Guild Wars 2

Okay, how could an encounter be fun, now that we have more people to use?

Don`t do this
- Damage Sponges
With more people, there will be more damage. Try not to compensate this with a lot of health, without any other mechanics to look out for. Even if the lore asks for a dumb brute at this point, have other mechanics suplement the encounter.

Encounter Ideas
- Enviromental Weapons
Yes, they have become a bane and some will sigh at the pure mention of them, because the fights feel depended on them.
This not wrong.
However if not all people have to wield them, then it is a different matter and it adds a new layer to the fight.
We add to the “simple” attack and evade gameplay a defend and protect mechanic, which would allow other playstyles to shine through.
Things like the Guardians Shield would suddenly be more viable in dungeons.

While I know people think these things are patting a fight, it is more reasonable as a damage sponge where you just go brain afk.

- Dodging
Oh yeah. We need more dodging. Have fire and brimstone fall from the skies, like with Mai Trin. Not everywhere, but have every place of the battlefield have the possibility to be a dangerzone.
This gets people to move and reduces the stacking (which I loath. I prefer skill play and no brain afk as I mentioned before).

- Split the group
If anything I would love to see encounters that split the team. Have them do different things at the same time.
While it could be something simple like activating things, while another group is holding the boss at bay, it could also be something like that:
Imagine being on top of a tower (fought your way up)
The group has to chase the enemy they encounter up there, as he does not want to fight.
While one half is right behind it, as attacks slow the enemy down (he drops bombs to keep them at bay for example).
The other half is able to take a different route (maybe a jumping puzzle section) on the outside of the tower (maybe a magic one with flying platforms, think easier mad king tower) and stop the enemy on the half way point by closing a door.

- Evolving encounters
Continueing from the idea before, how about the encounter changes, depending on how the enemy is defeated?
Let`s combine some Ideas:

The enemy manages to get to the bottom of the tower. Here he activates a defense system that helps him fighting the whole group.

Another Idea would be choosing which path to follow him be.

If certain environmental items are being used against the boss, he will adapt (or the following) in later encounter.
He won`t be indestructible, but the fight becomes harder (maybe more rewarding) the more different techniques you use (the other way around, the whole thing could also be made easier, if you refrain from using the items)

Basically allow encounters to play out differently, to promote re playability (maybe with some little tongue and cheek humor. Maybe have five enemies who are optional, but combine for an extra boss later in the dungeon for revenge. go go power rangers )

Hello there,
its really nice to see this topic Chris, and also I hope that some of our ideas will be used.

At the beginning I have to say that I was thinking about raid content since release of Guild Wars 2, and a lot of my ideas was really cool (IMO), but after time I came to the final idea, which is IMO pretty good, and whats more important – possible to add to the Guild Wars 2 game and reasonable.

In my opinion you do not need to create a brand new mode, cause we’ve got alot of these – what we need is upgrading these things. After all we’ve got Guild Missions – right? Why not just use them, and create a new mission called “Raid” or something like that? In this game guild content is definitely something missing, we’ve got world bosses, which require very large amounts of people – and some of players are just nervous, that they simply cant do something enjoyable in the comfort of your guild – alone, without random people. We’ve got dungeons, fractals, pvp – its all cool, but you can not go and play there with a whole of our guild. Also there’s WvW, which is pretty, but some of guilds are nervous about that u can go there with 10/20 players, and be smashed by 60. Guild Missions are ok, but we miss a professional approach, and also many guilds got tired of doing the same thing weekly.

Here “raid” appear, which would be added to the guild missions, as a demanding challenge, where we’ve got to defeat the boss. But i mean a real boss – the entire raid
consisting of players will focus on this boss – not “going to him”, finding him or something else. Simply group in the right place, explain the tactics and trying to kill it First bosses doesnt have to be that hard, but let us unlock next, and next bosses, whichs is harder, and harder – and in the future u can announce new bosses which is going to be added and crate a hype. People would like to return to the game to try to beat the next boss. It would be really cool then

Next thing is that IMO raid shouldnt be limited for a 10/20 people or something like that. It is easy to imagine that every guild mate want to make a raid, but it may look like we’ve got 21 ready to play people, while there’s just 20 slots – sad, right? Let everyone have a fun there – as it works in guild missions, but for sure developers will have to work on scaling. In sum – let small,medium or even large guilds raid.

The last important thing is a challenge, what we should experience there. Everyone should have a role, and practice it – demanding boss is something important. Dont let us zerg and smash it, cause its boring. Anyway – Liadri boss was really cool – it wasnt that easy

Its all for now – thanks for reading!

Edit:
Ohh, and rewards, right?
Of course it may be some exotics, rares, merit points, influence, these tokens, which we gain by doing other guild missions, chance to loot ascended etc etc…
But beyond that u can reward people by titles – when they’ll beat a really hard boss etc

Jaken.6801:

So a Raid is basically a multi group (or bigger group) dungeon/instance if I am right, which has rewards and designs that do need the amount of people.
It is either damage or mechanics that are in play here.

As my Guild has died due to not enough greater group activities (Guild Missions were not enough) I suggested something like that a while back.

Ironicly with me not having any idea on how raids work (as I never played WoW and I did not experience Alliance Battles in FFXI and do not count Capital City Siege in Warhammer Online as such), this came to mind:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Multi-Party-Dungeon/first#post3557782

TD;LR
A dungeon which is not entirely depending on an organized party, but benefits from having more people.
More people raise the chances of more loot, but also the chance of harder encounter.
(This is an idea for a different approach to raid-dungeons, which could supplement the ones to come and offer something like an introduction from dungeon to raiding)
Basic Idea
- There are three paths leading to a central chamber.
- Each of the Paths will feature the same amount of events, which allows all of them to get the same amount of rewards.
- It is not required to have all three parties in the dungeon to get to the boss and the final chest
- While each party will not directly interact with each other, their presence influences the other parties process.
- Parties do not have to cooperate till the endboss, making it a little race to the finish if they decide to do so.
- Main goal is the end-chest.
- reward and dificulty at the end is based on the number of participants. Max loot and danger for full paths.
- The chances for single or multiple parties at the end (special loot) are the same

Graphic
(rough sketch)
- Each orange field represents an event zone, with the numbers indicating who is at the event (1.1 = Path 1, Event 1)
- Two numbers represent an event in which both parties can help/hinder the other party by finishing their event first.
- The Boss strenght and the acompanied loot is based on how many parties are in the map. There can be one scaling Boss, or one that changes depending on how many paths are cleared.

Example dungeon run
(szenarios depicted here are just an example. They are no fleshed out design)
- All groups start at the same time
- Group 1 reaches event 1.1 first and engages in a fight with a fire element.
- Group 2 reaches event 2.1 as well, is in a waterfilled glas-tunnel above them.
- Group 2 finishes the the fight first, causing it`s enemy to explode. This causes instabilities in the glass-tunnel and some water leaks down on event 1.1.
- Group 1 has now waterfields to draw the enemy in, cleanse the burning efect it aplies and debuff him. (help szenario)

- Group 3 in the meantime cleared their events 3.1 quickly and entered event 3.2. To proceed they have to choose one of two cages to fall down to create a bridge. Each cage holds an different enemy. They fight their choice and proceed.
- Group 1 just finishes event 1.2 but right as they are able to proceed the cage of 3.2 comes down, forcing them into a bonus event. (hindering event)

- Group 3 reaches event 3.3 first and defeats it. On the sides are cannons which fire on event 2.3. Since they can take the event with 4 people, they decide to give some coverfire to Group 2 who just arrives at event 2.3

- Even though they got held up by the cage, Group 1 reaches event 1.4 first and cleares it before the other two reach their 4th.
- They reach the final chamber and are faced with a decision: deactivating all remaining events so the others can proceed smoothly (loosing maybe a champ bag) or they wait for a bit. (Race insentive)
- Group 1 decides to ask on Mapchat which group wants to skip. Group 2 is allready in fight declines, while group 3 is willing to skip.

