Guild Wars 2

Is Accessiblity.

Getting into raiding once your in it isnt hard, once you’ve found a good static, or people good enough to get you into a decent training guild/training run regieme you can genuinely get through raiding fine, the difficulty isnt as hard as some might be afraid to think it is.

Id say the challenge of most raids is on par with normal mode world of warcraft for those familiar with the concept, as a comparison for refference, its accessably dooable and hell some of it can even be done with mostly exotics though id still recommend having at least ascended armor/weapons before investing into raiding, maybe a backpack too.

I would however admit, that it took me a while, like, a whole year and then some to finally “find” someone willing to take me on, Im not a confident person, the group im with though, they’re awesome, some of the best, genuinley.

And as times gone on, we went from clearing maybe 3 bosses a week, to literally clearing the entire raid, a week.

We’ve even recently done CM Cairne, I got the eternal title, working on slip-slub, is it achievable? Yes, is it hard, quite probably yes.

Now I will say again, the accessiblity can be demanding, I find alot of pug raids demand a rediculas number of LI’s even if you clearly have done some of the harder achievements in the game which honestly makes it obnoxious.

My proposal to A-net is something akin to a soft LFR like wow. My suggestion essentially is this, a tutorial mode much like how everyone keeps asking for story mode.

Tutorial mode would essentially be the beginners guide to raiding, much like how we have CM and current normal, tutorial mode would be designed for people more interested in the story, but also be designed to give you a much “much” easier time getting “into” raids for the first time.

My idea for this works as follows:

Tutorial motes are similar to challenge motes, but instead of blue glowing motes, you get a green glowing one.

When tutorial mode is activated, the damage the boss deals is significantly nerfed, and the boss enrage timer is made alot longer.

However, in this mode it is literally impossible to get raid rewards from the bosses, but you can however get mastery contribution, aswell as a very MINOR amount of mag shards, were talking maybe…, 2-3 per boss.

Some might say this would make raiding completley Irelevent but I disagree, this is “the” compramise raiding needs, because now, you have no excuse. Accessability via tutorial mode would give people the means to get into raiding, much like infantile mode to SAB. It would be designed to help you START the experience, and help unfamilair players do the bosses for the first time.

Tutorial mode would also extend to the training ground, which could be accessed now een without a squad, tutorial mode basically allows you to familiarize yourself with your class, and the general role your speicalizatoin favors such as Chronomancer Tanks, Druid Healers, etc etc.

By training people with an automated system we can essentially remove the need for trianing groups and eventially have everyone more or less ready for raiding in no time. I say keep the current difficulty, and CM, but add a training mode, to help new players who want to get into raiding for the first time.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Is Accessiblity.

Getting into raiding once your in it isnt hard, once you’ve found a good static, or people good enough to get you into a decent training guild/training run regieme you can genuinely get through raiding fine, the difficulty isnt as hard as some might be afraid to think it is.

Id say the challenge of most raids is on par with normal mode world of warcraft for those familiar with the concept, as a comparison for refference, its accessably dooable and hell some of it can even be done with mostly exotics though id still recommend having at least ascended armor/weapons before investing into raiding, maybe a backpack too.

I would however admit, that it took me a while, like, a whole year and then some to finally “find” someone willing to take me on, Im not a confident person, the group im with though, they’re awesome, some of the best, genuinley.

And as times gone on, we went from clearing maybe 3 bosses a week, to literally clearing the entire raid, a week.

We’ve even recently done CM Cairne, I got the eternal title, working on slip-slub, is it achievable? Yes, is it hard, quite probably yes.

Now I will say again, the accessiblity can be demanding, I find alot of pug raids demand a rediculas number of LI’s even if you clearly have done some of the harder achievements in the game which honestly makes it obnoxious.

My proposal to A-net is something akin to a soft LFR like wow. My suggestion essentially is this, a tutorial mode much like how everyone keeps asking for story mode.

Tutorial mode would essentially be the beginners guide to raiding, much like how we have CM and current normal, tutorial mode would be designed for people more interested in the story, but also be designed to give you a much “much” easier time getting “into” raids for the first time.

My idea for this works as follows:

Tutorial motes are similar to challenge motes, but instead of blue glowing motes, you get a green glowing one.

When tutorial mode is activated, the damage the boss deals is significantly nerfed, and the boss enrage timer is made alot longer.

However, in this mode it is literally impossible to get raid rewards from the bosses, but you can however get mastery contribution, aswell as a very MINOR amount of mag shards, were talking maybe…, 2-3 per boss.

Some might say this would make raiding completley Irelevent but I disagree, this is “the” compramise raiding needs, because now, you have no excuse. Accessability via tutorial mode would give people the means to get into raiding, much like infantile mode to SAB. It would be designed to help you START the experience, and help unfamilair players do the bosses for the first time.

Tutorial mode would also extend to the training ground, which could be accessed now een without a squad, tutorial mode basically allows you to familiarize yourself with your class, and the general role your speicalizatoin favors such as Chronomancer Tanks, Druid Healers, etc etc.

By training people with an automated system we can essentially remove the need for trianing groups and eventially have everyone more or less ready for raiding in no time. I say keep the current difficulty, and CM, but add a training mode, to help new players who want to get into raiding for the first time.

This is exactly what many have been advocating for the past year. It makes sense and would help make raiding at all levels more accessible and warrant deeper support for the game mode.

