Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To OP:

Your argument for #1 is downright silly. It’s group content. It’s designed as group content. It’s not meant to be solo content.

If you want Anet to produce more challenging solo content, then ask for more challenge motes in the story instances.

I half-agree half-disagree with #2. I can agree that forming squads is rather tedious, but Anet never said raids were a “go in and have fun” gameplay. If anything, they said it wasn’t such. They always said it would be the most challenging content in the game, and would need some serious considerations to build composition and the like.

Regarding #3: Exclusive content was always around. Unfortunately, ArenaNet reduced such for the original set of legendary weapons but originally you had to do WvW and dungeons to get them. There was no other ways. Slowly Anet changed that, and I kind of wish that they’d revoke such changes or change the recipes a bit. But you get what you get.

Legendary gear is meant to be hard to get and require playing a specific piece of content.

They kind of screwed the pooch with the original legendary weapons, especially the collections, in how they’ve so distanced from dungeons, but I’d say they did good with the legendary backpieces and the armor – I’ve not looked much into the second legendary weapon set so I won’t comment there.

Strange, I don’t recall ever making an argument against there being group content. My argument in that regard was that the creation of difficult content is not taken to unreasonable extremes, to the point of alienating a majority of your player base. I’m promoting making content accessible to more people, not less.

The main point I made that you’ve mistaken as an argument against group content, is that your legendary journey should be personal. I never said Raids or whatnot should be soloable, but that legendary content should not necessarily be hidden behind group content where failure is based on the performance of others. It’s almost like saying that others have to win your prestige for you.

Please don’t confuse those two vastly different points.

Loli Ruri.8307:

I found it funny how there were a few people talking about how the game shouldn’t be reliant on a group of people, but individual skill, and yet the game is called “Guild Wars 2”. Funny that.

Funny how the game is called Guild Wars 2, but there’s no wars between guilds, and guilds are playing an increasingly less important role in the game.

So, what does the name have to do with it again?

P.S. no-one is arguing against group content or playing with groups. My main concern is that the margin of error for raids is just too small, to a point where it feels like individual skill no longer matters if one or two people in your group aren’t up to scratch, and thus causing the whole group to fail.

I quote:

“The room for error in Raids is so minuscule that having even one mediocre player on your team can mean the difference between success and failure, and this is a sad situation because usually I like helping new or inexperienced players in dungeons or fractals, but raids do not allow for this friendly community behavior because of how extreme the difficulty curve is and how toxic it can cause your raid group to become.”

You’ll notice in my comment I mentioned that I usually like helping other players in content. I actually LIKE playing with other people regardless of their skill level. The issue is that poorly implemented difficult content with no proper difficulty curve can create a toxic, elitist mindset community and destroy the spirit and fun of group play. It is counter productive in many regards.

By promoting more accessibility, I’m actually also promoting the idea of more groups playing Raids and having fun. Is that not uplifting community aspects of the game? X___x

Or do you perhaps believe segregating the community and creating content that only caters to a minority to be more in line with the spirit of the name ‘Guild Wars 2?’

Interesting how the opinion of “multiplayer” of some of you completely differ from my opinion.

To me “multiplayer” means: objects, that move while I run around in game might be other players. That’s it. It is “multiplayer”, not “social”. That would be MSORPG.

However, it is a “role” playing game. Don’t you think that “lone wolf” is a perfectly suitable role for a role playing game? So, why can’t group sizes for instances etc. not be variable? Why can’t the game adjust the difficulty of those encounters to number and skill level of players? That wouldre solve a lot of irritations.

Halvorn.9831:

Interesting how the opinion of “multiplayer” of some of you completely differ from my opinion.

To me “multiplayer” means: objects, that move while I run around in game might be other players. That’s it. It is “multiplayer”, not “social”. That would be MSORPG.

However, it is a “role” playing game. Don’t you think that “lone wolf” is a perfectly suitable role for a role playing game? So, why can’t group sizes for instances etc. not be variable? Why can’t the game adjust the difficulty of those encounters to number and skill level of players? That wouldre solve a lot of irritations.

Lol. This is a good point actually. Just because a game is an MMO, that doesn’t mean it HAS to be cooperative. That being said, I don’t think anyone is actually arguing against the existence of group content.

People just take what is said out of context. More variables would be nice though. As they say, variety is the spice of life.

I agree with you.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

1: The creation of ‘Challenging Content’ should not be taken to unreasonable extremes.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not challenging content in itself that I do not like. In fact, I love challenging content. But what I don’t like is when the completion of challenging content is not dependent on my own skills…

Since your thread is about raids and not open world content, I must disagree here. Raids ARE supposed to be group content, that’s how they work in every MMO. Honestly, the only game I know that has “doable” or rather pretty hard solo-raids is Vindictus, I could do every raid on my own until the frost dragon (inkl. Siglint on easy difficulty) but that was the end of the line. Most of my friends there needed the help of a group even earlier in the game, but that’s ok since those missions were specifically called “raids”. You can be more or less happy that the story of HoT isn’t connected to raids like it is in Vindictus…. now THAT was frustrating.

2: Functionality for forming and maintaining Raid groups is incredibly lackluster
To put it plainly, putting a group together for raids is a very painful process.

