Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

DutchRiders.2871:

Astralporing.1957:

..you might have missed the fact, that precursor weapons are craftable. For over half a year now. Did the existence of another path to obtain them devalue your experience? Doesn’t seem so, or you wouldn’t have been mentioning them as a good example.
So, where exactly is the problem?

You mean the crafting system that is more expensive than buying them straight of the trading post, which means there is no real alternative path? I do not see your point. But if you want more difficult content than the current raids that also rewards envoy armor (I rather have a different set), good luck arguing for it, I will help you.

Restating your argument already? You said that getting the weapons available through other means than rng dropping them would devalue your experience. You didn’t even mention the TP, which was already supposedly doing that.

Crafting precursors is an alternative to relying on luck. It’s not more difficult, it is a completely different way. And yet it doesn’t involve getting them for free, nor does it devalue your experience. Which clearly shows that all your other arguments are pure bunk, as they are based on some assumptions that are simply not true.

DutchRiders.2871:

Stop strawmanning, okay? So far the only people speaking about legendaries for free are raid defenders. Having another way to obtain them is not equivalent to handing them out for free.

I thought you guys were all about majorities getting their way?

That’s not even close to what we were saying (and you know it), but i’ll bite. Since when “majority getting their way” would be “everything given out for free”? This is only generally brought up by minorities already posessing said things, as a fake argument against making them available (not for free, with effort, just different kind of effort) for others.

Ofcourse I will restate and refine my arguments, isn’t that the point of a discussion? I will especially clarify for people that reach weird conclusions like: Me taking pleasure in them being sad. For example in this case you rip the argument out of context, I discussed with Ohoni whether there is more value in precursors dropping like greens or precursors being rare as they are now ( for me its clear the latter has more value). You are right that the alternative path for precursors didnt drop decrease my value. It does not make every argument bunk however. Because precursors were never meant as a specific reward, quite unlike the raid set.

I’m not saying precursor crafting shouldn’t have happened, I’m not saying you cannot have legendary armor in open world. I’m saying you cannot have the raid set in open world or in easy mode. Unlike precursors the raid set was never meant to depend on luck, it was exclusive for raiders, by definition it was not meant to have different paths. I like that certain skins have meaning behind them, like the pvp wings/fractal wings/HoT legendaries ( to lesser extent)/fractal skins. There is a reason the pvp and pve wings look different, as should raid and open world legendary armor do.

There is a path, either you walk it like the rest of us or you do not. However I’m done with this discussion as the bottemline is quite clear: I like different skins for different content you do not. So I wish you all the best pleading your case.

Earn your raid skills as well, the raids are available and live right now. What you do not see, is that wealth is restricting the majority of players more than raids ever will.

No. There are numerous ways to gain wealth. You can gain wealth from practically any activity in the game, any game mode, you can even buy it with gems, wealth comes from everywhere. To complete a raid, there is only one thing you can do, play the raid. Don’t try to make some sort of false equivalency.

I’m definitely sympathetic to concerns over the economy, I do think that many things are way more expensive than they should be, but that is an entirely separate argument to have.

Ofcourse there is value to envoy armor being exclusive, nobody wants to play an MMO without exclusive rewards. Your real issue is that you can’t have the rewards yourself for once. And now suddenly there is need for alternative paths, thats not how it works.

I’m pretty consistent on the idea that ALL exclusivity is bad, even when things are exclusive to modes I enjoy. I believe that some items should take effort, certainly, but that this effort should come in a variety of flavors to suit many tastes, that you should never be limited to only one path to a goal, there should be several paths for you to choose from, ideally in such a broad array that if you enjoy the game at all you’ll be able to find at least one path that you’ll enjoy.

Obviously you have trouble understanding this, but ten people being happy is greater happiness than everybody not giving anything about yet another green drop.

Sure, but we aren’t talking green drops. There’s a middleground. I’ve been playing since launch, thousands of hours in, and I’ve not seen a single Precursor drop. In the meantime, I’ve had dozens of exotic gear drop, and at least a handful of RNG Ascended crates. I think that ideally Precursors could drop a bit more commonly than they currently do, and I also believe that the current Precursor crafting methods require far too many expensive materials. But again, that’s neither here nor there.

I can’t help that you get sad over little things. I do not participate in certain content and don’t get the exclusive rewards, yet I’m not sad at all. Hint if the value does not over come the effort, you do not participate.

