, in multiple threads
-i’m not smart enough to understand your ‘gotcha!’
-again, why would raids not be something they show off? you can dislike them as much as you want, anet have publicly said themselves, multiple times, that they consider them to be a massive success
-HoT was not a hardcore expansion
-favoring development for wvw and spvp is not an argument for easy mode raids, it is an argument for discontinuing raid development completely
-the content drought was not caused by raids and will not be fixed by easy mode raids, it was caused by pipeline issues
-game development staff are not generalized, they are specialized; moving key personnel away from a project does not result in a percentage drop in production speed, it results in a key deficiency which delays the project until they can return

WoW had a massive open world content reduction after introduction of LFR as people had ‘more content’ with LFR causing a massive subscriber loss. All other games with easy modes had it from the start.
So there is one negative example and no positive examples for raid easy modes as you don’t know how the other games would turn out if they hadn’t an easy mode.

Maybe you should bring data that an easy mode would benefit the game instead demanding data that it wouldn’t.

Raid participation rates in gear threadmill games without the same gear available in other places are not positiv examples.

Raids are already casual-friendly if you put in the effort. You might not clear a wing for awhile with a casual schedule, but you’ll get there eventually.

Read guides and watch videos. This will speed up how long it takes to learn each boss dramatically.

Then spend some time, at your leisure, attempting a chosen boss. If you run out of time, you say goodbye to the group and log off. Repeat again at your leisure.

The only difference between this approach, and the approach used by casual players for literally everything else in the game, is that you probably won’t succeed sometime on your first 3 attempts. It’ll take more failure.

Astralporing.1957:

reikken.4961:

yeah, time commitment requirements are very low. 3 or 4 hours? I have never done that. The only reason you even spend more than 15 minutes is if you don’t know the fight

Ah, but how much time before you do know the fight? I know, that, for example, in raid teaching guilds, many-hour attempts that still end in failure to kill the boss are a common occurence.

@Nokaru: that’s a good suggestion, that’s indeed far more approachable encounter. You do need several raid veterans for it though (for the raid mastery to clear poison).

Well you can join a training raid and stay for like 2-3 attempts thats 30 min tops, or just 2 attempts, 20 mins. Than leave as you dont have much time, do it many times in different days, then you have enough experience, you dont need to practice 3 hours straight if you dont have time, you can split in many short time sessions.

It’s as casual-friendly as it could be, it’s just that the casuals see barriers that don’t exist for some reason. There’s a reason raids reset weekly and don’t have to be cleared in one go along with the possibility to jump in at any boss, given someone has appropriate instance-progress.

Wing 3 would be the easiest to jump in, as it has overall the lowest difficulty across the three wings.

Ok so the thing a lot of you casual people don’t get is that in games if you can’t do the content, you don’t deserve the reward. Please don’t use that you don’t have time for this because in my core static group there are full time grad students and people that work in banks and they cleared all wings. Training raids exist and you can spend just 30 minutes in a run to see the mechanics. Plenty of training raid guilds exist and some even recruit on the forums or Leddit.

People can throw out all the insults about “l2P” or “its already easy” and try to gloss this over all they want, but there is a need for a more casual raiding experience.

Not everyone wants to play to the meta or conform to the demands placed on most groups. Now, I agree that means there should be a lesser reward, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t needed.

And, once again, every other successful MMO with raids on the market has learned this lesson and has implemented tiered reward/difficulty raids.

I think Anet is starting to see that and I feel confident it is coming.

Also, this thread needs to be merged with the larger one on this topic. There has already been a lot of good dialogue (on both sides) about this.

Astralporing.1957:

reikken.4961:

yeah, time commitment requirements are very low. 3 or 4 hours? I have never done that. The only reason you even spend more than 15 minutes is if you don’t know the fight

Ah, but how much time before you do know the fight? I know, that, for example, in raid teaching guilds, many-hour attempts that still end in failure to kill the boss are a common occurence.

depends on the person. and I really wouldn’t expect a long teaching run to result in a kill, for several reasons. But the same amount of time broken into 3 sessions would be a little more likely. But even then, if there are people in the group who aren’t serious about getting better you’ll never get the kill. So typically you’d learn the encounter in the teaching run(s) and then join a more experienced run once you feel that you’re not holding the group back.

Blaeys.3102:

People can throw out all the insults about “l2P” or “its already easy” and try to gloss this over all they want, but there is a need for a more casual raiding experience.

Not everyone wants to play to the meta or conform to the demands placed on most groups. Now, I agree that means there should be a lesser reward, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t needed.

And, once again, every other successful MMO with raids on the market has learned this lesson and has implemented tiered reward/difficulty raids.

I think Anet is starting to see that and I feel confident it is coming.

Also, this thread needs to be merged with the larger one on this topic. There has already been a lot of good dialogue (on both sides) about this.

What insults? I am not reading any insults to be honest. Arenanet implemented raids in an entirely different fashion and if recent blogs/posts are any indication they are content with Forsaken thicket.

A more casual experience would be fractals and open world, there is no raid to make raids more casual.

You want raids to be as easy as dungeons? Because that’s what would make them ‘casual’ and even for dungeons, the amount of people who cannot do much more than spam skills in their bar is not to be underestimated – even before the dungeon nerf when everybody was doing it.
If you want to make it casual – as in you pick up any strangers and do it in 30 mins – you need to remove the organisation and role attribution part of the events and I’m not sure that is possible without defacing the events so much they just become a joke compared to what they are now.
Raids were advertised as ‘challenging game content’… why make it casual? Are you against content of varying difficulty, appealing to different types of players? Because right now there are as many people complaining that the raids are too easy as there are people complaining they are too hard and need to be made more accessible. I think a morphine-drip style of scaling difficulty would help please everybody. You choose how easy-hard you want it and you get the corresponding reward. Anything below the current difficulty level would not yield any LI or exclusive loot, but you’d still be able to experience the content; harder difficulty levels would guarantee more rewards. Raids are a time and money sink, it would be nice that the more talented players could actually make a profit from it, apart from selling raids.