It would also put to rest any concern about story accessibility for those never interested in the more hardcore experience – and open raids up as a real storytelling tool for future content.

Thank you for posting.

I suppose that if that doesnt take much to any real resources to make then sure. But are you its the boss it self that deals the dmg and needs the nerf and not diff mechanic tweaks to various bosses?

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

oh one more addition if they go through with the lfr mode then it will only be available after 3 weeks have passed from when the raid released

zoomborg.9462:

Most people asking for “ez mode, training mode, infintile mode” are just being greedy. They wouldn’t agree to your post cause there would be no rewards while the obsession with these modes are max rewards for no effort. That’s how the average Gw2 player thinks.

Actually, it would unlock the mastery track, and could be used for smaller/casual guilds to ‘ramp up’ to the actual raids. More forgiving attacks/mechanics and longer enrage timers would be extremely useful in helping people learn the raid, because it won’t all fall apart with a single screw-up.

For example – VG could have the damage of Seekers be reduced, blue circle teleport range restricted, and have damage from green circles tiered (75% if one person, 50% if two, 25% if three), and longer/no enrage timer.

Being able to give players the (reduced) satisfaction of a kill while learning on somewhat reduced mechanics would do a lot for smaller/more casual guilds that decide to raid instead of hammering away futilely at the normal mode (And let people unlock the kitten mastery track) would be a great boon, I think, in addition to allowing people to experience the story.

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

“Tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart” basically means a spectacular design failure. Basic raid education should be handled by the game itself, not rely on good will of random people.

Rednik.3809:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

“Tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart” basically means a spectacular design failure. Basic raid education should be handled by the game itself, not rely on good will of random people.

The debate of should Anet or the community organize training is a completely different debate. I’m saying that there are tools available for people to get into raiding which you agree with in your post hence making raid accessible.

zoomborg.9462:

…
Unlike you i never joined a static, pugged 99% of my li (sitting at 200 atm) and will probably never join a static either. A lot of people have done similarly, not because they waited and found a group but because they really wanted to get into raids.There is no need for anything like training or else. Groups are there for that and it’s enough.

Case in point, people who want to get into raids and have the right mentality will get into it one way or another. There rest are usually quitters,whiners, crybabies.
…

People need to have the right mindset as well as be willing to put in the effort that is needed. I certainly agree with you there. These “requirements” already weed out a lot of players. Whether this is a good or bad is up to debate. I’d still consider raiding in this game to be quite accessible. Also, I highly doubt that it would make the complainers finally try a raid in earnest.

Going to be honest here, I have yet to pug a single raid encounter myself, even though I am getting close to finishing my second stack of LIs. Always been in a static. Maybe that’s why I never experienced any of that toxicity people are supposed to show you even if you are quite a perfect pug and player in general.
With that being said, I ended up leading a casual training guild for a few months, however. Had pretty low expections based on my years of raiding in different games, made it as casual and friendly as possible.
The wide spectrum of players wanting to raid in this game is quite astonishing. Anywhere from people being willing to give you their firstborn for taking your time to explain a boss encounter to some not understanding why there is any need to listen and considering it to be normal to insult anyone for asking them to do anything. A slight exaggeration of course, but you get my point.

A true easy mode wouldn’t be such a bad addition. With lower rewards to keep it from becoming yet another handout, perhaps. This would keep out quite a few of those who are still trying to claim they aren’t only interested in easy rewards.
There are those who have a very hard to time ever reaching the required amount of synergy, teamplay or outright damage numbers after all. While they still enjoy playing together as a guild. Something like that would fit them well, would allow them to finally finish some of the bosses. Keep the moral and interest high.
It would make those guys happy, I am sure. All though, I believe that the overall impact on raiding, the community and overall level of toxicity would be quite minor. People are still going to complain constantly and the kittens on both sides of the arguement will still continue to act like kittens.

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

The debate of should Anet or the community organize training is a completely different debate. I’m saying that there are tools available for people to get into raiding which you agree with in your post hence making raid accessible.

They are not available for people, they are fully dependent from amount of people willing to carry and teach you, and there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot learn Xera fight if there is only W1 teaching groups in LFG, or learn VG if there is only W4 training runs available at the moment, and so on. And there is no teaching schedule, so you cannot say “hey, you cannot learn this fight now, but tomorrow you will be able to join two training runs made for this boss, just come around this time and join”. These tools are not reliable.

I am very happy to see this topic persist across both these forums and other sites like Reddit and Massively. GW2 is an amazing game and raids should have a real place in it – something they can really do once Anet deals with the accessibility issue.

As before, I strongly encourage everyone participating in this topic to go back and read the first real raid discussion on these forums – the CDI with the developers (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first). There are some really strong ideas and points in that thread. I even noticed, while looking through recently, that the guild leader of one of the most hardcore guilds in the game even advocated for a scaling system in raids – proposing they scale, inside an instance, between 8 and 16 people (an idea I liked then and still like now).

For raids to justify any kind of real developmental resources, they need greater appeal – and there desperately need to be a way for those professions/builds on the bottom of the tables to legitimately experience the content without feeling severely handicapped or like they have to lean on “the real raiders.” The fact is true balance will never happen (without completely redoing their systems or homogenizing every build in the game) – this needs to be done on the content side or the issue will never go away.

It’s been more than two years now that I and many others have been pointing this out (as often and as loud as we can) and making these arguments to Anet. And, if need be, we will be making it two years from now (hopefuly we wont need to). This issue isn’t going away – Anet needs to fix this.

