Guild Wars 2

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Already started from a casual non-hardcore non-programmer point of view.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

I don’t think limiting raids to 15-20 is the answer, it should allow for the majority of a large guild to enter. There are ways to handle scaling better so that it doesn’t turn into a massive guild zerg fighting a boss.
One way to counter zerg mentality is to simply have additional events spawn during boss fights that requires more people to peel off and deal with as player numbers increase. Lyssa is a good example. When the three points start to become contested some players need to go handle that event or everyone gets locked out of the boss. This could turn into 4,5, or more events as players numbers hit 20, 30, 50 etc. Balling up at the boss then is no longer an option when you have several events that must be handled or the boss resets.

I don’t think that is a reasonable expectation numbers wise. Every member of your guild is not likely to be at the skill level where they could complete the raid. Assuming a quarter of your members have the skills. Even then how do you ensure that every member of the raid is forced to pull their weight? as the Dev’s stated that becomes a major issue with large numbers.

Even with an event style system for raids I’d still only picture it being around 20 people,
E.G: Jack , John get on those cannons keep the inquest off our backs, Mary and Sue get that force-field up to prevent reinforcements getting through, Assault squad one go down to the ground level and keep those golems pinned , Assault squad two get up on that walkway and take out those long range casters, You five with me we’re going to fight the boss on this unstable rafter above a giant lava pit. obviously timed so that you can’t just do the events separately.

Dalanor.5387:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Why not let the player decide when he wants to progress? Let average Joe take a longer break and try the next bosses with some other guys.

Thats exactly what weekly / monthly resets do.

Imagine player daddy joe enters a raid the first time on the 25th of the month. He and his team beat the first 3 bosses, 6 still left. Daddy joe then goes on holiday / looks after his little kiddies and suddenly the month is over. Reset. All his progress gone. He only tried it once.

Why not let him try with other groups whenever he wants/can play again?

No point in adding raids until the combat system actually feels finished.

1. Fix the dodge system, there is no point in investing anything in defensive stats or the majority of the games defensive mechanics. And there is no chance at ever having build diversity so long as dodge trumps every single player, mob, and boss mechanic. It either needs to be reigned in as a part of the stat system, or it needs to be more rigidly limited as something entirely removed from the stat system. For the record, the former is a better idea in my opinion. Dodge could add to build diversity rather than subtract from it.

2. Make conditions a viable secondary damage source, make critical a less dependent secondary damage source. Conditions and critical damage are in seriously weird places, they are both supposed to be ‘sub-damage’ stats; sort of like healing is a sub-defense stat. Yet one is powerful enough to stand alone as a primary damage source, but only if you are literally alone and usually playing certain classes, and the other is viable in any play for any class but only when heavily parented by a primary stat. Conditions are largely a mechanical problem which I can’t say how to fix, critical on the other hand I can. Make critical damage a stand alone stat, no longer dependent on power, it builds up on its own, to be a viable damage source somewhat less powerful and consistent than power damage, similar to conditions. Additionally, like conditions, make it immune to armor as a secondary damage source should be.

3. Assuming those two ever get fixed, rework mobs and bosses to where they better take advantage of those mechanics. Less mechanics which one-shot in spite of your build and more which aim for certain players depending on their build, basically giving AI a strategy against players, this would particularly affect bosses but would slightly affect mobs as well.

Concerning raiding, to be honest, this is the first MMO where I have been able to stand maxing a character, and now I have five. So I have never participated in raid content. But this game really is awesome and if I would like to see such content anywhere it would be here. But GW2s most basic mechanics are still not ready for higher tier content, wurm and tequatl both proved that. If they add raids, just for them to be more boring, off scaled, defensive phase/burn phase DPS races endlessly repeated the same because of limiting combat mechanics, they’ll just be ignored like much of the existing content already is.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Already started from a casual non-hardcore non-programmer point of view.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

runeblade.7514:

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

To remove it, I suspect the entire engine would have to be re-written.

To discourage it? Enemies which can pierce through any number of players with a swing rather than hit just one. Stack at your own peril.

Ehm, stacking has nothing to do with cleave attacks. Guardian’s aegis would still negate the damage despite it hits multiple players. Dodge still negates every damage. Active defenses still negates every damage. Reflects and absorbs still negates every damage (lets take aside stealth patches ’kay?).
So please, please let this issue die silently in this thread since vast majority of users who comment on this topic spread only misinformation which hurts both the discussion and players who likes to melee stuff.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Imagine player daddy joe enters a raid the first time on the 25th of the month. He and his team beat the first 3 bosses, 6 still left. Daddy joe then goes on holiday / looks after his little kiddies and suddenly the month is over. Reset. All his progress gone. He only tried it once.

Why not let him try with other groups whenever he wants/can play again? A try once a month… why not?

I would label “daddy joe” as a casual player and it’s a non-issue from a design standpoint. Thats why i said weekly or monthly resets are fine. Well, weekly is still better to let other non-casuals (read: people with more time to invest in the game) progress.
Or maybe implement and ID system as in WoW and save progress for each individual player.

Crystal Reid.2481:

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Design wise, one of the largest issues in the game is the way you scale content. The only way we see it being done is by increasing health and numbers, which doesn’t create a better experience.

And as a result of the inadequate scaling system, most content breaks once a certain threshold of players appear. In many cases this threshold is between 5 and 10 players, yet you easily see 3-4 times the ideal amount of players appearing. Guild bounties are a perfect example, where the boss is best suited for a small group of players, yet always is done with a large group, resulting in a completely trivial and uninteresting fight.

So please, do not scale raids. Create a set number of players the raid is designed around and do not allow any more players than that to enter. Otherwise the raid will become broken because of an inadequate scaling system, like we have seen in most large scale content.

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Scaling:

While it isnt perfect, it is preferable to the alternative. As Ive said before, the idea of possibly having to leave people I have been playing with for a long time out of guild raid nights makes me sick to my stomach a little. That said, I do believe scaling should be limited to make harder raids plausible (for example raids that scale from 8-24 people).

Difficulty:

The difficulty should come in the coordination and teamwork required to accomplish the task at hand. I understand this is hard to reconcile with scaling issues, but I think that is a challenge GW2/ArenaNet should try to overcome. The downside to scaling is just too great. There have been some good recommendations regarding this topic throughout this thread already.

Practically, I think the demarcation comes at the coordination level. Raids shouldnt be possible by groups that refuse to communicate in any way, but, at the same time, they shouldnt necessarily require voice comm programs either. You should shoot for a difficulty somewhere between the two.

Bottom line, though – EVERY player should be considered when designing raids. You really have to avoid creating tiers or castes of players in game based on who is and who isn’t allowed to raid (by the community).

Stacking:

In my opinion, this issue is not exclusive to raids and should be tabled or discussed in a separate thread.

AI:

Same as stacking, this is a macro topic that could apply to just about any PVE content in the game. Let’s focus on the areas exclusive to raiding (at least in this thread).

Rewards:

Raiding cannot be seen as the pinnacle of GW2 end game. It has to be complimentary to dungeons, Living Story, WvW, guild missions, world bosses, etc. If it isn’t approached this way, you risk creating an in game caste system similar to those found in other games (and that many of us came to GW2 to escape from). Rewards need to be modeled after reward models in other areas of the game (if there are issues with rewards as a whole, they should be addressed in a macro thread as well).

Punishment for failing a raid:

Punishment from failure should not include any kind of lock out (eg, only X number of attempts a week). Telling people they cannot participate in part of the game isnt what GW2 is about. Beyond that, im unsure what is meant by punishment.

Ive posted alot in this thread (and doubt I am done) because this is a topic I care alot about. On one hand, I worry that something akin to raiding from other games (and the hate and exclusionary actions that comes with it) will sneak its way into GW2. On the other hand, Im excited at the prospect of something new to do with my guild and large groups of friends in game.

I trust Anet to think of all guilds and all players if/when they take the game down this path.