Zui.9245:

Raids are already casual-friendly if you put in the effort.

LOL. This is saying “OH yah it’s casual if you are a hardcore player”

Love these kinds of posts.

Sure, they’ll add in ‘casual’ friendly ‘raids’ right after they invent icy friendly bonfires.

STIHL.2489:

Zui.9245:

Raids are already casual-friendly if you put in the effort.

LOL. This is saying “OH yah it’s casual if you are a hardcore player”

Love these kinds of posts.

Resets per week. Progress is getting saved after each boss. Getting rewards by wiping.
That’s about as casual-friendly as raids can get.
Oh and casual just means that the person in question is someone who doesn’t play much, they don’t have to be bad. So even someone who plays 1h a day in a casual guild can be able to clear all raids weekly and still have time to do other things in game, it’s just stretched out over a longer time frame. And no, you don’t need everything the second it’s released, that’s just called being impatient.

Miellyn.6847:

WoW had a massive open world content reduction after introduction of LFR as people had ‘more content’ with LFR causing a massive subscriber loss. All other games with easy modes had it from the start.
So there is one negative example and no positive examples for raid easy modes as you don’t know how the other games would turn out if they hadn’t an easy mode.

Maybe you should bring data that an easy mode would benefit the game instead demanding data that it wouldn’t.

Raid participation rates in gear threadmill games without the same gear available in other places are not positiv examples.

Lolwhat, one negative and no positive? Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks? Have you forgot about WotLK, where they finally split raids to multiple modes, and that made WotLK most popular addon in WoW history? Or maybe you forgot about Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn in Icecrown CItadel? It was failure in balance design in Cataclysm and after it, which caused the downfall of WoW, not LFR.

STIHL.2489:

Zui.9245:

Raids are already casual-friendly if you put in the effort.

LOL. This is saying “OH yah it’s casual if you are a hardcore player”

Love these kinds of posts.

Casual players put in the time and effort for a lot of things in this game. Complete the Tarir meta event 100 times? I’m not even close. But there are casual players who have easily completed this, and then some.

How is that possible? Oh, they put in time and effort. They just put it into a different area of the game. If they had put that time and effort into raiding, they’d be seasoned raiders with kills on at least all of the wing 1 and wing 2 bosses.

Rednik.3809:

Lolwhat, one negative and no positive? Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks? Have you forgot about WotLK, where they finally split raids to multiple modes, and that made WotLK most popular addon in WoW history? Or maybe you forgot about Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn in Icecrown CItadel? It was failure in balance design in Cataclysm and after it, which caused the downfall of WoW, not LFR.

The key issue that means that any comparison between WoW and GW2 is pointless is that WoW explicitly designs its content for planned obsolescence and GW2 doesn’t. A WoW expansion’s content- its raids, its dungeons, its open world content, even its class designs- are designed with the understanding that at some point, they will be mostly thrown out as relevant content. Maximizing exposure makes more sense with this in mind; they want to make sure that as many people can see the content before they throw it out for the next best thing.

They have this planned obsolescence model because of the gear treadmill. It’s tangential, so I won’t go into it.

These elements completely undermine any argument for a WoW-style easy-mode because there is neither a planned obsolescence model nor a gear treadmill. If you’re playing WoW, there’s a really good reason to get an easier-than-heroic mode; if you don’t, you may never experience that content at the intended level ever. GW2 design contradicts the planned obsolescence model; both explicitly in its manifesto, and implicitly in its design choices (mastery levels instead of raising the level cap). If WoW’s lifespan is to be taken as the example, there is simply no need for an easy mode so that you can experience the content when you have nine years to get good enough at the content to beat it.

So when GW2 has a gear treadmill, and because of that gear treadmill it has planned obsolescence built into every facet of its design, then I will agree with you- an easy mode following Blizzard’s model might be okay. But it doesn’t. They are different games.

reikken.4961:

yeah, time commitment requirements are very low. 3 or 4 hours? I have never done that. The only reason you even spend more than 15 minutes is if you don’t know the fight

I’ve spent about 100 hours just to get one Vale Guardian kill.

4 hours feels long for a practice session, but 15 minutes is ignoring the whole idea of repeating it over and over for several hours each week until you get it right.

By the way, I don’t consider that “knowing” the fight. I “knew” the fight after several hours. The rest was trying over and over again.

My point is that most people who raid initially need to do practice sessions that are longer than 15 minutes.

Sarrs.4831:

Rednik.3809:

Lolwhat, one negative and no positive? Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks? Have you forgot about WotLK, where they finally split raids to multiple modes, and that made WotLK most popular addon in WoW history? Or maybe you forgot about Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn in Icecrown CItadel? It was failure in balance design in Cataclysm and after it, which caused the downfall of WoW, not LFR.

The key issue that means that any comparison between WoW and GW2 is pointless is that WoW explicitly designs its content for planned obsolescence and GW2 doesn’t. An expansion’s content- its raids, its dungeons, its open world content, even its class designs- are designed with the understanding that at some point, they will be mostly thrown out as relevant content. Maximizing exposure makes more sense with this in mind; they want to make sure that as many people can see the content before they throw it out for the next best thing.

They have this planned obsolescence model because of the gear treadmill. It’s tangential, so I won’t go into it.

These elements completely undermine any argument for a WoW-style easy-mode because there is neither a planned obsolescence model nor a gear treadmill. If you’re playing WoW, there’s a really good reason to get an easier-than-heroic mode; if you don’t, you may never experience that content at the intended level ever. GW2 design contradicts the planned obsolescence model; both explicitly in its manifesto, and implicitly in its design choices (mastery levels instead of raising the level cap). If WoW’s lifespan is to be taken as the example, there is simply no need for an easy mode so that you can experience the content when you have nine years to get good enough at the content to beat it.