Rednik.3809:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

The debate of should Anet or the community organize training is a completely different debate. I’m saying that there are tools available for people to get into raiding which you agree with in your post hence making raid accessible.

They are not available for people, they are fully dependent from amount of people willing to carry and teach you, and there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot learn Xera fight if there is only W1 teaching groups in LFG, or learn VG if there is only W4 training runs available at the moment, and so on. And there is no teaching schedule, so you cannot say “hey, you cannot learn this fight now, but tomorrow you will be able to join two training runs made for this boss, just come around this time and join”. These tools are not reliable.

Hmmm, so you are saying that people can’t make a group and go do the bosses themselves learning the mechanics like idk the people who originally cleared the content by trial and error!

Because people are capable of doing just that, that is an option and it’s the option that has been used to clear every Raid Boss released, but the big thing here is the new people doing it will have a much easier time since the Raiding commmunity is kind enough to always release strategies and Class Guides for each boss encounter.

If players took initiative and made their own groups instead of whining about not being able to raid there would be hardly any complaints, but certain people just want an easy mode no effort path to rewards.

Rednik.3809:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

“Tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart” basically means a spectacular design failure. Basic raid education should be handled by the game itself, not rely on good will of random people.

Was TT also a failure then? Because use if gw2 community or a diff build guild doesnt organise for it it usually fails or ppl dont even bother.

I support story mode with no rewards. I don’t think you should get any mag shards for heavily nerfed raids. I think unlocking mastery track via easy mode is fine, its basically the same as escort.

But I guess I just don’t see the difference between what OP is suggesting, and what we have. We already have some raids which are insanely easy like escort,trio, and MO. Anyone wanting to get into raids can start with those pretty easily.

thrag.9740:

I support story mode with no rewards. I don’t think you should get any mag shards for heavily nerfed raids. I think unlocking mastery track via easy mode is fine, its basically the same as escort.

But I guess I just don’t see the difference between what OP is suggesting, and what we have. We already have some raids which are insanely easy like escort,trio, and MO. Anyone wanting to get into raids can start with those pretty easily.

And I agree 1000% that story or lesser difficulty raids should come with a significantly lesser reward, possibly even excluding magnetite shards (or, at the very least, locking the more interesting items on the magnetite vendor until players have beaten bosses on the harder modes as they have to now).

To the other point, what we have now is limited to specific encounters and does not offer the experience of the raid, which is the true need.

So yes, reduced or almost no reward is definitely warranted in this case – providing the experience for a greater number of players is the goal.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Is Accessiblity.

Getting into raiding once your in it isnt hard, once you’ve found a good static, or people good enough to get you into a decent training guild/training run regieme you can genuinely get through raiding fine, the difficulty isnt as hard as some might be afraid to think it is.

Id say the challenge of most raids is on par with normal mode world of warcraft for those familiar with the concept, as a comparison for refference, its accessably dooable and hell some of it can even be done with mostly exotics though id still recommend having at least ascended armor/weapons before investing into raiding, maybe a backpack too.

I would however admit, that it took me a while, like, a whole year and then some to finally “find” someone willing to take me on, Im not a confident person, the group im with though, they’re awesome, some of the best, genuinley.

And as times gone on, we went from clearing maybe 3 bosses a week, to literally clearing the entire raid, a week.

We’ve even recently done CM Cairne, I got the eternal title, working on slip-slub, is it achievable? Yes, is it hard, quite probably yes.

Now I will say again, the accessiblity can be demanding, I find alot of pug raids demand a rediculas number of LI’s even if you clearly have done some of the harder achievements in the game which honestly makes it obnoxious.

My proposal to A-net is something akin to a soft LFR like wow. My suggestion essentially is this, a tutorial mode much like how everyone keeps asking for story mode.

Tutorial mode would essentially be the beginners guide to raiding, much like how we have CM and current normal, tutorial mode would be designed for people more interested in the story, but also be designed to give you a much “much” easier time getting “into” raids for the first time.

My idea for this works as follows:

Tutorial motes are similar to challenge motes, but instead of blue glowing motes, you get a green glowing one.

When tutorial mode is activated, the damage the boss deals is significantly nerfed, and the boss enrage timer is made alot longer.

However, in this mode it is literally impossible to get raid rewards from the bosses, but you can however get mastery contribution, aswell as a very MINOR amount of mag shards, were talking maybe…, 2-3 per boss.

Some might say this would make raiding completley Irelevent but I disagree, this is “the” compramise raiding needs, because now, you have no excuse. Accessability via tutorial mode would give people the means to get into raiding, much like infantile mode to SAB. It would be designed to help you START the experience, and help unfamilair players do the bosses for the first time.

Tutorial mode would also extend to the training ground, which could be accessed now een without a squad, tutorial mode basically allows you to familiarize yourself with your class, and the general role your speicalizatoin favors such as Chronomancer Tanks, Druid Healers, etc etc.

By training people with an automated system we can essentially remove the need for trianing groups and eventially have everyone more or less ready for raiding in no time. I say keep the current difficulty, and CM, but add a training mode, to help new players who want to get into raiding for the first time.

I would definitely try this mode to enter into Raids. No rewards is fine by me, the problem has always been pure accesibility.