Wow, what an amount of information in this thread already…

Haven’t yet read through all of it, so bear with me if this is already mentioned, just would like to add my 2 cents.

Proposal Overview

A simple, yet functional solution for scaling of a raid.

Proposal Functionality

Have a tier-system like it exists for guild bounties.

Depending on whether raids are guild-based or ffa, provide an appropriate system to purchase or unlock a consumable for a raid of a specific tier. To start a raid of a specific tier, a consumable of that tier needs to be used.

There would be 3 tiers, normal (for a small group, more like the story path of a dungeon), challenging (for a full-sized group of players who need to really work together to master the raid) and insane (for groups of those who can solo anything in this game with their arms tied to their back).

Associated Risks

- 3 Tiers may not be fine-grained enough.
- Rewards have to be sensibly balanced between the tiers. I personally think, rewards for raids should be in the form of tokens, like with dungeons. Different tiers of a raid would earn successful raider a different amount of such tokens. Additionally, finishing a raid on insane level, could add a bonus reward, like a title or a medal depending on the number of successful raids.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Should raids be restricted to the guild level that require some form of guild activity/currency to activate/enter, or should they be accessible by anyone? What are your thoughts on that specific?

In my opinion, the challenge of the raid itself should be the only gatekeeper. Locking a raid behind some sort of currency or activity creates an arbitrary accessibility requirement. One of the biggest problems I saw with Wildstar was that there was a twelve-step attunement players had to do just to have a chance to attempt the raids.

I’ve seen time and time again this just stunts raiding communities as a whole. (Like it did with Wildstar) If a group of highly skilled but unguilded players decide to play together, they should have that choice. There are many games with pick-up-group raiding, with a recent release being Destiny.

Crystal Reid.2481:

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?
-Fixed it makes it easier to account for what each person should be doing and makes it less possible for someone to kitten their way through. While inclusiveness takes priority in other content maintaining difficulty is key here.

Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.
I was of the impression the whole idea of this was to add some super challenging content, if you’re using casual to describe low playtime but with possibly high skill then they’ll be fine, if you’re using casual to describe someone who is not very good at the game then no they won’t be able to.

Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?
My raid mechanics post outline some boons/buffs that punish stacking.

AI- What AI should be in place?
An advanced reactionary AI if possible that identifies and targets major threats instead of a preset stat distribution.

Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?
Outlined in my rewards proposal, There should be a set of guaranteed rewards (an armor set and weapon set) and some RNG rewards (cosmetic jewels/minis/tonics) to encourage re-playability.

Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?
I outlined a death debuff in another post. A complete wipe should also maybe set a group back a bit more than just resetting the bosses health

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

I have a question for you.
When designing our proposals, should we think of raiding as an endgame type of content, or a more horizontal type of content (available for all kinds of players)?

This is important to know, because scaling, difficulty, rewards and punishment are tied to this concept.
I have some ideas regarding scaling and difficulty, but those contradict some of the principles of the game that we have seen so far (like how every type of content is designed to be completed by both players with experience and players without), or how there are no gear gates to access content. And just to be clear, when I say endgame, I’m not just talking about being lvl 80, but also having a complete set of at least, exotic armor, weapons and trinkets, and having some knowledge of the mechanics of the game and the class you are playing. (for example, just autoattacking shouldn’t be sufficient to complete this kind of content)

Dalanor.5387:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

runeblade.7514:

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

To remove it, I suspect the entire engine would have to be re-written.

To discourage it? Enemies which can pierce through any number of players with a swing rather than hit just one. Stack at your own peril.

Ehm, stacking has nothing to do with cleave attacks. Guardian’s aegis would still negate the damage despite it hits multiple players. Dodge still negates every damage. Active defenses still negates every damage. Reflects and absorbs still negates every damage (lets take aside stealth patches ’kay?).
So please, please let this issue die silently in this thread since vast majority of users who comment on this topic spread only misinformation which hurts both the discussion and players who likes to melee stuff.

Let me be honest – I don’t see stacking as a “problem” which has to be completely rooted out. I see it as a byproduct of design and it has been present since the first time I played an MMO where you could do that.

Heck, my first “raid” as modern definitions call it was rife with stacking so Bard songs could continue to affect people fighting, so enemies could be AOEd down quickly from casters, and slightly so they didn’t ping pong all over the place chasing different targets.

(. . . the first “raid” as I’d call it was the Lupogg King and that one was hilarious for other reasons. Stacking didn’t matter as much as safe spots and management of the aggro methods. )

I don’t want stacking to go away so much as I want counterplay for it.

Normal Mode and Hard Mode Raids

TL; DR Clear distinction between difficulty for more causal players and more experienced min/maxers.

Goal: Two difficulty tiers for players to choose from- Normal and Hard.

Functionality:
Normal: Would require coordination similar to the Boss Blitz.

Hard: Would require coordination similar to Triple Trouble (maybe have optional gambits to challenge players even more).

Risks:
Potentially splitting some players, this already occurs with Teq and Triple Trouble, so I don’t think players interested in this type of content would notice a split.

Note: I cut out a lot of my original notepad doc., will add more if there is interest.

Blaeys.3102:

Scaling:

While it isnt perfect, it is preferable to the alternative. As Ive said before, the idea of possibly having to leave people I have been playing with for a long time out of guild raid nights makes me sick to my stomach a little. That said, I do believe scaling should be limited to make harder raids plausible (for example raids that scale from 8-24 people).

Difficulty:

The difficulty should come in the coordination and teamwork required to accomplish the task at hand. I understand this is hard to reconcile with scaling issues, but I think that is a challenge GW2/ArenaNet should try to overcome. The downside to scaling is just too great. There have been some good recommendations regarding this topic throughout this thread already.

Practically, I think the demarcation comes at the coordination level. Raids shouldnt be possible by groups that refuse to communicate in any way, but, at the same time, they shouldnt necessarily require voice comm programs either. You should shoot for a difficulty somewhere between the two.

Bottom line, though – EVERY player should be considered when designing raids. You really have to avoid creating tiers or castes of players in game based on who is and who isn’t allowed to raid (by the community).

..

Rewards:

Raiding cannot be seen as the pinnacle of GW2 end game. It has to be complimentary to dungeons, Living Story, WvW, guild missions, world bosses, etc. If it isn’t approached this way, you risk creating an in game caste system similar to those found in other games (and that many of us came to GW2 to escape from). Rewards need to be modeled after reward models in other areas of the game (if there are issues with rewards as a whole, they should be addressed in a macro thread as well).

Scaling
I’d much rather have fixed size on the raids, than the alternative. I originally thought the raids should be scalable, but after reading Chris’ post about the problems this would cause in designing the encounters, I immediately changed my mind to fixed size.
In no way would I prefer lowering the quality of the encounters to make sure I could get everyone online in my guild in at once.
We have survived being odd numbers (not dividable by 5) for dungeons for 2 years, and we still managed to fill the gaps with “outsiders” or taking turns in who got to come along, and I’m sure we can survive it here.
Making the entrance cooldown low enough, I’m sure we’ll be able to cycle through our members for the raids.
We can always put a limiter on how many times you can claim the exclusive rewards (as I suggested), like once per week. This way, the X players who did not get to go on monday, can still join in for the go on wednesday and claim their exclusive rewards, while those who were also in on monday will only get the daily rewards on wednesday (unless they beat a boss they did not beat on monday).

Difficulty
As for difficulty, communication should definitely be necessary. I’d even prefer if voice communication was needed.
I’m fine with wide accessibility, but it must still be hard. Beating the later bosses (or whatever it turns out to be) must be an achievement. It has to take hard work, and for a big part of the playerbase it should take a long time to get to the end (probably myself included).

Rewards
Raids should be the pinnacle (of PvE). It should be the hardest, and the rewards should be exclusive. They should not be available anywhere else, and they should not be tradable.
I’m all for a “lesser” version of whatever skins will be in there. Just like the PvP Glorious armor set.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Dalanor.5387:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

runeblade.7514:

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

To remove it, I suspect the entire engine would have to be re-written.