So when GW2 has a gear treadmill, and because of that gear treadmill it has planned obsolescence built into every facet of its design, then I will agree with you- an easy mode following Blizzard’s model might be okay. But it doesn’t. They are different games.

I often use that argument to argue for an easier difficulty level. In other MMOs, people do come back and do a level 70 raid at level 90 — yes, this happens and isn’t even particularly uncommon. In GW2, there isn’t this option.

ekarat.1085:

I often use that argument to argue for an easier difficulty level. In other MMOs, people do come back and do a level 70 raid at level 90 — yes, this happens and isn’t even particularly uncommon. In GW2, there isn’t this option.

Thing is, you do that solo. Having a solo mode is actually an idea I like to play around with, as it sidesteps a lot of the issues that come with multiple difficulty modes.

Sarrs.4831:

ekarat.1085:

I often use that argument to argue for an easier difficulty level. In other MMOs, people do come back and do a level 70 raid at level 90 — yes, this happens and isn’t even particularly uncommon. In GW2, there isn’t this option.

Thing is, you do that solo. Having a solo mode is actually an idea I like to play around with, as it sidesteps a lot of the issues that come with multiple difficulty modes.

No, I wasn’t talking about solo, though I have no reason to doubt you when you say some people do it.

Absurdo.8309:

I believe easy mode raids are called dungeons and fractals.

Please tell us how to enter the dungeon/fractal version of the HoT raid.

DutchRiders.2871:

Blaeys.3102:

People can throw out all the insults about “l2P” or “its already easy” and try to gloss this over all they want, but there is a need for a more casual raiding experience.

Not everyone wants to play to the meta or conform to the demands placed on most groups. Now, I agree that means there should be a lesser reward, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t needed.

And, once again, every other successful MMO with raids on the market has learned this lesson and has implemented tiered reward/difficulty raids.

I think Anet is starting to see that and I feel confident it is coming.

Also, this thread needs to be merged with the larger one on this topic. There has already been a lot of good dialogue (on both sides) about this.

What insults? I am not reading any insults to be honest. Arenanet implemented raids in an entirely different fashion and if recent blogs/posts are any indication they are content with Forsaken thicket.

A more casual experience would be fractals and open world, there is no raid to make raids more casual.

They made the same mistake, then, that other MMO companies have made. They are charging customers for content that is inaccessible to them. Blizzard fixed this with random queues, so should we expect that soon from this game?

GreyWolf.8670:

DutchRiders.2871:

Blaeys.3102:

People can throw out all the insults about “l2P” or “its already easy” and try to gloss this over all they want, but there is a need for a more casual raiding experience.

Not everyone wants to play to the meta or conform to the demands placed on most groups. Now, I agree that means there should be a lesser reward, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t needed.

And, once again, every other successful MMO with raids on the market has learned this lesson and has implemented tiered reward/difficulty raids.

I think Anet is starting to see that and I feel confident it is coming.

Also, this thread needs to be merged with the larger one on this topic. There has already been a lot of good dialogue (on both sides) about this.

What insults? I am not reading any insults to be honest. Arenanet implemented raids in an entirely different fashion and if recent blogs/posts are any indication they are content with Forsaken thicket.

A more casual experience would be fractals and open world, there is no raid to make raids more casual.

They made the same mistake, then, that other MMO companies have made. They are charging customers for content that is inaccessible to them. Blizzard fixed this with random queues, so should we expect that soon from this game?

Won’t happen. People demanded it back when the first version of the LFG was implemented and ArenaNet said this kind of system will never be implemented in GW2.
Raids are not inaccessible. Accessible content doesn’t imply that you can clear it with zero effort.

WotLK was the start of the downfall of WoW, not Cataclysm.
People always use the subscriber count and the change to the raid system as an argument. They ignore the fact that WotLK was the continuation of the most popular story arc of the whole Warcraft universe, the release in multiple new regions like Brasil and Korea and China, the biggest region, got everything with about half a year delay, as they had to change everything to remove the death theme.
The subscriber number was not longer divided by region in WotLK like Classic and BC, a strong indicator that the player count was already declining in the West.

It introduced most problems WoW has today. Fast content consumption, class unification, stat inflation, the year+ content drought at the end of an expansion, obsolet content after every content patch, content burnout due multiple versions of the same content (most present during T9, every mode had its own ID).

Fast content consumption is never a good thing. People will just leave after the reached their goals and many won’t come back. MMOs can only survive with some grind and long term goals. Things where you have to improve your gameplay to reach them.

Miellyn.6847:

Won’t happen. People demanded it back when the first version of the LFG was implemented and ArenaNet said this kind of system will never be implemented in GW2.
Raids are not inaccessible. Accessible content doesn’t imply that you can clear it with zero effort.

WotLK was the start of the downfall of WoW, not Cataclysm.
People always use the subscriber count and the change to the raid system as an argument. They ignore the fact that WotLK was the continuation of the most popular story arc of the whole Warcraft universe, the release in multiple new regions like Brasil and Korea and China, the biggest region, got everything with about half a year delay, as they had to change everything to remove the death theme.

Right, so numbers doesn’t matter, subjective opinion is?
LK was almost ideal addon, this is a fact. A lots of vanilla mistakes was fixed, but class uniqueness was still there, pvp was made more available than ever (even PvE players was actively participating in Wintergrasp battles), and raiding was in top shape – most hardcore guilds in the world barely was able to kill final bosses to get a world first 25HM, and casuals was able to get same story and epic raiding experience, but in much more easy and friendly version in 10 normal. Don’t forget 5 man raid dungeons, which was another amazing success and acted like bridge between dungeons and raids for beginners. Anet can learn a lot from WotLK.

Rednik.3809:

Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks?