Also it should come a month after the first raid release.
An ez mode creates more problems than having a normalmode and a hard one. An ez mode targeted at casual must be really eaz and the jump in difficulty from ez mode to your suggested harder normal mode will be too big. Ppl will go in normal thinking they cleared the ez one so they have the experience only to fail miserably.
They also cant be too small because the casual will cry that its to hard or the other way around the raider will cry that they ve been robbed of their challenging content.

zealex.9410:

Also it should come a month after the first raid release.
An ez mode creates more problems than having a normalmode and a hard one. An ez mode targeted at casual must be really eaz and the jump in difficulty from ez mode to your suggested harder normal mode will be too big. Ppl will go in normal thinking they cleared the ez one so they have the experience only to fail miserably.
They also cant be too small because the casual will cry that its to hard or the other way around the raider will cry that they ve been robbed of their challenging content.

I think this makes sense as well. The primary purpose of raids should always continue to be offering the challenging content mode. The additional modes would be about accessibility, story continuity, justifying more raid development, etc.

To the point about how much easier a story or training mode should be – to me, that means leveling the playing field between ALL builds more than anything. I think escort from wing three feels about right in that respect (which is pretty easy comparatively, imo). After the initial challenge is offered, I would see them using that encounter as target when developing a story or lesser difficulty mode.

But, again, the integrity of the hardmode must be preserved first and foremost (and that includes the unique rewards). Waiting a month or even more to release the story or lower difficulty + significantly reducing the rewards offered makes sense and would accomplish this, imo.

My proposal isnt an easy mode thats so laughably easy that you can cakewalk it, its more like the difference between 100% of the bosses capability and 70% of it, in other words, its a 30% reduction in the bosses damage/abilities over all and an extended raid timer, but generally gives enough learning curve to actually learn the encounter and the mechanics. So that when people “do” transit from easy to normal, they have a better grasp of the boss itself.

Given that they have already added all the bosses into the game so far, this wouldnt be that difficult to impliament, it would simply be a reduction of enemy boss encounters damage by 30%, their enrage timers maybe increased by another 2-3 minuates per boss, and generally that would be a far less simplistic curve change.

All it would mean is the difference between being able to do bosses in exotics, which is possible now for “some” bosses, and being able to do them in ascended, which can only be a good thing for hardcore raiders since it could allow a-net to finally make ascended gear a practical requirement for CM modes in the future.

As a player that has done quite a few of the difficult encounters, from getting the eternal title, to CM Cairn to first timing Xera and Demios which can be quite a handful and utterly crying through Matthias who just slaughters new raiders I do think its important to give them the tools to learn, perfect, and get better.

Raiders are already a minority in this MMO as it is, encouraging more to join the raid scene CANT hurt it in any way.

Thus by making a slightly easier difficulty, enphasis on SLIGHTLY its enough to give people a tutorial experience, PLUS, I disagree with some points being made about story enjoyment through encounters.

Alot of dialogue and character interactions are often impossible to hear over a TS3/Discord/whatever chat channel your using conversation, its hard enough to listen to the story if your always fighting the enemy with people VCing “Dodge this” to your eardrum 500 MPH.

Easier difficulty will allow puggable casuals to just “enjoy” the story itself, and not have that hastle which I think is a reasonable compramise.

also the matter of what purpose does the ez mode serve? Is it just a story mode for ppl to experience the story or a first step to raiding? If the former ppl will cry " i went in ez mode cleared it i went to normal got my ass handed t me and was kick or flamed for being bad omg anet kitten game" Or the latter " omg anet the story mode is too hard still omg new pll that dont have any knowledge and mess my runs (since there no such thing as li for you to make a base lvl of experience for ppl to see before joining your group). I support to not include any reword maybe the bare minimun of maybe a rare and 2 blues (lul) but then ppl might say (what the kitten anet this is to hard and it rewards too little omg fix. Then how hard should normal raids be? with having a entry lvl normal mode os still limited on how low that entry lvl is and therefor the devs are limited to what they can do. The devs could also go the way of making normal mode a hard but not as hard as the player base that raids were sold to wanted it. Now what do they make an even harder raid for them? But thats 3 modes does anet have money for 3 modes?

zealex.9410:

also the matter of what purpose does the ez mode serve? Is it just a story mode for ppl to experience the story or a first step to raiding? If the former ppl will cry " i went in ez mode cleared it i went to normal got my ass handed t me and was kick or flamed for being bad omg anet kitten game" Or the latter " omg anet the story mode is too hard still omg new pll that dont have any knowledge and mess my runs (since there no such thing as li for you to make a base lvl of experience for ppl to see before joining your group). I support to not include any reword maybe the bare minimun of maybe a rare and 2 blues (lul) but then ppl might say (what the kitten anet this is to hard and it rewards too little omg fix. Then how hard should normal raids be? with having a entry lvl normal mode os still limited on how low that entry lvl is and therefor the devs are limited to what they can do. The devs could also go the way of making normal mode a hard but not as hard as the player base that raids were sold to wanted it. Now what do they make an even harder raid for them? But thats 3 modes does anet have money for 3 modes?

I think, once the initial pain point (accessibility) has been addressed, what you’re talking about here actually presents more of an opportunity than a hurdle. If it makes sense to revisit a raid (which should be a rare occurrence once the accessibility issue is cleared up), they could just as easily add in more difficult motes as less difficult ones. It would be, if needed, another way to revisit and make the content more applicable to more people (on both ends of the spectrum).