Yup. Others have already suggested that ArenaNet could create some sort of lobby, a SAB like puffer-zone for raids. That way, people who want to raid could gather in this additional, small area and form groups even without the lfg tool.

3: Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase
Unlike legendary weapons, which can be acquired regardless of what game modes you play, legendary armor will seemingly be a Raid only affair.

Yes again. GW2 offers 3 different game modes. In my opinion, legendary armor should be accessible through ALL game modes, PVE, WvW and PVP. WvW is so dead right now that this idea “could” revive the new maps and maybe even some people who are still very disappointed because of the guild nerfs might come to like WvW (at least) a bit again. I don’t see why it should be fair to put the most prestigious end game gear only in one place. And this comes from a never pvp-ing, very casual wvw player xD

4: My suggestions for solutions
a) difficulty curve
b) Squad functionality improvements
c) certain builds or group compositions, which once again go against the “play how you want” policy. I think ANet should allow for a bit more leeway (perhaps by removing time limitations on bosses) to allow for less than ideal group compositions to still succeed, even if at a slower rate.

a) Highly agree with you. I bet many casual players would even be satisfied if the “easy” raid mode would give them only 1/5 of the usual reward. It SHOULD take longer to get the same rewards as the hard core playerbase (cuz that’s only fair) and it’s better than excluding average skilled players from legendary armor. This way, casual players could still have fun with the actual boss battles instead of being forced to run specific builds they can barely play.
b) This or the SAB-like lobby should solve the problem
c) Certain builds will always be needed as long as there are timers, that thing’s apparently the biggest flaw of the so-called “challenging” content. The not existing timers in dungeons were what made them casual-friendly. It was optional to do a berserker build or not, many casuals even came to like meta builds thanks to the learning time they had in casual groups.

Imo, raid difficulty should be in general more about player’s movement and reaction speed rather than the equipment one has. That’s what I loved about Liadri, it took me dozens of tries to defeat her, testing different builds/tactics/buff food I saw in youtube videos and finally defeating her – with my own build and playstyle (because I couldn’t adapt to the ones from the videos xD). That was probably my favorite moment in 3 years of playing GW2, I cleared that content with my own skill and not in the best way someone else did. But maybe it’s just me who thinks it should be this way.

Sorry that this comment is so long again ._.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Hey all.

From the moment raids were first announced for GW2, I could already see problems on the horizon. Just the way they tried to sell the idea of Raids gave me the impression that things were not going to work out well. When ANet starts to mention things like how it will be the most difficult content in the game and, in their own words, cause players to shed tears (e.g. "And if you fail to fill these roles? You’re going to have a bad time. But don’t worry, as we’re leaving you a repair anvil at the entrance. You know—to collect your tears on. ") then you just know things are going to be a mess.

Here’s a breakdown on why I don’t like Raids as they are.

1: The creation of ‘Challenging Content’ should not be taken to unreasonable extremes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not challenging content in itself that I do not like. In fact, I love challenging content. But what I don’t like is when the completion of challenging content is not dependent on my own skills, but rather the skills of 9 other players who I have to hope are incredibly competent. The room for error in Raids is so minuscule that having even one mediocre player on your team can mean the difference between success and failure, and this is a sad situation because usually I like helping new or inexperienced players in dungeons or fractals, but raids do not allow for this friendly community behavior because of how extreme the difficulty curve is and how toxic it can cause your raid group to become.

This, unfortunately, not only makes finding good raid groups incredibly frustrating, but it also alienates a large portion of the player-base from what is meant to be the primary new, permanent form of end game content. I don’t see how you can quite literally alienate a vast majority of your playerbase by nerfing other end game modes like dungeons, only to replace it with a ludicrously challenging game mode that pretty much gives any player that is even remotely casual or less skilled a big middle finger.

2: Functionality for forming and maintaining Raid groups is incredibly lackluster

To put it plainly, putting a group together for raids is a very painful process. Despite ANet’s attempts to sell it as a no wait, jump in and go game mode that results in instant fun, the reality is far from that idealistic vision. Because Raid groups rely on the squad UI, using the looking for group tool to form parties becomes near impossible. What’s worse is that if anyone leaves your party post entering the raid, getting a new one to join becomes an even more difficult affair thanks to the lack of functionality with squads.

This needs to be streamlined more to make finding groups for Raids less frustrating.

3: Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase

This is another worry I have with Raids, and that is that exclusive rewards like legendary armor will be unattainable by a vast majority of players because of the difficulty of Raids and the inconvenience of forming Raid groups.

Unlike legendary weapons, which can be acquired regardless of what game modes you play, legendary armor will seemingly be a Raid only affair. Not only do I feel this is unfair for players who might not enjoy Raids, but I also believe it hurts the “play how you want” policy that ANet has been punting for years and yet have somehow completely ignored as they’ve further developed the game.

4: My suggestions for solutions

- Firstly, I think Raids should have a scale-able difficulty curve, like fractals, with higher difficulty levels offering more rewards. Not only does this give less experienced players an opportunity to learn the mechanics in a lower difficulty scale, thus preparing them adequately for the higher levels, but it also allows players looking for a true challenge to still find it. This will also allow lower-skill players to earn the same rewards as high-end players, albiet at a slower rate, which helps mitigate the impact of alienating your playerbase.