Blizzard always adjusts the balances of bosses. They actually made some bosses more difficult post-launch. (Hodir Hard Mode, Thorim Hard Mode, etc.) I don’t see what your point is though. All of World of Warcraft’s raids basically self-nerf themselves due to the increasing power of the player’s gear.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

Won’t happen. People demanded it back when the first version of the LFG was implemented and ArenaNet said this kind of system will never be implemented in GW2.
Raids are not inaccessible. Accessible content doesn’t imply that you can clear it with zero effort.

WotLK was the start of the downfall of WoW, not Cataclysm.
People always use the subscriber count and the change to the raid system as an argument. They ignore the fact that WotLK was the continuation of the most popular story arc of the whole Warcraft universe, the release in multiple new regions like Brasil and Korea and China, the biggest region, got everything with about half a year delay, as they had to change everything to remove the death theme.

Right, so numbers doesn’t matter, subjective opinion is?
LK was almost ideal addon, this is a fact. A lots of vanilla mistakes was fixed, but class uniqueness was still there, pvp was made more available than ever (even PvE players was actively participating in Wintergrasp battles), and raiding was in top shape – most hardcore guilds in the world barely was able to kill final bosses to get a world first 25HM, and casuals was able to get same story and epic raiding experience, but in much more easy and friendly version in 10 normal. Don’t forget 5 man raid dungeons, which was another amazing success and acted like bridge between dungeons and raids for beginners. Anet can learn a lot from WotLK.

5 man raid dungeons? oO
If you mean HC dungeons, the only reason they were a ‘success’ was the fact you could grind the previous raid tier equipment through dungeons. They were even easier than our dungeons and after some harder dungeons were added with ICC patch, almost nobody played the Halls of Reflection because it was ‘too hard’ aka you couldn’t chain pull and face roll it.
Award magnetit shards in dungeons and the participation rate for our dungeons will increase by like 1000%+.

The only class that had something unique left was shaman with bloodlust/heroism. The rest could be replaced with other classes.

Wintergrasp was more PvE than PvP and gated a miniraid. The only reason PvE-Players played it. So do we gate forsaken thicket and make it only accessible if your server controls Stonemist Castle? It would increase the WvW participation and create a kittenstorm beyond compare.

Raids had huge balance issues in 10 and 25 man mode and lets not forget the panic 30% health buff for LK, after every other HC boss in ICC was killed in the first 24h after HC release, making it impossible to kill him without the 5% buff before you got weapons from him and finished 1-2 legendary axes.

And the main reason for the popularity was the Arthas story arc and the story telling overall not the PvE systems.

All MMOs that ‘learned’ from WotLK went f2p pretty fast.

Miellyn.6847:

5 man raid dungeons? oO
If you mean HC dungeons, the only reason they were a ‘success’ was the fact you could grind the previous raid tier equipment through dungeons. They were even easier than our dungeons and after some harder dungeons were added with ICC patch, almost nobody played the Halls of Reflection because it was ‘too hard’ aka you couldn’t chain pull and face roll it.

Except that they was farmed for battered hilt pretty actively. I guess you played on some very dead and underpopulated server and never used auto-lfg for some reason.

Miellyn.6847:

The only class that had something unique left was shaman with bloodlust/heroism. The rest could be replaced with other classes.

That’s why druids/shamans, disc priests and paladins had guaranteed raid spots back then, because no uniqueness? Seems like you haven’t played WotLK raids seriously at all.

Miellyn.6847:

Wintergrasp was more PvE than PvP and gated a miniraid. The only reason PvE-Players played it. So do we gate forsaken thicket and make it only accessible if your server controls Stonemist Castle? It would increase the WvW participation and create a kittenstorm beyond compare.

That would be fun, honestly, but anet hates wvw too much for that.

Miellyn.6847:

Raids had huge balance issues in 10 and 25 man mode and lets not forget the panic 30% health buff for LK, after every other HC boss in ICC was killed in the first 24h after HC release, making it impossible to kill him without the 5% buff before you got weapons from him and finished 1-2 legendary axes.

Which was good thing.

Miellyn.6847:

And the main reason for the popularity was the Arthas story arc and the story telling overall not the PvE systems.

So raiders playing raiding game for storytelling? Cool story bro.

Miellyn.6847:

All MMOs that ‘learned’ from WotLK went f2p pretty fast.

Wildstar? Except that WS copied vanilla WoW model, not LK one. And now GW2 trying to do the same.

Rednik.3809:

So raiders playing raiding game for storytelling? Cool story bro.

You’re missing the point. WOTLK did well because it did things other than raiding well.

Sarrs.4831:

You’re missing the point. WOTLK did well because it did things other than raiding well.

WotLK had a lot of stuff done well, but WoW is a raiding game, and you cannot get successful addon without making successful raids. And yet for some reason he trying to insist that numbers doesn’t matter/numbers are high not because of raids/doomsday is close because heretics made easier raid modes.

WotLK was riding off it’s own lore, and the implied raiding basis that was in its predecessors. The design decisions such as LFG and severe content droughts or worse, reused content (Naxxramas) caused many players to make WotLK their last expansion in WoW.

The only acceptable raid that correctly implemented Easy Mode and Hard Mode in WotLK, in my opinion as a pretty hard-core raider during that time-frame, was Ulduar. Ulduar was magnificently done, as the hard mode encounter toggles were anything from doing the normal encounter but with a strict DPS check for a timer, not killing certain kinds of trash or in a more literal aspect, pressing a button. There was a seamless transition for easy and hard mode, yet the encounters in their hardest versions were definitely the next level of the encounter.

The Bandit Trio Encounter in W2 of Forsaken Thicket tried something like this, but Arenanet felt the numbers were impossible for the original iteration so now the normal encounter for full loot is extremely easy, while the achievement for a one-time additional box of loot is more in-line with a typical Raid Encounter. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of what Ulduar brought in WotLK over in GW2 since that seamless hard-mode trigger doesn’t actually involve different instances (Meaning you could do easy mode bosses and hard mode bosses in the SAME instance, you pick what you want) but the rest of WotLK was utter garbage for PvE.