That said, realistically, the primary needs would be met with a hardcore and story mode, imo. Anything beyond that would be – as with all things – on a case by case basis (and likely have more to do with balance as new elite specializations are released into the game).

Still, the immediate pain point is accessibility. That would be addressed pretty well by what Vanguard discusses above.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

My proposal isnt an easy mode thats so laughably easy that you can cakewalk it, its more like the difference between 100% of the bosses capability and 70% of it, in other words, its a 30% reduction in the bosses damage/abilities over all and an extended raid timer, but generally gives enough learning curve to actually learn the encounter and the mechanics. So that when people “do” transit from easy to normal, they have a better grasp of the boss itself.

Given that they have already added all the bosses into the game so far, this wouldnt be that difficult to impliament, it would simply be a reduction of enemy boss encounters damage by 30%, their enrage timers maybe increased by another 2-3 minuates per boss, and generally that would be a far less simplistic curve change.

All it would mean is the difference between being able to do bosses in exotics, which is possible now for “some” bosses, and being able to do them in ascended, which can only be a good thing for hardcore raiders since it could allow a-net to finally make ascended gear a practical requirement for CM modes in the future.

As a player that has done quite a few of the difficult encounters, from getting the eternal title, to CM Cairn to first timing Xera and Demios which can be quite a handful and utterly crying through Matthias who just slaughters new raiders I do think its important to give them the tools to learn, perfect, and get better.

Raiders are already a minority in this MMO as it is, encouraging more to join the raid scene CANT hurt it in any way.

Thus by making a slightly easier difficulty, enphasis on SLIGHTLY its enough to give people a tutorial experience, PLUS, I disagree with some points being made about story enjoyment through encounters.

Alot of dialogue and character interactions are often impossible to hear over a TS3/Discord/whatever chat channel your using conversation, its hard enough to listen to the story if your always fighting the enemy with people VCing “Dodge this” to your eardrum 500 MPH.

Easier difficulty will allow puggable casuals to just “enjoy” the story itself, and not have that hastle which I think is a reasonable compramise.

That still limit how hard nomal mode can be tho. If the normal is really hard then the ez encounter of 70% will still be hard that yes can be fixed with 3 modes 1 the 70% 60% the normal 100% and the hard the like 150 200% but thats 3 modes that would take crazy resources.

Blaeys.3102:

zealex.9410:

also the matter of what purpose does the ez mode serve? Is it just a story mode for ppl to experience the story or a first step to raiding? If the former ppl will cry " i went in ez mode cleared it i went to normal got my ass handed t me and was kick or flamed for being bad omg anet kitten game" Or the latter " omg anet the story mode is too hard still omg new pll that dont have any knowledge and mess my runs (since there no such thing as li for you to make a base lvl of experience for ppl to see before joining your group). I support to not include any reword maybe the bare minimun of maybe a rare and 2 blues (lul) but then ppl might say (what the kitten anet this is to hard and it rewards too little omg fix. Then how hard should normal raids be? with having a entry lvl normal mode os still limited on how low that entry lvl is and therefor the devs are limited to what they can do. The devs could also go the way of making normal mode a hard but not as hard as the player base that raids were sold to wanted it. Now what do they make an even harder raid for them? But thats 3 modes does anet have money for 3 modes?

I think, once the initial pain point (accessibility) has been addressed, what you’re talking about here actually presents more of an opportunity than a hurdle. If it makes sense to revisit a raid (which should be a rare occurrence once the accessibility issue is cleared up), they could just as easily add in more difficult motes as less difficult ones. It would be, if needed, another way to revisit and make the content more applicable to more people (on both ends of the spectrum).

That said, realistically, the primary needs would be met with a hardcore and story mode, imo. Anything beyond that would be – as with all things – on a case by case basis (and likely have more to do with balance as new elite specializations are released into the game).

Still, the immediate pain point is accessibility. That would be addressed pretty well by what Vanguard discusses above.

you still seem to be ignoring that raids arent the main focus of gw2 as opposed to wow for example. The raid team are 10 ppl and revisiting the 2 raids to balance the encounters again would take so much time off from raid 3 and that would mean more ppl in the raid team therefor more focus there for hw2 becomes a raid centric mmo what wow is. I thought ppl hayes the idea of gw2 going mainstream.

zealex.9410:

That still limit how hard nomal mode can be tho. If the normal is really hard then the ez encounter of 70% will still be hard that yes can be fixed with 3 modes 1 the 70% 60% the normal 100% and the hard the like 150 200% but thats 3 modes that would take crazy resources.

I think you are overcomplicating the matter. You’re simply talking about balancing the content for different audiences here. If the story mode doesnt meet the accessibility needs when it comes out, the solution wouldnt be to create a third version – it would be to balance the story mode version, something they do across the board as standard operating procedure anyway.

Blaeys.3102:

zealex.9410:

That still limit how hard nomal mode can be tho. If the normal is really hard then the ez encounter of 70% will still be hard that yes can be fixed with 3 modes 1 the 70% 60% the normal 100% and the hard the like 150 200% but thats 3 modes that would take crazy resources.

I think you are overcomplicating the matter. You’re simply talking about balancing the content for different audiences here. If the story mode doesnt meet the accessibility needs when it comes out, the solution wouldnt be to create a third version – it would be to balance the story mode version, something they do across the board as standard operating procedure anyway.

balance it by making it easier? Shouldnt the normal mode be easier then as well for a smoother transition? Also does that entry lvl change with a new raid?

zealex.9410:

balance it by making it easier? Shouldnt the normal mode be easier then as well for a smoother transition?