You not being sad over something does not absolve you of sympathy for others who are sad over it. Your not being able to empathize with other people is entirely on you.

I could not care less whether you are sad or happy. I do care about exclusive raid rewards remaining exclusive to raids.

And that’s basically the counter-argument against easy mode raids with a path to legendary armor, in a nutshell.

I’m not saying precursor crafting shouldn’t have happened, I’m not saying you cannot have legendary armor in open world. I’m saying you cannot have the raid set in open world or in easy mode.

But that’s a completely arbitrary potion to take. There’s no reason that you can’t have the raid set in open world or in easy mode, except that you insist it be so.

I like that certain skins have meaning behind them, like the pvp wings/fractal wings/HoT legendaries ( to lesser extent)/fractal skins. There is a reason the pvp and pve wings look different, as should raid and open world legendary armor do.

Both of those things should also be available via multiple paths, for those that want to pursue them.

There is a path, either you walk it like the rest of us or you do not.

Currently? That much is obvious. In the future? Nothing is preventing ANet from opening up alternate paths, and those alternate paths are what I am pushing for.

Astral pretty much covered what I was going to say.

I will add that customer feedback is an important part of making long-running games successful, and while you disagree with the feedback I am giving, and perhaps ANet does too and nothing will come of it, that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to provide it.

Why have hard levels in Raids? Solution is much simpler. Just remove time-gates and reward appropriate to the speed at which the raid downs the boss. Why Anet has not done this (which is simple to implement) baffles me.

Basicly raids are kitten easy. My suggestion is Anet makes them harder

Any ideas,yes/no?

Why have hard levels in Raids? Solution is much simpler. Just remove time-gates and reward appropriate to the speed at which the raid downs the boss. Why Anet has not done this (which is simple to implement) baffles me.

Yes and no. For one thing, with the current raid bosses, being able to down them at all can be difficult even given infinite time. Certain mechanics would definitely need adjusting, like allowing you to circle Gorseval infinitely if need be (currently after four flights you’re stuck). But if they did that, it’s certainly one way to go with it.

The downside there is that it would still require specific group comps, it would still requiring gearing towards the raid, it would just allow for a bit more flexibility and more gearing towards tankiness than towards hard DPS. Ideally you wouldn’t have to gear towards the raid or form specific group comps, and it would be more like dungeons where an ideal group can get through it faster, but a less than ideal group can still complete it well enough.

Sure as long as they aren’t buggy abominations like Xera.

I agree, they have the difficulty I would expect from dungeons. They should get harder mechanics and less lenient enrage timers.

Enrage timers are fine as is. Just beef up pressure on survival and mechanics. Right now if you just do the mechanics, you don’t even need a real healer even with everyone running full glass. And the mechanics are each pretty simple by themselves. The challenge in raiding is really just getting all 10 people on the same page.

Think there are a couple of things at work here.

Arguably, Wing 1 and 2 were harder by a large margin. Wing 3 was easier due to the escort, and the ability to negate couple of Keep Construct’s mechanics. Xera is pretty easy for a final boss once groups figure out the tanking pattern and break her breakbar quickly.

One possibility is, ArenaNet was experimenting with difficulty to try to get a wide spectrum to see what players wanted. Personally, I’d like for all of the encounters to be as mechanically challenging as Matthias, a boss which still gives some groups trouble. Now that they’ve gotten a spectrum of difficulty, they can tune future bosses to an ideal difficulty that players want.

The other possibility for why raids have become easier: Players have gotten better. Mechanics were basically recycled, so most players who’ve been raiding for a while know what to do when certain things happen. That’s probably why it took very little time for the bosses to be cleared – people knew what to do within a couple of attempts and all it took was a bit of practice to refine the techniques.

Moving forward, the raid team has more feedback on what players expect, and it will be interesting to see how future raids turn out.

Rashy.4165:

Mechanics were basically recycled, so most players who’ve been raiding for a while know what to do when certain things happen.

This. So many things were recycled to a point where it’s no longer fun. Circular boss arenas also need to go. It became dull back in w1.

I agree. Honestly I don’t get all the praises the last wing got tbh. It’s the last wing, with the endboss of the whole raid… and it’s the easiest one. Feels like w3 is the starter raid instead of w1 lol.

Or they could add a challenge mode for every boss with a LI multiplier.

Like you kill every boss with challenge mode active and you get 2 LI instead of one.

