Guild Wars 2

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal Overview
Potential Raid Mechanics: Part 6 Profession specific interactions

Goal of Proposal
To make use of the unique abilities of specific professions.

Proposal Functionality
I see two levels of functionality:

Soft Profession requirements and Hard profession requirements, soft, its ideal to have this class but at least one other class can carry out the same task. Hard: only one class can carry out this task and is based on the classes theme.

Soft Profession mechanics
-Stealth, Example: You must make it from one end of a corridor to another while stealthed the whole way or an instakill occurs. Can’t be bypassed by mistform or other invuln mechanics.
Another possibility is a stealth portion of a raid where you want to make it through an area unseen with patrols and the like.

-Elements and fields: Water/heal fields to douse flames or activate effects, Fire fields to ignite traps or activate explosives, Holy fields for god statue activations etc.

-Reflection: To shield from an explosive blastwave or redirect a magical blast to blow open a door etc.

Hard profession mechanics
Necromancer: Raise a corpse to get information/password/open a locked room from inside etc.

Guardian: Use holy magic to activate a god statue/complete a ritual/ seal a passage preventing reinforcements.

Ranger: Can make use of a fixed position sniper rifle to hit a switch/take out a target of opportunity at some point to assist in progressing.

Engineerer: Can activate disabled golems/rig a door to blow etc.

Elementalist: Can make use of magical reagents, Activate elemental doors, converse with elementals etc.

Mesmer: Can jedi mind trick some goon into opening a door / reveal a disguised illusion, do the kasmeer portal trick.

Thief: Can Identify a trap, bribe for information , locate a weakness.

Warrior: Kinda at a loss for this one since a warriors kinda meant to be the generic everyman. can use brute strength to open something/ force their way through something at some point?

Associated Risks
-Hard class requirements can result in the same lf healer issue in other games.

I think Soft profession requirements are a better idea then Hard profession mechanics.

The former utilities the unique abilities professions bring to the table that’s already built in like stealth and it’s something we use all the time anyways. The Latter seem to just be adding a unique ability to a class for uniqueness sake which I’d argue is counterintutive and just puts a hard wall against certain class compositions.

It’s better to make a section where you need stealth and just have the group blast smoke fields if they don’t have enough thieves then some trap only a thief disable because reasons.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Symph.8407:

But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

You dont have to exclude the rewards , but that doesnt mean that the reward must be ’’beautiful’’ :P

PPl WILL BE FORCED to play the raid if the reward is visually beeautiful , and they will moan that encounter to be nerfed afterwards .
But if the lesser-easier bosses throw those ’’beautifuls’’ rewards they wont whine at all … and the other ‘’ugly-prestigious’’ gear can be be looted by the dificult bosses for the pro players :P

Edit : Ah , i didnt see the ’’red’’ post … sorry

The “beautiful” rewards do have to come from the later/harder part of the raid though, otherwise it’s counterproductive, and no one would care to do the later parts.
And nobody will be forced. It’s a choice, a matter of how badly you want that shiny reward.
People just need to accept that if they want everything, they will also have to do everything, and (for some of the things) be good at them as well.

Symph.8407:

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Symph.8407:

But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

You dont have to exclude the rewards , but that doesnt mean that the reward must be ’’beautiful’’ :P

PPl WILL BE FORCED to play the raid if the reward is visually beeautiful , and they will moan that encounter to be nerfed afterwards .
But if the lesser-easier bosses throw those ’’beautifuls’’ rewards they wont whine at all … and the other ‘’ugly-prestigious’’ gear can be be looted by the dificult bosses for the pro players :P

Edit : Ah , i didnt see the ’’red’’ post … sorry

The “beautiful” rewards do have to come from the later/harder part of the raid though, otherwise it’s counterproductive, and no one would care to do the later parts.
And nobody will be forced. It’s a choice, a matter of how badly you want that shiny reward.
People just need to accept that if they want everything, they will also have to do everything, and (for some of the things) be good at them as well.

Like the minority that dont want rewards , an other part of the manority like yourself wont do it because of the ‘’ungly gear’’ .
In both cases , you and me , are the manority :P
The majority will do Raids :
a) because its fun
b) They will complete for the 1st World Run or Speedrun records
c) prestigious Titles

Brb : movie …

The game needs hardcore level 80+ content, no upscale stuff. Everyone I know just craft to 80 or play PvP until they have 60 tomes of knowledge.

The problem is that what we need isn’t just Guild Halls, GvG, Raiding, new skills, etc. It needs all of the above released as an expansion, and released soon. I sincerely hope that is what have you been doing at Anet all that time we were kept in the dark…

Raiding and rewards obtained from it:
To have Raiding be the least of interesting you need to increase the party limit and release new skills for level 80+. Maybe raise the level cap with another ranking system that give you access to these new skills.

Else we are raiding for what? 3 yellow items and some random loot? No!

Please tell the top manager at Anet that after 2 years we don’t need more random gear or gem store skins for rewards. We need new skills, traits, classes and weapon types for rewards.
I can’t understand why after over 2 years you’ve only been able to release a few healing skills almost nobody uses (they are not even better than the older skills), considering all the developers you guys have.

These rewards need to be usable in new balanced competitive context: GvG it is.

Guild halls are just the minimum you can expect from a game that claims itself to be a derivative of Guild Wars 1.

guardian.6489:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal Overview
Potential Raid Mechanics: Part 6 Profession specific interactions

Goal of Proposal
To make use of the unique abilities of specific professions.

Proposal Functionality
I see two levels of functionality:

Soft Profession requirements and Hard profession requirements, soft, its ideal to have this class but at least one other class can carry out the same task. Hard: only one class can carry out this task and is based on the classes theme.

Soft Profession mechanics
-Stealth, Example: You must make it from one end of a corridor to another while stealthed the whole way or an instakill occurs. Can’t be bypassed by mistform or other invuln mechanics.
Another possibility is a stealth portion of a raid where you want to make it through an area unseen with patrols and the like.

-Elements and fields: Water/heal fields to douse flames or activate effects, Fire fields to ignite traps or activate explosives, Holy fields for god statue activations etc.

-Reflection: To shield from an explosive blastwave or redirect a magical blast to blow open a door etc.

Hard profession mechanics
Necromancer: Raise a corpse to get information/password/open a locked room from inside etc.

Guardian: Use holy magic to activate a god statue/complete a ritual/ seal a passage preventing reinforcements.

Ranger: Can make use of a fixed position sniper rifle to hit a switch/take out a target of opportunity at some point to assist in progressing.

Engineerer: Can activate disabled golems/rig a door to blow etc.

Elementalist: Can make use of magical reagents, Activate elemental doors, converse with elementals etc.

Mesmer: Can jedi mind trick some goon into opening a door / reveal a disguised illusion, do the kasmeer portal trick.

Thief: Can Identify a trap, bribe for information , locate a weakness.

Warrior: Kinda at a loss for this one since a warriors kinda meant to be the generic everyman. can use brute strength to open something/ force their way through something at some point?

Associated Risks
-Hard class requirements can result in the same lf healer issue in other games.

I think Soft profession requirements are a better idea then Hard profession mechanics.

The former utilities the unique abilities professions bring to the table that’s already built in like stealth and it’s something we use all the time anyways. The Latter seem to just be adding a unique ability to a class for uniqueness sake which I’d argue is counterintutive and just puts a hard wall against certain class compositions.