If they remade Forsaken Thicket as above, they could incorporate repeatable weekly achievements for those Raider’s Boxes so there’s a fairly substantial reward for the hard mode raiders (Technically Raw Gold), these achievements naturally would be something that inconveniences the raiders however it is not required for any of the collections or getting the normal loot. That would be a pretty good compromise.

After seeing the snorefest that is wing 3 I’m absolutely pro difficulty modes as long as the version we have now is not the “hardmode”. It feels raids are just getting easier and easier with each wing. Ridiculous.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

5 man raid dungeons? oO
If you mean HC dungeons, the only reason they were a ‘success’ was the fact you could grind the previous raid tier equipment through dungeons. They were even easier than our dungeons and after some harder dungeons were added with ICC patch, almost nobody played the Halls of Reflection because it was ‘too hard’ aka you couldn’t chain pull and face roll it.

Except that they was farmed for battered hilt pretty actively. I guess you played on some very dead and underpopulated server and never used auto-lfg for some reason.

Halls of Reflection had a reaaaally low playrate. The other 2 were farmed yes.

Miellyn.6847:

The only class that had something unique left was shaman with bloodlust/heroism. The rest could be replaced with other classes.

That’s why druids/shamans, disc priests and paladins had guaranteed raid spots back then, because no uniqueness? Seems like you haven’t played WotLK raids seriously at all. [/quote]
Only shamans had a guaranteed spot. We are talking about the raid enviroment, that includes 10 man raids…

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

Wintergrasp was more PvE than PvP and gated a miniraid. The only reason PvE-Players played it. So do we gate forsaken thicket and make it only accessible if your server controls Stonemist Castle? It would increase the WvW participation and create a kittenstorm beyond compare.

That would be fun, honestly, but anet hates wvw too much for that.

No, they don’t force people into content to increase the participation like other companies.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

Raids had huge balance issues in 10 and 25 man mode and lets not forget the panic 30% health buff for LK, after every other HC boss in ICC was killed in the first 24h after HC release, making it impossible to kill him without the 5% buff before you got weapons from him and finished 1-2 legendary axes.

Which was good thing.

It’s a good thing to artifically stretch the contentwith buffing it to a point where you can’t beat it without a passiv nerf? Really?
And balancing problems speak for themselves.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

And the main reason for the popularity was the Arthas story arc and the story telling overall not the PvE systems.

So raiders playing raiding game for storytelling? Cool story bro.

The raid participation in WoW was pretty low all the time before LFR introduction, even in the over gloryfied WotLK.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

All MMOs that ‘learned’ from WotLK went f2p pretty fast.

Wildstar? Except that WS copied vanilla WoW model, not LK one. And now GW2 trying to do the same.

So GW2 has attunements that are harder than the raid itself? Almost no open world content?
GuildWars 2 isn’t a raid game. Stop treating it like a raid game. You can get the same equipment in other places.
The story has a summery at the beginning of Wing 3, you don’t even need a cleared instance anymore.

Miellyn.6847:

GuildWars 2 isn’t a raid game. Stop treating it like a raid game. You can get the same equipment in other places.

Please, do show me where else can i get Legendary Armor. Or viper trinkets.

But you’re right. GW2 is not a raid game, and it’s time that Devs remembered that.

I think the big issue with raids in GW2 is that they really do not fit in with the rest of the PVE content – and it doesn’t make sense from a community/resource perspective to have them stand alone.

To fix that, Anet is going to have to either make them more accessible baseline (which I don’t think is the best solution), do away with future raiding completely (again, not a great solution), or go with a tiered difficulty model.

Why raids need tiered difficulties

As others have said, GW2 is not a raiding game, but that doesn’t mean that raids cannot be an engaging part of the game. They just have to implement them in a way that fits cohesively (and logically) with the rest of the PVE experience in GW2. As much as some people (and probably even some developers) don’t want to hear it, that has to include accessibility and scaled difficulty/rewards.

This exists in open world (gold/silver/bronze), fractals (difference between a lvl 1 and a lvl 98), adventures (again, gold/silver/bronze), living story instances (challenge motes and achievements), guild missions (low/medium/hard difficulties) and more. In each of those areas, there are gradient difficulties. Arguably, hard could be ramped up considerably in some areas – which I am all for – but the point here is that they need to apply that same logic to raiding.

The need for hardcore content – and what it could look like

If there is really a need for a hardcore experience (which I would support), I think the answer is to create a team within Anet whose exclusive role is to add logical tiers to EVERY PVE element of the game. Let them make an eye bleeding tier of guild missions (super powered version of test subject alpha chasing the group through Proxemics Lab or a rogue Giganticus Lupicus in Cursed Shore as a new bounty target, for example), crazy suicidal level versions of the current fractals (raid level mechanics and even enrage timers in lvl 100+ fractals), splinter paths in jumping puzzles that would make Indiana Jones curl up in a ball, along with raids (which would need lesser difficulty versions to balance everything out). They could even use the guild challenge instancing model (using the guild world boss event flag) to create superpowered versions of the current world bosses. That would not only set GW2 apart from other games more, it would enrich the experience for everyone.

Why other games included tiered raiding
As far as the comparison to other games, the move to include lesser difficulties didn’t kill raiding in any of those games. Easy mode in many of those games was just a formality. Due to gear and level treadmills (again, not a fit for GW2), every raid since day one of those games eventually had an easy mode. All the easier modes did was let those people in a little earlier. The exception was flex mode raiding, which was introduced to let different sized groups of friends play together – and, ironically enough, was probably based on concepts from – and the success of – GW2.

Regardless, this needs to happen or we will see the game community become more and more fractured as time goes on, which isn’t good for atmosphere and future success of the game (not saying the game will fail – just that it is changing in some negative ways).