- All three groups are now at the final chamber.
- As all paths have been cleared they are faced with the final boss, who is balanced to take on 15 people.
- if only two (or one) groups would have been there, the boss would have been weaker or a completly different.
- After their win, all groups can open the chest and get an extra-reward, based on which version of the final Boss they defeated. Think amount of chains destroyed in the recent twistet marionette LS update

I could get behind this idea. It would alleviate my scaling concerns nicely and still offer serious large group challenges.

It would also allow some flexibility. It wouldnt necessarily have to be paths. It could also be something similar to Assault Knights opening portals to the Breachmaker or multiple map areas with mini-bosses/events to clear (ala Dry Top).

I appreciate that we’ve been asked to consider a ‘Raid Group’ to be up to 15 players, but I wanted to make some suggestions and pointers regarding this aspect.

I think that designing a raid based on group size, is going to be a limiting factor in what can be created as a raid. It would be better IMO, to not have a specific group size that is always the same for every raid. Instead you set the group size later in the process, based on the specifics of what the raid requires.

Take the Marionette for example, there is no real way that fight would work in a group of 15 people, but it’s probably the content that would be voted the best boss fight that’s been developed so far.

After a bit of practice this fight was generally done with 15-20 people per lane, and I think given more time for us to master it, it would have been doable with as little as 10 per lane (I suspect it probably ‘was’ done with 10 per lane at one point). You could bring this fight back as a 50 player raid (10 per lane), you might even be able to bring it back as a super hard 25 man raid (5 per lane), but not as a 15 player raid, 3 players per lane is just unrealistically small to be completed.

Therefore limiting raids to a very specific player size is also limiting the creative scope of the development team. I Marionette was being designed now, with the intent of being a raid, it just never would have happened.

From a technical point of view, I am guessing that the reason for a 15 man limit is based on the theoretical maximum size for a party. Any more than 15 players would – I assume – mean that there is not enough screen space to include the health bar of all party members.

Could there not instead be a way of connecting two parties together into ‘companies’ (squad is already in use)? The primary purpose would be to allow groups to ensure that they end up in the raid with others that they want to play with, and not randomly get grouped with another party that happened to start at the same time.

The parties might not be able to see the health bars of the players outside of their own party, but they could chat with each other using /team and the system would essentially enable you to design any raid you want.

Some examples might include :

1 party of 5 players (5 man raid in 1 group)
1 party of 10 players (10 man raid in 1 group)
1 company of 2 × 5 player parties (10 man raid in 2 groups)
1 party of 15 players (15 man raid in 1 group)
1 company of 3 × 5 player parties (15 man raid in 3 groups)
1 company of 5 × 5 player parties (25 man raid in 5 groups)
1 company of 3 × 15 player parties (45 man raid in 3 groups)
1 company of 10 × 15 player parties (150 man raid in 10 groups)

Kaz.5430:

From a technical point of view, I am guessing that the reason for a 15 man limit is based on the theoretical maximum size for a party. Any more than 15 players would – I assume – mean that there is not enough screen space to include the health bar of all party members.

I’m not sure the 15 man limit was made up because of screen space. I think the 15 man limit is an estimated size, above which any encounter would start to become dumbed down by the amount of players. For every additional player in the team, less effort is needed per player.
Also all their particle effects would decrease visibility of indicators you need to see.
In my opinion, 10 or 15 players is probably the best size (also makes it possible to combine teams of 5), no scaling and preferably just one raid size (per raid) from the start.

As for your talk about the Marionette. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a few (in time) big one-boss raids like the Marionette for bigger raid groups (like the Vault bosses in WoW during WotLK).

Blaeys.3102:

I could get behind this idea. It would alleviate my scaling concerns nicely and still offer serious large group challenges.

It would also allow some flexibility. It wouldnt necessarily have to be paths. It could also be something similar to Assault Knights opening portals to the Breachmaker or multiple map areas with mini-bosses/events to clear (ala Dry Top).

Well it was only an Idea. I wanted a dungeon which offers this experience, but is not reliant on it (thus why I have chosen three seperate paths which meet without actually meeting).
Of course things can be used differently as this was only a concept, which is mostly based on the dungeon and reward design that is already in game and not explicit for raiding.

However it is nice that it might for other ideas.

@cesmonde.
Well, I can certainly appreciate the “dance to the rhythm” element of the raid, as well as the difficulty.
Organization is a must, as you have said, but I rather prefer the “on the fly” approach, thus I prefer the random factor a bit more.

While some might not like it, because it screws with their ability to prepare, I believe it is more engaging.
I mean, what use is a well oiled machine, which knows every encounter beforehand.
However as you have said, even in randomness, knowledge how to handle it is still important.

Symph.8407:

Kaz.5430:

From a technical point of view, I am guessing that the reason for a 15 man limit is based on the theoretical maximum size for a party. Any more than 15 players would – I assume – mean that there is not enough screen space to include the health bar of all party members.

I’m not sure the 15 man limit was made up because of screen space. I think the 15 man limit is an estimated size, above which any encounter would start to become dumbed down by the amount of players. For every additional player in the team, less effort is needed per player.
Also all their particle effects would decrease visibility of indicators you need to see.
In my opinion, 10 or 15 players is probably the best size (also makes it possible to combine teams of 5), no scaling and preferably just one raid size (per raid) from the start.

As for your talk about the Marionette. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a few (in time) big one-boss raids like the Marionette for bigger raid groups (like the Vault bosses in WoW during WotLK).

i’d like to see different sizes raid like others game, imho one with 8 ppl and another one with 16 whould be great, i dont like the idea i readed in some posts, to split the number of the party, i’d like to be in party with everyone, and if at some point of raid we should split i’d like to do it w/o reform the parties, but just the real life, we r 16 guys 8 will go to eat pizza and 8 will go to eat chinese then lets go everyone at the discoteque, without disbanding our friendship
i also have another little things to say, pls dont insert jp in raid, not everyone will love it, personally i avoid every content with jp, so pls dont force ppl to do something doesent wanna do… stuff like asuran fractal is ok, but doesnt esagerate pls

edit:
about scaling
if will be designed 2 (or more) different istanced raid, should be designed with a defined party size, not variable, as dungeons, u can do it in max 5 ppl not more, so devs doesent became mad with scaling, lets avoid him to waste their time

Iason Evan.3806:

Please don’t include Defiance in raids. Make “Control” mean something.

The Problem with not including defiance, especially in a raid (10+) group, is having permanent CC on the boss.

I think defiance is pretty good where it’s at, although the scaling of it might have to be tweak.

But you need to work around Defiance, prepare the boss for the attack that you will want to CC. Get everyone to work together to take care of the Defiance Stack so that it’s ready for the interrupt of THE attack that needs to be CC’d

Symph.8407:

Kaz.5430:

From a technical point of view, I am guessing that the reason for a 15 man limit is based on the theoretical maximum size for a party. Any more than 15 players would – I assume – mean that there is not enough screen space to include the health bar of all party members.

I’m not sure the 15 man limit was made up because of screen space. I think the 15 man limit is an estimated size, above which any encounter would start to become dumbed down by the amount of players. For every additional player in the team, less effort is needed per player.
Also all their particle effects would decrease visibility of indicators you need to see.
In my opinion, 10 or 15 players is probably the best size (also makes it possible to combine teams of 5), no scaling and preferably just one raid size (per raid) from the start.

As for your talk about the Marionette. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a few (in time) big one-boss raids like the Marionette for bigger raid groups (like the Vault bosses in WoW during WotLK).

This is my point regarding limitation of possible designs. Sure, a single linear path were the entire party is involved in every fight at the same time zerg-style, then you don’t want more than 15 players in the same fight.

But the more interesting fights have been where the groups are forced to split up and achieve various goals simultaneously. This zerg-splitting concept is one of the things that GW2 has been doing well (at least for the last year), and a 15 man limitation reduces the scope of what can be done.

read the last few pages I had missed overnight so commenting without quotes.