It’s better to make a section where you need stealth and just have the group blast smoke fields if they don’t have enough thieves then some trap only a thief disable because reasons.

Sure , Soft mechanics are a better idea , the kittenes were just there as a possible example of story elements you could generate with set professions.

Edit: hard , the kitten is the word hard the censor blocked it due to the word after it being ones.

Proposal Overview
Raids, Guild Wars 2 style
Goal of Proposal
A way to integrate Raids inside Guild Wars 2, in a way that it utilizes the Guild Wars 2 elements.

• Makes use of Dodging mechanics
• Makes use of the combat mechanics(move and cast, conditions, boons)
• Makes use of the event system
• Makes use of jumping puzzles, mechanics found in Guild puzzles and Guild Challenges.
• Makes use of the environment

Proposal Functionality
I’ll focus this on a 15 man raid.

I’ll also use a couple of ideas that I’ve seen throughout the thread and really liked.

• Even if you’re running with 15 players, it doesn’t mean the full content should be the 15 sticking together. Multi-paths
• Have something for every playstyle
• Don’t lock stuff down to specific class (make sure there’s alternatives)

So here goes

You’re at the entrance of a dredge mine, you set up your 3 party of 5 (or get pugs from LFG), a commander tags up, switches to RAID mode and creates a raid from the 3 parties.

Everyone enters the instance, you come in a big room. Hobo-tron is there, you interact with him, and he asks you if you want to bind this raid to your account.
There’s 3 paths leading out of the room, how will you split up? [No one knows! It’s your first time here and I’m writing this as I think about it]

The groups decide to split in 3 parties of 5, each taking a path.

Left Path
The Left path goes up to the scafolding on top of the mines, this is laid out almost like a maze, you can see across from it, to the exit, because it’s all wire walls. You also see different patrols walking inside the maze.
You start walking across towards the exit, you come across some switches, but they seem to do nothing, you can’t interact with them. Upon reaching the end of the Maze, you see a locked door with 3 lights that aren’t lit up… But the switches did nothing, you couldn’t interact with them.

Center Path
The Center path seems to lead straight ahead, deeper in the mine, after a couple of adds, they reach an open room with a big device in the center, looks like a Generator, but there’s no way to power it. A boss jumps in from the side, sending an electric shockwave in a small AOE around him. What if we used this to power the generator? Each stomps powers the generator for 30 seconds, and he stomps every 15 seconds. This group needs to make sure the shockwave hits the generator to power it up. They can’t kill the boss, he’s immune to damage and condi, but not CC(has a small stack of defiance).

Meanwhile on the Left Path, they can now interact with the 3 switches in the maze, and make their way out. The group can see the group from the Center Path fighting down below, there’s an arrow cart on the other side of the door from the maze. Someone gets on it, and notice that there’s a skill that will cause the immunity to damage to be removed, and another skill for the immunity to conditions, the cooldowns for both are the length of the debuff of one or the other on the boss.

Right Path
The right path goes far underground, you start to feel the heat, and you see lava flowing around you. After a while you come to an impass, a huge gap, there’s no way to make it across. But you see a path along the edge of the cliffs, where if someone that was good with jumping puzzles could go up and see what’s up there. Well look at that, there’s a crane-like device up here that can drop a bridge for the party to move on.

All Three Path merges back to a central area, except all 3 parties are on different levels. They prepare for the first boss, a huge dredge suit/mech that comes in. The team on top can drop boulders to stun/cc the mech into place, while the team underground are killing fire grubs to get some stones/coal to put in a huge furnace. On the main floor, the party sees a flame thrower on the side of the room, that’s powered by the furnace underground. But the thing is constantly under attack by adds, and also the boss that tries to crush them. So you need someone to man the flamethrower, and people on top to stun the boss in place so the shot actually hits, while the people on the bottom are feeding the furnace so the flamethrower can work.

—End Of Example—

Associated Risks

Being too awesome

[b]Proposal:
Create more demands in dungeons/raid. Let Mob groups can do everything to create demand.

[b]Goal of Proposal

Encourage more build diversity and a little bit more gear choice.

[b]Proposal Functionality

Dungeons have very little demands. What do I mean by demands? Well, dungeons do not demand cripple, boon removal, CC because they don’t need it in dungeons.

• Cripple, immobilize, chill- discourage stacking. It is the only way to see these conditions find use anywhere.
• Boon removal/corrupting- Not very demanding because no mobs apply boons. To fix this, every mob can at least apply a weak boon to themselves + several mobs can stack boons to their allies.
• Daze/Interrupt/Stun- The AoE stuns are useful actually. Single target stuns are not, in mob groups or boss. Give every mob the ability to heal themselves, single target stuns become more useful so that mobs don’t renew themselves. For Bosses, listen to the community on taking steps to remove defiant.
• Condition damage- Simple to fix this. Some mobs have more toughness and less hp.
• Toughness/Vitality/Healing power- I feel that steps to discourage stacking will make these stats a lot more useful if mobs AI were implemented right. Players with toughness/vitality can survive better in an AoE to revive downed players. Healing power can be useful with water fields and healing others.
• Single target- Instead of AoEing everything to death, I would like to see some builds that focuses on single important targets, lets call them veterans. These veterans don’t have high health, they are very dangerous, and highly resistance or immune to focus fire/AoE. A small team is needed to kill them while the others are focused on the mobs.
• Projectiles- Probably be more useful by discouraging stacking.
• Melee- This means that melee becomes a lot more worthless. To fix this, give reflect or projectile blocking to mobs.

• Every mob group encounter should be able to do everything. Make a checklist:They should be able to rip/corrupt/transfer boons, apply conditions to enemies, transfer/remove condis to themselves or others, apply boon to themselves, reflect projectile, heal themselves or others, support themselves support others, revive dead allies(like warbanner), do huge aoe damage, do huge single target damage. Not every mobs need to do all this by themselves. It can be split up between teams.

• To keep mobs unique, one mob can have AoE/boon removal/High health/low toughness, another mob can have boon support, high toughness/low hp/projectiles. But every mob group needs to have everything.

• To keep bosses unique, how they apply the attack can be different. For example, projectile(bouncing, AoE straight line), AoE(consistent, instant), whirling(instant, consistent), leaps, etc. Bosses can also combo through themselves: Boss applies a fire field then he uses a blast finisher to give himself 10 stacks of might.

• Sometimes, not everyone can bring these. So I suggest that consumable to fill every niche is made. However, it is completely weak compared to bringing a player. Such as, 3 second cast to rip a boon.

I want to be able to play any build I like and find it effective anywhere in all raids. I want to be able to find it difficult to choose between Well of Corruption and Corrupt Boon. I don’t want to switch builds because no mobs “bring boons.”

I just don’t want this to be like dungeons with more players.

Associated Risks:

• Some players are not ready to break out of the liner model mold.
• Very expensive to make mobs unique while doing everything.

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?

I honestly believe this is a non-issue. Players that view end-game content as the end-all / be-all will always consume low level content at an extreme pace. They are the “first” group, the kind of player that wants to be the first in the game or their group to consume the content.

Then there are players in it for the experience, “role-players” and the like who are going to enjoy the content at their own pace regardless of what waits at end-game. GW2 didn’t have raiding at launch, but you still had a significant portion of the players consuming content faster than you could create it. You will always have this group and you will NEVER be able to produce content fast enough for them.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

In fairness, you brought the scaling issue to the forefront when you told us to assume a set raid size as part of our feedback. If we can abandon that assumption (with the understanding that the topic will be part of a later discussion), then it would open the conversation to other topics.