In this way people is happy because they have an extra challenge (but not obligated) and get better reward for this. And it helps with the 150 LI amount for legendary armors.

Phil.8901:

Or they could add a challenge mode for every boss with a LI multiplier.

Like you kill every boss with challenge mode active and you get 2 LI instead of one.

In this way people is happy because they have an extra challenge (but not obligated) and get better rewards for this. And it helps with the 150 LI amount.

So no one will care once everyone realises the legendary armor looks terrible? :P

Nah, I think raids are in a decent place. A mix of relatively simple and straightforward encounters, and a few with more complex mechanics. Players have just gotten better and there are fewer ‘bads’ in the community.

This is mostly a matter of perception. Anything that can be beaten consistently by a skilled and experienced group will seem easy after a while.

Doctor.3462:

Basicly raids are kitten easy. My suggestion is Anet makes them harder

Any ideas,yes/no?

Well, that’s a good argument for multiple difficulty modes. Easy, current, and one even harder.

Rashy.4165:

Think there are a couple of things at work here.

Arguably, Wing 1 and 2 were harder by a large margin. Wing 3 was easier due to the escort, and the ability to negate couple of Keep Construct’s mechanics. Xera is pretty easy for a final boss once groups figure out the tanking pattern and break her breakbar quickly.

One possibility is, ArenaNet was experimenting with difficulty to try to get a wide spectrum to see what players wanted. Personally, I’d like for all of the encounters to be as mechanically challenging as Matthias, a boss which still gives some groups trouble. Now that they’ve gotten a spectrum of difficulty, they can tune future bosses to an ideal difficulty that players want.

The other possibility for why raids have become easier: Players have gotten better. Mechanics were basically recycled, so most players who’ve been raiding for a while know what to do when certain things happen. That’s probably why it took very little time for the bosses to be cleared – people knew what to do within a couple of attempts and all it took was a bit of practice to refine the techniques.

Moving forward, the raid team has more feedback on what players expect, and it will be interesting to see how future raids turn out.

I think its both. Raids in GW2 are really fresh and new. Anet right now is in a good position to experiment with Mechanics, the Boss difficulties etc. just to see what works and what will not work. Due to experimenting we had a big kittenblocker with Slothasor ( Pre Nerf ) being the first Boss of a Wing and a complete Joke Encounter after that. An easy Encounter like the Siege would be really good for a first Raid Encounter. But Anet will get more and more experience with how to make Raids and perhaps we will see some really complicated and really hard Encounters. ( Matt is a step in the right direction )

Also the Players got much better. Remember that SALT did clear Wing 2 in less Time than it took Top Guilds to kill Gorseval. Does it mean that Gorse is much harder than Wing 2? Hell no. Gorseval is a really easy Boss, you just need to dodge one Attack and the Eggs and then do your Rotation. Back when Wing 1 was released. People were experimenting much and figuring out good Raid compositions and much more important. They were completeley new to Raiding and not used to it.

Also yes Anet is recycling some Mechanics. While I don’t mind the Fixate, the Bomb was recycled too much. Having it on Sabetha? Awesome. On Matt? Ok? Now with just more People affected by it, can live with it. On KFC? Come on you can do better its just the Bombs on Matt just bigger and with a longr fuse. If you use old Mechanics then alter them enough to make them fresh. Change their behaviour. Like you did with Volatile Poison from Sloth and Well of the Profane from Matt. Both damaging Debuffs that leave an AOE Field when expired or dropped. But the Poison is a growing AOE Field while the Well being a static one.

People had the exact same complaints about dungeons at release.

People actually sucked it up and decided to learn to play the dungeons.

Now, a few years later, even the staunchest defenders of “difficulty should not be a barrier to specific rewards” tout dungeons as examples of reasonable, manageable content and are perfectly fine with them.

I try to stay out of these discussions because all of the points have been made, and discussed, to death at this point. The people that feel they should be entitled to every reward without the requisite structure of specific content will not change that opinion. The people that feel like rewards being limited to specific c ontent as a trophy of said content will not change that opinion.

However.

Both sides attempt to paint it as an argument of fact, or make appeals to democratic or populist philosophies rather than state clearly what the real conflict of ideas is. It is a difference of opinion.

In some people’s opinions, armor/weapon skin rewards should be accessible to all, and should never have utility as trophies of specific achievements and conquered content.

In other people’s opinions, what makes armor/weapon skins exciting is that they symbolize achievement and mastry of specific content.