Raids as Endgame:

“endgame” is really a bad word for GW2 to be using but it is used because it is the standard term. As mentioned before (or somewhere else) I think we should be thinking more in terms of “elite missions”. Perhaps its just semantics, but sometimes semantics shapes the train of thought and, in the future, marketing.

In GW2, level1-80, while you do gradually gain access to some dungeons, simply doing personal story, exploring the world, doing crafting, etc. will easily and quickly let you reach 80. At which point, exotic gear isnt really hard to come by. In other words, leveling to 80 is more or less an extended tutorial. I honestly dont see basing a portion of content on level 80 exotics as “exclusionary”. However, some will and it would be acceptable to me to use the same scale up factor as is done in WvW. Yes, higher rarity scales better, but you are scaled regardless. You then hit a huge wall for the small stat jump from exotic to ascended gear. As such the basic level of raids SHOULD be made for (designed based on) exotic gear. Enter scaling…

Scaling/difficulty:

“elite missions” should be more difficult and there should be difficulty tiers. ALL ifferent maps should be open for all tiers, its just that they should become increasingly difficult so that all player can at the very least experience the content of the raid (which, i have said before, should involve stories from lore). this should NOT involve agony. Leave that for fractals. I think it should involve addition of and increase in effectiveness of mechanics such as:

-non dodgeable aoe
-more cleaving from bosses, range damage that pierces.
-faster boss movement speed with defiance
-use of environment objects to slow/immobilize or otherwise CC faster/defiant bosses or remove all stacks of defiance, remove invulnerability, interrupt mass aoe, remove conditions from players (yea I am thinking about Teq at the moment), use of various siege that must be protect from other mobs. This forces players to spread out in an organized way, adds strategy and i think allows for more mechanics and a more interesting encounter.
-more organized mobs not in boss fights such as, mobs that res each other, mobs that refuse to stack, on the other hand mobs that retreat and form up in a zerg themselves, Mobs that form front and back lines with heavy armor/ranged damage, that use the terrain to their own advantage. This is not to say that all trash mobs should act like this, but would allow for “boss” mob encounters (difficult battles that dont just involve a single or 2 targets)
-players/player groups should be required to coordinate multiple activities during some encounters. Not necessarily kill 3 things at the same time like Wurm, but multiple coordinated things can be going on.
-others probably have some other ideas

If the design team were to design this with the highest tier of difficulty in mind, then it would be much easier to create the lower difficulty tiers by lessening/gradually removing some of these mechanics.

number scaling: there is also some validity to the idea that a particular elite mission is designed for x players. But, if a group completes it with fewer, each person receives a proportionally higher reward. Of course, there are some mechanics that may be implemented that force a minimum number as well, but i dont see that as bad.

cont…

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Iason Evan.3806:

Please don’t include Defiance in raids. Make “Control” mean something.

The Problem with not including defiance, especially in a raid (10+) group, is having permanent CC on the boss.

I think defiance is pretty good where it’s at, although the scaling of it might have to be tweak.

But you need to work around Defiance, prepare the boss for the attack that you will want to CC. Get everyone to work together to take care of the Defiance Stack so that it’s ready for the interrupt of THE attack that needs to be CC’d

It would be fine for Defiance instead of a champ eating one CC and then getting his Defiance stacks back, that once Defiance stacks were broken the boss got a debuff instead like “Instability” that makes him vulunerable to CC for a couple seconds before getting his Defiance stacks back.

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Rewards:

I would, as many others I think, like rewards that does NOT involve RNG. For instance, in fractals, the fractal skins which are visual representations of your completion of particular game content are RNG. I dont think this was proper. Some RNG items are fine, but because those are fractal skins, they should be acquirable in some certain way. Maybe its splitting hairs and maybe those other RNG items would be viewed the same way as fractal skins are now, but hopefuly you see my basic point: that visual representation of completion of some content should be acquirable in a certain (read “for sure”, not particular) way.

I, personally, like the idea of a set of skins that get more and more elaborate based on the tier of completion as the primary reward and visual representation of an particular player’s completion of this content. Past that, other rewards can be added acquired either through crafting using drops unique to these missions or through simple RNG fashion, but the primary skins should be much more assured than RNG.

How: there are a couple different things that can be done that dont involve RNG (at least not too much of it.

-Achievements/meta achievements are one. Each raid map could have a set of achievements compleatable at any difficulty tier with a meta achievements that gave a weapon or armor chest (chosen by the player) containing the first tier of the skin. Problems with this are that the meta-achievement would need be reset/repeated, as such, you would want the achievements to be things involving playing the content rather than things like “dodge teqatl’s tail whip”. for instance, using the siege/other environment objects, defeating various bosses, not dying in a “boss” mob encounter as explained before, etc. If it were only achievements, then there would be a ridiculous number of achievements as you would need a new set for each tier (not really feasible). enter upgrades…

-Upgrades: after getting a piece from said achievements, that piece can be upgraded using items obtained either as a sure boss drop (dungeon token style) or as something dropped from everything at a relatively high drop rate. Of course, you would want the number required to be higher than the number typically obtained in a single run, but you dont want to go overboard. using a relatively high mob drop rate or 100% boss drop rate gives a player a pretty good idea of time frame to complete an item rather than an average time with a ridiculously large standard deviation. (As a note to ANet, Lower standard deviation in timeframe to acquire an item is very very preferable for many players even if the average timeframe is the same or even slightly longer). Anyway, The upgrade should also require a single or very small number (5 as an absolute max) of an item that has a 100% drop from the final boss/event in a particular tier of “Elite mission” even perhaps in multiples if multiples are required. ie, in order to get the 5th tier of skin, you must COMPLETE the 5th tier of the mission. There are 19 different weapons and 18 different pieces of armor we are talking about here with multiple tiers of a similar skins per piece. This could become VERY grindy VERY fast and needs to be done carefully. in my opinion each tier of each skin should take absolutely no more than a few (2-3) completions of that tier.

Doing this through skins (that perhaps either do not require a transmutation charge on first use or become a part of the free application achievement skins would be a big plus) i think draws this away from being a gear treadmill because you are not after stats, some may disagree, and I do understand tat view as well.

-other items: minis, tonics, endless tonics, other fun items can be dropped from RNG, thats just fine, but the primary “i completed this” visual rewards, should be more certain as above. if these skins were to also drop rarely (similar rarity as fractal skins) thats fine, as long as that is just a bonus in addition to their normal acquisition.

Style:

quick note on discussions of “player should be divided into little groups” vs “raids are everyone together not split up”. there is nothing saying that different maps cannot involve different mechanics. In fact, I think they should be varied. This is one reason I started with a semantic discussion. Framed as GW2 unique “Elite missions” rather than familiar mmo “raids” opens the realm of creativity to all kinds of possibilities, having BOTH split and large group content even on the same mission being only one of them.

Hi Chris. Just for the sake of brainstorming encounters, I’ll use the 15 player structured limit you mentioned in an earlier post. To be fair, I do wish the design included scaling the entire map of the raid to probably 25 players (or more), but I understand the difficulties that can present with balance, clutter, and accessibility.

IMO, one of the best dungeon encounters in GW 2 could have actually been built as a raid encounter – Slick and Sparky in the Twilight Aetherpath. The perceived difficulty of the encounter mostly stemmed from the knowledge required to alleviate pressure (HP degen) on the players and survive in the toxic environment.