The logistics of how raids are formed – especially among guilds of diverse numbers – is a very important topic that will affect how players – and definitely guilds – experience raiding should it ever become a thing. That topic cannot be pushed aside. It goes to the heart of how we play the game.

I put forward set raid size to try to steer discussion away from scaling.

And just to note I also said ‘Set raid size with the ability for a smaller number than the set to enter in and try the encounter’

Knowledge>skill>numbers.

Chris

Which raises the issue of accessibility (an area where GW2 has always set itself apart) and essentially limiting people out of raiding for pure math and logistical reason – which I’ve explained in detail in this thread.

The solution doesn’t have to be scaling, but the alternative of a single set number causes logistics issues that plague raiding in other games, especially for guilds (its the reason WoW implemented flex raiding).

Again, the discussion around that point – and finding an alternative (or the insistence that there isn’t one) – is a necessary part of the raid conversation.

If scaling limits development, what can we do to solve both issues – making challenging raids accessible to everyone (logistically) without tearing guilds and communities apart or limiting your development capabilities.

Ive tried to compromise on this perspective, even offering a potential solution (the 8-12-16 or just 8-12 sized raids). Im just asking that something people care about not be dismissed out of hand – that it be part of the actual discussion.

What about some mechanics to let guilds compete in a Raid? 2-5 guilds can pick to compete against each other for checkpoint times, overall time, fewest deaths etc. There would be a countdown timer to start. Each of the guilds is running their own instance of the Raid, but an announcer tells each guild where the other guilds are in terms of their run. Each guild gets the reward for beating the Raid, but bonus rewards can be won for the things I mentioned above. This would be great too because if you finish first you get your bonus rewards and get to end the instance and not have to wait for the others to finish.

• This would be great for streaming as well and would be a lot of fun if you could access the Raids from the guild hall.

• There should obviously be a place to enter the Raids from the game world as well, but I think this would offer a nice way for guilds to compete indirectly in a PvE setting.

• The best guilds could have their emblem and name displayed in the Raid.

Xillllix.3485:

The game needs hardcore level 80+ content, no upscale stuff. Everyone I know just craft to 80 or play PvP until they have 60 tomes of knowledge.

The problem is that what we need isn’t just Guild Halls, GvG, Raiding, new skills, etc. It needs all of the above released as an expansion, and released soon. I sincerely hope that is what have you been doing at Anet all that time we were kept in the dark…

Raiding and rewards obtained from it:
To have Raiding be the least of interesting you need to increase the party limit and release new skills for level 80+. Maybe raise the level cap with another ranking system that give you access to these new skills.

Else we are raiding for what? 3 yellow items and some random loot? No!

Please tell the top manager at Anet that after 2 years we don’t need more random gear or gem store skins for rewards. We need new skills, traits, classes and weapon types for rewards.
I can’t understand why after over 2 years you’ve only been able to release a few healing skills almost nobody uses (they are not even better than the older skills), considering all the developers you guys have.

These rewards need to be usable in new balanced competitive context: GvG it is.

Guild halls are just the minimum you can expect from a game that claims itself to be a derivative of Guild Wars 1.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but skills in this game aren’t tied to levels – so, no need for level cap increase. It would only net more grinding and broken builds, nothing more. And this isn’t relevant to raids, anyways.

Proposal Overview
Possible raid mechanics: Part 7: Materials and surfaces

Goal of Proposal

Yet more raid mechanics, this time based around the idea of certain surfaces having unique properties.

Proposal Functionality
This set of mechanics would likely work more around puzzles and tricks rather than direct combat.

Surfaces modifying properties
Jump Gel/ Bouncy surfaces: Can be set points or a carry-able gun that sprays “Jump Gel”, Doubles the height of a players jump, can be used to work through puzzles.

Sticky Surfaces: Slowed to a walk, can’t jump and dodge won’t function while on these patches, increases positional awareness in raids and if enemies are lured into these patches can effect them too.

Viscosity surfaces (Cornstarch Gel): Can be run over while under the effects of swiftness, not being under the effects of swiftness causes you to sink through the surface, stopping for more than a second or two will also cause this effect.

Flammable Surfaces: A fire-field will ignite the entire surface causing damage to everything standing on it (friend and foe).

Temporal surfaces: Grand quickness and endurance regen but damage you in increasing amounts the longer you remain on them.

Chaotic surfaces: Modify the properties of attacks randomly, I.e a basic auto attack could end up causing burn , or turning into a heal , random each time. Minions/pets that walk over these surfaces temporarily become neutral and will attack both sides at will.

Associated Risks

While some already partially exist like the sticky, and jump surfaces some may be tricky to implement.

Other ideas for interesting raid concepts:

• Split Raid: every person starts the raid in a separate location and can’t see the other players on a map. They need to use a bundle item to stealth from enemies and also locate other players (maybe via sonar/echolocation?). Once, say, 2/3 of the players are together they can go activate a switch to teleport everyone to the next section, but they get bigger rewards the more of them manage to meet up first.

• Canary in the Coal Mine: the raid is full of deathtraps and one or two players use a bundle to spot and disarm the traps. That person can also use the bundle to deliberately trigger disarmed traps to hurt/kill enemies.

• Body Swap: a boss that randomly swaps around players between each other. So for instance every minute I would swap to being in control of a different person in my raid, possibly someone of a different profession entirely – (I can’t alter their gear or access their inventory, obviously). Alternatively it could just randomly change my profession temporarily, but I think the idea of swapping with the specific profession/bodies of your raid members would add a little fun into the mix, and would even be easier in some respects. “Hey EngiBro I’m you now, what do I do?!”

Another interesting mechanic/game play option from GW1 would be to be given a particular set of skills and traits and have to play what you were dealt. Obviously, this might be problematic for min/maxers, but would do away with the idea that there is a best way to do this.

I’m not happy about the fixed raid-size statement since it excludes friends from playing together in most cases, but if it helps to focus on moving to another topic… allright.

What I think worked quite well (e.g. in Queens Gauntlet, Evacuation of LA,…) was the option for players to choose your next encounter while others do theirs. Good players can try the challenging harder bosses while newbies go for the relatively easy route.

Very organised teams can send players to their suggested encounters and those sub-teams organize themselves via. a number of teamspeak-channels.

Queens Gauntlet had the mechanic to give the best reward if people get all bosses down at a specific time-limit. It was a nice challenge (though the rewards were very underwhelming: quantity over quality rewards).

Proposal:

What if a instance starts in a room with 6 portals.

• each portal is open for 5 players at most
• the raidgroup spreads their players to their portals of choice
• once they enter a portal/path, the timer starts ticking. You can’t go back from there on.

• example A (small group): 8 players spread:
  4 at portal 2,
  4 at portal 4.
  Each portal has a specific endboss with a unique skin-drop. Defeating both bosses in a certain time unlocks a mega-boss where all come together. He drops 2 reward chests for everyone (rare rng reward) and a special reward chest (token/unique skin choice).

• example B (big group): 28 players spread:
  5 at portal 1
  5 at portal 2
  5 at portal 3
  5 at portal 4
  4 at portal 5
  4 at portal 6
  Each portal has a specific endboss with a unique skin-drop. Defeating all bosses in a certain time unlocks a mega-boss where all come together. He drops 6 reward chests for everyone (rare rng reward) and a special reward chest (token/unique skin choice).