To discourage it? Enemies which can pierce through any number of players with a swing rather than hit just one. Stack at your own peril.

Ehm, stacking has nothing to do with cleave attacks. Guardian’s aegis would still negate the damage despite it hits multiple players. Dodge still negates every damage. Active defenses still negates every damage. Reflects and absorbs still negates every damage (lets take aside stealth patches ’kay?).
So please, please let this issue die silently in this thread since vast majority of users who comment on this topic spread only misinformation which hurts both the discussion and players who likes to melee stuff.

Let me be honest – I don’t see stacking as a “problem” which has to be completely rooted out. I see it as a byproduct of design and it has been present since the first time I played an MMO where you could do that.

Heck, my first “raid” as modern definitions call it was rife with stacking so Bard songs could continue to affect people fighting, so enemies could be AOEd down quickly from casters, and slightly so they didn’t ping pong all over the place chasing different targets.

(. . . the first “raid” as I’d call it was the Lupogg King and that one was hilarious for other reasons. Stacking didn’t matter as much as safe spots and management of the aggro methods. )

I don’t want stacking to go away so much as I want counterplay for it.

The problem with stacking as I see it, is that the enemies we fight aren’t given the tools to counter it.

In most cases, all enemies are given is the capability to hit a small number of targets with their normal attacks, and their stronger attacks capable of hitting the entire group all have obvious tells and AoE rings, allowing players to negate them with a single dodge, or more often, just take the hit and recover in seconds from the group healing.

What bosses need are attacks that discourage players from standing in the same spot or next to the boss for the entire duration of the fight. For instance, give their melee attacks a cleave that hits 25 targets and AoE effects that linger in an area like with the spider queen and Tequalt’s poison. This will encourage players to move around more and be a natural counter to stacking.

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

We need to clarify casual? What does it mean? Competent or incompetent? Goods vs. Bads? Or some other gray, meaningless, pairing of x vs. y, that somehow annoys someone?

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

The premise of this game was cooperation, interactivity between professions and their skills, and a sense of organic grouping. The fact that content becomes easier in the face of numbers is a problem related to groups scaling above events. Fix the scaling, add some mechanics that make stacking unreliable, but still viable, and you would be on the way to fixing this issue.

• AI- What AI should be in place? Hard to say on this one since I ma not an AI wizard. hoping the contractor you guys have on board since April this year are ironing this one out.

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be? The rewards should be:

1. Highly desirable because of looks not stats
2. Difficult to obtain
3. Wholly attainable through active play that reinforces goal setting, rather than trying to entice players through RNG and tickling those addictive neural pathways.
4. Exclusive to the dungeons, cannot be recolored and sold in the gem store

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

It should cost something to get your ticket to get in. The rewards would have to be worth the price of admission. The coin used to get in should be an amount to cause some distress if lost.

You wipe? You start over from the beginning. You wipe to many times? You are removed from the instance with a thanks try again later. This actually does two things:

1. It allows for mistakes to be overcome and not feel totally punitive
2. It makes the content last longer because it will take a while to build up the coin to get access to the raid.

aRestless.6213:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Should raids be restricted to the guild level that require some form of guild activity/currency to activate/enter, or should they be accessible by anyone? What are your thoughts on that specific?

I think we want progression, without the you-need-that-equipment-to-enter we know from other MMOs. I don’t see how this would be possible without a guild that “unlocks” tier after tier.

I think we want no gear-treadmill/grinding to get to the next raid-tier. But it is still possible that every player “unlocks” tier after tier for himself with playing.

I really would like this kind of progression for the player and not (only) for the guild. If a player changes the guild he should not loose his own progression.

Greetings.

Dalanor.5387:

I would label “daddy joe” as a casual player and it’s a non-issue from a design standpoint. Thats why i said weekly or monthly resets are fine. Well, weekly is still better to let other non-casuals (read: people with more time to invest in the game) progress.
Or maybe implement and ID system as in WoW and save progress for each individual player.

Daddy joe could be hardcore daddy joe as well. Everybody grows up, most people have less time the older they get. He might be a champion-raider but one with little time left. Why would you exclude him?

Naqaj.6219:

So far the majority of suggestions seem to replicate the boss-focused raid designs of other MMOs, including all the flaws and problems those designs inherit. With GW2 already missing one of the main design objectives of other MMO’s raids (provide continuous power progression to stretch player retention), a raid in GW2 can (and should) take completely different forms.

I think your post reflects an excellent, new idea for raids.

Greetings.

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

You ask for answers, but I give you more Questions!

Controversal Topics v1.01 that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

-If Raids should be rigid, how many party members should be the maximum allowed? 6,10, 20, 30? and why that specific number?

-If raids should be flexible, how can ANet keep difficulty consistent at 15 people vs. 150 people?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player. How difficult do you want it to be?

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove/discourage stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place? A simple AI or a very complex AI?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be? What kind of rewards do you want to see? How should players get to those rewards: RNG, Tokens, both? Compare to the rest of the game, where should raiding rewards in the reward hierarchy should be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be? Some people want failing a raid(aka wiping) or dying to be very punishing. Do you want wiping on a raid to be more punishing than wiping on a dungeon? Should dying be more punishing than currently is?

• 5-12 months after raids are released, how do you want to see the people raid normally? Should raids surprise players even at that time(“That boss shouldn’t do that yet!”) or, do you want people to know the raid from inside and out?

• How should party kicking be managed in raiding? Let say there is one bad apple in the raid. Does it require 2 votes to kick like a normal party? Majority rules? Party leader dictator?

• Should ANet implement a special userface for raiding such as seeing HP bars for all party members or should it be kept how it is to keep the UI clean?

• Preparing for raids- Should raids be allowed to be completed with an average-skilled group that is full with masterwork/fine gear, or should everyone be required to have exotic gear?

-Should raids be allowed to be completed with full berserker/soldier gear group with an average group? Or do you want to see a group with mix and match gear be more effective than full zerker?

• Selling raid spots- Yay or nay? Why?

• Skipping- Should it be an issue? If it shouldn’t be an issue, should ANet bother making better AI for trash mobs.

• Reset- How long should it take to reset a raid? Weekly, monthly, daily?

Leablo.2651:

What exactly is the intention behind creating “raid” content that cannot already be expressed in terms of existing dungeons or fractals? Is it about creating another category of content that is gated to guilds?

Usually the name comes from the number of players the instance is mostly designed for

1 player: “Personal Story, Living Story” (yes, up to 5 players, but mostly designed for 1)
2 player (not existing in GW2)
5 player: Dungeon/Fractal
10 player (or 8, or more): Raid

And with designing for more players there can be other, more challenging game mechanics in the instance.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Should raids be restricted to the guild level that require some form of guild activity/currency to activate/enter, or should they be accessible by anyone? What are your thoughts on that specific?

Raids should be opened/activated/entered by everyone, not just guilds, and it should be without currency.

Binding raids only to guilds seems like an artificial gate/barrier.

Greetings.

runeblade.7514:

-If raids should be flexible, how can ANet keep difficulty consistent at 15 people vs. 150 people?

Well if you can’t make difficulty consistent across multiple playercounts then pick one playercount and make it the “recommended “ then tune the scaling elements so that other playercounts make the raid harder. This will probably mean a low playercount ceiling will have to be made (like 25) but it would help remove elminate the need for players to stick to one player count as long as they have the skills to make up for scaling.

This isn’t an open world environment where scaling has to make sure it you don’t hate that dumb PVT newbie that showing up and upscaling the event because the people in the instance should have control who joins. Added a player in an instanced environment can cause an encounter to be harder instead without causing the same player friction as an open enviroment.

I’ve been thinking about typing up my proposal for a while now. Since it fits really well into the scaling/difficulty/reward discussion, this is a good a time as any.