Again, youre overcomplicating it.

You balance the normal (hardcore) mode to offer the challenge desired by the hardcore players and the story mode to offer the accessibility wanted by more casual players.

If either of those do not adequately accomplish their goal (keeping in mind there will always be outliers unhappy with whatever happens), then you balance that specific version – common sense shows that there is no reason you have to balance both every time you touch one or the other. Ongoing balance has always been a part of the game – even with stuff that came out in 2012.

I don’t think the solution would be nearly as convoluted as you try to make it seem.

so they are 2 diff raiding scenes huh? I mean one as you said is for the experience while the other is for the challenge and should bw hard how do you move from the one scene to the other?

zealex.9410:

so they are 2 diff raiding scenes huh? I mean one as you said is for the experience while the other is for the challenge and should bw hard how do you move from the one scene to the other?

Again, I think the answer is to adapt the challenge mote system into a story mote system instead – as Vanguard says in his posts as well.

It already has precedent in game and would solve the problem elegantly (and most raiders I know don’t care for the challenge motes anyway – this would be a better use of those resources). That said, Anet has a long history of creative problem solving. There may be a better way.

well… i agree, it is nice to have a choice, i for once wouldn’t do the training mode because i am lucky enough to have a steady raiding group, but it is nice for everybody else to have a choice and it wouldn’t strip the normal raid of anything, so why not?
It would be useful to learn the mechanics, after that you just apply the same mechanics to the normal mode and try it out.
reward wise, it should be masteries and probably some magnetite shards not enough to make normal raid useless, but enough to make training groups satisfied.

edit: legendary insight wise maybe it should be 1 for every wing clear? or pieces of legendary insight that you can double click to make an entire 1 every n pieces?

I can somehow get the point behind a “story mode” (though I’m anything but a fan of that idea), but what’s the point of such a “tutorial mode”? Many (most?) raid mechanics are already quite lenient, just as the enrage timers are. Make it yet easier and it may be nice for the story, but will have absolutely no learning effect for the proper mode.

CptAurellian.9537:

I can somehow get the point behind a “story mode” (though I’m anything but a fan of that idea), but what’s the point of such a “tutorial mode”? Many (most?) raid mechanics are already quite lenient, just as the enrage timers are. Make it yet easier and it may be nice for the story, but will have absolutely no learning effect for the proper mode.

thats the thing such mode with meh rewards would like like a thing most ppl will do once if it doesnt transition them well into the actual raid mode

Amadan.9451:

well… i agree, it is nice to have a choice, i for once wouldn’t do the training mode because i am lucky enough to have a steady raiding group, but it is nice for everybody else to have a choice and it wouldn’t strip the normal raid of anything, so why not?
It would be useful to learn the mechanics, after that you just apply the same mechanics to the normal mode and try it out.
reward wise, it should be masteries and probably some magnetite shards not enough to make normal raid useless, but enough to make training groups satisfied.

edit: legendary insight wise maybe it should be 1 for every wing clear? or pieces of legendary insight that you can double click to make an entire 1 every n pieces?

thats the thing tho making an easier mode might take resources from the actual raid since they are only 10 man teams and they have to come up with an easy mdoe for every raid wing and one for the new one. That means that we might not see a new raid from even a year.

Blaeys.3102:

zealex.9410:

so they are 2 diff raiding scenes huh? I mean one as you said is for the experience while the other is for the challenge and should bw hard how do you move from the one scene to the other?

Again, I think the answer is to adapt the challenge mote system into a story mote system instead – as Vanguard says in his posts as well.

It already has precedent in game and would solve the problem elegantly (and most raiders I know don’t care for the challenge motes anyway – this would be a better use of those resources). That said, Anet has a long history of creative problem solving. There may be a better way.

vanguard who?

SAB is totally different from Raids. SAB can be soloed, doesn’t require coordination between a bunch of people, doesn’t gate any relevant lore, is only temporary content, don’t require specific builds or professions, and do not have a dedicated grup of devs investing time and resources in it.

If Raids were like SAB, people would probably still complain, but not as seriously as now.

If Raids were just a seasonal joke, maybe it would be a bit more acceptable for they to be accesable only to a group.

zealex.9410:

Blaeys.3102:

zealex.9410:

so they are 2 diff raiding scenes huh? I mean one as you said is for the experience while the other is for the challenge and should bw hard how do you move from the one scene to the other?

Again, I think the answer is to adapt the challenge mote system into a story mote system instead – as Vanguard says in his posts as well.

It already has precedent in game and would solve the problem elegantly (and most raiders I know don’t care for the challenge motes anyway – this would be a better use of those resources). That said, Anet has a long history of creative problem solving. There may be a better way.

vanguard who?

The OP of this thread.

A 70% reduction to the difficulty isn’t enough for a Story Mode. A 70% Matthias destroys casual players in exo gear and without specific raidbuilds. Straight up demolishes them.

The problem i have with this is: You either make a weakened up tutorial mode. This mode would be the 70% reduction. The mechanics still need to hurt so you feel their impact. There needs to be an enrage timer (+2-3 minutes) so you know what timing you need to look at, realise you need to get your boons in order and dps rotations on point (somewhat at least).