TL;DR: A group can freely choose how many paths (portals) they would like to try. The more paths they do, the higher the rng-chance for the rng reward. The other chest (token/unique skin for completing) are constant, no matter how many paths are done.

BilboBaggins.5620:

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?

I honestly believe this is a non-issue. Players that view end-game content as the end-all / be-all will always consume low level content at an extreme pace. They are the “first” group, the kind of player that wants to be the first in the game or their group to consume the content.

Then there are players in it for the experience, “role-players” and the like who are going to enjoy the content at their own pace regardless of what waits at end-game. GW2 didn’t have raiding at launch, but you still had a significant portion of the players consuming content faster than you could create it. You will always have this group and you will NEVER be able to produce content fast enough for them.

Although no one can suppress the appetite of gamings equivalent of locusts <BEG> should design reward them for these efforts. The point being, you are not only encouraging those that consume the content this way, but are also encouraging others to feel ‘forced to keep up’. Another discussion, entirely, but definitely a risk, nonetheless.

Hey guys, what do you think about mobs or mobs group can do everything at once?

For example, rip/corrupt/transfer boons, apply conditions to enemies, transfer/remove condis to themselves or others, apply boon to themselves, reflect projectile, heal themselves or others, support themselves support others, revive dead allies(like warbanner), do huge aoe damage, do huge single target damage.

All so that a diversity of builds will be useful?

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?

That will depends on how the raid contents is created. You can create a raid content based on existing maps. Much like your personal story which often send you to special instance on existing map.

Also, I doubt the raid contents will have rewards that not already existed in the game. I believe anet mentioned that ascended will be the final tier, I read a news somewhere. So, gears grade are fixed, will there really be a rush to go to level 80? Currently, majority of the players themselves already demanding level 80 for dungeons and WvW. Players are already creating that pressure to newbies to level to 80 fast via any fast methods.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m not happy about the fixed raid-size statement since it excludes friends from playing together in most cases, but if it helps to focus on moving to another topic… allright.

What I think worked quite well (e.g. in Queens Gauntlet, Evacuation of LA,…) was the option for players to choose your next encounter while others do theirs. Good players can try the challenging harder bosses while newbies go for the relatively easy route.

Very organised teams can send players to their suggested encounters and those sub-teams organize themselves via. a number of teamspeak-channels.

Queens Gauntlet had the mechanic to give the best reward if people get all bosses down at a specific time-limit. It was a nice challenge (though the rewards were very underwhelming: quantity over quality rewards).

Proposal:

What if a instance starts in a room with 6 portals.

• each portal is open for 5 players at most
• the raidgroup spreads their players to their portals of choice
• once they enter a portal/path, the timer starts ticking. You can’t go back from there on.

• example A (small group): 8 players spread:
  4 at portal 2,
  4 at portal 4.
  Each portal has a specific endboss with a unique skin-drop. Defeating both bosses in a certain time unlocks a mega-boss where all come together. He drops 2 reward chests for everyone (rare rng reward) and a special reward chest (token/unique skin choice).

• example B (big group): 28 players spread:
  5 at portal 1
  5 at portal 2
  5 at portal 3
  5 at portal 4
  4 at portal 5
  4 at portal 6
  Each portal has a specific endboss with a unique skin-drop. Defeating all bosses in a certain time unlocks a mega-boss where all come together. He drops 6 reward chests for everyone (rare rng reward) and a special reward chest (token/unique skin choice).

TL;DR: A group can freely choose how many paths (portals) they would like to try. The more paths they do, the higher the rng-chance for the rng reward. The other chest (token/unique skin for completing) are constant, no matter how many paths are done.

Interesting idea. Keeping to the proposed 15 man max size, 5 portals available, any combination can be attempted, with optimum prizes being given for all being finished by 3 player teams in a given time limit. My concern for smaller number of portals we are back to 3 portals with 5 man teams. To ‘dungeony’.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Proposal Overview
Raids, Guild Wars 2 style
Goal of Proposal
A way to integrate Raids inside Guild Wars 2, in a way that it utilizes the Guild Wars 2 elements.

• Makes use of Dodging mechanics
• Makes use of the combat mechanics(move and cast, conditions, boons)
• Makes use of the event system
• Makes use of jumping puzzles, mechanics found in Guild puzzles and Guild Challenges.
• Makes use of the environment

Proposal Functionality
I’ll focus this on a 15 man raid.

I’ll also use a couple of ideas that I’ve seen throughout the thread and really liked.

• Even if you’re running with 15 players, it doesn’t mean the full content should be the 15 sticking together. Multi-paths
• Have something for every playstyle
• Don’t lock stuff down to specific class (make sure there’s alternatives)

So here goes

You’re at the entrance of a dredge mine, you set up your 3 party of 5 (or get pugs from LFG), a commander tags up, switches to RAID mode and creates a raid from the 3 parties.

Everyone enters the instance, you come in a big room. Hobo-tron is there, you interact with him, and he asks you if you want to bind this raid to your account.
There’s 3 paths leading out of the room, how will you split up? [No one knows! It’s your first time here and I’m writing this as I think about it]

The groups decide to split in 3 parties of 5, each taking a path.

Left Path
The Left path goes up to the scafolding on top of the mines, this is laid out almost like a maze, you can see across from it, to the exit, because it’s all wire walls. You also see different patrols walking inside the maze.
You start walking across towards the exit, you come across some switches, but they seem to do nothing, you can’t interact with them. Upon reaching the end of the Maze, you see a locked door with 3 lights that aren’t lit up… But the switches did nothing, you couldn’t interact with them.

Center Path
The Center path seems to lead straight ahead, deeper in the mine, after a couple of adds, they reach an open room with a big device in the center, looks like a Generator, but there’s no way to power it. A boss jumps in from the side, sending an electric shockwave in a small AOE around him. What if we used this to power the generator? Each stomps powers the generator for 30 seconds, and he stomps every 15 seconds. This group needs to make sure the shockwave hits the generator to power it up. They can’t kill the boss, he’s immune to damage and condi, but not CC(has a small stack of defiance).

Meanwhile on the Left Path, they can now interact with the 3 switches in the maze, and make their way out. The group can see the group from the Center Path fighting down below, there’s an arrow cart on the other side of the door from the maze. Someone gets on it, and notice that there’s a skill that will cause the immunity to damage to be removed, and another skill for the immunity to conditions, the cooldowns for both are the length of the debuff of one or the other on the boss.

Right Path
The right path goes far underground, you start to feel the heat, and you see lava flowing around you. After a while you come to an impass, a huge gap, there’s no way to make it across. But you see a path along the edge of the cliffs, where if someone that was good with jumping puzzles could go up and see what’s up there. Well look at that, there’s a crane-like device up here that can drop a bridge for the party to move on.

All Three Path merges back to a central area, except all 3 parties are on different levels. They prepare for the first boss, a huge dredge suit/mech that comes in. The team on top can drop boulders to stun/cc the mech into place, while the team underground are killing fire grubs to get some stones/coal to put in a huge furnace. On the main floor, the party sees a flame thrower on the side of the room, that’s powered by the furnace underground. But the thing is constantly under attack by adds, and also the boss that tries to crush them. So you need someone to man the flamethrower, and people on top to stun the boss in place so the shot actually hits, while the people on the bottom are feeding the furnace so the flamethrower can work.

—End Of Example—

Associated Risks

Being too awesome

I really like most of this example. That’s exactly the kind of stuff I want to see.
Perhaps with a little more focusing on using the class skills to accomplish the different subobjectives, but generally really nice.