- Raids should be split up into five and ten player archetypes. Not everyone is part of a large guild that can more easily put together a group for raids. I think new raids should be added that specifically cater to and are balanced around five player groups to allow for more leeway for those facing limitations, whether they are related to time or manpower.

- Squad functionality should be improved to make forming groups for Raids easier and more streamlined.

- At the moment, Raids force certain builds or group compositions, which once again go against the “play how you want” policy. I think ANet should allow for a bit more leeway (perhaps by removing time limitations on bosses) to allow for less than ideal group compositions to still succeed, even if at a slower rate.

5: Closing notes

As things are right now, I really don’t have the time or energy to spend on raids. It can take up to an hour or more just to find a ideal group and I’d much rather spend that precious time having fun in other game modes.

If it comes to a point where Raids are the primary end game content and the main focal point for updates going forward, while other end game content is abandoned or ignored, then I can honestly see myself quitting this game unless some improvements are made to Raid functionality overall. I didn’t buy GW2 for Raids or for forced play styles, or the promotion of toxic group behavior through elitist mindsets. If I wanted all that I would have bought another MMO like WoW.

Raids were not intended for casual players like yourself. Raids are optional content, get off your rocker and either become competent enough in the raid setting or don’t do them, it’s really simple.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

1: The creation of ‘Challenging Content’ should not be taken to unreasonable extremes.

And it hasn’t been, in the opinion of a large number of people, including many of those who have yet to succeed.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

2: Functionality for forming and maintaining Raid groups is incredibly lackluster

The functionality works fine. It could have more features, but it has the key elements:

• Squad leaders can lock/unlock who joins.
• There’s a “ready up” option, so that the group doesn’t start too soon.
• The leader can split up folks into teams, with their own chat, if desired.

Everything else is gravy.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

3: Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase

Doing anything in this game alienates someone. People complain that the 5k achievement awards only 400 gems, which they think “forces” them to buy more gems to afford “anything decent”.

I don’t see anything wrong with rewards tied to skill, to group challenges, to preference for certain game modes, as long as most of the rewards can be obtained by anyone. I’m not sure when “balanced rewards” meant that everyone “deserves” a “chance” to get everything — to me, games are more interesting when it rewards people for skill and tempts folks to try new things.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

4: My suggestions for solutions

I won’t comment on the solutions to problems I don’t think exist.

Why I don’t like most players in this game. They get rewarded for everything included failing. The moment they have to earn something they complain. There is nothing in this game that is hard, besides this raid and it’s difficulty is relative. I don’t personally find the raid mechanics difficult. The only difficult part about it is you fail it when its not your fault. This is the only thing I will agree with the OP on. I disagree with everything else because I feel that anet has catered enough to the people who just want to push 1 and smash keys.

For a game whose endgame is supposed to be cosmetic upgrades to your character, it seems pretty foolish to gate something like Legendary armor behind something you expect only 5% of players to complete.

Since when was the endgame about cosmetics. We must be playing a different game. Sounds like you play the Sims.

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

It’s not our problem that everything isn’t just handed to you, heaven forbid for once you have to be a decently skilled player and work for something.

Stop trying to get content nerfed because you’re not good enough to figure it out or you’re not willing to work hard enough to do it. 99% of everything in this game has been handed to us whether you’re a fantastic player, or mediocre.

Great coordination and play should be rewarded, getting rewarded because you “tried” shouldn’t cut it in end game raid content.

Welcome to exclusivity where the men are separated from the boys. There is nothing wrong with how difficult this raid is nor what it requires out of players. This is what raiding is and should be.

Bllade.1029:

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

It’s not our problem that everything isn’t just handed to you, heaven forbid for once you have to be a decently skilled player and work for something.

Stop trying to get content nerfed because you’re not good enough to figure it out or you’re not willing to work hard enough to do it. 99% of everything in this game has been handed to us whether you’re a fantastic player, or mediocre.

Great coordination and play should be rewarded, getting rewarded because you “tried” shouldn’t cut it in end game raid content.

Welcome to exclusivity where the men are separated from the boys. There is nothing wrong with how difficult this raid is nor what it requires out of players. This is what raiding is and should be.

If you cant read OP, stay out of the forums…
Reading seperates the little baby boys from men…this is what reading is, and should be!

Bllade.1029:

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

It’s not our problem that everything isn’t just handed to you, heaven forbid for once you have to be a decently skilled player and work for something.

Stop trying to get content nerfed because you’re not good enough to figure it out or you’re not willing to work hard enough to do it. 99% of everything in this game has been handed to us whether you’re a fantastic player, or mediocre.

Great coordination and play should be rewarded, getting rewarded because you “tried” shouldn’t cut it in end game raid content.

Welcome to exclusivity where the men are separated from the boys. There is nothing wrong with how difficult this raid is nor what it requires out of players. This is what raiding is and should be.

Lol. It’s amazing how people completely misconstrued the point I was trying to make.

As I said quite clearly in my original post (very clearly in fact), I like challenging content. My issue is not with the challenge itself, but rather with how inaccessible that content is, to the point where success is hindered by a lot of factors besides personal player skill.