• A team was REQUIRED to learn and understand how the Toxic Fumes debuff worked, and how to remove the Oil Slicks quickly to not die from the continuing debuff.
• Teams had to remain positionally aware of the Ooze which could one-shot any player. The ooze itself was incredibly slow and could be snared or blinded to offer assistance to allies kiting it, but if it was slowed too much, the Tar Pools around the room would slowly overtake the team. This added an element of “give and take” or “smart-usage” for snares and control skills. Some teams could get by on minimal usage of snares, pulls, and pushes to the Ooze, while other teams used them more heavily but could be punished if they used them too frequently or not skillfully. Still, it was a REQUIREMENT to be aware of the Ooze and the Tar Pools at all times.
• Slick and Sparki had synergy between their skills. Anyone who touched Slick’s Tar Pools would get the “Tar” debuff, and then receive increased burning duration from Sparki’s attacks. Also, any Tar Pools hit by Sparki’s Flame Blast would come ablaze, adding the burning effect to their area as well.
• Both Slick and Sparki had separate enrage mechanics. Depending on which one died first, the other would grow stronger. The Molten Firestorm and the Molten Berserker from the Flame and Frost dungeon: Molten Facility, they also had separate enrage mechanics. There is a risk that one enrage is eventually found to be easier than the other by the players, but it adds flavor and a sense of variety to the fight, especially if each enrage can be equally balanced.

This kind of difficulty through required knowledge or “puzzle encounters” are a common staple in the design of raids in other games, and I feel we can make some great puzzles (both combat and non-combat) to strengthen the design of potential raids in GW 2. Where the attacks, debuffs, environmental effects, and events can serve as the “puzzle,” the pieces or keys to the puzzle would be bundle items, combo fields, behavior triggers, and awareness.

Now…what if we try to imagine the Slick and Sparki fight as a 15-man boss encounter?

• What if we got rid of the ooze, and instead had a limited number of specially calibrated Elixir Guns (different than regular Engi Elixir Gun) that cleared the Tar Pools instead? Players would use these Elixir Gun bundles to clean up Tar Pools on their own, as well as support their allies through uses such as Condition Removal, Swiftness application, Area Healing, etc… This is something players already do with the Tequatl turrets. Let’s say only 5 guns were available, either found on the ground throughout the entire map of the raid or spawned from a gun rack gadget. Now, the player is in charge of actively clearing the ooze pools, instead of relying on a mob’s AI (which was one of the weaknesses, difficulties, or flaws of the original Slick and Sparki encounter)

• Ah, but just firing cleansing fields sounds too easy, eh? We’ve all done that before at Tequatl. We could give these guns a limited ammo system like conjured weapons. From there, the design could branch in one of two ways.

1. The ammo in the guns is strictly limited and no additional ammo can be acquired. This requires teams to coordinate who is cleansing when and where and perhaps not even cleanse all of the pools. It might just focus on finding what is the “breaking point” of the current group composition where X number of pools is too many to regen or heal through. Or…
2. The gun has a method of being recharged, which could be directly linked to some gadget or effect in the fighting area, or could be triggered through some attack on the boss itself. This removes a little bit of the flawless execution required for the first scenario, while adding in a new puzzle that players are REQUIRED to solve in-order to succeed in the encounter.

At that point, the puzzles of the encounter have been made. It is required for parties to “solve the puzzle” to even have a chance at the encounter, much less defeat it. Just for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say Slick and Sparki have the same moveset as they do currently in the Aetherpath. The rest of the design falls into numbers balance on values like damage, HP, cooldowns, and event/effect triggers.

proposal:
a raid that everyone with some understanding of core mechanics and class mechanics can achieve together with people looking for challenging and engaging content.

raid number cap:
my preferable raid number would be 10-15 people as this doesnt water down the importance of certain classes and roles.

raid mechanics:
the raid itself should be a engaging, yet difficult set of events, last anywhere from 2-4 hours for players to complete and less time for people once experienced in its mechanics. there should be a number of bosses preferably 3-5 with a path that leads to each boss with puzzle like encounters to make it harder for people to make there way though. each boss should have a unique mechanic and the final boss a combination of the mechanics, this will show the number of players that payed attention to mechanics and learnt from the previous encounters.

raid difficulty:
this is a issue im struggling to come with a solution, one solution is a normal and hard mode with the normal mode being less challenging and eases people into the raiding scene with hard being the mode that gives the true rewards, or just have 1 mode that is difficult and requires co-ordination,understanding and communication to overcome.

raid progression:
a weekly reset every Tuesday to align with patch day of gw2. a checkpoint system should be implemented for the people who have irl responsibilities that might cause them to leave suddenly, maybe a save point after each boss.

raid accessibility:
preferably people at lv80 with full exo gear minimum is required to enter, i see raiding as hard pve content that requires a certain level of understanding of mechanics before even attempting the raid but in the end its down to the devs.

rewards:
this is my biggest issue, i got no clue for rewards. maybe a token system like the dungeons for exclusive skins and luxuries, maybe rewards that will tie in with potential guild halls that show of trophies or statues that give buffs to the groups that completed it like the dolyak statue from wvw season. IMO each boss should have a unique skin/ascended weapon that he/it/she has the potential to drop with the chance of say if the raid size is 15 people at least 1 person should get it every time.
other potential rewards are laurels,gold,minis,skins again its down to devs what they deem a suitable reward would be.

pros/cons:
its restricted really to a group of people that are looking for a challenge and understand game mechanics.
it might take too long for quite a few of the players.
if the mechanics are not designed well/hard enough a lot of people might not actually find it challenging and just not do it.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

SNIP
-Balancing the content to be hard based on skill instead of hard based on coordination. Currently the only thing that makes Wurm the hardest thing in the game is the need to have 120 players organized an hour in advance to complete it. It doesn’t matter if those 120 people are all new players in blues or veterans in ascended gear. This should not be the case for raids.

I do think it needs to be hard based on skills AND coordination.

Coordination between 10-15 players is way easier than 120 people.

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Does the word “coordination” mean something to you? You should need that in raids.

Daala.4258:

Edgar Doiron.2804:

I do like the idea of a 3-6 hour raid, but the save points should last longer than 24h. To take into account us with family and lives.

I do like the idea to remove the buff once you enter again, and that you NEED to reach the next one, in order to “save” again. But make it a weekly reset like the guild missions, and not a 24h thing.

Would you rather have fun with raid that takes max 2 hours of intensive play or 3-6 hours of boring running between checkpoints? Look at the GW2 community as a whole. Not everyone can dedicate 6 hours to complete one instance.

Oh wow, i’m just catching up to the post i replied too yesterday :P kitten you work!

So yeah, I’d rather have an intensive 2h.

But like our first Arah P4 run, it took us 5 hours….Sooo Long, but I enjoyed the Hell out of the dungeon.

If there would’ve been checkpoints after each boss, I think we would’ve cut our run in half, and come back the next day. We were super tired after that run that ended at around 2:15am.

Conski Deshan.2057:

SnIP

Tricks and Treats
-Holographic walls that can be run through can lead to bonus chests or act as a way to avoid a patrol, ideally randomly distributed (works for inquest/ather style raids).
SNIP

I just got a wolfenstein flashback of pressing spacebar on every wall

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Groups already have this down to a T. In every dungeon I’ve run for weeks everyone has known to burn down the defiance stacks then let me or another ele fire off Icebow 5, sometimes it takes me a few moments to notice the stacks are gone and even then no one accidently wastes the CC chance.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Conski Deshan.2057:

SnIP

Tricks and Treats
-Holographic walls that can be run through can lead to bonus chests or act as a way to avoid a patrol, ideally randomly distributed (works for inquest/ather style raids).
SNIP

I just got a wolfenstein flashback of pressing spacebar on every wall

Haha not what I was going for exactly but yeah could be like that.

Gilgalas.7860:

Hello again.

Here we go for the summary. The summary does not include many ideas that are ahead of the current “accessibility” theme:

SNIP

Thank you for these summaries

Dalanor.5387:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Does the word “coordination” mean something to you? You should need that in raids.

Ya but Defiance takes way too much coordination for little reward. You basically have to make sure your entire group uses PRECISELY the perfect amount of CCs to burn away Defiance then one person has to use just the right CC before anyone else screws it up. And all that is just to use one knockback/knockdown/etc. Maybe you could argue for certain encounters forcing that level of coordination is ideal but most of the time people just pretend the boss has stability.

guardian.6489:

Conski Deshan.2057:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Groups already have this down to a T. In every dungeon I’ve run for weeks everyone has know to burn down the defiance stacks then let me or another ele fire off Icebow 5, sometimes it takes me a few moments to notice the stacks are gone and even then no one accidently wastes the CC chance.