Blaeys.3102:

Which raises the issue of accessibility (an area where GW2 has always set itself apart) and essentially limiting people out of raiding for pure math and logistical reason – which I’ve explained in detail in this thread.

The solution doesn’t have to be scaling, but the alternative of a single set number causes logistics issues that plague raiding in other games, especially for guilds (its the reason WoW implemented flex raiding).

Again, the discussion around that point – and finding an alternative (or the insistence that there isn’t one) – is a necessary part of the raid conversation.

If scaling limits development, what can we do to solve both issues – making challenging raids accessible to everyone (logistically) without tearing guilds and communities apart or limiting your development capabilities.

Ive tried to compromise on this perspective, even offering a potential solution (the 8-12-16 or just 8-12 sized raids). Im just asking that something people care about not be dismissed out of hand – that it be part of the actual discussion.

I think Chris has clearly indicated that he’s open to downscaling the raid for less numbers at this point.
He’s trying to get the conversation focused on more pressing issues though, namely how raids are going to work at a gameplay level. How are we going to make challenging instanced group content, for a group size of about 15 players, using GW2’s unique mechanics of play.
I’m sure the discussion will come back around to scaling later. The CDI threads are progressive in nature, they grow over time to cover different facets of the topic.

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

Arewn.2368:

I think Chris has clearly indicated that he’s open to downscaling the raid for less numbers at this point.

He didnt propose down scaling, simply letting players try the content – at the set difficulty – with smaller groups (similar to soloing 5 player dungeons). There is a difference.

I believe telling a good story is important in the overall raid experience. This doesn’t mean an annoying NPC following the group and spouting exposition, it means the raid objectives making sense. Just plowing through a dungeon and killing everything in the way does not make an interesting tale.

As to how the raids should be structured as a whole, Underworld and Domain of Anguish from GW1 are good places to start from. Mix in some metaevent magic from open world content – several sub-events to complete, some more urgently than others, some simultaneously, culminating in a big boss battle.

As for these sub-events, some of them could be boss fights, but not all – that would be rather boring, don’t you think? So, mix in defense missions (like Dzagonur Bastion from GW1), escort missions, puzzles, and the like. And don’t make the mistake of making them as easy as they are in open world – focus on challenge, and the two golden values cooperation and coordination. Have these events tie in together to tell, no, SHOW a story.

As boss fight mechanics have been discussed for quite a bit already, and I don’t have more to add to that for now, I’ll leave that out of this post. The key part in this post is, coherent story and scenario are important. A boss rush is just that, a boss rush, and while I’m sure many would enjoy that, a good story brings it all together for an unforgettable experience. In theory, anyways.

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

It seems that its only a significant concern for you. Most guilds should have no problem organising into smaller groups. Even if their numbers dont divide up perfectly. I think its time we move away from it. You’ve made your point on the issue. Thats all there is to it.

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

spoj.9672:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

It seems that its only a significant concern for you. Most guilds should have no problem organising into smaller groups. Even if their numbers dont divide up perfectly. I think its time we move away from it. You’ve made your point on the issue. Thats all there is to it.

I dont believe I am the only one with this concern. Many throughout the thread have advocated more flexibility in raid size, for the same reasons I list. The difference is Im more vocal and less inclined to let the issue fall to the wayside (call it a character flaw).

This is an important issue to me and one I will continue to advocate for – or at least advocate to keep it part of the conversation. I dont think that is an unfair request.

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

We can’t have them design something that’s supposed to be challenging around X number of players, and then allow people to bring in more than that amount.
Everyone would go for the easy rewards, and that would ruin the whole point of this discussion.
Make it fixed, then we can always discuss the possibility for 2 or 3 sizes.

But as was said above, we should move away from this now and focus on the mechanics, as Chris asked us.

This is a totally selfish aside but here are a couple suggestions:

• I want to get in fights with smaller dragons. You know, 3 times longer than a drake and as tall as a Jotun. I see them flying around(in my imagination)and never get to fight them.

• Setting is totally important. Find places that you know for a fact we are never going to go to (Isle of Janthir, Ring of Fire Islands, Crystal Desert) and put a Raid there. It doesn’t have to be underground like some old-school hipster Raid. Put in the open.

• I have heard it said we will never meet Isgarren. Fine. But Raids need to be set in places like(notice I said like) the Wizard’s Tower. Places that are important to the lore. I don’t want throwaway characters that I have never had a reason to care about. Raids should be in locations and about people of great importance like Livia, Evennia, Marriner, Dougal Keane, Snaff, Glint…(I could keep going). Locations should matter.

• I don’t think we should get a big story around a raid but rather the location and people the raid is about just setting a mood of importance. For example, you make the raid about what happened to Rytlock and everyone will care about it. Or we have to go to the Underworld to get Tybalt. People will care about it. make it about a character and a setting that no one has any connection to and it’s just another instance.

• The greater legacy of the GW Franchise is important. Tie a Raid into the lore of the franchise. A raid about the founding of Ebonhawk. A raid about what happened to Livia. Saul D’Allessio. There is so much unfinished business when it comes to the setting of this game. Things don’t exactly have to get answered in the Raid, but the raid could be a setup for telling those untold stories in future Living World or expansion content.

I feel splitting up the raid is a fundamentally bad idea, here’s why:
The idea of the raid is to have a cooperative experience with a medium-size group. If the first thing you do is split that group into different paths, then you stop playing together and start playing beside each other.
The raid needs to find a method of engaging the 15 member group together in a meaningful way.
Remember Marionette? fun fight. But failing because lane 4 couldn’t beat the mini-boss, and there was nothing you could do to interact with the lane 4 players or influence the outcome? not so fun.

I want to actually play with the 14 other members of the raid, not have 10 of them separate from me doing their own thing in a different place that happens to be working to the same objective.
Sub-objectives within an encounter that divide the group are good, but all the members have to still be in the same encounter and able to interact with the other sub-groups.

15 people jumping on the same mob is going to be a meaningless cluster, that’s definitely the case and there needs to be a solution to that. But sending them their separate ways is not a solution I think we should be satisfied with.
15 people jumping on the same mob, but that mobs has different body parts that need to be engaged in different ways and that require interactivity between them. That can be meaningful combat.
15 people in the same room for one encounter, but there’s some heavy hitting high health mobs that need to be locked down by a CC/tanky team, while other members burn adds, and the main group kills the boss. That can be meaningful.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

Proposal Overview
Possible raid mechanics: How to start a raid instance
Goal of Proposal
Idea for starting a raid instance utilizing existing mechanics within the GW2 game.
Proposal Functionality
A “raid” instance could be created by clicking on an interface (a stone, or door), this creates a portal which exists for 5 minutes. During that 5 minute period, whoever enters the portal, enters the “raid” instance. After the 5 minute period, the interface could be clicked again creating a new portal to a new instance. These are both things that exist in the game already. The 5 minute period (or 2 minutes or whatever time is appropriate) is similar to how the instances worked during the “Scarlet raids” where you could enter the instance only during the first 2 minutes of a raid. An interface to create a portal is done all over Tyria already.
By utilizing this method, no new coding would have to be done to add a “raid mode” to commanders or anything like that. It is an easy way to create group instances of a dungeon.
Associated Risks
While you could set a maximum size for the instance (50-100-150 people for instance) it would be hard to set a minimum size and as such during unpopular times, you could have only a few people entering the instance and attempting it (this may not be a bad thing for challenge). Other bad side is that since the portal does not restrict who enters, you cannot control everyone who enters if a guild wants to do this alone for instance. This could be mitigated with a guild “device” for creating dungeon portals on their own where only guild members could enter. This might be a good thing for encouraging players to work with others (gets rid of the “you can’t come with us” mentality). Although this also allows for griefers, etc to enter your “raid” instance.