- Finding a group and keeping it together is incredibly hard.
- The margin of error is so small that one bad player on the team can cause a failure (so the other nine good players get messed up).
- There’s no difficulty curve to ease people into the content, which results in a smaller pool of players doing the content, which in turn contributes to longer than necessary time spent trying to find a group.
- And lastly, the tools for managing Raid groups are borderline broken.

All of these factors contribute to a situation where running a Raid is simply more hassle than fun.

If you can’t understand these simple concepts, and take it as some sort of admission of personal laziness, then I feel sorry for you, because it means you cannot comprehend what others are trying to say, even though they’re laying it out quite clearly for you. You are one of those kinds of players who mistake broken content for challenging content. You assume difficulty is separating the “men” from the "boys’ when really it’s just a mess of poorly implemented features that is creating a wall between those who can take the time to bother working around that mess, and those who don’t actually have the time to wait an hour to get things rolling.

Asking for content to be FIXED does not = asking for it to be nerfed. Asking for a proper difficulty curve does not = asking for easier content. Asking for a situation where I don’t get kitten because I’m in a less than 100% perfect group composition does not = saying that my personal skill is low or that I don’t want challenge (I just don’t want a forced trinity situation where I have to play a build I don’t like because it’s the only one that works).

Lastly, remember that this is just a game. Try to have fun and stop thinking of how others can be screwed over. I find your demeanor to be very sad, because you seem to believe that it’s actually better that a majority of people should be alienated from what could become the primary form of end game content (separating the men from the boys, as you call it).

Silent The Gray.3091:

Raids were not intended for casual players like yourself. Raids are optional content, get off your rocker and either become competent enough in the raid setting or don’t do them, it’s really simple.

I’m not casual, and apparently you can’t read. sigh >_>

Thaddeus.4891:

Loli Ruri.8307:

I found it funny how there were a few people talking about how the game shouldn’t be reliant on a group of people, but individual skill, and yet the game is called “Guild Wars 2”. Funny that.

Ya, I find it funny too. It’s a MMO, not a single players game. Want some challenging content when only your skill count, there is Darksouls and others for that. GW2 is a MMO, it’s made to play with several players. That mean you must live with the good (socialize and teamwork) and the bad (rely on other people).

The name Guild Wars doesn’t really infer group content, thanks. “When I was a young girl, my father fought in the Guild Wars”. Faction fighting. What does Guild Wars have to do with a group of people/guild fighting random monsters.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Silent The Gray.3091:

Raids were not intended for casual players like yourself. Raids are optional content, get off your rocker and either become competent enough in the raid setting or don’t do them, it’s really simple.

I’m not casual, and apparently you can’t read. sigh >_>

Your points are valid. I don’t get what people are on about, unless they really don’t understand what you’re saying…

Well I must say the thread has become more toxic after moving it into the “Fractals, Dungeons and Raids” forum.

Nobodies asking for a nerf here, just difficulty levels so that everybody, including casuals, can experience the raid content.

Why would ArenaNet want to exclude maybe 90% of it’s player base, do they want to drive people away, doing that won’t pay their wages.

Loli Ruri.8307:

I found it funny how there were a few people talking about how the game shouldn’t be reliant on a group of people, but individual skill, and yet the game is called “Guild Wars 2”. Funny that.

And there is a movie called Blade Runner yet I didn’t see Harrison Ford dancing on a sword. Your point?

1. The room for error in Raids is so minuscule that having even one mediocre player on your team can mean the difference between success and failure, and this is a sad situation because usually I like helping new or inexperienced players in dungeons or fractals, but raids do not allow for this friendly community behavior because of how extreme the difficulty curve is and how toxic it can cause your raid group to become.

The difficulty of something can have no relevance on how toxic a community is. This forum was littered with thousands of posts of inexperienced players complaining about being kicked from dungeons because they did not know how to run them quickly. You’re trying to correlate bad behavior with difficulty, yet it’s prevalent everywhere. An inexperienced player stumbling into an open-world PvE farm and “messing it up” will earn them tons of harassment.

I’ve cleared the raid, and yet I still PUG it for fun to help others when I’m bored. Just because you’re unwilling to doesn’t mean others aren’t.

Despite ANet’s attempts to sell it as a no wait, jump in and go game mode that results in instant fun, the reality is far from that idealistic vision.

Class balance is not the same team as the raid designers. Every class should ideally be able to fulfill any role. If they don’t (and they don’t) then the people you complain to are Skills and Balance, not the raid designers.

Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase… Unlike legendary weapons, which can be acquired regardless of what game modes you play,

I’m really curious if you’ve ever talked to a WvW-exclusive player that’s tried to make a Legendary weapon. You cannot get dungeon tokens for the gifts… My point is that exclusive gear has existed before, and yet now that it exists somewhere else you’re trying to say it’s a problem? Maybe the difference is that now you’ve fallen outside the circle of players who can attain it.

Firstly, I think Raids should have a scale-able difficulty curve, like fractals, with higher difficulty levels offering more rewards.

Fractals is probably the best example to point to as to why scaling difficulty is really bad. It’s impossible to balance. Either a scale is too easy, or one’s too hard. The truth is that players will PUG whatever difficulty is the least amount of effort for the most rewards, so instead of seeing LF10,, you’ll see LF16m or whatever it is. This happened in World of Warcraft.