You want easy raids? Alright. Here’s the reward structure:

2g per boss kill weekly, plus 1 rare and 1 exo
Zero ascended drops
Zero special raid drops
Zero legendary insights
Magnetite shards cap at 50 per week

In exchange you get to do raids, experience the story and lore “authentically”, and LEARN the mechanics and gain experience until you’re ready for the real thing.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

GuildWars 2 isn’t a raid game. Stop treating it like a raid game. You can get the same equipment in other places.

Please, do show me where else can i get Legendary Armor. Or viper trinkets.

But you’re right. GW2 is not a raid game, and it’s time that Devs remembered that.

Viper trinkets will come with LS3.
Legendary armor is just convinienice, does basically nothing if you can’t change the rune on the fly and is an expensive skin. You can get the same stats with ascended.

And again it’s only about loot. Can we get real arguments instead of ‘They get shinies I can’t reach’? Or you could ask for legendary armor in other game modes instead of trying to ruin raids.

Tentonhammr.7849:

You want easy raids? Alright. Here’s the reward structure:

2g per boss kill weekly, plus 1 rare and 1 exo
Zero ascended drops
Zero special raid drops
Zero legendary insights
Magnetite shards cap at 50 per week

In exchange you get to do raids, experience the story and lore “authentically”, and LEARN the mechanics and gain experience until you’re ready for the real thing.

That sounds perfect. Shard cap may even be a little high (argument could even be made for reserving shards for gold level difficulty).

It’s never been about wanting the same reward as the current structure – most realize that would be inappropriate.

Blaeys.3102:

Tentonhammr.7849:

You want easy raids? Alright. Here’s the reward structure:

2g per boss kill weekly, plus 1 rare and 1 exo
Zero ascended drops
Zero special raid drops
Zero legendary insights
Magnetite shards cap at 50 per week

In exchange you get to do raids, experience the story and lore “authentically”, and LEARN the mechanics and gain experience until you’re ready for the real thing.

That sounds perfect. Shard cap may even be a little high (argument could even be made for reserving shards for gold level difficulty).

It’s never been about wanting the same reward as the current structure – most realize that would be inappropriate.

No, it was suggested multiple times and they come always back and want legendary components in the easy mode. Just look at Astralporings post. ‘Where is the legendary armor’. Most people on the forum want an easy mode for legendary armor, they don’t care about the raid at all.

Blaeys.3102:

I think the big issue with raids in GW2 is that they really do not fit in with the rest of the PVE content – and it doesn’t make sense from a community/resource perspective to have them stand alone.

Subjective opinion.

To fix that, Anet is going to have to either make them more accessible baseline (which I don’t think is the best solution), do away with future raiding completely (again, not a great solution), or go with a tiered difficulty model.

It’s weird to suggest a fix for a problem you haven’t established yet as a problem.

Why raids need tiered difficulties

As others have said, GW2 is not a raiding game, but that doesn’t mean that raids cannot be an engaging part of the game. They just have to implement them in a way that fits cohesively (and logically) with the rest of the PVE experience in GW2. As much as some people (and probably even some developers) don’t want to hear it, that has to include accessibility and scaled difficulty/rewards.

As others have said, GW2 is a raiding game, which means that raids are engaging part of the game. They have implemented them in a way that fits cohesively with the rest of the PvE experience. As much as some people (dobt call them casuals!) don’t want to hear it, raids are already accessible and rewards are trivial to obtain.
____

See how easy it is to make bold, declarative statements that sound like an argument but in fact are just opinionated, subjective and meaningless? Just because you state things definitively doesn’t make them actually true.

Why other games included tiered raiding
As far as the comparison to other games, the move to include lesser difficulties didn’t kill raiding in any of those games. Easy mode in many of those games was just a formality. Due to gear and level treadmills (again, not a fit for GW2), every raid since day one of those games eventually had an easy mode. All the easier modes did was let those people in a little earlier. The exception was flex mode raiding, which was introduced to let different sized groups of friends play together – and, ironically enough, was probably based on concepts from – and the success of – GW2.

I agree, we need a hard mode of raids. The existing baseline Easy Mode is trivial to organized groups. The fatal flaw in your entire premise is that the baseline of raids is already hardmode. The developer intention is that GW2 raids are BELOW Mythic/nightmare etc difficulties in other games. We already have the easy mode. Guess your point is moot right?

Regardless, this needs to happen or we will see the game community become more and more fractured as time goes on, which isn’t good for atmosphere and future success of the game (not saying the game will fail – just that it is changing in some negative ways).

Big games can support multiple communities. The ESL pvp community and the elite raid guild community have very little connection. There is no proof or real argument offered that that this is inherently bad. You simplistically state that it is without actually marshaling any sort of case for it.

Stop making posts where you disguise your subjective opinions in declaratory tones as if they were obvious facts.

NikeEU.7690:

Stop making posts where you disguise your subjective opinions in declaratory tones as if they were obvious facts.

This is exactly what your post is.

NikeEU.7690:

Stop making posts where you disguise your subjective opinions in declaratory tones as if they were obvious facts.

By posting on the forum, I am, of course, expressing my opinion – the same as anyone else on the forums. I never pretend otherwise. To express opinions and have real, productive, two way dialogue is the whole point of the forums.

If we had to say “in my opinion” every time we posted something, it would get a little tiring.

The big problem (in my opinion ) with these discussions is that we aren’t talking about absolutes. Things like hard and easy – or casual and hardcore – are perceptually based concepts. We define them solely through our perception. What one person sees as hard, another sees as very easy (as one example).

For that reason alone, I don’t think a single difficulty or game mode is going to meet the needs or desires of the GW2 PVE community. We need a scaling or tiered system to more adequately appeal to a broader group of players.

You even touch on this yourself in your response. You don’t seem to feel the current raid challenges you enough. Maybe what we need is look at the current raid as the midline and expand difficulties in both directions (with the current being the silver level reward, with gold being more demanding and bronze being less).