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW
Use many of GW2’s existing strengths to build a randomized raiding system, which automatically adapts for group size and skill.

GOAL OF PROPOSAL
There are several parts of GW2 that are really extraordinary, and they can be leveraged to build an powerful dynamic raiding system which will be fun for a wide variety of play-styles and group compositions. These pieces are the following:

• Flexible group size with the ability to join or leave at any time (from WvW and Meta-Bosses)
• Randomized encounters with adjustable difficulty (from Fractals)
• A wide variety of encounter/boss mechanics (from Fractals, Dungeons, and LW)

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY
In its simplest form, this proposal will function as a endless sequence of random encounters, lasting 5-15 minutes. These encounters could be “waves” of enemies in a defense scenario, or “rooms” in a dungeon or whatever. The important part is that this raid is dynamically generated, which allows it to adapt to changing circumstances of group size and skill. This format allows the follow benefits:

1) Flexible group size, with the freedom for individuals to join or leave at will
The raid would be randomly pulling from a large pool of possible encounters. Each encounter can be designed for a certain group size. As people join or leave, the next “room” or “wave” would be chosen from the set of encounters appropriate for the current number of players. This would give Anet the freedom to design content for a specific number of players, without forcing the group to maintain a specific size.

2) Scaling difficulty and rewards
Each time the victory conditions are met for a “room,” then the difficulty and rewards will increase for the next “room.” As each room is won, both the difficulty and reward continue to increase, until eventually the group starts to lose. At this point, the difficulty could either reset to 0, or be decreased by 1. Either way, the difficulty will be dynamically set by the group as they succeed or fail. Hardcore players can push it to new limits, and casual players can enjoy it on an easier difficulty.

3) A wide variety of encounter mechanics
Anet has designed countless boss/mob mechanics. In order to build a large library of random encounters, all of these mechanics could be used. This is especially great for LW content that is no longer in game, allowing Anet to use that work again. Because of the dynamic scaling, these do not need to be “once size fits all” mechanics. Large groups could have a chance of fighting the Claw of Jormag. Small groups might run into the Mossman.

4) Easily expandable and highly replayable
Anet could upgrade and expand this game mode by adding new possible “rooms.” In fact, every LW release could add an associated room to the options. The more the better! This way, the experience will be different every time. The number and skill of your teammate will be always changing, along with which random encounter are rolled up. Each play through would be a unique experience, and as more “rooms” are added, that will continue to increase.

ASSOCIATED RISKS

• Lack of story: Random content does not really have a story attached to it. That said, when was the last time you paid attention to the story in AC?
• Development Load: While I believe this proposal will allow Anet to leverage some existing assets, it will still be a big commitment to build 100+ short encounters. Developing Dev tools specifically for this purpose is a must.
• Maintenance: Properly balancing and maintaining a 100+ short encounters, will be a significant drain on resources. Although with appropriate Dev tools that can be mitigated.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Dalanor.5387:

I would label “daddy joe” as a casual player and it’s a non-issue from a design standpoint. Thats why i said weekly or monthly resets are fine. Well, weekly is still better to let other non-casuals (read: people with more time to invest in the game) progress.
Or maybe implement and ID system as in WoW and save progress for each individual player.

Daddy joe could be hardcore daddy joe as well. Everybody grows up, most people have less time the older they get. He might be a champion-raider but one with little time left. Why would you exclude him?

He wouldn’t necessary get excluded from the content. Depending on the encounters length a week should be enough to complete it especially with saved progess. Don’t think about 10 hour long instances with a dozen boss and trash run though the other way around should be avoided too with half an hour long rushes (before farm state, thats another issue when that happens).

Scaling:

• You cannot achieve perfect balance without fixing the raid size. However, fixed raid sizes have always been an issue with accessibility. These two factors are simply irreconcilable. The more accessible you try to make a raid, the less perfectly it will become balanced.
  
  For example: Let’s say that a raid could scale between 10 and 40 players. There would inevitably be some “sweet spot” difficulty that would be considered the easiest. (i.e.: 23) The community will recognize this and raid groups would then only fill up to that amount. Even though they could take in more players, they know this makes it more difficult for themselves, and therefore won’t. This happened during the Boss Blitz and also Tequatl on the turret defense teams. This has happened in other games as well that have attempted this.

Suggested Raid Size:

• It should be between about 10-15 in my opinion. The group should not be so large that fights become “zergy.” I believe making raiding accessible is important, even though there will inevitably be some “easier” or “harder” size. However, it should not have a huge range, and should definitely not creep into the “zergy” territory. There comes a point where it begins to not matter what an individual is doing anymore. (“Spamming 1”) It also becomes incredibly more difficult to actually kill players because of how many revives there are potentially.

Proposal Overview

For 4-5 party raids, have a specific section of the raid focused on an aspect of varying difficulty

Goal of Proposal

Keeping content challenging, whilst accommodating lesser skilled players

Proposal Functionality

Assuming that the party of 5 mechanic will remain in place, I propose that in a similar vein to how dungeons are run, there will be different paths on a raid. Not so much that there will be different “stories” altogether for it, rather for example, one party deals with a jumping puzzle, whilst another fights a dodge heavy mob, and another fights a dps-race mob. The idea being, if you are skilled in one area specifically (dodging/jumping/condition) you can be involved in that aspect of a raid. Meaning if a player is new to a raid, they can be placed into a party dealing with an “easier section” of the raid.

Associated Risks

Players purposely always joining the easiest raid party due to laziness
Possible backlash to failing the more difficult sections.

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Scaling
A scaling system for the sake of flexibility. Something simple and easier to balance, like three tiers of scaling for, say, 10-men, 15-men and 20-men groups, instead of a more complex “enter with whatever size you want” scaling. Raiding should not be guild-exclusive, neither. PUGs should be able to form a party and do it. Guilds could simply have better tools for it (and more motivation, should raids award guild merits).

Difficulty
First, I think the playerbase wants raiding in GW2 because they want challenging, endgame content. However, in my opinion, challenging content is not equal to near-impossible content. People want challenging content, but they also want to be able to beat it. :P They want something that makes them think outside of the box, that forces them to play better and to learn, and ultimately something that makes them feel accomplished. You don’t need “ultra-hard” content to acchieve that. In fact, “ultra hard” content only alienates the community.

Second, how do we define casual player here? Because any player, casual or hardcore, should be able to finish a raid as long as they are willing to learn and put into some effort and dedication. The main question I ask you back is, how can the game give to the casual playerbase the motivation and the tools for them to learn and to get better? My answer is: with layered difficulty, and with clarity. Encounters should be designed as such that, even if the player repeatily loses, they can understand what they did wrong, and _ have an idea_ on what they should have done better. So, I’d say the issue is not so much how difficult it should, but more on how it should be presented to the player.

Third, I highly disagree that coordination should be the main difficult point of raids. That’s why I dislike world boss events. What about players like me, who want challenging content that focus more on actual combat mechanics? That forces us to master the combat system itself? And what about pugs who can’t coordinate with voice chat or do not have previous practice with their party members? Yes, coordination should still be a factor, but only up to a point. The difficulty of the raiding should, instead, be based on the mastery of the combat system and on the player’s ability to analyze the situation and react/ improvize properly. For that, we need interesting secondary mechanics, and an enemy’s AI that can counterplay, surprise, and effectively execute core combat strategies (burst, cc-lock, conding locking, healing at the right time, kite and chase effectively, etc).

Stacking and AI
While I already addressed the AI issue above, what about stacking? How can we remove stacking without revamping the entire combat system? Instead, I’d say that stacking should be a goal, an objective. And more: it should be something hard to acchieve. In other words, there should exist anti-stacking mechanics, but those mechanics should be purposefully situational and/ or contextual, so that players would have to find the right opportunity to stack.

Rewards
Horizontal progression. Lots of horizontal progression. Not only cosmetics, like skins, miniatures, dyes, etc, but also unique account-bound upgrades/ privileges/ unlocks.