Raids should be split up into five and ten player archetypes.

In short, this won’t work because having a Healer + Tank + 8 damage is different in ratio from Healer + Tank + 3 damage. Most of the bosses won’t translate well into 5-man encounters. The mechanics also wouldn’t scale well, as some have 3-5 things happening at once.

At the moment, Raids force certain builds or group compositions, which once again go against the “play how you want” policy.

In short, you’re misquoting the “play how you want” quote. It doesn’t mean “everything is optimal”, it means “everything can maybe be viable.” You’re also quoting somethat that was said before raids were conceived.

It’s not a raid problem, but a skills and balance problem.

I really don’t have the time or energy to spend on raids.

I found the problem. Raids are doable by anyone who is willing to do what it takes to raid. If you are unwilling to do what it takes to play, then why do you expect to win? I have fun in raids; maybe raids just aren’t for you. They’re a small part of the content in the game; a very small one.

Just to weight in, class balance actually does have a lot to do with it. Some pull more damage, have better utility and are more demanded for raid groups. That is a reality and it does effect the raiding experience, so you can’t really discard it like that.

It might not be the raid teams department, but it most certainly is a consideration when designing challenging content… While power Reapers are by no means in a bad place for example, I have seen videos of Revenant damage and they make me drool.

SkylightMoon.1980:

He’s just another casual gw2 pve’er making the typical “its too hard for me so it should be easier for everyone else” childish argument we’ve heard a hundred times.

I’m not sure if you are the SkylightMoon I know, but if you are, you disappoint me. Can’t you seperate the actual difficulty of the raid, which is fine by the OP and the accessibility of that said raid?

The OP never said it’s too hard for me to do the content. He’s complaining that Anet dropped the ball when it come to the accessibility of the raid. I don’t agree 100% with the OP, but overall he is right.

To be clear. I have 5 characters in full ascended, I have my own Squad for raids and we are doing pretty ok for ourself in raid. For me raid are ok, but I can see that it missing key feature for a lot of people.

I said that a lot of times but, a Raid section in LFG, you should be able to use the LFG with a Squad instead leaving the Squad to find people and then invite them in the Squad. You should also be able so join or invite someone in a squad via the chat or the guild panel just like you can with a party. That’s pretty basic stuff that should be in the game since day one of the raids.

The other big point is that raid difficulty can’t be good for everybody. I find the difficulty perfect for my group, but it’s already in farm mode for some guild like DNT and it will be for a lot of other guild pretty soon. At the same time, a lot of players just can’t experience the raid and we should all stop saying that if you can’t experience the raid you are automatically a bad casual player because that’s not the case. Some of them are in a family/friend guild since day 1 with only 4-5 people. That doesn’t make them bad players. Some of them play thief with success since day one and now can’t get a place in pug raid, that doesn’t mean they are bad players. Some of them have ascended trinkets and weapons, but exotic armors (which is MORE than fine for the 1st Raid boss). He have a hard time getting a place in pugs raid, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad players.

The point is a content can’t sustain itself if it’s only for a small portion of it’s community. It’s just not economically viable and I want raid to last. I want to get new raid on a regular basis and it’s not in putting our head in the sand and screaming CASUAL each time someone said something that we gonna get more and more raids. And easy mode with less rewards would be a good thing for everybody. It would give players that can’t complete the raid a way to at least experience the content, it would allow some of those players to learn the fight and become better at it so they will be able to pull their weight in normal raids. These same players would gain a new way to slowly acquire the ascended gear they need. It would give a bigger pool of players for pugs to form Raid Squad, which will be easier to form. More people able to experience and enjoy the content will mean more financial reason for Anet to keep that content alive. Win-Win for everybody. The difficulty of the raids stay intact, but it’s accessibility increase.

SkylightMoon.1980:

dertingel.1730:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Sorry OP but you’re points are pretty stupid and I stopped reading after the first one when you said its too challenging.

“Your POINTS are stupid and i stopped reading AFTER THE FIRST ONE….”

Find the error!

You are saying:
I dont know what your opinion is, i dont even care about your arguments, i just wanna hate without any sense, cause i dislike your thread title.

He’s just another casual gw2 pve’er making the typical “its too hard for me so it should be easier for everyone else” childish argument we’ve heard a hundred times.

Lol. Please point out one instance where I said the content was too hard for me.

If you aren’t going to add anything constructive or relevant to the discussion, and are only interested in resorting to baseless insults, all you’ll end up doing is discrediting yourself and no-one else.

Thaddeus.4891:

SkylightMoon.1980:

He’s just another casual gw2 pve’er making the typical “its too hard for me so it should be easier for everyone else” childish argument we’ve heard a hundred times.

I’m not sure if you are the SkylightMoon I know, but if you are, you disappoint me. Can’t you seperate the actual difficulty of the raid, which is fine by the OP and the accessibility of that said raid?

The OP never said it’s too hard for me to do the content. He’s complaining that Anet dropped the ball when it come to the accessibility of the raid. I don’t agree 100% with the OP, but overall he is right.

To be clear. I have 5 characters in full ascended, I have my own Squad for raids and we are doing pretty ok for ourself in raid. For me raid are ok, but I can see that it missing key feature for a lot of people.