Deep Freeze ignores Defiance, that’s why everyone uses it.

Deep freeze does not ignore defiance, the visible ice appears, but if they have a defiance stack left its just visual and they continue to attack.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Freeze

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To be clear Crystal is simply engaging in brain storming. The foundation of GW2 as we know it is the core foundation that we should be building our proposal from. This said broadening our field of view outside of this is a good way of finding good ideas and then working to apply them to new areas.

Chris

What some people see as broadening of perspective, for others may seem like shifting it in another direction. Raids as are mostly presented in this thread seems like the second kind to me. This happened once already, when the ascended gear got introduced, and personally i am very much afraid that raid introduction may be just another step on the road away from the original core foundations. Or at least from what i perceived those foundations to be.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally I would also want to see raids as end game content and by that I mean level 80 only.

Chris

If that’s all what it means, it’s not that big of a problem (depending on how strict the level requirement is – fractals for example are level 80 content as well, but you can still run early ones with level 70-s and hope to succeed). If raids were to be designed around level 80s with perfect BiS (ascended) gear however…
Also, there’s a question whether they are meant to be one of many endgame activities, or the endgame. Again, lot of the voices in this thread seems to show desire for the latter (which would be a massive change to the game principles). That’s especially visible where rewards are mentioned.

Erichermit.6018:

Ensure that rewards properly drive players to engage in challenging and difficult content instead of choosing the easier content because it is more profitable (not simply because it is easier.)

I disagree. The game should not drive players towards “challenging and difficult” or “rewarding” system. If it even has to drive players anywhere, it is towards fun content. Something they would like to play. And since no two people like the same things, the game should not attempt to drive them anywhere, but rather open up multiple options.

Basically, if someone decides to play the game for rewards, no single content should leap immediately to their mind, Of course, consequently, no content should also be visibly last in that category.

If people are going to play raids primarily for rewards, then they have failed as a design, and the game would be better without them being introduced at all. If GW2 is going to have Raids as only one important PvE endgame option, then again, it would be better without them being introduced at all.

guardian.6489:

Dalanor.5387:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Does the word “coordination” mean something to you? You should need that in raids.

Ya but Defiance takes way too much coordination for little reward. You basically have to make sure your entire group uses PRECISELY the perfect amount of CCs to burn away Defiance then one person has to use just the right CC before anyone else screws it up. And all that is just to use one knockback/knockdown/etc. Maybe you could argue for certain encounters forcing that level of coordination is ideal but most of the time people just pretend the boss has stability.

Conski Deshan.2057:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Groups already have this down to a T. In every dungeon I’ve run for weeks everyone has know to burn down the defiance stacks then let me or another ele fire off Icebow 5, sometimes it takes me a few moments to notice the stacks are gone and even then no one accidently wastes the CC chance.

Deep Freeze ignores Defiance, that’s why everyone uses it.

Coordination. If you play like monkeys with anger issues and just slam repeatedly your keyboard of course it won’t work.
But i agree the incentive to use it often is lacking especially in high damage parties where you can just blow up the boss after a Deep freeze.

It has a 5 second duration and keeps the boss in place, thats why people use it. Also it works as every other control skill. Without Defiance stacks it does CC, without it it just strips off one stack. Please don’t make suggestions if you don’t even know how basic mechanics works in the game.

Astralporing.1957:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To be clear Crystal is simply engaging in brain storming. The foundation of GW2 as we know it is the core foundation that we should be building our proposal from. This said broadening our field of view outside of this is a good way of finding good ideas and then working to apply them to new areas.

Chris

What some people see as broadening of perspective, for others may seem like shifting it in another direction. Raids as are mostly presented in this thread seems like the second kind to me. This happened once already, when the ascended gear got introduced, and personally i am very much afraid that raid introduction may be just another step on the road away from the original core foundations. Or at least from what i perceived those foundations to be.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally I would also want to see raids as end game content and by that I mean level 80 only.

Chris

If that’s all what it means, it’s not that big of a problem (depending on how strict the level requirement is – fractals for example are level 80 content as well, but you can still run early ones with level 70-s and hope to succeed). If raids were to be designed around level 80s with perfect BiS (ascended) gear however…
Also, there’s a question whether they are meant to be one of many endgame activities, or the endgame. Again, lot of the voices in this thread seems to show desire for the latter (which would be a massive change to the game principles). That’s especially visible where rewards are mentioned.

Erichermit.6018:

Ensure that rewards properly drive players to engage in challenging and difficult content instead of choosing the easier content because it is more profitable (not simply because it is easier.)

I disagree. The game should not drive players towards “challenging and difficult” or “rewarding” system. If it even has to drive players anywhere, it is towards fun content. Something they would like to play. And since no two people like the same things, the game should not attempt to drive them anywhere, but rather open up multiple options.

Basically, if someone decides to play the game for rewards, no single content should leap immediately to their mind, Of course, consequently, no content should also be visibly last in that category.

If people are going to play raids primarily for rewards, then they have failed as a design, and the game would be better without them being introduced at all. If GW2 is going to have Raids as only one important PvE endgame option, then again, it would be better without them being introduced at all.

I think this post brings up some very important points and I agree with every one. The content should be enough to draw players to a particular aspect of the game.

Rewards (in GW2) shouldnt drive gameplay decisions. Let us play the content we find the most fun without having to worry about missing out on the special shinies. That is what can lead to a single mode or aspect taking over the game, which would not be good for this game.

Raiding should be about the experience more than it is about the reward (which should be true of every aspect of the game, imo).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep this is an astute point. Let’s not worry about levels in this discussion then. However we should focus on the foundation of this content being challenging, requiring skill and strategic co-operation whilst being build around the core combat, movement and accessibility of GW2.

Chris

Exactly, even if you say you upscale people to level 80 for the RAID, they’re still lacking the required Traits/utilities to be “useful”. Sure they can go in, and be on par in terms of HP and Power and Defense, but they’ll be lacking in the tools they can bring with them.

When the game first came out, they touted a soft trinity of control/support/dps. I would like to see fights that require all of these elements in raids.

Some thoughts:

• It should be mathematically impossible for any group to burn down a boss before it uses all of it abilities several times.

• It should be impossible to avoid all damage and bosses should liberally apply conditions such as immobilize, weakness, vulnerability, blind, chill and cripple. Players should have to feel like they need to save dodges for the big crushing attacks. Regen, healing, aegis, etc. (as well as condi removal) should be required to stay alive between dodges.

• Big, fight altering attacks should be interrupt-able via a short window (the Three Toed Tootsie method).

• Bosses should react to player positioning. If a large group of players lumps into a big pile, then the boss should be able to focus more damage on that single spot, requiring even greater healing and support in the party (dodges should never be enough to stay alive in a stack) – or, alternatively, run away from that spot. Likewise, if everyone is widely spread out, the boss should take a “pick them off” strategy, focusing huge attacks at a one player at at time (while still not ignoring others).

• Niche abilities, such as boon stripping, reflects/projectile defense, fear, walls of warding etc should be a requirement in many fights. The advantage raiding brings over dungeon runs is you will have greater diversity in the party and access to more tools with which to fight.

• Where possible, fights should involve secondary objectives (dont let the blood get to the Test Subject)

• The boss should try to control where the group fights. Electrify areas of the floor, use the cutters/walls from the Aetherblade fractal, use the hotfoot mechanic, etc.

• A new condition damage model needs to be implemented prior to introducing raids in GW2. It is a broken mechanic that devalues common builds that players want to use.

• Coordination should be the focus of fight design. Look at fights like Sparki & Slick, Mai Trin, the final boss of the Dredge Fractal, The Clockwork Boss in AP, etc as good examples. Coordination comes in multiple forms, including player positioning, controlled DPS on multiple targets, the need for healing/boons/condi removal/using environmental weapons (such as the oil pots in the dredge fractal)/many more.