Attempting to claim one way is “right” and the other is “wrong” is not only pointless, it is needlessly divisive to an absurd degree. None of you are right, and none of you are wrong. You just want different things from the same game. Anet’s job is to cater to as many of you as possible, as fairly as possibly, which means that your desires will never be adequately fulfilled as long as they strongly contrast with a large portion of the player base.

Unless there is largely unilateral community opinion on a subject that subject does not generally receive feedback based overhaul This discussion, and the myriad other threads like it only prove that there is not consistent enough support for a change to the status quo to make changing it a worthwhile decision for arenanet. The issue is too divisive, and when it is that divisive, the go-to strategy is to let it be as any change will not admirably impact the overall satisfaction levels of the player base at large.

If you upset just as many people as you make happy, it’s a zero-sum change. You can’t predict that when adding new content and systems, but you can accurately predict that when changing existing ones.

People actually sucked it up and decided to learn to play the dungeons.

Now, a few years later, even the staunchest defenders of “difficulty should not be a barrier to specific rewards” tout dungeons as examples of reasonable, manageable content and are perfectly fine with them.

It’s not the people that changed, it’s the characters. When the dungeons were “hard,” characters were far weaker than they are today. Dungeons did not keep pace with power creep. Furthermore, nobody knew how to play their characters at launch. The same is not true today. There is no reason to believe that the current raids will EVER be any easier than they are today, unless ANet makes deliberate nerfs to them. The comparisons to dungeons are nonsense.

Ohoni.6057:

People actually sucked it up and decided to learn to play the dungeons.

Now, a few years later, even the staunchest defenders of “difficulty should not be a barrier to specific rewards” tout dungeons as examples of reasonable, manageable content and are perfectly fine with them.

It’s not the people that changed, it’s the characters. When the dungeons were “hard,” characters were far weaker than they are today. Dungeons did not keep pace with power creep.

It goes actually even further than that. Not only Dungeons did not keep up with power creep, but additionally they were nerfed more than once. So, dungeons seem easier now not only because players are stronger due to the power creep, but also because they really are easier.

Nerfed how. Examples of a direct dungeon nerf would be nice. At the moment I can only recall indirect nefs which are power creep and adjusted downscaling which is basically a power creep on top of a power creep.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Nerfed how. Examples of a direct dungeon nerf would be nice. At the moment I can only recall indirect nefs which are power creep and adjusted downscaling which is basically a power creep on top of a power creep.

The most major one was when they stopped res rush strategy. To compensate for not being able to waypoint when your group was in a fight, almost all of the boss fights were “adjusted” downward. They have also kept tweaking individual encounters up and down (mostly down) throughout the whole early part of the game history.

Astralporing.1957:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Nerfed how. Examples of a direct dungeon nerf would be nice. At the moment I can only recall indirect nefs which are power creep and adjusted downscaling which is basically a power creep on top of a power creep.

The most major one was when they stopped res rush strategy. To compensate for not being able to waypoint when your group was in a fight, almost all of the boss fights were “adjusted” downward. They have also kept tweaking individual encounters up and down (mostly down) throughout the whole early part of the game history.

Are we sure this was not partially due to the power creep as well? I am surprised they would make any of the non-story dungeon paths easier. (I do recall making story ones easier)

Pompeia.5483:

Astralporing.1957:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Nerfed how. Examples of a direct dungeon nerf would be nice. At the moment I can only recall indirect nefs which are power creep and adjusted downscaling which is basically a power creep on top of a power creep.

The most major one was when they stopped res rush strategy. To compensate for not being able to waypoint when your group was in a fight, almost all of the boss fights were “adjusted” downward. They have also kept tweaking individual encounters up and down (mostly down) throughout the whole early part of the game history.

Are we sure this was not partially due to the power creep as well? I am surprised they would make any of the non-story dungeon paths easier. (I do recall making story ones easier)

Oh, yes. Partially, it was due to the general power creep, of course. Only partially, though – they definitely did some intentional nerfs to the dungeons too. You see, too many people were dissatisfied with their difficulty. And while Anet was touting explorables as more challenging, they still wanted them to be popular.

The same will eventually happen with raids (their reward system is not enough to sustain them longterm, and the number of people that are there for raids themselves (with their difficulty and challenge) and are willing to keep repeating them over and over again for fun is just a small subset of total number of players doing them.

Unfortunately, by the time it happens, it may be too late to patch the situation.