Many of the rewards should be unique, especially when it comes to skins. Some skins/ miniatures/ etc should not be tradeable for the sake of privilege, but generally, there’s not much of a problem if most of them are. Tradeable skins should be rare, as they usually are, while account-bound privilege skins should not be obtained through RNG.

Raiding should also be a nice source for ascended gear, and more importantly, it should be a valid way to work towards precursors for legendaries.

Acchievements and collectibles for raids, with a one-time gem reward could also be cool.

Difficulty:
The main thing I wanted to bring up is this: People need to distinguish the difference between “learning” and “challenging.”

• Learning: The best example I have is this: If a player is carelessly standing in an AoE which gives them 15 seconds to escape from, and this spell happens to kill them immediately, this is not a question of difficulty; it’s about ignorance to the mechanic. The player underestimated the ability, or did not know it existed.
  
  If this mechanic was tuned for someone who did not understand the mechanic, it would be much more forgiving. Imagine what a different fight Liadri would be if her Shadowfall only dealt 500 damage instead of immediately downing a player! It might be “unfair” or “cheap”, but it’s definitely not “difficult.”

• Challenging: In my opinion, balance should assume the player does in fact understand the mechanic. It is only through assuming this that we can accurately measure how difficult it is. Using the Liadri example again, if Shadowfall gave the player 15 seconds to escape from, it would be much easier than one that fires every 4 seconds. This is only information you can gather when you balance around the assumption that players must grasp the mechanic, or they will fail/suffer dire consequences.

Raid Difficulty:

• Regardless of what the difficulty is tuned for per se, raid encounters should assume that players have a basic understanding of the encounters. This learning might come through trial and error, or through doing research and being guided. (Which most will do over time) There is already plenty of content that allows players to participate without needing to know everything that’s going on and with little to no personal responsibility.

Proposal Overview

My proposal is to use existing assets in Guild Wars 2 but to reuse them in an instanced format. Here are a few examples, Astrozintli Forelands basically using this idea, but instead of each being a path they would optional bosses, and a final boss, which may have differences in its abilities based on whether each optional boss was defeated. Second example the location would end in The Infestation but start at the Crystalwept Groves or even further south and focus on gathering an iron legion force to halt the advance of the branded army, eventually leading all the way into the heart of the branded area destroying the leader.

Goal of Proposal

Turning current open world areas into great potential raid areas, that have plenty of potential, but it hasn’t all been realized yet. This will allow less resources to go into the area, but tell a more full story and give a longer lasting impression to the players who take up the task of defending these areas. I think this will also allow a lot of lore of these areas to be put into these areas of the game without it needing to be said through NPC dialogue or cut scenes, which should also save time and money without diminishing the experience.

Proposal Functionality

These raids could become living world updates, but they would be limited in a single area, so most likely they wouldn’t be able to be integrated into a season so easily.

Associated Risks

With assets from already existing maps being used this may feel old fast, but on the other hand it may give off a more living world feel, showing how different groups are encountering new problems and how our actions as players affect them.

Length, these may become too long to be played often, and the rewards would have to be substantial enough to get people to run them more than one or twice for the novelty.

Nokaru.7831:

Scaling:

• You cannot achieve perfect balance without fixing the raid size. However, fixed raid sizes have always been an issue with accessibility. These two factors are simply irreconcilable. The more accessible you try to make a raid, the less perfectly it will become balanced.
  
  For example: Let’s say that a raid could scale between 10 and 40 players. There would inevitably be some “sweet spot” difficulty that would be considered the easiest. (i.e.: 23) The community will recognize this and raid groups would then only fill up to that amount. Even though they could take in more players, they know this makes it more difficult for themselves, and therefore won’t. This happened during the Boss Blitz and also Tequatl on the turret defense teams. This has happened in other games as well that have attempted this.

Suggested Raid Size:

• It should be between about 10-15 in my opinion. The group should not be so large that fights become “zergy.” I believe making raiding accessible is important, even though there will inevitably be some “easier” or “harder” size. However, it should not have a huge range, and should definitely not creep into the “zergy” territory. There comes a point where it begins to not matter what an individual is doing anymore. (“Spamming 1”) It also becomes incredibly more difficult to actually kill players because of how many revives there are potentially.

I like the recommendation of scaling between 8 and 16. This would make raiding viable as long as you have at least 8 people. As examples:

- If 8-16 people show up, you have one raid group
- if 17 people show up, you have two: one 8 man and one 9 man raid.
- If 33 people show up, you have three: one 16 man, one 8 and one 9 man raid

There are very few feasible numbers (none above 8 that I can think of) that would not result in feasible raid group sizes with this range – and it is a slight enough range that they should be able to develop something engaging and difficult.

Nokaru.7831:

Raid Difficulty:

• Regardless of what the difficulty is tuned for per se, raid encounters should assume that players have a basic understanding of the encounters. This learning might come through trial and error, or through doing research and being guided. (Which most will do over time) There is already plenty of content that allows players to participate without needing to know everything that’s going on and with little to no personal responsibility.

That’s the problem. GW2’s content is not very good at educating the player, so any challenging content always causes a reaction shock. What is the difference between a lv40 area and a lv70 area? Not much. Mob encounters are generally the same. The gradual increase in difficulty is generally unimpactful. But that is another issue of its own, and is off-topic.

runeblade.7514:

You ask for answers, but I give you more Questions!

Controversal Topics v1.01 that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

-If Raids should be rigid, how many party members should be the maximum allowed? 6,10, 20, 30? and why that specific number?

-If raids should be flexible, how can ANet keep difficulty consistent at 15 people vs. 150 people?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player. How difficult do you want it to be?

This is something I talked about to some extent in my proposal. I really don’t know how feasible this is, but I thought about making multiple “versions” of the same raid.

Imagine having the option to choose between:

Scaling:

• recommended 10 players
• recommended 25 players
• recommended 50 players
• recommended 100 players
• …

Difficulty:

• Casual (this would be the PuG friendly version, with fewer and less punishing mechanics etc. Just so everyone can experience the raiding content to some extent)

• Hard (this would the actual raid designed for small/big organized groups, very challenging)

Then based on this Anet can balance those instances with much more precision, they won’t have to rely on an automated scaling system. They could still use their scaling system for some minor adjustments (like when a group of 30 chooses the 25 player instance) but the big differences will be done manually. There could for example be a mechanic in the fight that can be handled by 50+ players, but isn’t feasible with only 10 players. Relying on an automated process to scale that mechanic correctly might get bad results. However if Anet does it manually, they have more freedom to scale it like they want to, or they could just outright remove it if it’s causing too much problems and isn’t essential to the encounter.

Obviously this will take way more time than just making one version of the raid and having it scale automatically, but if they can find the resources to do this I bet it’s worth the effort.

Proposal Overview

Truly challenging (and repayable) content – requires the mastery of all game mechanics, competence, cooperation and teamwork.
Content that rewards skill (and punishes failure) appropriately (with minimum RNG) and provides long term goals for dedicated players – unique aesthetic rewards (not RNG based).

Goal of Proposal

Replayable and challenging content for players who want to test and challenge their skill and knowledge of the game.

Proposal Functionality

The current design of the game does not provide anything for dedicated PvE players that are looking for challenge.
Elite Missions/Raids will fill the hole GW2 has had since the day one.

Associated Risks

Elite Missions/Raids may force the new or long term inexperienced to finally start learning the game if it no longer holds their hands.

The content should be Challenging and difficult:
Challenging: In that it requires you to learn,be observant and coordinate with others.
Difficult: In that even when you have the challenge down you must be very good at combat itself, dodging correctly ,deploying boons, ressing and supporting other teammates.
It’s the opposite of making sure everyone can complete it, the entire encounter should be designed to try and make a group fail.

Out of curiosity what ballpark figure are people aiming for in being able to complete the content?