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

Blaeys.3102:

They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

use a raid planner.

Blaeys.3102:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

do we want to see more easy mode content because of scaling and all the issues that come with scaling?
no.
there are actually more points that speak against scaling or different raid sizes than points that speak for it.

now please, do us all a favor and accept what has been said and lets focus on the important stuff.

Harper.4173:

The problem is – as you’ve nicely put it – you want to have your cake and eat it.

You want to play the gear and build that you like even though it’s not what is best for the encounter but still clear the encounter just as fast or nearly as fast as those who are specifically playing in order to do it as fast as possible.

If you play for the “challenge” then taking longer shouldn’t be considered a “waste of time” since it’s what you like and want.

Ultimately you just proved you want the same rewards speed clear people get with less work while roleplaying your favorite set-up.

There’s no right or wrong way to play the game- it’s the way you enjoy it more.

You can’t really expect the game to change and make what you like to play the meta now can you?

There are a few ways I can think of to at least reduce the zerker meta for raids.

FFXIV has bosses where it’s helpful to slow DPS at times, either to avoid triggering too many add spawns at once, or to avoid pushing into a phase at an inopportune moment. I’m told that there are even some bosses which will enrage if pushed into a certain phase too soon.

Another option would be to require both the enrage timer and the boss’ health to reach zero before the fight ends. When the boss reaches zero health, the group then has to hold off waves of enemies, or the boss might turn invulnerable and gain new attacks. If the boss doesn’t take enough damage in time, then the enrage works as normal for that boss.

With the first suggestion, you’d still have a zerker meta (and FFXIV effectively does: tanks are expected to wear at least some DPS gear, and it’s not unheard of for people to conclude that one healer is better than another not by the healing they do but by their DPS over the course of a run).

NoTrigger.8396:

Blaeys.3102:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

do we want to see more easy mode content because of scaling and all the issues that come with scaling?
no.
there are actually more points that speak against scaling or different raid sizes than points that speak for it.

now please, do us all a favor and accept what has been said and lets focus on the important stuff.

What is important to one group is not the same as what is important to another.

And Im past advocating for pure scaling. I think different raid sizes are crucial to the success of the initiative, however, and deserves to be part of the conversation.

Im good with taking the conversation one piece at a time to encourage focus, but I want to know that we are not going to ignore the topic or consider it a foregone conclusion, which is what seems to be happening.

I hate coming across as stalling the conversation, but this is something that needs to be part of the discussion. That doesnt seem like too much to ask.

For a discussion where I think just about every single participant has disagreed with one or more other participants, this is all remarkably civil.

I got an idea to focus our mechanics discussion. Why don’t we take a previous living world event that could be transformed into a full Raid, create a blank slate for the Raid, then debate what mechanics we could add to it and what purpose they would serve. The reason for using an old event is because most of us have done it and it’s likely they’ll try recycling living story 1 content anyways.

I’ll use the wiki’s Dynamic event info as a template for each phase of the Raid: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Liberate_Lion%27s_Arch_from_Scarlet%27s_Forces
I also recommend finding some YouTube videos of the event so you know what I’m talking about.

For those who missed the Season 1 finale, this is modelled on the Dynamic Events and Boss fights around the battle of the breachmaker which is part of the Battle of LA. We’ll use the example Raid size of 15 for now.

Phase one: Neutralize Scarlet’s armies in key areas!
The fight begins with all 3 Parties starting off from the North entry location. They need to work together to take Fort Marriner, Trader’s Forum and Postern Ward. Once a location is taken after an X amount of time the Molten/Aetherblades/Molton Alliance attacks it forcing the group to split up to all 3 locations. There is trash throughout the city but they can be avoided. Once all 3 locations are captured phase 2 begins.
Recycled mechanics: Scarlet’s Alliances attacking each of the locations.
New Mechanics: (i.e. Toxic alliance husks spawn at Post Warden rally point and only take substantial damage from conditions)

Phase two: Stop the miasma deployment!

Three Miasma events spawn and the Raid party must deal with all 3 at the same time in a set time limit! If they fail one of the events they Miasma event the Raid will Fail/restart the event/lose out on bonus loot (pick one or add your own).

Recycled mechanics: The same Scarlet Alliance minions attack the Miasma locations

New Mechanics:

Phase three: Scarlet’s generals are out in the open. Kill them.

The 6 Generals of Scarlet Spawn in locations around the map (see that wiki page I posted for what they are) and the Raid must decide the Optimal way to kill all 6. They need to decide the fastest method to kill all 6 because ____
Recycled Mechanics: The Raid version of the 6 bosses use the same model and some of the same mechanics of the old open world fight
New Mechanics: (Think of new boss mechanics for all 6 of them)

Phase Four: Scarlet has unleashed her assault knights to stop the Lionguard.
The 3 Assault Knights spawn, and the Raid must defeat all 3 to the final battle with Scarlet.
Recycled Mechanics: The Three Assault Knights model and some of their attacks
New Mechanics: (Do we make the 3 Knights different this time?)

Phase Five: Defeat Scarlet’s Prime Hologram
All 15 members of the Raid come together for the final fight with Scarlet’s Prime Hologram. The first phase of the fight, the Raid must collect Primary Light Attunements to damage the Prime Hologram while avoid the Hologram’s laser attack which leaves a DoT effect on the ground in a strip where the Hologram fired. Second Phase the Hologram splits into 3 Holograms, and they must be killed at the same time or they will split further into mirco-X holograms and waste time further. Phase three you must kill Mircoprime Holograms to finish off the Ultra-violet Hologram, the fight goes back and forth between the Ultra-Violet Hologram firing it’s laser attack to leave a DoT attack (same as phase 1). There is a time limit to the fight.

Recycled mechanics: The fight still uses the same primary pattern and mechanics
New Mechanics: (What awesome new raid mechanics could we add?)

Rewards:
Death Consequences:

If you want to contribute to my thought experiment just quote my post edit what you want added, bold whatever is new and explain your decisions afterwords.

Arewn.2368:

I feel splitting up the raid is a fundamentally bad idea, here’s why:
The idea of the raid is to have a cooperative experience with a medium-size group. If the first thing you do is split that group into different paths, then you stop playing together and start playing beside each other.
The raid needs to find a method of engaging the 15 member group together in a meaningful way.
Remember Marionette? fun fight. But failing because lane 4 couldn’t beat the mini-boss, and there was nothing you could do to interact with the lane 4 players or influence the outcome? not so fun.

I want to actually play with the 14 other members of the raid, not have 10 of them separate from me doing their own thing in a different place that happens to be working to the same objective.
Sub-objectives within an encounter that divide the group are good, but all the members have to still be in the same encounter and able to interact with the other sub-groups.

15 people jumping on the same mob is going to be a meaningless cluster, that’s definitely the case and there needs to be a solution to that. But sending them their separate ways is not a solution I think we should be satisfied with.
15 people jumping on the same mob, but that mobs has different body parts that need to be engaged in different ways and that require interactivity between them. That can be meaningful combat.
15 people in the same room for one encounter, but there’s some heavy hitting high health mobs that need to be locked down by a CC/tanky team, while other members burn adds, and the main group kills the boss. That can be meaningful.