The point I try to make is that the raid in its current state doesn’t really fit well with the rest of the game – where they do try to do what I mention above (albeit with varied success – especially in terms of offering a challenge). The raid just doesn’t offer the experience the community needs it to offer.

And, once again for the record, this is my opinion.

Blaeys.3102:

I think the big issue with raids in GW2 is that they really do not fit in with the rest of the PVE content – and it doesn’t make sense from a community/resource perspective to have them stand alone.

To fix that, Anet is going to have to either make them more accessible baseline (which I don’t think is the best solution), do away with future raiding completely (again, not a great solution), or go with a tiered difficulty model.

Why raids need tiered difficulties

As others have said, GW2 is not a raiding game, but that doesn’t mean that raids cannot be an engaging part of the game. They just have to implement them in a way that fits cohesively (and logically) with the rest of the PVE experience in GW2. As much as some people (and probably even some developers) don’t want to hear it, that has to include accessibility and scaled difficulty/rewards.

This exists in open world (gold/silver/bronze), fractals (difference between a lvl 1 and a lvl 98), adventures (again, gold/silver/bronze), living story instances (challenge motes and achievements), guild missions (low/medium/hard difficulties) and more. In each of those areas, there are gradient difficulties. Arguably, hard could be ramped up considerably in some areas – which I am all for – but the point here is that they need to apply that same logic to raiding.

The need for hardcore content – and what it could look like

If there is really a need for a hardcore experience (which I would support), I think the answer is to create a team within Anet whose exclusive role is to add logical tiers to EVERY PVE element of the game. Let them make an eye bleeding tier of guild missions (super powered version of test subject alpha chasing the group through Proxemics Lab or a rogue Giganticus Lupicus in Cursed Shore as a new bounty target, for example), crazy suicidal level versions of the current fractals (raid level mechanics and even enrage timers in lvl 100+ fractals), splinter paths in jumping puzzles that would make Indiana Jones curl up in a ball, along with raids (which would need lesser difficulty versions to balance everything out). They could even use the guild challenge instancing model (using the guild world boss event flag) to create superpowered versions of the current world bosses. That would not only set GW2 apart from other games more, it would enrich the experience for everyone.

Why other games included tiered raiding
As far as the comparison to other games, the move to include lesser difficulties didn’t kill raiding in any of those games. Easy mode in many of those games was just a formality. Due to gear and level treadmills (again, not a fit for GW2), every raid since day one of those games eventually had an easy mode. All the easier modes did was let those people in a little earlier. The exception was flex mode raiding, which was introduced to let different sized groups of friends play together – and, ironically enough, was probably based on concepts from – and the success of – GW2.

---

Regardless, this needs to happen or we will see the game community become more and more fractured as time goes on, which isn’t good for atmosphere and future success of the game (not saying the game will fail – just that it is changing in some negative ways).

These arguments fail to address the prime question with regard to easy mode raids.

Why does this content, in particular, need an easy mode?

I know I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll continue to ask it until I get a satisfactory answer.

I won’t go over the arguments, again, in depth, but here’s the 30 second elevator version:

Diversity of content is superior to the same content at multiple difficulty levels. It provides new content to new players when they get better, and a variety of content for veterans to play. There’s usually no incentive to play both the easy and hard mode versions of the same content.

And to address your specific points:

1. Not all of your examples fit the easy mode most imagine for raids. I think the only true examples are fractals and super adventure box.

Most content has a single difficulty level. Open world (with different rewards for participation), world bosses, dungeons, personal story, map metas, guild challenges, guild puzzles, guild rush.

Living story does not really count as multiple difficulty levels. It is a single difficultly level with some achievements. The achievements are not meant to be repeated, and some don’t even change the difficulty of the encounter (e.g., don’t get hit by sandstorms).

Guild bounty and guild trek don’t really count as multiple difficulty levels. It is the exact same content that most be completed multiple times. The “hard mode” just means you need more people.

So I don’t think easy modes are the norm in Guild wars 2. Even if they were, there are notable exceptions, like dungeons.

2. I don’t want hardcore versions of content I’ve already completed. As noted above, it’s far superior to have different content that is hard.

3. I’m unfamiliar with other games. I’m not sure they have much relevance in this case because gw2 has no gear treadmill. You can beat raids with the same armor you got in the first months of gw2. That’s amazing. This content needs to last years. Players eventually get used to content and master it. The same thing happened to dungeons, and it’s happening to raids. It’s already getting easier.

Blaeys.3102:

NikeEU.7690:

Stop making posts where you disguise your subjective opinions in declaratory tones as if they were obvious facts.

By posting on the forum, I am, of course, expressing my opinion – the same as anyone else on the forums. I never pretend otherwise. To express opinions and have real, productive, two way dialogue is the whole point of the forums.

If we had to say “in my opinion” every time we posted something, it would get a little tiring.

Read in the light most favorable to Nike, I think he’s expressing discontent that many easy-moders express their opinion (“I want easy mode raids”) without facts, reasons, or evidence why.

Although blunt, I agree with this opinion. That is, most easy-moders don’t answer the most important question: Why does this content need to be easy?

Absurdo.8309:

1. Not all of your examples fit the easy mode most imagine for raids. I think the only true examples are fractals and super adventure box.

Most content has a single difficulty level. Open world (with different rewards for participation), world bosses, dungeons, personal story, map metas, guild challenges, guild puzzles, guild rush.

Living story does not really count as multiple difficulty levels. It is a single difficultly level with some achievements. The achievements are not meant to be repeated, and some don’t even change the difficulty of the encounter (e.g., don’t get hit by sandstorms).

There are three tiers of difficulty for guild missions.

Living story offers a range of achievements and challenge mote challenges (that do ask you to repeat the content)

Dungeons had story modes and explorable modes (and Aetherpath even had achievements to reward players trying more difficult approaches).

Open world tries to offer reward based on how much you contributed (a variation on the difficulty theme, but along the same lines).