• Safe spots and other semi-exploits should be identified and dealt with immediately, even if it means shutting down access to the raid temporarily.

Again (and MOST IMPORTANTLY) , I believe this can all be done in a scalable (or at least multi-tiered including 8,12,16 player versions) raiding models without sacrificing difficulty or complexity. In fact, I think that is crucial (see my other posts in this thread to see how adamant I am about that ).

@Galen Grey
@cesmode

about normalized raid gear

WoW currently does this with challenge mode dungeons. In this game all gear above item level 463 will get scaled down. (more about it from the wiki: Gear will retain all hit and expertise, so players can remain capped. Stats that will be scaled down are secondary ones.)

Why not make the GW2 version of it, with a much more broader approach? No need for a new kind of gear, Galen already had an (imho) good idea: use the sPvP-armor build. Everyone – from the get go – has the same stats available in his build-library. You retain the skins from your PvE gear.

I love this suggestion because it solves many problems. Players would always be on the same power level so no place for gear discrimination. As only lv.80 players can enter the raid, there can be no level-discrimination as well. Balancing would be a dream come true for the devs, so the encounters could be finetuned perfectly.

Dalanor.5387:

guardian.6489:

Dalanor.5387:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Does the word “coordination” mean something to you? You should need that in raids.

Ya but Defiance takes way too much coordination for little reward. You basically have to make sure your entire group uses PRECISELY the perfect amount of CCs to burn away Defiance then one person has to use just the right CC before anyone else screws it up. And all that is just to use one knockback/knockdown/etc. Maybe you could argue for certain encounters forcing that level of coordination is ideal but most of the time people just pretend the boss has stability.

Conski Deshan.2057:

guardian.6489:

It would solve the stupid issue of trying to burn away 1-2 stacks of defiance with some members of the group then use your best CC on the boss without accidently wasting it with another CC you wanted to use to get rid of the defiance stacks.

Groups already have this down to a T. In every dungeon I’ve run for weeks everyone has know to burn down the defiance stacks then let me or another ele fire off Icebow 5, sometimes it takes me a few moments to notice the stacks are gone and even then no one accidently wastes the CC chance.

Deep Freeze ignores Defiance, that’s why everyone uses it.

Coordination. If you play like monkeys with anger issues and just slam repeatedly your keyboard of course it won’t work.
But i agree the incentive to use it often is lacking especially in high damage parties where you can just blow up the boss after a Deep freeze.

It has a 5 second duration and keeps the boss in place, thats why people use it. Also it works as every other control skill. Without Defiance stacks it does CC, without it it just strips off one stack. Please don’t make suggestions if you don’t even know how basic mechanics works in the game.

My mistake then, I thought it worked like immobilize then however from what I know it’s mostly used as the first CC so you can zerk down a boss. Most other uses of CC in dungeons is often to use one push CC to get the boss into the right position to melee down (though the FGS-nerf kinda changed this). Rarely do you actually burn down defiance stacks so you can use another CC on a boss (I can’t even think of an example off the top of my head so you have one I’d like to hear it).

Sure, I’m certain there are a couple senarios where there could be interesting encounters where you have to coordinate burning Defiance in order to interupt a boss or push them correctly, but as a mechanic tagged onto every champion and legendary mob? It’s a dumb mechanic that might as well be stability which is why I think it should be changed.

Hi Chris

That raiding sounds nice I’m away from the game since many months now, played tera bcs the combat. But I always miss gw2 whith it’s world which feels alive.

I didn’t read all proposals but for me raiding would be a reason I come back.

Here my short wish for raiding

Test the encounter before release, test like crazy I don’t want end up stacking at a safe spot and range afk the boss. Also make sure that every class is useful I m so sick of no Ranger LFG even tho I play Guardian.

About combat i don t need say much gw2 has 2 bosses in game which show u can do it,

Crystal Reid.2481:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

Is it an issue for the majority of the population? Definitely not.

Could it have a potentially negative effect on the new player experience? Definitely, but those negative effects would be easy to avoid by making sure Raids are complimentary to other lvl 80 content and not the end all be all to the game.

I think a more important question would be, what effect would raiding have on the other aspects of level 80 game play?

If you implement shambling complex raids that take hours to complete, will that diminish the number of players doing other content? Yes, it most likely would.

Would that be detrimental to the game? Only if players felt like they had to raid to obtain the best rewards in the game.

Should this stop you from putting raids (that scale on a limited basis ) into the game? definitely not. You just need to take the game as a whole into account and design raids to be complementary to other level 80 content rather than seen as the preferred or elite status content (imo, primarily in terms of rewards and the weekly time commitment required in the raids)

In other words, it will be up to you to ensure raiding doesnt take over the game and become the end all be all of GW2’s end game.

Crystal Reid.2481:

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

I think it’s important to note that a lot of players like playing with their alts. Even though they might have 7 lv.80, they might want to play with their lv.53 elementalist. It’s a chore to level the 8th character to max. level when the only thing you want to do with him is raid.

Why not take the sPvP approach? Normalize the gear and level and you have everyone on the same level to beat a well balanced challenge.

A few reward ideas:

Guild Merits and Guild Commendations could be rewarded if 3 or more guild members participate in a raid

For general purposes, the basic reward structure of a raid would look like this:
Untradable → Tradable → Untradable → Tradable → Legendary Trinkets

Starting off with accountbound rare quality items. They are mainly a constant in forge/salvage material, but they would consist of one or two completely fresh sets of weapon skins. These skins would be fairly basic, not much different than you would expect from the greens and blues you pick up while leveling. The important think is that they be elegant, simple and exclusive to each raid. With enough attempts at the raid, you’ll have all the skins unlocked in no time.

Next would be new tradable named exotics similar to the ones added to champ bags. You’d probably get dropped an average of 1 every 6-7 failed raids or 1 every 1-2 successful raids.

After that, we delve into accountbound ascended territory. There’s a chance at the standard ascended stuff just like fractals, but there would also be a few exclusives similiar to Tequatl and Triple Trouble.

Then we jump into a new concept, sellable ascended weapons that are about as rare as Tequatl’s Hoard. The skins on these would be pretty fancy, almost legendary. They do not drop in boxes and all have Assassin stats.

Finally with raids we could have the addition of a new legendary type, trinkets. Depending on how the raids are developed, different portions of it would reward different parts of these legendaries. I’m thinking they would go in the necklace slot but occupy the other 4 slots as well, leaving only the back item slot open (so you can still wear back items). Or they could be a thing where you have to collect all 5 legendary trinkets to get the full visual effect (that way each could be individually stat swappable). They should probably be a little bit less complex than legendary weapon crafting and lean more toward completion of tasks and far less toward materials and gold.

Passive magic find boost that starts at +0% and increases to +100% by the time you get to the last stage of the raid.

Charged Mystic Forge Stones A rare drop that can be combined in the forge with three ascended rings for a chance at a variety of things ranging from: Mystic Clovers, Stat selectable ascended rings, 5-20 globs of ecto, some sort of fancy new mini .etc

New craftable armors and outfits that require materials earned only in said raids.

Crystal Reid.2481:

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

You guys DID just put a lot of emphasis on trying to bring in new players… :-)

And among those new players, a common thread I see is trying to rush to 80 and getting advice to level via EOTM, which usually just leads to the complaint “no endgame” when they haven’t even unlocked more than 3-4 maps. Also complaints that they get wrecked in dungeons, but I digress.

That being said, I do agree that the raids should be treated like level 80 advanced dungeons the way that Fractals of the Mist are. I don’t think more people would rush to 80 without playing the game than already do now.

Crystal Reid.2481:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

Ppl always rushing to Lv 80 wow trained us I think the npe was made to work against that.

Maybe joining a raid should have more requirements then just Lv 80 ?

I think having to play content A a long time in order to unlock content B isn’t a wise choice. Players who want to play content B (raids) wouldn’t enjoy content A (level phase).

Unlocking a new map is a whole different thing. Playing content A1 (PvE zones) in order to unlock content A2 (new zone) is viable imho because it feels natural. Well, I’m not sure if others would have the same feeling though.