I kind of agree with this. I dont think raids should be designed to force the group to split into smaller groups to progress. But I think it should be something that is optional. Especially for more experienced players.

The way I want to see raids in gw2 is very much how UW and FoW were in gw1. The group enters a large open map and can go off and complete multiple quests/objectives. You can do them in any order. Each will have an end boss and separate rewards. And then there will be a final boss once all sub objectives are complete. And going back to unique rewards and hybrids original proposal. Once you beat the final end boss it unlocks a vendor which you can spend unique materials (obtained from drops in the raid) to buy prestigious unique cosmetic gear.

This means groups have the option to split up and tackle multiple sub objectives at the same type with however many players they feel is necessary. But only if they are experienced or feel comfortable doing so. It would simply open up new strategies for experienced players. It would add great replayability to the content. Especially once players have worked out how to complete all the events with a full group, it will give them something new to try. The general groups would probably all still go around and do each objective one at a time. But theres no reason why we cant have the option to tackle things in any order we like and at the same time with group splits.

Also id just like to mention that Arah and AC already have maps which are almost suitable for this type of layout. Some of the other dungeon maps are also not far off, they just lack size, looping and intertwining routes. If you opened up the blocked doors and tunnels in AC and combined all path objectives into one singular instance. And allowed them to be completed in any order while tieing the rewards to each objective. You get a really free roaming and fun instance with a lot of replayability. The same can be done with Arah.

What im seeing here is some people try to turn Raids into a Mini Tequal type of encounter while being remarkably scared of organized 5+ content:

I don’t understand whats everyone’s infatuation with a spam 1 scenario where numbers > skill and there all you have to do is join at a certain time, afk for 30 min till the commanders assign 4-5 people who know what they are doing and then collect loot after a trivialized boss fight.

Do we really want more of those? haven’t you had enough of those for a lifetime?

Just bring back old school raid content: You only need to look as far as the old DoA in GW1. I won’t refer to WoW as complex encounters are not easy to design without a trinity system (tank, healer, DPS)

DoA Hardmode required you to :

1: Have knowledge of the encounters
2: Design and adapt your party around it
3: Optimize gear and attributes
4: Be willing to put in the time to learn the encounters
5: Avoid careless and irresponsible play. If party wiped, you lost ALL progress

These characteristics should be taken in account when designing a raid encounter, or endgame, call it whatever.

If you dont add mechanics to punish careless play, punish lack of skill/knowledge, and to encourage players to ADAPT to the environment, you might as well scrap this whole raid “nonsense” and design more dungeons.

Even though GW2 is primarily aimed at the casual audience, it also needs to have endgame or challenging content where you can’t simply walk in with suboptimal gear and traits and faceroll through it

Naetell.3815:

RE: Gear equals player skill

I see a lot of:
‘I run zerker because I’m a good player, don’t punish me for being good’
‘If you’re not good enough to go full zerker, use other gear’
‘Stats don’t matter in this game, skill does’
‘Making other stats viable will lower the skill required to beat an encounter’

If you honestly, truly believe this is true, then ask yourself this:
Is that not a design flaw by default?
Why is it that your choice of stats is determined by player skill?
In that design, stats are obsolete. They are not required. Hence, we may as well remove them altogether.
There is no such thing as a player who cannot become a good player. If there is, it is because of restrictions they’ve placed upon themselves. With that in mind, there is no room for gear sets at all.
Furthermore, there is no reason to believe making condition damage, for example, more viable will lower skill level required at all.
Don’t kid yourselves when you refer to a full berzerker player running all support skills as a support player. That’s a DPS player who happens to have awesome support abilities.
In World of Warcraft, I’ve played a Rogue. The Rogue class was all about DPS. Yet, they also had an array of stuns that allowed them to excert an enormous amount of control over mobs. Yet, they were never cited as a control class. They could not gear for control, their main job was DPS.

Having support skills will not make you a support character any more than running 3 DPS skills in cleric gear make you a DPS character.

The only reason you can be a super DPS, control, and support character rolled into one in this game is the disparity between the effectiveness of skills when they are modified by stats. So please, inform yourselves before trying to drag any of that into this discussion.

in this game you are actually wrong. Theres is very little use for other playstyles to use the other stats.

• Control is COMPLETELY decided by skills/traits/runes/sigils no stat gives you an advantage on control other than immobilize and cripple, and thats a minimal gain for a huge stat disadvantage
• Support is mostly decided by skills/traits/runes/sigils except for healing, which is a stat who would only be extremely useful if they forced you to take damage no matter what you do. Which imo would be a bad design for this game. Might, protection, swiftness vigor, blinds weakness aegis stability etc, minimal effect through gear stats, and overall not worth it. you go all out and sacrifice most of your stats, and you ll get like what 60%? duration? A coordinated team would be better off having one other person use support skills/abilities because that would give at least double uptime.
• durability is somewhat effected by stats, but skillful play mitigates it way better than any stat, skill full play by a group of people would still mitigate it better. Proper use of aegis, groups using protection, and weakness. proper use of reflects, walls, sheild skills will always way outweigh the benefit of a stat.

Like it or not, right now, this game your stats have little to do with your role. what skills/traits/runes/sigils you pick determines your role. Stats determine how fast stuff dies, and how many mistakes you can make. This design is why the berzerker meta exists. unless they start to make stats effect skills more than just passive offense versus passive defense, this will always be the case.

I wanted to suggest a progression system. I’m only caught up to page 12, so I apologize if this is inappropriate at this time, but I’m finding that there’s 2 new pages every time I read one.

I think Raids should mean the introduction of Legendary armor. Legendary Armor has the same stats as Ascended but allows for stat-switching, just like Legendary weapons. Legendary armor is earned in raids through a progression system that starts with an exotic. Let’s use bullet points.

• Each Raid is broken into 6 sections, perhaps with a specific challenge or boss. These get harder as you go.
• Each section drops a corresponding piece of gear. The first time you complete it on a character, you get an Exotic with a fixed set of stats.
• Each time you complete that section in the future, your gear piece earns a “charge.” After a certain number of “charges” (maybe 10?) the gear piece can be upgraded.
• The upgrade cycle is Exotic with fixed stats, Exotic with selectable stats, Ascended with fixed stats, Ascended with selectable stats, Legendary
• The selectable stats on Exotic and Ascended raid gear can only be made once
• For each section, one player chosen at random in the group will receive a Super Charge with allows a piece to be upgraded a full cycle. There’s still some RNG for fun.

I created an image that might help to explain what I mean.

I feel like this ties together the concepts of raid-specific gear and rewards with the progression systems we’ve seen for things like the Mawdrey backpiece. There is a fixed level of effort before you can get your Legendary armor, but at the same time, you could luck out and shorten the process.

In addition, if your group isn’t good enough to complete the entire raid, you can still work toward some pieces of Legendary armor, just not the full set.

Blaeys.3102:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

This might be alleviated by making raids activate multiple times (at your discretion) and making them much more rewarding for the first completion rather than the subsequent completions which benefit the guild more than individuals (the benefit to the guild becomes less and less as more of them are done so it can’t be farmed ad nauseaum and still be rewarding ). This makes missing raids painless (great for casuals) and gives incentives to do them again (great for guilds, especially big ones who may need to do raids multiple times to get people through them).

timmyf.1490:

I wanted to suggest a progression system. I’m only caught up to page 12, so I apologize if this is inappropriate at this time, but I’m finding that there’s 2 new pages every time I read one.