Now, whether or not they offered a high enough level of difficulty is beside the point (I don’t believe they did – which is part of my overall point) – all of these areas (and many others) reward the player for attempting more difficult content in those game modes. Raids should follow the same model.

You mention that you don’t want harder versions of past content because “new is better than revised old.” I can relate to that. But what about the next round of content? Let’s have the developers forget about the past content and focus on offering a greater range of difficulty/reward tiers in all PVE content (including raids) moving forward. That way, we all get new content on a more regular basis that is geared toward the community as a whole.

I still think this is the right way to go. I still believe the current raid model is bad for the game and the community. But, I also still believe that Anet sees this and will eventually work to fix it.

And, so its clear once again – this is my opinion.

Blaeys.3102:

Absurdo.8309:

1. Not all of your examples fit the easy mode most imagine for raids. I think the only true examples are fractals and super adventure box.

Most content has a single difficulty level. Open world (with different rewards for participation), world bosses, dungeons, personal story, map metas, guild challenges, guild puzzles, guild rush.

Living story does not really count as multiple difficulty levels. It is a single difficultly level with some achievements. The achievements are not meant to be repeated, and some don’t even change the difficulty of the encounter (e.g., don’t get hit by sandstorms).

There are three tiers of difficulty for guild missions.

Living story offers a range of achievements and challenge mote challenges (that do ask you to repeat the content)

Dungeons had story modes and explorable modes (and Aetherpath even had achievements to reward players trying more difficult approaches).

Open world tries to offer reward based on how much you contributed (a variation on the difficulty theme, but along the same lines).

Now, whether or not they offered a high enough level of difficulty is beside the point (I don’t believe they did – which is part of my overall point) – all of these areas (and many others) reward the player for attempting more difficult content in those game modes. Raids should follow the same model.

You mention that you don’t want harder versions of past content because “new is better than revised old.” I can relate to that. But what about the next round of content? Let’s have the developers forget about the past content and focus on offering a greater range of difficulty/reward tiers in all PVE content (including raids) moving forward. That way, we all get new content on a more regular basis that is geared toward the community as a whole.

I still think this is the right way to go. I still believe the current raid model is bad for the game and the community. But, I also still believe that Anet sees this and will eventually work to fix it.

And, so its clear once again – this is my opinion.

I don’t want to quibble too much on your examples, but they do not reflect easy/hard modes, at least in the way easy moders imagine it. It’s not the same/similar fight with easier mechanics.

Yes, the missions label themselves easy, medium, and hard. But there’s only one difficulty level for each challenge — for example, there’s only one difficulty for save our supplies. Only one for ghost rush. (*Aside: This is the ideal, because it offers different content at different skill levels).

Similarly for dungeons and dungeons story mode. There’s only one AC story, only one COF path 1. But there’s varying difficulties across all dungeon paths.

Most living world achievements do not change the difficulty of the encounter, but require you to do something different than the normal. I will give you that some are actual hard modes, like the hearts and minds challenge mote. Still, this content is not designed to be repeatable, that is, there’s no incentive to repeat the challenge motes, and the motes do not need to stand am their own, like a easy/hard mode raid would. And raids have similar hard mode achievements.

Even going forward, I don’t want easy/hard modes for all types of content. I’d rather have two new things than one new thing.

I know this is all your opinion. That’s fine. I know you care. That’s fine too. But if you want a dialog, prepare to be challenged on your views. Anyone can give an opinion, but dialog is something else entirely.

Again, why do raids, in particular, need an easy mode?

Absurdo.8309:

Even going forward, I don’t want easy/hard modes for all types of content. I’d rather have two new things than one new thing.

Again, why do raids, in particular, need an easy mode?

To the first question, you and I differ on this core idea. That is why these forum conversations are so important – so we can each talk about the pros and cons of our thoughts on it.

The question about need, I and many have answered this – again solely from our perspective – many times.

I think the question is oversimplified, so here is the oversimplified answer I would give -

Raids, in particular, need an easy mode to open the experience and fun to a wider group of players.

Now, within your question – and within my answer – there are a lot of nuance, points and counterpoints. I think most of these have been covered, ad nauseum, through this and many other threads. The question has been answered and explained in detail.

However, the answer to that question goes back to perspective. Easy, hard, casual, hardcore – these are not finite terms. They depend on the perspective of the player. For that reason, the answer is a moving target. What convinces me will never convince you, because you and I have different perspectives going into it. Where that statement answers the question for me (and probably many others) it may not for you (and probably many others).

Because of that subjective nature, I feel a varied solution is needed – and a tiered solution seems like the simplest to implement (even though I could be wrong and there could be a better one out there).

Again, this is just my opinion.

Blaeys.3102:

Raids, in particular, need an easy mode to open the experience and fun to a wider group of players.

Eh I don’t think this really answers his question. I know you said it was oversimplified, but I think that rather than asking generally why there should be easy mode in raids, he was asking something more specific, along the lines of “Why is it important that raids have an easy mode rather than just having similar content that is easier?” This is a valid question because currently almost all content in the game does not have variable difficulty (with fractals being the notable exception), and the game has gotten on perfectly well for a long time with some content being easy and some being more difficult. Triple Trouble is way more difficult than every other world boss, arah is more difficult than other dungeons, etc. yet no one has any problem with it. So why are raids special? In what way are they different from existing content such that they need an easy mode? Why is having content that is similar but easier not adequate in this case?

Personally I think tiered raid content is actually a great idea going forward, largely because it also solves the complaint from the other end of the raider spectrum that the current raids are actually too easy (whether the additional development time required is worth it is a separate matter). But absurdo is not wrong to in pointing out that the vast majority of content in this game does not have scaling difficulty on an individual level (i.e. it isn’t made more difficult just by having you do the same thing more times a la guild missions) but rather has similar content of a different difficulty level, and afaik no one complains about it for anything except for raids.