Guild Wars 2

Ouch, so the past few days have been fairly fun to observe. Ever since we had that colorful video about DPS Meters, everyone went bonkers, posting arguments looking at DPS Meters in a black/white setting. When this much talk occurs about potential feature, it might help to take a step back and see the pros and cons. For summation, I’ll blanket both sides to an argument:

- DPS Meters give quality information about individual player performance in a raid setting on a given encounter, and help immensely remove any unknowns about how well a given group is performing.

- DPS Meters are also well known to be abused. This isn’t a fringe case, it’ll happen, players can misuse DPS numbers without looking at the big picture.

There’s a big benefit and a big downside. Fair enough, the question is how do we eliminate the downside to reap the benefit? The opinion is that DPS meters shouldn’t be accessible in raids, which defeats the purpose of the benefit then…

So…I ask this then. Why do DPS Meters have to be in raids? Why not set up something technically outside of raiding, a place where pugs are likely not to have the kind of access, where dedicated raiders can use them to their benefit? “Well there’s no possible place…”

Guild Halls. Implement another Guild Progression tree for dedicated raiding where you can unlock fake versions of the raid bosses, which provide the DPS numbers you get from the Training Golem in the Special Training Area.

Here’s my proposal:

- Raiding Based Guild Hall Upgrade where guild members unlock ‘Fake Versions’ of the Raid encounters, which incorporate the Training Golem DPS numbers and allow Guilds to repeat encounters to their heart’s desire.
- The unlocks naturally require the usual guild currency, but they come with Raid Specific Rewards as a requirement to turn in to unlock as well.
- The unlocks go in order per wing, gotta unlock the Fake Vale Guardian before you can unlock Fake Gorseval, and so on.
- The bosses ‘being fake’ aesthetically can be holograms, from the mists, whatever, it brings you to the normal fake arena you fight the boss in.

The above addresses the problem with applying DPS Meters to Raids, because the DPS meters are not in raids. They are in an environment that is isolated from the general population with a specific group in mind. AND, dedicated raid guilds have a location where they can train on any bosses they have exceptional mastery for, which also provides an environment for NEW raiding members to train.

“Well anyone can just unlock it then, pug leaders will still discriminate and have you come in-”

Alright here’s my vision for unlocking the Fake Vale Guardian fight for your guild hall:

- 1 Gold Vale Guardian Trophy
- 1000 LIs
- 100 of an item purchased with 50 Raid Shards that is TRADABLE on the TP.
- <Insert general amounts of whatever gold sink items here, A TRILLION ECTOS lol who knows>

You see some of the checks here? You are going to be hard pressed to find any random pug leader doing DPS meter testing when he has to sacrifice the ABOVE to unlock just one fight.

The above requirements are likely not easy to get even for a regular 10 man guild, but it does offer a sort of Guild Goal when you can brag or recruit to others that you can train on any boss any time.

My proposal here is fairly simple, to create an environment for raiding guilds to progress their guild hall for the express purpose of improving their own performance without having DPS Meters in every single raid. Furthermore I included assets we already have live in game and bundled them together, hopefully to reduce the potential work on this solution.

Finally, and it goes without saying. These fake bosses might be just as painful as the real deal, but they offer no rewards for killing them, maybe you get a guild anthem to play and the raid leader can have everyone relay DPS numbers.

I could probably elaborate more, but I think I prefer this gray solution.

DPS meters should just be personal only, as-in only I can see my own DPS and get my own readouts. You can never find out someone else’s DPS unless they give you the numbers. Honest players looking to improve will work together with the meter, and dishonest people looking to put others down won’t have access to the information. I realize part of the value some would claim is being able to see who the weak link is, but any good raid leader can already tell so I don’t think it’s worth it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

DPS meters should just be personal only, as-in only I can see my own DPS and get my own readouts. You can never find out someone else’s DPS unless they give you the numbers. Honest players looking to improve will work together with the meter, and dishonest people looking to put others down won’t have access to the information. I realize part of the value some would claim is being able to see who the weak link is, but any good raid leader can already tell so I don’t think it’s worth it.

This is true, however the preface behind my proposal and why it will shine is that it is operating within a guild environment. Almost always there will be a lot of ‘Honesty’ going on with a guild working together. Attempting to lie to your raid leader and very likely a friend/guildmate is not something being abused. Also Nike’s video did address how difficult it can be for any raid leader to find where the issue in their group is with what we have now. The upgrade can provide experimentation and composition creations, ease of training, and if possible I would not mind seeing a sort of Spectator area to stand from and watch your guildmates fight a particular boss.

Furthermore, I forgot to add this in my OP. These raid boss unlocks for the guild hall are content that Arenanet has 100% control over when they decide raiding guilds should have access to do. They could very well set it up so a wing is untrainable in a guild hall environment for a Year after its release, then pop the unlock in a patch.

I see a lot of benefits for this proposal for raiding guilds to bring in like-minded newbies, providing a backend to raiding guilds to work with.