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Scaling – Raids should be of pre-determined, rigid size. Not only do we have in-game experience with the pit-falls of scaling, we now have dev confirmation that this does indeed cause design problems. In order to have a cohesive, challenging experience, rigid raid size will be necessary. Players can and will make do with the inconvenience of having to conform to a group size, as they do now with dungeons, and as they have across other MMOs for the past decade. Understandably, GW2 is a game that is very casual friendly, but being casual DOES NOT mean being bad at the game. Nurture player skill and cater to the needs of the casual gamer by including features that support their needs rather then by dumbing things down. For example, by allowing you to save raid progress and pick up where you left off at a later time.
If scaling is a must, I would recommend a split: have a “Normal Mode” that has a rigid group size and is properly and precisely tuned and balanced, and then have an “Easy Mode” that has flexible group sizes so that communities can have their group tours, and so that players of lesser skill can more accessibly get a taste of the content.
Difficulty – raids don’t have to be the pinnacle of gaming challenge, but they should be a cohesive challenge none the less. Inclusion of a separate “easy mode” could be a good way to ease new players into raiding, and would stand as a way for casuals(or more to the point, less skilled players) to get to experience the content.
If opting for a single difficulty I would suggest that the raids be easier in so far as completion goes, but that there be additional objectives that naturally increase difficulty that the group can chose to go after. The additional objectives can range from being outright side-bosses that are more challenging but not required to clear the raid, to being natural optional difficulty enhancers such as defeating an encounter under certain circumstances, or opening a gate that let’s out more enemies during the fight or doing something during the fight to trigger additional more difficult mechanics.
Stacking -stacking isn’t inherently bad, it’s bad when it becomes the standard thing you do for the entire duration of the fight. Fight mechanics that discourage stacking (AoE, powerful bouncing attacks, condition spreading when too near to an infected ally, etc), and/or enhanced AI (see below) should be put in place.
AI – Not an area I have too many ideas for, but making mobs move around more, and giving them skills that reposition them, can contribute to diminishing stacking-play.
Rewards – stick to GW2’s base philosophy, don’t add gear tiers and gear grinds. Some form of token system similar to dungeons, which guarantee that players can chose what they want and get something for their time, would be good. Additionally, having rare drops that come from specific encounters within the raid would give great incentive to participation and would integrate the raids into the market. Rewards can range from skins, to tonics, to specialty items with quirky (but for the most part cosmetic) functionality, to recipes, to gear (exotics/ascended). This, on top of regular “trash drops” of the usual variety.
A FotM style solution can be used if gear-related progression is desired. By this I mean a non-combat stat that you can add to your character that facilitates progression through the raid (agony in the case of FotM). Not sure if such progression is generally desired for GW2 raids though.
Punishment – I don’t feel punishment needs to be anything special, groups should be allowed to try and re-try until they get it right. Individual encounters in the raid should fully reset after a failed attempt. Players should not be able to re-spawn (waypoint) while their group is in combat. The usual dungeon rules for the most part.

Punishing – if one player or all players fail, they should start from the beginning or get completely kicked out of the instance like in Underworld, Guild Wars 1.
That being said, even if the party fails an attempt, the monsters inside the instance should provide decent enough drops with relatively low RNG, again, like Underworld in Guild Wars 1 – Aatxe ecto drops.

Just my thoughts on the subjects brought up by runeblade….

Rigid Scaling. The thought of having it be flexible to the point where it would scale even if you had 8 people is a nice one, but I’d imagine an absolute nightmare to actually program. As we’ve seen in game, sometimes you just hit ‘sweet spots’ where the content is just not even remotely challenging. It needs a firm structure and it people can do it with less than the required amount (the suggested 10 earlier sounds really good to me), more power to them. Kinda like duoing a dungeon now.

Difficulty: Maybe I’ll get blasted for saying this, but 99% of this game is made for casual players. Having 1% of it where the content is really really difficult would not be a bad thing. There’s this idea that everyone should have access to everything but I don’t think that’s feasible. Raids are meant as endgame content always, and should reflect that. Anyone who enters should have a firm understanding of what’s coming their way.

Stacking – Mechanics are what is needed to prevent stacking. I mean lots of mechanics, not just one, and those mechanics need to be punishing. With GW2 right now, a boss fight can largely be summed up as a target with an insane amount of health with mechanics that aren’t terribly threatening in the short term to the player. That needs to change. If you’re dumb enough to be in the red circle of doom, you should be heavily penalized. Not just pop a heal skill and get right back to it. I also think the downed mechanic should be removed completely from raids, but maybe that falls under difficulty and not ways to prevent stacking (although I think it would).

AI: I’m not entirely sure where to go here but I think instead of Defiant you need something more akin to diminishing returns on cc and the like. On some fights, certain abilities should be required to be interrupted. And if theyre not interrupted, well gg start over. I will say, however, that boss fights post launch have been better than anything that shipped with the original game. Aetherblade Retreat as a whole was incredible mechanically and shifted the paradigm away from zerk everything and stacking as well.

Rewards: Purely cosmetic. Honestly, don’t even put stats on it, but it should not, under any circumstances, be tradeable or sellable on the AH. These things need to be earned, akin to Teq’s weapons. This game is severely lacking in anything prestigious because everything can just be bought and gold can easily be obtained just by dropping real cash on gems. They’ll need to come up with a way to distribute the loot in the raid, maybe limit a ‘roll’ to items only your class can use so people aren’t trolling by rolling on everything?

Punishment: Extremely harsh. Like I mentioned earlier, I think downed should be removed. Raids should be for players who really understand mechanics and how their class/team can cope with them. Failing to do so should result in failure, not just a ‘chance’ at failing; It should be a guarantee. I’m honestly thinking of a system more akin to what we saw in elite areas in the original GW. But that could open up more questions because of my comment that downed should be removed completely. Perhaps anyone dead would revive on a boss kill? And if the whole party wipes, you start over.

While I’ve addressed that, the main thing I’d like to say on the subject is that I’d like to see Raids in GW2 be very similar to the Elite areas of GW as opposed to more in line with traditional linear (or semi-linear) raids you find in other games. GW2’s strength is dynamic events, so make use of that to, in a sense, recreate areas like FoW and UW where set amounts of quests had to be completed in order to ‘finish’ the area. The map should be open. I’d love to see UW/FoW mechanics get updated, add boss fights regularly for events, and just various ways that could be played with, because really I think that’s GW2’s strength, how open it really is. When you confine all that and take away player choice, it can get stale much quicker. The reward system of the original GW is also what I’d like to see as well; Multiple raids which drop items that ultimately culminate in one item, as well as unique drops within the area.

I could go on about this subject for days. It’s what GW2 is missing right now for me, as a veteran player from the first BWE and a fairly hardcore player. Difficulty. Prestige. Mechanics. That’s what they should be about. And a final thought, I don’t like the notion of limiting these to guilds only in any way. PUG em if you want. But that fact shouldn’t effect the overall difficulty of the content.

Proposal Overview
Multi-step raids that start more casual-friendly and become more intense at later stages.

Goal of Proposal
The goal of a multi-step raid would be to make a good and challenging raid that doesn’t entirely exclude more casual players from the content. This will allow the biggest use of the majority of the content within the game, rather than all of it being seen only by the segment that wishes to/can raid.

Proposal Functionality
The best way to explain is by example. Let’s say the raid is to take down “The Devourer in the Mists”, which can be reached by using five hidden portals.

Step 1: Clear the open world events near where the portals are hidden, opening the single path dungeons that lead to them. A very casual event, able to be soloed by one or two random people. This is almost more of a “there’s something interesting here” sign than a part of the raid.

Step 2: 5 person teams enter the dungeons. These are all pretty much story mode dungeons with no extra paths. They are made to be team content, but they’re really not all that difficult. The dungeon gives appropriate rewards, and can be played as such. Or, the team can move on to …

Step 3: Activating the portal at the end of the dungeon starts a 5 minute timer and sends a message to teams in the other dungeons (if any). If they activate their own portals within that time, then all 5 teams are transported to the mists to face the Devourer. If time runs out, all teams with active portals are expelled from the instances and have to start again. (Note: The challenge here is “Are we communicating for the raid?”)