I said that a lot of times but, a Raid section in LFG, you should be able to use the LFG with a Squad instead leaving the Squad to find people and then invite them in the Squad. You should also be able so join or invite someone in a squad via the chat or the guild panel just like you can with a party. That’s pretty basic stuff that should be in the game since day one of the raids.

The other big point is that raid difficulty can’t be good for everybody. I find the difficulty perfect for my group, but it’s already in farm mode for some guild like DNT and it will be for a lot of other guild pretty soon. At the same time, a lot of players just can’t experience the raid and we should all stop saying that if you can’t experience the raid you are automatically a bad casual player because that’s not the case. Some of them are in a family/friend guild since day 1 with only 4-5 people. That doesn’t make them bad players. Some of them play thief with success since day one and now can’t get a place in pug raid, that doesn’t mean they are bad players. Some of them have ascended trinkets and weapons, but exotic armors (which is MORE than fine for the 1st Raid boss). He have a hard time getting a place in pugs raid, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad players.

The point is a content can’t sustain itself if it’s only for a small portion of it’s community. It’s just not economically viable and I want raid to last. I want to get new raid on a regular basis and it’s not in putting our head in the sand and screaming CASUAL each time someone said something that we gonna get more and more raids. And easy mode with less rewards would be a good thing for everybody. It would give players that can’t complete the raid a way to at least experience the content, it would allow some of those players to learn the fight and become better at it so they will be able to pull their weight in normal raids. These same players would gain a new way to slowly acquire the ascended gear they need. It would give a bigger pool of players for pugs to form Raid Squad, which will be easier to form. More people able to experience and enjoy the content will mean more financial reason for Anet to keep that content alive. Win-Win for everybody. The difficulty of the raids stay intact, but it’s accessibility increase.

Thank you Thaddeus. Even though you don’t agree with me on all points, I appreciate that you took the time to at least understand what I was trying to say and do I respect your opinion as well.

I know a lot of my points may not necessarily be correct (it’s just my personal opinion after all), and perhaps some of them are built more on the frustration of my personal experiences in Raids, but if people give helpful, constructive suggestions where they feel I am off the mark (as many have been gracious enough to do), or can improve on my own suggestions where they might have been less than ideal, I’m more than willing to read what they have to say and further discuss it with them. I just get frustrated when people simply resort to insults like “he must be a dirty casual” the moment someone says something that doesn’t align with their beliefs or personal views. It adds nothing constructive and simply makes the thread more toxic.

I also apologize if – in my frustration – I have at any point unknowingly offended anyone in turn. That isn’t my intention, though I have been feeling somewhat annoyed with the direction the discussion took.

Ultimately, I do agree on the position of making Raids more accessible, especially if they are going to be the primary focus as far as end game content is concerned going forward. There are a lot of ways to do that, but I think adding a difficulty curve for newer players and fixing the squad UI and group finding functionalities would go a long way towards helping the situation.

As far as group functions are concerned, I really do wish we could colour code each group. My groups for content that require coordination, like raids and Triple Trouble etc, always set us up to teams with specific duties, and colours would really help.

Thaddeus.4891:

SkylightMoon.1980:

He’s just another casual gw2 pve’er making the typical “its too hard for me so it should be easier for everyone else” childish argument we’ve heard a hundred times.

I’m not sure if you are the SkylightMoon I know, but if you are, you disappoint me. Can’t you seperate the actual difficulty of the raid, which is fine by the OP and the accessibility of that said raid?

The OP never said it’s too hard for me to do the content. He’s complaining that Anet dropped the ball when it come to the accessibility of the raid. I don’t agree 100% with the OP, but overall he is right.

To be clear. I have 5 characters in full ascended, I have my own Squad for raids and we are doing pretty ok for ourself in raid. For me raid are ok, but I can see that it missing key feature for a lot of people.

I said that a lot of times but, a Raid section in LFG, you should be able to use the LFG with a Squad instead leaving the Squad to find people and then invite them in the Squad. You should also be able so join or invite someone in a squad via the chat or the guild panel just like you can with a party. That’s pretty basic stuff that should be in the game since day one of the raids.

The other big point is that raid difficulty can’t be good for everybody. I find the difficulty perfect for my group, but it’s already in farm mode for some guild like DNT and it will be for a lot of other guild pretty soon. At the same time, a lot of players just can’t experience the raid and we should all stop saying that if you can’t experience the raid you are automatically a bad casual player because that’s not the case. Some of them are in a family/friend guild since day 1 with only 4-5 people. That doesn’t make them bad players. Some of them play thief with success since day one and now can’t get a place in pug raid, that doesn’t mean they are bad players. Some of them have ascended trinkets and weapons, but exotic armors (which is MORE than fine for the 1st Raid boss). He have a hard time getting a place in pugs raid, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad players.