My suggestion:

You want to have only experienced players in a raid.

—> A player has to have at least one lv.80 to unlock raids accountwide. Normalize gear and level for raids so that player “newthiefy” (lv.23) can play a raid with his lv.80 friends while he is on the same power-level as they are.

alternative: instead of one lv.80 go for a specific number of achievement points. This would ensure that players have done a variety of things. Don’t make the number too high, so that it doesn’t feel like a grind. (e.g. the number of AP that a player has when he does his dailies on his way to his first 80)

Crystal Reid.2481:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

Honestly I think leveling players already have a ton of options anyways. If anything we’ve seen the negative effects of mixing vertern players and newbies in the same explorable dungeon (Some verterns get impatient at leveling newbies trying to learn the dungeon). The 8 story dungeons are already a good enviroment for newbies to learn how instanced encounters work free from the pressures of verterns and honestly when your leveling there is more content then you know what to do.

Let’s keep this content targeted at level 80s. If your so worried about making sure the leveling characters feel left out, you could always do what fractals do and uplevel them just to give players the choice (though I doubt leveling characters will go in anyways).

Crystal Reid.2481:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

The people who would rush to 80 for endgame content are already rushing to the end for endgame content (fractals, high level dungeons, BiS gear). I also think the poster has completely hyperbolized the scenario. It seems like quite an assumption to say raid content = all 1-79 content trivial. There are people with over 10k AP who have never stepped in a dungeon. So likely “endgame” isn’t too interesting to them. There will still be those players.

And I agree on the fact that the game is 2 years old making it less of an issue. I have 7 80s (sorry necro), and I’m just running out of meaningful content. Most of the AP I can get at this point is either PvP or dailies/monthlies. All I have to work on that interests me is the dungeoneer title, which is completely lacking in the AP department but it at least has a cool title.

The fact is there is plenty in this game for people who enjoy the casual experience, but there is a definite lack of long term endgame content (fractals + 2/3 dungeons). It’d be nice to see a better balance and I just don’t think a game is looking in the long run if the majority of the content is prior to hitting max level.

Crystal Reid.2481:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

You cannot look at every piece of content and ask the question: Is it possible for new players to do it?
This won`t work, because you will end up with content that might only be a fraction of what it could be.
Instead you should ask these questions:
- Do we have enough content for players that are not level 80? (Answer is certainly a big yes, btw. )
- Who is the target demographic for this content?
- How much similiar content do we have already and how is the learning curve in compairson? (in this case we could see a dungeon as the easier version, something where players could learn the basics and raid-dungeons could be seen as the more advanced scenarios, something more experienced players should tackle)
- How much extra struggle would a low level character have?
- How much would we have to adjust the dungeons to count in for low level players?

And lastly:

- Does adapting the high level content for lower level players dilude the experience and the targeted goal?

While I highly apreaciate the fact that this game is offering a lot for casual and solo player, i do not believe that it should do that all the time and focus too much on it.
After two years players will be okay if you create some harder or niche content.

That being said, to fight the segregation of players, it will all be handled by the rewards you will earn in the end.
As long as you are able to balance this (which is still a questionable topic for this game in some parts as far as I am aware), then you might not find people pressured too much into doing raids over all other content.

Keep the rewards desireable, but simple. Think about time/effort/reward balance in the end.

If people are stuck 2 hours in a dungeon, the rewards should not only be the satisfaction of beating it (which is bad for an MMO, because then there is not enough replayability for many), but some other more usefull reward.

If you allow lower lvl players into raids then you are just inviting the mass of problems we already have with low levels in dungeons. Exclusion due to less efficiency, toxicity and players attemping to raid when they clearly arent ready for it. And thats not even mentioning the problems with upscaling and downscaling players and balancing around lower tier armour.

Most people in this thread seem to agree that raids should be for larger groups to attempt challenging content which requires coordination and experience. So its fairly obvious that raids should be designed for lvl 80 characters and lvl 80 characters alone. If people want to play alts then they should get to 80 and learn that class so they can use it in a raid.

People asking for the ability to use low level characters in raids sound like people who just want to experience the content without really pulling their weight. They dont want to bring efficiency to their group and they dont want to do the best they can to help the group. So they are happy to take a underleveled and undergeared character to get carried through the instance. Which is completely against the philosophies of a raid. Which is working together effectively to complete challenging content. Each individual should matter. People not pulling their weight should make things considerably harder. So please dont give players the incentive to negatively effect each other in this manner.

I like the idea of the pheromone mechanic in the Aetherpath (the elemental part) and feel it can be used to an extent to focus aggro in a fight where the group is required to split up in order to survive.

That Guy.5704:

-non dodgeable aoe
..

Nonononono. It “sounds” like a good idea, but it will just receive a ton of complaints. Take a look at the PvP forums and the feedback related to Skyhammer.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My suggestion:

You want to have only experienced players in a raid.

—> A player has to have at least one lv.80 to unlock raids accountwide. Normalize gear and level for raids so that player “newthiefy” (lv.23) can play a raid with his lv.80 friends while he is on the same power-level as they are.

I’m going to go a little in-depth here on assets and risk in game development. My examples come from occurrences that have happened over the the history of GW 2 and were often exhibited on the GW2 subreddit.

• I am of the opinion that upscaling and/or neutral power-level would not work well over the long-term health of raid maps. Look at a few examples in WvW where new buffs introduced with content completely unrelated to WvW then started to cause awkward nuances in the scaling formula. People found ways to max every single stat and get over 100% crit chance as a level 2.

• The upscaling for Crown Pavilion produced wildly dangerous results on some of the bosses – like Shurakk the Savage and his hawks. He inflicted level 80 legendary level values of Retribution damage with his hawks, which melted players who were sub-80 and tried to use the zerg as a means to farm loot and exp. It wasn’t a bug. It was just a consequence of the design on sub-80 players in Crown Pavilion. Not necessarily “bad”, but it did produce a decent amount of criticism during the release, hence the risk.

• Dry Top and all of the Living Story instances have been designed as strict 80 maps, and I have to believe that comes from the slightly higher dependence on one’s personal skill, and knowledge of one’s profession.

• The risk in using upscaled maps is that each additional piece of content, buff, character enhancement, etc… has to consider the upscaling formula within the raid map, even if the developer of said additional content is not a member of any raid team or intended their content for use in the raid maps. One mistake or overlooked anomaly could lead to another case of max stats as a level 2 or similar, which would ruin any sense of accomplishment for players who completed the raid without the anomaly or before the anomaly was discovered.

In a perfect world, there would never be any mistakes, design flaws, missing requirements, or other such occurrences. Notice I didn’t say “bugs”, because it’s totally possible to have an oversight in design or missing requirements without it actually being a “bug.” The thing is though, developers are human, and they can and will make mistakes. Some of these mistakes might unfortunately slip through QA, especially if it is a strangely obscure case that deals with several factors or effects not even remotely related to the content. In my mind, it would be best to reduce as much of this risk as possible, where applicable, when considering high-level decisions such as upscaling and player limit. I absolutely want and desire for the raids to have some level of dynamic scaling of the mobs and mechanics themselves, but hoping to scale both the mobs AND the players is just adding more variables into the mix which can cause more problems and add further complexity into trying to achieve a balance within the content’s difficulty and accessibility.

In an area where some of the highest, most prestigious rewards, and the greatest level of challenge is supposed to exist, the risk of upscaling players to 80 seems too great to me.

They should set raids foundation according to level 80 attributes, and scale only depending on AMOUNT OF PLAYERS, not their levels. It seems to me that accounting for various levels and equips is a waste of time, they should set raid from level 80 and focus on more important matters (AI, combat mechanics, rewards, reward-gating [it needs to exist to an extent], etc).

TL;DR Set raids a lvl80 content, reducing unecessary variables, and focus on the raids themselves, especially considering how easy it is to reach level 80 in GW2 comparing to other hundredths of MMOs out there.

style.6173:

That Guy.5704:

-non dodgeable aoe
..