Step 4: The final fight, climax of the raid. This is the only part of the raid content that’s actually out of the grasp of a normal team. The rest of the content (the build-up to the fight) can be experienced in parts by non-raid players.

Associated Risks
Some people may become upset when they reach the end of the part that’s suited for them, and can’t progress through the next stage. However, this will happen with any difficult content put into the game, especially something like raids.

Casual does not mean one is a bad player or does not want hard content.
This should be in OP.

I mostly log in only for scale 50 FOTM, I haven’t touched the Living Story for months, nor do I role play or explore the world.
And why am I a casual player? Because the game does not provide a content (I) would like to be playing.

Nick.6972:

Punishing – if one player or all players fail, they should start from the beginning or get completely kicked out of the instance like in Underworld, Guild Wars 1.
That being said, even if the party fails an attempt, the monsters inside the instance should provide decent enough drops with relatively low RNG, again, like Underworld in Guild Wars 1 – Aatxe ecto drops.

Aatxes never dropped ecto for me. They would always drop trash white gear.

Sorry. The RNG drops of UW/FOW were crap – already we could do better in GW2 just by dropping “green or better” plus valuable junk for vendoring.

Hey guys,

first off I want to show my support for the proposition of NoTrigger to introduce “style infusions” and I think in its core it is very similar to what Conski Deshan and That Guy were on to when they were talking about having 5 tiers of raid specific armor. To recap: style infusions are a means of horzontal progression as an infusion alters the corresponding raidspecific armor/weapon visually – the higher the infusion the shinier. Besides that it behaves a lot like the ar counterpart as you are rewarded with style infusions at the end of a successful raid and you can combine them. I am really fond of this idea because this is a non-rng long term goal where those aiming for have feasible steps in between where they can feel a sense of progression.

Another idea I do like is that of leaderboards (afaik the last post about it was made by Snowball). In the end all new content can only provide that much replayability through simple completion of said content. This is where external (I am not saying extrinsic!) reinforcement comes into play to make people play the respective content differently – for example particularly fast, even though there are also other options, as in other leaderboard categories.
Other kinds of external reinforcements are achievements and rewards. While you can do a ton with those, I want to revisit Edgar Doirons statement: “Like Chris says, nothing is stopping you from doing [fractals] with less [people]. But I also think that doing it with Less should up the rewards”. My proposition how you could “up the rewards” include achievements for completing a raid being x men down and also granting a magic find bonus for each person that you are less than what’s supposed for the raid. This measure would provide replayability while also providing a workaround for the possible lack of a hardmode. To some extend the scaling issue is also tackled. Not through the means of actually changing the content (the option was there before as well) but by changing the mindset of the players. Because the option of doing a raid while being people short now is legitamized as I would like to call it. No sense of feeling cheated because you do the raid deliberatly with a handycap and it is not getting valued. You could mindlessly massacre chicken in a certain fractal – but nobody would if there were no achievement.
Opererant conditioning is a powerful tool, indeed – ask Skinner’s lab rat

PS: I would actually love to see that mf bonus in other parts of the game as well.
PS2: I would also love to hear an official statement on the chances of Season 1 living story encounters being revisited via (prolly fractal-)raids. Because if there is a chance I would think of ways to incorporate those into a raid format – or rather look it up in my notes.

What I’d like to see. Sorry this is split into two posts – I went over the 5001 word limit.

Failure

I’d want to see failure i.e. if your team wipes you’re out. It sounds harsh and it’s not something players are used to in the rest of the game but it makes everything much more interesting. It’s much more exciting if you know you could fail at any moment and it makes victory so much sweeter. Overcoming a challenge under pressure creates a real lasting sense of comradery. If you can just carry on from where you left off whenever you wipe it removes any sense of pressure and trivialises even the most difficult content.

I feel strongly about this – it’s very important.

Difficulty

I’d love for raids to be extremely difficult, or at least for some of them to be. I’m a fairly decent player and I wouldn’t want to be able to finish the Raids within the first few weeks or even month of them being released. Much of the PVE is GW2 is really very easy so if I can step straight from that into “challenging” content and immediately beat it – that’s a problem. I shouldn’t be good enough now – I’d want to see content that I need to better myself as a player to be able to complete.

Without getting too detailed for what’s really just a concept discussion I’d want to see more damaging enemies, with bigger skillsets, lots of area mechanics, lots of pressure and less vitality / toughness on mobs. So many enemies right now in GW2 have a massive pool of health and little else. Even some of the most impressive world bosses are ultimately killed by standing next to them and attacking until they die, with the odd reshuffle of players. There’s very little pressure and an individual player makes next to no difference. There is an element of organisational difficulty in them but it’s not ultimately all that interesting.

It also goes without saying – safespots and the like are a big no no.

Size

I’d prefer for Raids to involve more than 5 players, if anything to differentiate them from other content. However I’m not too fussy over an exact number. What I would not want to see however are world boss scale raids. In fact I probably wouldn’t want to see anything over 15 players. Beyond that some of the combat mechanics in GW2 start to break down (think cc, conditions) and each individual’s importance to the team starts to decrease. I think every player should be significant and ideally profession mechanics shouldn’t be hitting caps too much.

Scaling

In a perfect world I see no problem with scaling. If raids could be scaled perfectly with the number of players I’d totally support that. However they can’t. It’s hard enough to design high difficulty raids for a specific number of people without it being mathematically impossible let alone doing it for ten different group sizes.

I’d have no problem with teams entering with less than the recommended number of players if they want but there should ideally be one specific number of players in mind. I really think that trying to scale this kind of content that has to be so carefully tweaked is a mistake.

Progression

This is another hot topic. Some people like to see progression as they feel they are improving or getting closer to beating the content. Others see it as an artificial barrier to victory. I’m probably sitting inbetween the two. I don’t want to have to “grind” anything in order to have a chance of victory, but I don’t mind something like AR which I unlocked naturally as I progressed through fractals.

Would I mind if there were no progression? No. Would I mind if there was heavy progression? Yes.

Rewards

I’ve always felt a mix of tradeable and account bound rewards are important.

Account bound items are best for prestige items – they show that you personally managed to complete some content. The problem is that once you have the account bound items they are no longer rewarding. It’s also extremely frustrating to get the “wrong” reward out of a set – think fractal weapons. If you don’t want it, you don’t want it and because it’s account bound it’s useless to you. If there’s a set then drop it in a box and let players pick the reward.

Tradeable items however don’t have the same problem where after the first drop they become worthless. If the player doesn’t want it themselves they can give it away or sell it on the TP. To some players earning gold will be more motivating than unlocking a particular account bound skin anyway for example. Including tradeable items extends the life of content so long as they hold some kind of value.

RNG is very much a hot topic. I’m leaning towards the side of not wanting RNG, at least for the prestige account bound items anyway. If you manage to complete the content, you should be able to show it off. Prestige is however very much connected to rarity. The fewer the number of people that can complete the content, that have the item, the more impressive it is to see and the more “rewarding” it is. The liadri mini was like this for a short time although ultimately liadri turned out to be much easier than initially realised and nowadays the mini doesn’t mean much.

I’m not quite as fussed about RNG on tradeable items so long as the percentages are appropriate for the difficulty level of the raid.

It’s also worth noting that there could be multiple reward stages throughout a raid. Failing just before the end boss and getting nothing would be very frustrating. I don’t think that person should get the ultimate prestige reward, or the best chance at the rarest tradeable reward. They should however get something for what they did manage to do. A fairly easy way to do this would be to add chests after beating mini-bosses throughout the raid or something akin to that.