I can see this helping with keeping people from being demoralized. But with that strenght on the bosses you’ll still need a leader who is willing to explain the mechanics, still need good gear, need 10 people, preferably who want to communicate. Like this, it helps make trainings easier and more satisfying but it doesnt allow casual players to experience the story. The bar would still be far too high for them.

If, on the other hand you make the content really easy so that 10 random people can go in mediocre gear and random/fun builds and they should be able to clear the content without spending too much time there and without being forced on TS/discord. This helps with the “we want to experience the story but not raid” situation. However it means the content gets played once and then never again by those players. And it also doesnt make getting into raids easier. The difference between the easy mode and the actual raid would be sooo enormous that the easy mode is in no way a stepup to the real raid.

Lets not go down the new mode = accessible. It’s not, it’s just diluting the pool.

While yes accessibility is an issue, its a core problem with the game that needs to be solved. There’s a completely lack of a structured way to find a guild that’s best suited for the individual players experience. Fix that and you fix a lot more than just the problems with raids, but WvW and even PvP.

Blaeys.3102:

thrag.9740:

I support story mode with no rewards. I don’t think you should get any mag shards for heavily nerfed raids. I think unlocking mastery track via easy mode is fine, its basically the same as escort.

But I guess I just don’t see the difference between what OP is suggesting, and what we have. We already have some raids which are insanely easy like escort,trio, and MO. Anyone wanting to get into raids can start with those pretty easily.

And I agree 1000% that story or lesser difficulty raids should come with a significantly lesser reward, possibly even excluding magnetite shards (or, at the very least, locking the more interesting items on the magnetite vendor until players have beaten bosses on the harder modes as they have to now).

To the other point, what we have now is limited to specific encounters and does not offer the experience of the raid, which is the true need.

So yes, reduced or almost no reward is definitely warranted in this case – providing the experience for a greater number of players is the goal.

Do you really mean the experience of the raid is the need? Or do you mean the story? Because the experience of the raid is the fight. Creating easy mode, would allow people to experience a fundamentally difference experience. A Matthias without difficulty isn’t the same experience. You can experience the same dialogue, but easy mode raids can never be the same experience, because the difficulty is the experience. Raids are tied with difficulty, which forces deeper teamwork than any other content in the game. You can’t just remove that and pretend its the same content.

My guild can’t even handle the escort.

TexZero.7910:

Lets not go down the new mode = accessible. It’s not, it’s just diluting the pool.

While yes accessibility is an issue, its a core problem with the game that needs to be solved. There’s a completely lack of a structured way to find a guild that’s best suited for the individual players experience. Fix that and you fix a lot more than just the problems with raids, but WvW and even PvP.

This.

Somehow people always assume easy = accessible. While that is partly true, it usually is not the main reason, especially when some encounters are easy enough.

The main reasons for raid accessibility lacking is one common among just about every MMO that has raiding (and often have very little to do with difficulty alone):

- it’s a group effort. There will always be a big part of a MMO playerbase that just will not interact with others least of all join a guild

- it’s a matter of build optimisation and practice. Going off of years of fractal experience and raiding in multiple MMOs, many people have 0 idea of how to adapt or even play their class (mostly not their fault because the open world game never demanded such gameplay or initiative in most games)

- it’s time intesive. raiding consumes time, mostly dedicated time slots which many people can’t give up due to RL reasons or due to unwillingness (both very valid and acceptable reasons)

- not interesting to some. some people do not enjoy raiding. period. (and that is perfectly fine)

- gear in raids is not superior. this is a GW2 unique one mostly. For many players gear is a driving factor. It’s the reason why many have a hard time to adapt to GW2 endgame. It’s also a reason why some will just ask themselves:“why bother?” (not advocating for better raid gear, simply pointing this out). Most complaints surrounding raids can be summed up with just:“I want legendary armor in other game modes.”

While an easy raid mode would allow for easier access to a part of the playerbase. I doubt it would have such a significant impact as many believe. Certain wings and raid events are already very easy. Making them easier would not help in the slightest.

I do believe the way fractals are ment for preparing people for raids is also at fault here. By the time you get anywhere interesting in fractals difficulty wise, you are required to be even more geared out than for most raid encounters. It is very noticible that both these modes were added sperately and their interaction or design towards each other added as an afterthought.

If arenanet has the ressources, sure add an easy mode. Don’t coming running back though when the desired effect is not reached.

tl;dr: difficulty in raids is not the major reason for players not trying the game mode.

You can’t make the mechanics so ez that ppl can do the raid without paying attention too them because its the mechanics you need to learn. Something that doesnt teach you to play your role properly whhile adapting to mechanics will not prepare you for the actual mode.

The easiest thing done and then best inho would be to simply increase the timer BY ALOT which takes away the presure on that oart and allows to learn the nechanics better. But its again a matter of what ppl want, if you want to experienece just the story etc in raids then a dumped down ez mode is what you need but that will not prepare you for the actual fight. Same thing with the LFG system in wow it was made to please ppl with low amounts of time to put into the game, if you ask any serious raider (heroic maybe normal and even mythic) will tell you to not bother with kfr because it wont teach you anything.

The best solution imho is what ppl said above in short a better guildfinding feature. You put in what you want you type the requirements you want the guild to have (training groups/ statics / lowmans/ be an rp guild ) we and then search for a guild with those requirements. Or the opposite. You put a description of yours up on the finder with what you want from a guild and what kind of guild you are looking for And guild officers or gms can sent you inv to their guild and you can see which one fots you better.