The point is a content can’t sustain itself if it’s only for a small portion of it’s community. It’s just not economically viable and I want raid to last. I want to get new raid on a regular basis and it’s not in putting our head in the sand and screaming CASUAL each time someone said something that we gonna get more and more raids. And easy mode with less rewards would be a good thing for everybody. It would give players that can’t complete the raid a way to at least experience the content, it would allow some of those players to learn the fight and become better at it so they will be able to pull their weight in normal raids. These same players would gain a new way to slowly acquire the ascended gear they need. It would give a bigger pool of players for pugs to form Raid Squad, which will be easier to form. More people able to experience and enjoy the content will mean more financial reason for Anet to keep that content alive. Win-Win for everybody. The difficulty of the raids stay intact, but it’s accessibility increase.

Your last criticism isnt very good because theres no proof that the current “growing” playerbase can’t sustain itself. Ever since this game was released people have been very vocal about wanting more difficult content. Anet gave us this and they specifically said that its meant to be very very challenging. It is.

Raids in their current state can be completed by anyone who is committed enough. I used to think VG was hard and now I think of it as trash basically. Its still easy to wipe but the level of mechanics and dps necessary to kill it is far less than something demanding like sabetha or gorseval.

The raiding community has just started as well. Give it time to grow. You’re saying it can’t sustain and raids were just released a week ago. Maybe it can’t sustain, maybe it can. Give it a few months, even wait until the next wing it released.

Pugging VG isn’t even an uncommon practice now. The community has continually gotten more skilled as this game has been developed and released successively more difficult content.

The point is, you are basically asking for an “LFR” difficulty for raids after only a week and thats a very premature criticism to make.

rainisword.7860:

Your last criticism isnt very good because theres no proof that the current “growing” playerbase can’t sustain itself. Ever since this game was released people have been very vocal about wanting more difficult content. Anet gave us this and they specifically said that its meant to be very very challenging. It is.

Raids in their current state can be completed by anyone who is committed enough. I used to think VG was hard and now I think of it as trash basically. Its still easy to wipe but the level of mechanics and dps necessary to kill it is far less than something demanding like sabetha or gorseval.

The raiding community has just started as well. Give it time to grow. You’re saying it can’t sustain and raids were just released a week ago. Maybe it can’t sustain, maybe it can. Give it a few months, even wait until the next wing it released.

Pugging VG isn’t even an uncommon practice now. The community has continually gotten more skilled as this game has been developed and released successively more difficult content.

The point is, you are basically asking for an “LFR” difficulty for raids after only a week and thats a very premature criticism to make.

Just to be clear. I don’t want to do easier difficulty raid myself. If anything I would want a harder difficulty for raids.

My point, and it’s the same point since they announced challenging group content, even before raid were announced. It need to have different level of difficulty because there is such a wide variance in the level of skill of the player base. For some people the current raid have the right amount of difficulty, for other it’s too hard and for other it’s too easy.

Now, you are right I don’t know if raid will be able to sustain themselves. I have no idea and nobody does. But the goal would be to make the content accessible to the most people possible to make sure that the content can sustain itself.

PvP League range from Amber league for noobs to Legendary league for hardcore PvP players. As long as you like playing PvP you gonna have a place in that content and you will be able to enjoy it. Casual like Hardcore, unskilled killed skilled, Noobs like Veteran, they will have find a place in those league with a content that fit their needs.

Raid on the other end are for a portion of the community that love instanced PvE. I don’t know what the size of it. Maybe it will be huge and there will be no problem. But if raid are easy enough that a good portion of the community can participate, the most hardcore players won’t find it enough challenging.

Raid are 2 weeks old, not 1. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because like I said it was revelant before they even announced raid.

Thaddeus.4891:

rainisword.7860:

Your last criticism isnt very good because theres no proof that the current “growing” playerbase can’t sustain itself. Ever since this game was released people have been very vocal about wanting more difficult content. Anet gave us this and they specifically said that its meant to be very very challenging. It is.

Raids in their current state can be completed by anyone who is committed enough. I used to think VG was hard and now I think of it as trash basically. Its still easy to wipe but the level of mechanics and dps necessary to kill it is far less than something demanding like sabetha or gorseval.

The raiding community has just started as well. Give it time to grow. You’re saying it can’t sustain and raids were just released a week ago. Maybe it can’t sustain, maybe it can. Give it a few months, even wait until the next wing it released.

Pugging VG isn’t even an uncommon practice now. The community has continually gotten more skilled as this game has been developed and released successively more difficult content.

The point is, you are basically asking for an “LFR” difficulty for raids after only a week and thats a very premature criticism to make.

Just to be clear. I don’t want to do easier difficulty raid myself. If anything I would want a harder difficulty for raids.

My point, and it’s the same point since they announced challenging group content, even before raid were announced. It need to have different level of difficulty because there is such a wide variance in the level of skill of the player base. For some people the current raid have the right amount of difficulty, for other it’s too hard and for other it’s too easy.

Now, you are right I don’t know if raid will be able to sustain themselves. I have no idea and nobody does. But the goal would be to make the content accessible to the most people possible to make sure that the content can sustain itself.

PvP League range from Amber league for noobs to Legendary league for hardcore PvP players. As long as you like playing PvP you gonna have a place in that content and you will be able to enjoy it. Casual like Hardcore, unskilled killed skilled, Noobs like Veteran, they will have find a place in those league with a content that fit their needs.

Raid on the other end are for a portion of the community that love instanced PvE. I don’t know what the size of it. Maybe it will be huge and there will be no problem. But if raid are easy enough that a good portion of the community can participate, the most hardcore players won’t find it enough challenging.