Nonononono. It “sounds” like a good idea, but it will just receive a ton of complaints. Take a look at the PvP forums and the feedback related to Skyhammer.

We got this already (not sure if intended): Ascalonian Catacombs’ Spider Queen’s poisonous aoes.

Blaeys.3102:

• It should be mathematically impossible for any group to burn down a boss before it uses all of it abilities several times.

I think that’s a given. As I said before, if you don’t think they can design raid bosses properly you’re mistaken. They are well aware that a good 5 man team makes 50-75k dps per second and they will certainly take that into account.

• It should be impossible to avoid all damage and bosses should liberally apply conditions such as immobilize, weakness, vulnerability, blind, chill and cripple. Players should have to feel like they need to save dodges for the big crushing attacks. Regen, healing, aegis, etc. (as well as condi removal) should be required to stay alive between dodges.

This isn’t self-evidentally good, you have to explain why this is something we should want, not just declare you want it. I’m not against the concept of bosses that do condition overload, but you should be a bit more honest that what you’re trying to do is encourage use of tanky gear for survival.

• Big, fight altering attacks should be interrupt-able via a short window (the Three Toed Tootsie method).

We have a Defiant system that will work well in a raid environment. Also, most modern design raid bosses take mandatory interrupts into their design, don’t worry.

• Bosses should react to player positioning. If a large group of players lumps into a big pile, then the boss should be able to focus more damage on that single spot, requiring even greater healing and support in the party (dodges should never be enough to stay alive in a stack) – or, alternatively, run away from that spot. Likewise, if everyone is widely spread out, the boss should take a “pick them off” strategy, focusing huge attacks at a one player at at time (while still not ignoring others).

This isn’t really how raid bosses are designed in modern games, and reactive AI is asking a bit much. Generally speaking boss attacks in today’s raids are fairly rapid and usually AOE based, with single target attacks in between and require constant repositioning of the team, sometimes in a stack sometimes apart but always moving. I’m pretty sure any raid boss they design will have this in the design.

• Niche abilities, such as boon stripping, reflects/projectile defense, fear, walls of warding etc should be a requirement in many fights. The advantage raiding brings over dungeon runs is you will have greater diversity in the party and access to more tools with which to fight.

We do all these things in organized dungeon groups already. You should try it.

• Where possible, fights should involve secondary objectives (dont let the blood get to the Test Subject)

• The boss should try to control where the group fights. Electrify areas of the floor, use the cutters/walls from the Aetherblade fractal, use the hotfoot mechanic, etc.

Like I said, these things are already done in every raid boss in every game designed in the last few years. I highly doubt anet is going to go backwards mechanically.

• A new condition damage model needs to be implemented prior to introducing raids in GW2. It is a broken mechanic that devalues common builds that players want to use.

In fights as long as raid boss fights condition damage is as good as direct. The system doesn’t have to change to enable that. I would also expect to see mechanics like the triple wurm husks to be much more common.

Again (and MOST IMPORTANTLY) , I believe this can all be done in a scalable (or at least multi-tiered including 8,12,16 player versions) raiding models without sacrificing difficulty or complexity. In fact, I think that is crucial (see my other posts in this thread to see how adamant I am about that ).

This isn’t crucial at all. It’s crucial that they get the encounters tuned for one raid size. having one properly tuned raid size and no alternatives is better than one properly tuned raid size and two jokes.

Besides, as I said in my other posts, the more people you add the easier it gets and the less prestige it has. You can say “without sacrificing difficulty” but that is literally impossible. In an 8 man raid if someone dies the team loses 1/8th of its efficiency, in a 16 man they lose 1/16th. there is literally no way for that not to be true.

spoj.9672:

So they are happy to take a underleveled and undergeared character to get carried through the instance. Which is completely against the philosophies of a raid. Which is working together effectively to complete challenging content. Each individual should matter. People not pulling their weight should make things considerably harder. So please dont give players the incentive to negatively effect each other in this manner.

Based on your sig , it seems you have expirianced with instances .
Atm , when you do the speedruns dungeons , do you inv low lvl characters ?
When they implant raids , will you inv lower lvl characters to your party ?

Other guild will inv lower lvl characters , and they will fail , while your group that consist of 15 × 85 lvl characters and succed .
What is again is the problem ?

hybrid.5027:

Blaeys.3102:

• It should be mathematically impossible for any group to burn down a boss before it uses all of it abilities several times.

I think that’s a given. As I said before, if you don’t think they can design raid bosses properly you’re mistaken. They are well aware that a good 5 man team makes 50-75k dps per second and they will certainly take that into account.

• It should be impossible to avoid all damage and bosses should liberally apply conditions such as immobilize, weakness, vulnerability, blind, chill and cripple. Players should have to feel like they need to save dodges for the big crushing attacks. Regen, healing, aegis, etc. (as well as condi removal) should be required to stay alive between dodges.

This isn’t self-evidentally good, you have to explain why this is something we should want, not just declare you want it. I’m not against the concept of bosses that do condition overload, but you should be a bit more honest that what you’re trying to do is encourage use of tanky gear for survival.

• Big, fight altering attacks should be interrupt-able via a short window (the Three Toed Tootsie method).

We have a Defiant system that will work well in a raid environment. Also, most modern design raid bosses take mandatory interrupts into their design, don’t worry.

• Bosses should react to player positioning. If a large group of players lumps into a big pile, then the boss should be able to focus more damage on that single spot, requiring even greater healing and support in the party (dodges should never be enough to stay alive in a stack) – or, alternatively, run away from that spot. Likewise, if everyone is widely spread out, the boss should take a “pick them off” strategy, focusing huge attacks at a one player at at time (while still not ignoring others).

This isn’t really how raid bosses are designed in modern games, and reactive AI is asking a bit much. Generally speaking boss attacks in today’s raids are fairly rapid and usually AOE based, with single target attacks in between and require constant repositioning of the team, sometimes in a stack sometimes apart but always moving. I’m pretty sure any raid boss they design will have this in the design.

• Niche abilities, such as boon stripping, reflects/projectile defense, fear, walls of warding etc should be a requirement in many fights. The advantage raiding brings over dungeon runs is you will have greater diversity in the party and access to more tools with which to fight.

We do all these things in organized dungeon groups already. You should try it.

• Where possible, fights should involve secondary objectives (dont let the blood get to the Test Subject)

• The boss should try to control where the group fights. Electrify areas of the floor, use the cutters/walls from the Aetherblade fractal, use the hotfoot mechanic, etc.

Like I said, these things are already done in every raid boss in every game designed in the last few years. I highly doubt anet is going to go backwards mechanically.

• A new condition damage model needs to be implemented prior to introducing raids in GW2. It is a broken mechanic that devalues common builds that players want to use.

In fights as long as raid boss fights condition damage is as good as direct. The system doesn’t have to change to enable that. I would also expect to see mechanics like the triple wurm husks to be much more common.

Again (and MOST IMPORTANTLY) , I believe this can all be done in a scalable (or at least multi-tiered including 8,12,16 player versions) raiding models without sacrificing difficulty or complexity. In fact, I think that is crucial (see my other posts in this thread to see how adamant I am about that ).

This isn’t crucial at all. It’s crucial that they get the encounters tuned for one raid size. having one properly tuned raid size and no alternatives is better than one properly tuned raid size and two jokes.

Besides, as I said in my other posts, the more people you add the easier it gets and the less prestige it has. You can say “without sacrificing difficulty” but that is literally impossible. In an 8 man raid if someone dies the team loses 1/8th of its efficiency, in a 16 man they lose 1/16th. there is literally no way for that not to be true.

You may not have intended it, but your post comes across a little insulting.

Especially stuff like this:

“We do all these things in organized dungeon groups already. You should try it.”

You need to tone it down and respect other people’s right to their opinions a little more.

This needs to be a balanced discussion where we have civil conversations about topics. Insults and talking down to people works counter to that idea.