They can also with that then introduce a dumped down ez mode that will come like 3 4 weeks after the actual raid. That way the devs get more time on themselves to deliver a good experience on both. You have an ez mode coming but you also got to w8 more while the urge to just find a guild through the guild finder and train with them in a chance to do the actual thing is there.

Escort path 1 is easy mode. Try that if you’re beginning

TexZero.7910:

Lets not go down the new mode = accessible. It’s not, it’s just diluting the pool.

I disagree. There is a very clear reason why other successful raiding MMOs utilize multiple modes. While there are some minor issues with them as there is with many things, they go a long way to solving the accessibility issue. They open the raid experience to people who would otherwise be uninterested or excluded.

Yes, more structure and better grouping tools are good things and should be continual goals, but it still doesn’t address the big issues related to accessibility.

Well, it’s not like it would be hard to create an easy mode. They just remove the enrage timer and the boss punishing mechanism when he is just about to die. Job done, everybody and it’s grandma should be able to pass through the raid while still keeping the feeling of achivement after a long stressfull fight.

Dadnir.5038:

Well, it’s not like it would be hard to create an easy mode. They just remove the enrage timer and the boss punishing mechanism when he is just about to die. Job done, everybody and it’s grandma should be able to pass through the raid while still keeping the feeling of achivement after a long stressfull fight.

They did this for Cairn the first boss of wing 4 effectively. Considering I have never seen a thread praising that, it didn’t seem to make a difference.

Blaeys.3102:

TexZero.7910:

Lets not go down the new mode = accessible. It’s not, it’s just diluting the pool.

I disagree. There is a very clear reason why other successful raiding MMOs utilize multiple modes. While there are some minor issues with them as there is with many things, they go a long way to solving the accessibility issue. They open the raid experience to people who would otherwise be uninterested or excluded.

Yes, more structure and better grouping tools are good things and should be continual goals, but it still doesn’t address the big issues related to accessibility.

The multiple mode system doesn’t fit here. We aren’t pushing some new gear treadmill which incentivizes any mode higher or lower.

If you cannot do a raid because of your personal skill try improving, after all this is raids are end game content. As is current raids aren’t even that hard. If you were to compare them to the same games you’re holding on a pedastool you’d see that these raids are akin to those raids “Into” version.

Sorry if that annoys you but it comes down to players gotta play at some point or the game may as well be a movie and we all saw the horror that was the warcraft film. Lets not repeat that mistake okay.

TexZero.7910:

The multiple mode system doesn’t fit here. We aren’t pushing some new gear treadmill which incentivizes any mode higher or lower.

If you cannot do a raid because of your personal skill try improving, after all this is raids are end game content. As is current raids aren’t even that hard. If you were to compare them to the same games you’re holding on a pedastool you’d see that these raids are akin to those raids “Into” version.

Sorry if that annoys you but it comes down to players gotta play at some point or the game may as well be a movie and we all saw the horror that was the warcraft film. Lets not repeat that mistake okay.

Multiple mode system is only kind of system that works in modern MMO, so there is not much choice anyway. “Raid training runs” system that we have now is flawed and not reliable.

Rednik are you implying that multi mode system isn’t flawed?

thrag.9740:

Rednik are you implying that multi mode system isn’t flawed?

Of course not. Nothing is perfect. And raid training runs/groups/guilds are definitely a good thing.

But raid training runs, while a noble concept, do not address many of the key concerns – and become a pretty rare occurrence when things start to get stale for the harder core raiders leading them.

Even worse, they are often used by players to get higher skilled players to carry them through the content rather than teach them how to do it. That doesn’t really help the raid scene and probably feels tedious and unfun for everyone involved.

A multi tiered system puts the onus on the players looking for that kind of content rather than relying on others to form the groups. It gives them more control over how they experience the game. It gives them an option that doesn’t include being carried – making it easier for harder core raiders to identify and work with the players who do actually want to learn and progress.

I also think it’s worth bringing up since it was in a blog post today – the idea of raids consuming only a small amount of ANet’s time and resources pretty much went out the window with the Legendary Armor blog post today. The writer specifically talks about the huge amount of work – even rewriting core system – that went into developing it. That pretty much negates any argument that this is a niche corner of content that doesn’t affect developmental resources for the rest of the game.

Blaeys.3102:

A multi tiered system puts the onus on the players looking for that kind of content rather than relying on others to form the groups. It gives them more control over how they experience the game. It gives them an option that doesn’t include being carried – making it easier for harder core raiders to identify and work with the players who do actually want to learn and progress.

I also think it’s worth bringing up since it was in a blog post today – the idea of raids consuming only a small amount of ANet’s time and resources pretty much went out the window with the Legendary Armor blog post today. The writer specifically talks about the huge amount of work – even rewriting core system – that went into developing it. That pretty much negates any argument that this is a niche corner of content that doesn’t affect developmental resources for the rest of the game.

You know what other system puts the onus on the player ? The one we currently have, that has ONE mode. You know what the benefit of that is ? Everyone who raids is in the same pool which means you have a larger playerbase to link up with. If you cannot handle this don’t go blaming the system. It’s the player.

Also heavily overreaching with that straw there buddy. The resources that went into making armor != the same resources used to create your 3 maps and PvE stories. They are separate teams.