Raid are 2 weeks old, not 1. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because like I said it was revelant before they even announced raid.

gw2 biggest feature was its access ability for example hard cores players were able to make legendary weapon in 3 months(gold farming stuff) but for me it took 2 years to craft one legendary weapon..i really did not mind because at the end every one had chance to go through game’s content and get stuff they want.
similar example that you gave is pvp league…obviously hard core pre made(teams) will get to higher tiers and they will make legendary back piece faster than others for some it might take much longer but at the end they all have shot at it.
unlike legendary armor and raiding which is exclusively made for certain pve players hard core or what ever
can wvw player get it?? no
can pvp player get it?? no
can non raider pve player get it?? no

you have to defeat the first boss to unlock the mastery to unlock the legendary armor.
it is true that you can get the currency even if you fail. but at least the first boss is the wall you have to break to even consider the possibility of a legendary armor.
i’m fine with the raid mechanics and the number of players required, although it is unforgiving:
- if 1 player make 1 mistake you wipe.
- you need specific roles to complete it, and it’s ok, but it is not fair if those roles can only be filled by some classes better than others.

i would be fine if any class could fulfill any role instead of having mandatory classes in the raids and if you haven’t ever played that class or not interested to, you are forced now to do so just because you picked the wrong class at the beginning

A couple of points here.

To the argument “there should be both easier and harder versions of raids so all players can access raids”:
All content in the game is tuned to a specific difficulty. There is so much content in this game that players who play at a “raiding level” find extremely easy, and therefore not very interesting to complete. That’s why we’ve been calling for harder content in this game for several years. I would argue that having content that is too easy is just as limiting to players who are looking for a challenge as raids are to players who are not looking for that challenge. (I understand that there is a difference in that I know can still go complete easy content, while people think they cannot go complete raids but honestly, it’s all a matter of perception. Players consider raids too hard, so they don’t do them while definitely still being capable. I consider extremely easy content too boring, so I don’t do it while definitely still being capable.) Just because not everybody enjoys the difficulty or ease of certain content doesn’t mean that we should have different difficulty levels for everything.

To the argument “success in raids is too reliant on your groupmates”:
Well… yes? That’s sort of exactly the point. We asked for challenging group content. Designed to be completed in a group. So if someone in your group messes up, the success of the group takes a hit. I will say however, that people are blowing this point way out of proportion. On my first VG kill, there was literally a point during phase 3 or 5 (can’t remember which exactly), in which literally 9/10 of our group members were in the down state. Our warrior was able to banner us and we recovered and killed the boss on that attempt due to excellent communication and group play. There is room for mistakes (albeit smaller ones) in these fights (especially VG). Another example. I play a lot of tempest and I on multiple occasions, have been able to see when someone in my group was not going to make it to the green circle in time, use rebound, and save multiple people in my group from going down leading to successful kills. That’s part of playing with a group. You cover for others mistakes, and they cover for yours. If you’re in a group where it seems like only one person’s mistakes are leading to wipes, I’d say you should probably make sure that more mistakes aren’t happening that you’re not noticing. I’ve watched a lot of very sloppy VG attempts result in kills.

To the argument “it’s not fair that legendary items are locked behind ‘exclusive’ pve content”:
Legendaries have always been locked behind content…. The original ones required you to play WvW (gift of battle), do dungeons (dungeon gifts), map complete (gift of exploration), etc. We have a fractals specific legendary backpack. We have a pvp specific legendary backpack. We have a raid specific legendary armor set. Every player in this game has easy access to all of this content. If you consider yourself “not a pvp player”, is it still unfair that that backpack exists even though “you don’t have access to it”? I’d say no. It seems incredibly likely that we will not see the possibility of creating this armor set for many many months to come (given that collection I requires all three wings of Spirit Vale to complete, and all legendary collections so far have also had II and III collections, implying that we will need to wait for every wing of two additional raids to be released into the game). Who knows what the difficulty level of spirit vale will look like at that point. (I don’t think the devs are going to nerf the bosses to make them easier, but we see the content getting “easier” even now with more and more pug groups finding success on these fights.) It seems likely that in 5-6 months from now, pugs will be regularly completing spirit vale bosses without much difficulty.

To the argument “there are mandatory classes you must have in raids”:
I have two counter points for this:
1. Acquiring a level 80 character in full exotic armor, with ascended weapons and trinkets, is frankly not very hard. (Weapons and trinkets can be acquired from a main character – weapons also can be bought after just 3 weeks of wipes in the raid, no boss kill required.) It’s not difficult to identify builds/classes that do well, and make a character that fills that role (i.e. herald, ps war, condi engi, tempest, chrono, etc.).
2. I can say with 100% certainty that every class in the game has participated in a VG kill so far, and with slightly lower certainty that every class in the game has cleared this wing. While maybe not “optimal”, it is certainly possible – albeit harder to find a group that will let you play that class.

tl;dr – let’s all give raids a few months before we start calling for nerfs and changes. The hardcore players seem very happy, the devs seem happy, and the info out there about raids seems like it’s right on par with what you want for a raid release. If you don’t consider yourself a hardcore raider, be patient and see what the situation is like in a few months once raids have had time to settle.