I think Raids should mean the introduction of Legendary armor. Legendary Armor has the same stats as Ascended but allows for stat-switching, just like Legendary weapons. Legendary armor is earned in raids through a progression system that starts with an exotic. Let’s use bullet points.

• Each Raid is broken into 6 sections, perhaps with a specific challenge or boss. These get harder as you go.
• Each section drops a corresponding piece of gear. The first time you complete it on a character, you get an Exotic with a fixed set of stats.
• Each time you complete that section in the future, your gear piece earns a “charge.” After a certain number of “charges” (maybe 10?) the gear piece can be upgraded.
• The upgrade cycle is Exotic with fixed stats, Exotic with selectable stats, Ascended with fixed stats, Ascended with selectable stats, Legendary
• The selectable stats on Exotic and Ascended raid gear can only be made once
• For each section, one player chosen at random in the group will receive a Super Charge with allows a piece to be upgraded a full cycle. There’s still some RNG for fun.

I created an image that might help to explain what I mean.

I feel like this ties together the concepts of raid-specific gear and rewards with the progression systems we’ve seen for things like the Mawdrey backpiece. There is a fixed level of effort before you can get your Legendary armor, but at the same time, you could luck out and shorten the process.

In addition, if your group isn’t good enough to complete the entire raid, you can still work toward some pieces of Legendary armor, just not the full set.

nice idea but i wouldnt want to play with exotic gear when i already crafted ascended. id prefer visual progression over gear progression even if the only special thing about it is the ability to change stats.

so instead of legendary armor, what about a legendary looking armor skin set that can be upgraded visually?

Blaeys.3102:

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

I don’t mean to drag out this off-topic discussion, but do remember that GW2 is not WoW. You won’t have to sit in chat for 2 hours looking for a healer in GW2.
The problem you bring up is no where near as big of an issue as you make it out to be. Split your group, pug the empty slots. Rigid group size is the pinnacle of normalcy in the genre, it’s something people have been able to easily deal with for well over a decade.

NoTrigger.8396:

nice idea but i wouldnt want to play with exotic gear when i already crafted ascended. id prefer visual progression over gear progression even if the only special thing about it is the ability to change stats.

I would suggest you can charge any gear in your inventory, not necessarily just what you’r wearing. Also, I anticipated unique looks for the Exotic, Ascended, and Legendary gear set, so you’d get visual progression in addition to stat progression.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.

This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.

If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic

If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.

Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.

Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.

Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.

I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

This might be alleviated by making raids activate multiple times (at your discretion) and making them much more rewarding for the first completion rather than the subsequent completions which benefit the guild more than individuals (the benefit to the guild becomes less and less as more of them are done so it can’t be farmed ad nauseaum and still be rewarding ). This makes missing raids painless (great for casuals) and gives incentives to do them again (great for guilds, especially big ones who may need to do raids multiple times to get people through them).

Something like this would help, even though I still believe the 8 and 12 person model would address the issue more eloquently and effectively (again, you would only ever need to find at most 3 people to fill in for any group larger than 8 to make multiple viable raids).

That said, in the model you propose, raids would have to be short – probably as short as a single boss or encounter (averaging around 30 minutes with a weekly lockout). People arent going to want to do multi hour long raids more than once a week with a diminished reward (and the diminished reward would be critical to making the system work). Im not sure people would like that.

And thank you for being willing to have the conversation and discuss potential solutions.

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.

And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.

Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?

I don’t mean to drag out this off-topic discussion, but do remember that GW2 is not WoW. You won’t have to sit in chat for 2 hours looking for a healer in GW2.
The problem you bring up is no where near as big of an issue as you make it out to be. Split your group, pug the empty slots. Rigid group size is the pinnacle of normalcy in the genre, it’s something people have been able to easily deal with for well over a decade.

Im very aware, which is why I advocate the two raid sizes of 8 and 12 as a viable model. As long as you have eight people, you would only ever need to find, at most, 3 people to make multiple raid groups possible during a raiding session.

There is big difference between having to find 3 additional people and having to find 14 additional people (even without the trinity) to make raiding viable during a session.

And we really shouldnt care what the pinnacle of normalcy is in raiding. The point is to get away from those preconceptions and look at what GW2 offers. Traditionally, in large groups, GW2 uses scaling. Im past advocating for scaling, but I still think the issue deserves a solution. That is why I want to have the discussion.

Mechanics – Encounter Design

-Raid encounter design (both boss and trash) should require more of the depth of the combat system (CC – hard and soft, fields ect).

It can then be up to the players to organise themselves how they bring these things to the fight: will they have dedicated roles (CCer, Cleanser ect) or will everyone bring a bit what is needed and rotate?

• A general rule I’d say is that whatever the player has access to, so should the mobs and bosses – weapon swap, traits, runes ect with some special skills and mechanics for the bosses. I’d even go as far as say make a bank of individual mob specs and mob compositions, and have them randomly generated each instance to provide variety.

-Build roles into the fight.

A role is simply more than Tank, Support, DPS, CCer ect; rather, roles should be based around these aspects designed specifically for the encounter. Think of needing to carry the hammer in Cliffside Fractal, keeping the Lovers apart in AC Story and destroying crystals for the flame effigy.

• Because of the fairly free character customisation and free respecs, you’re pretty much not limited by what you can do here; A fight needs Immobilization? That Warrior can sacrifice a little DPS to bring the trait that brings that to the fight. Trait templates would be welcome here hint hint, nudge nudge.

-Have more than one boss per encounter.

My reasoning behind this is even if you give a boss the same tools as a player, if we’re assuming 15 players make up a raid, then that boss will have access to a limited set of 15 skills minimum, 14 traits, 6 runes ect, whereas what the players have a whole have access to 225 skills minimum, 210 traits, 90 runes ect.

It simply levels the playing field a bit while easing balance and not top-loading a single boss with skills and mechanics so it can just keep up. This should also reduce the amount of people turning the boss into a supernova and preventing people from seeing tells.

Consequently, have more than one mechanic happen at a time. This forces players to deal with these mechanics and prevents them from all dealing with one mechanic at a time.

-Environmental Mechanics

Much like the Gambits, Fractal Instabilities and Domains in GW1, these effects could be included.

However, I also feel that these should be able to be dispersed by those who put the effort in to do so; maybe it’s a secret boss, jumping puzzle or simply a mental challenge that needs to be overcome.

Add achievements for going both routes as well; one for barreling head-on and one for taking the time to do that.

-Scaling

Allow raids to scale within a certain range (10 – 30, for example).

Allow mechanics to also scale; if the number of players hits a milestone, the mechanic changes slightly to adapt to the increased number of players. For example, one of the boss mechanics is a bouncing projectile that bounces and hits those within a certain radius of each other:

• At 10 players, the maximum players hit is 5.
• At 15 players, the maximum players hit is 8.
• At 20 players, the maximum players hit is 10.

And so on.

Also, include mechanics that aren’t number-bound. For example, the boss curses a player. After x seconds, the curse explodes, dealing damage to that player and cursing anyone within y radius of that player, thus potentially causing a chain reaction where the curse never stops bouncing if players don’t pay attention to positioning.

This should, in theory, allow for scale-able encounters without higher numbers watering the experience down.