Duration

I’m not a fan of content that requires hours upon hours to complete. Difficult content and content that takes a long time to complete are two very different things. Admittedly I’m finding it difficult to come up with an actual length of time I’d like Raids to take. I’d say maybe in the ballpark of 1h30-2h but I’m fairly flexible on that, I suppose it depends how engaging it is.

It becomes more difficult to organise a team the bigger it is and the longer you need the team together for. Most people can find an hour long block at some point in the week – not everybody can find a four hour block and very few can spare an eight hour block. Furthermore anything gets boring after a while and that should be avoided.

One method suggested is to allow players to save their progress in the raid to allow them to leave and come back later. But it’s quite hard to get that exact team back together and if you run with other people you lose that sense of comradery. If you can run with other people you give yourself another issue to deal with – how do you prevent skipping?

All in all I feel like the best approach is for players to need to complete the Raid in one go but to keep the duration down.

Issues

The first issue I see is that there are certainly players who want to see very large scale raids. I strongly feel that large numbers just don’t work well with GW2 combat mechanics and are hard to tweak difficulty for. However I’m perhaps looking for something different to those people.

The second issue is that the level of difficulty I’m asking for is very unforgiving. It won’t be for everyone and there would for sure be people unhappy with it. For the record I have no problem whatsoever with some raids being harder than others. If some players want slightly easier raids than me that’s totally fine but I want to play the super kittene. Of course hard modes and / or multiple raids would mean a significant increase to the workload of the dev team which isn’t ideal. In the end though whatever difficulty is chosen it won’t be perfect for everyone. Somebody is going to be left out – I just think it’s time the so called “hardcore” players had their turn.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Nick.6972:

Punishing – if one player or all players fail, they should start from the beginning or get completely kicked out of the instance like in Underworld, Guild Wars 1.
That being said, even if the party fails an attempt, the monsters inside the instance should provide decent enough drops with relatively low RNG, again, like Underworld in Guild Wars 1 – Aatxe ecto drops.

Aatxes never dropped ecto for me. They would always drop trash white gear.

Sorry. The RNG drops of UW/FOW were crap – already we could do better in GW2 just by dropping “green or better” plus valuable junk for vendoring.

I’d argue ecto drops in GW1 in UW were far better than the equivilant value drops in GW2. Ectos were really worth something – I’d say that’s probably an exotic worth a few gold in GW2 and those are really quite rare. It’s very unusual for me to see a drop like that. In GW1 however each player would usually get a few ectos each run. I’d equate greens and most yellows to that “trash” gear from GW1.

Guild Campaigns: Overview
This introduces the concept of a ‘guild campaign’, which would be a new type of guild mission launchable through the guild interface.
It is similar to a guild challenge in that it is an organised combat-focussed task, but differs in that it requires map-wide presence, takes place over a longer period, and encourages and rewards community assistance.
It would be a variation on a raid system in that it takes place in the open world and encourages participation from anyone, where raids would be instanced and require more careful planning and specific builds. Furthermore, guild sponsorship is a cornerstone to the concept.

Purpose
To provide challenge to guilds through inclusive co-ordination of people, both theirs and unaffiliated; to provide a means for guilds to “give back” to the community in a similar spirit to guild sponsorship of Canthan New Year festivals in GW1.

Functionality
Guild campaigns would be launchable once per week per guild. Launching them initiates a meta-event chain on a map (where applicable). This may require the ability to start new maps in order to get guild members in first. The sponsoring guild is shown in the meta-event dialog on-screen.
Campaign events require co-ordinated participation across different areas of the map. Completion time should ideally be 30 minutes to an hour so that casual players can more easily fit this into their schedules.
Completing the campaign provides a weekly reward to all participants, including those not in the guild.

Examples
Straits of Devastation – invasion. A guild campaign would require all three invasion paths and the Temple of Balthazar event to succeed. Adding auxiliary events, requiring scouts/skirmishers to divert Orrian reinforcements from the main assault, may provide additional interest.

Southsun Cove – Karka queen. While it can already be initiated by a guild, this may become a suitable candidate if several queens appeared in different places, each requiring simultaneous participation.

Marionette. This wouldn’t even require any changes; it’s perfect as-is.

Dry Top – Tier 6. Probably the best example going forward, this requires several teams of different sizes to be responsible for different areas. While it must be started on the hour unlike the others, the reduced vendor prices and a bonus reward at tier 6 provide an excellent opportunity to give something to the community and keep t6 attainable long after Dry Top’s launch.

Risks
The present eligible meta-events are so diverse that balancing the difficulty in a Guild Campaign might be complicated – T6 Dry Top simply requires people in the right place at the right time, where Straits of Devastation requires knowing how to keep Veteran Risen Subjugators etc. from wiping the escorted NPCs. As the concept is intended to be accessible to new players and veterans alike, it would require adjustments to events that leave little margin for error.

This system would be in addition to raids, meaning extra development time. However, this is mitigated in that it can work with modifications to existing or previously existing content.

Don’t want anything that changes the core element of GWs. Might as well play a different game for that.

My ‘raid’ would mix in WvW and PvP elements. Sort of fall back onto some of the content in the first game like the practice teams on the Battle Isles, and Fort Aspenwood.

Ideally – A group has to break through multiple layers of some sort of fortification, ala Aspenwood. Different points would require different tasks to better support not everything being a DPS check. Protect an NPC, run supply, sustain a health drain, and the like. Enemies could use metabuilds in different points to create different sorts of challenges too, going back to the Battle Isles bit.

It could be a gateway to getting more people into wvw and pvp proper. Ideally it would be fun enough for people to do it and not whine about the rewards, but that is probably a long shot given this forum. I don’t think I would limit it towards specific guilds, but instead go with servers. Throw in a leader board for time/score like Guild War’s challenge missions, and server pride might creep back down into the lower tiers.

Actually yeah, just bring back challenge missions. That would cover most of what I want out of a GW “Raid.”

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Hi, I’ve been following these CDI topic’s, its awesome. So here’s my 5 cents on the subject of guild raiding.

• Scaling: Scaling should be dynamic based on both player level and Raid difficulty setting.

• Difficulty: There should be 3 difficulty settings. Easy, Veteran and Hardcore. This way both the experienced and the new to the game players can enjoy the content. I my self only play Story mode dungeons because the explore tracks are to difficult to play for me. And i know i’m not alone in that. Not everybody is a hardcore GW2 player, but everybody should have the option to enjoy raiding. Hence the 3 difficulty stages.

• Stacking: Some people love this, others hate it. I think if you put in some mechanics that spreads a groups raid. Like how the Marionette worked. (In fact, that content would work great for a large guilds raid.) However its nice if you mixes it up. Some raid missions that allow stacking, some that don’t. People will pick what they like to do best. everybody happy.

• AI: I think AI of whatever we’re fighting, should be on par with the raids difficulty setting. So that On the higher difficulty settings, player actually have to think of how to fight their opponents.

• Rewards: Rewards should scale with difficulty setting. but still be awesome. Like perhaps some type of armor or weapon skins you can only get from those raids. This way, people can do what they love best in GW2, show off!

• Punishment: In Easy mode, i think the same mechanics for re-spawn currently in story mode dungeons is fine. For Veteran, re-spawn should be on a timer. Like if you die, you have to wait X-time till you can re-spawn at the way point. On Hardcore, i’d say, if you’re dead, you’re dead! Only option to keep playing is if a player rezzes you. And if its party wipe, its game over. This is to reflect the true difficulty and in return the epic awesomeness when you win. The rewards there for should also reflect this.

So theres my idea. I think I’ve allowed plenty room for both the casual player and the epic hard core ones, and everything in-between to feel that raiding with their guild(s) are fun.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Let’s assume that because raiding would be a very new type of content for the game that it’s possible for us to re-write the principles of the game that we have seen so far.

That’s…. a bit scary to hear. I’m sure it’s intended in reference to game mechanics and encounter design, but I can’t help but read it as relating to rewards and the dreaded specter of gear progression. I’d like some reassurances that it doesn’t.