Guild Wars 2

Blaeys.3102:

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.

My point about normalcy is that people are both accustomed to and fully capable of dealing with it.
5 friends, only 4 can play L4D. 11 friends, only 10 can play League of Legends. 3 friends, only 2 can play Portal2.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill on something we can discuss LATER, and it’s derailing the thread.

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

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.

My point about normalcy is that people are both accustomed to and fully capable of dealing with it.
5 friends, only 4 can play L4D. 11 friends, only 10 can play League of Legends. 3 friends, only 2 can play Portal2.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill on something we can discuss LATER, and it’s derailing the thread.

Again, it doesnt matter what people are used to from those games.

By the same logic, We’ve been doing guild missions and living story for close to two years in GW2 without any restrictions on who gets to participate in guild events.

And, I would have no problem tabling the discussion if I thought it would actually be part of the conversation at a later phase – and not dismissed with single set raid sizes established as given from the beginning. Again, all Im asking is it eventually be part of the planned conversation. Unfortunately, that isnt the case. I dont want raiding to end up making into the game and me raising my voice then just to be told “you should have said something during the CDI.”

Again, asking for raid size and flexibility/accessibility to be part of the planned conversation – that is all. Without it, it doesnt really matter to some us what the actual content of the raids looks like.

The second they allow more people to enter than the content is designed for then you’re entering zerg territory and trivializing the content… and then what’s the point, might as well just have it open world and be another world boss.

phys.7689:

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.

That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time now. The stats/traits/skills balance in this game is horrible.
Not just for raids, but for all of GW2, this is a severe limiting factor in what you can do.

runeblade.7514:

[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.
-snip for space-

I like a lot of your ideas here, so I’d like to add to your proposal:
Significantly increase overall mob mobility. Give as many enemies as possible a repositioning tool that they will use with decent frequency. Give them abilities similar to flanking strike, whirlwind attack, shadowstep, bulls rush, phase retreat, etc.
Basically, anything to make the mobs move around more. This will encourage, but not demand, players to use more cripple/chill/CC to lock down mobs, as well as make player mobility more important to keep up with the mobs, and will help alleviate the stacking situation in some places.
Gameplay in GW2 is very mobile, this should be taken advantage of in designing encounters.

im loving this arguement about rewards for raids, its interesting to me that people dont want exclusive skins to raids because they dont want to have to feel forced to do content for a certain reward, yet throughout this ENTIRE game that model exists. tequatl weapon skins,fractal weapon skins, wvw season weapon skins, ls skins this list just goes on. its something you have dealt with for 2 years. 2 YEARS! it shouldnt bother you now.

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Blaeys.3102:

snip.

snip

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.

snip

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.

I think that it should be like fractals but grander in scheme with more coordination. I guess I want quality encounters rather than lengthy ones. My own play time is often sporadic and punctured by class work and semester schedules. So I would prefer that raids be no longer than 1.5 hours long for average people with knowledge to complete. Faster for those with skill and knowledge. Big guilds would have to do raids multiple time anyway if they want most of their people to experience them. Longer raids are just too un-accessable to be worth it I think.
8 player doesn’t seem epic enough and limits mechanically some of the cooler coordination mechanics (not a lot of stuff can happen simultaneously with only 8 people). 12 is fine but I think 12 should be possible and not that hard if the limit was 15.
oh and you are welcome. I keep writing about an encounter that i have been thinking and then scraping it…

I think a mix of mobs/bosses is best. Mobile enemies would be nice for encouraging cc and more mobile friendly play (ranged). Structural enemies/bosses defeat the purpose of precision and ferocity. Slow chunkers can be easily stacked up on and taken down. As long as there’s variety, it’s more interesting. I guess nobody liked them, but I really liked the toxic mobs. Downed states may be another interesting thing. Not that I’d love being finished by a monster, but what if certain enemies could resurrect others? Interrupt the rez?!

Naetell.3815:

phys.7689:

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.

That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time now. The stats/traits/skills balance in this game is horrible.
Not just for raids, but for all of GW2, this is a severe limiting factor in what you can do.

your " horrible balance " is the reason why the combat system keeps alot of people hooked in PvE.

the game was advertised with “this is a skill based game” and not “this is a facetank game”.

A lot of the suggestions are still just about adding things to GW2 that exist in raids in other games and putting them into this game. That stuff doesn’t need to be here. That content is in other games, it’s fun, but we have all been there before a thousand times. GW2 doesn’t have the Trinity. Let’s not just make it 10-24 man dungeons. We can do that with Event Trains. I can go farm Coil or Zho’Qafa Catacombs for that. Tequatl and The Wurm fit that bill.

Proposal

Dynamic Event Raid Portal(D.E.R.P)

• After 5 Events are simultaneously completed around Tyria(with their own rewards)a kitten . <—- (won’t let me put acronym for Dynamic Event Raid Portal here) is opened. The 5 events allow for the firing of 5 massive, ancient lasers that open a sky walk to Melandru’s Moon, Tyria’s Satellite.

I don’t presume to go any farther than that though. I am no writer. I just think you couldn’t make anything crazier or cooler than having a raid on a moon of Tyria. I also think having in game events for those that don’t like to raid, but like to event farm is a cool way to open up the raid for a few hours. And if you think about it, it means the raid would always be open. You kill two birds with one stone, you create 5 events for people to do and you add a raid. Everyone wins.

Mizenhauer.6713:

I think a mix of mobs/bosses is best. Mobile enemies would be nice for encouraging cc and more mobile friendly play (ranged). Structural enemies/bosses defeat the purpose of precision and ferocity. Slow chunkers can be easily stacked up on and taken down. As long as there’s variety, it’s more interesting. I guess nobody liked them, but I really liked the toxic mobs. Downed states may be another interesting thing. Not that I’d love being finished by a monster, but what if certain enemies could resurrect others? Interrupt the rez?!

Good point on downed state.
I think it would be really annoying if every mob in the raid entered downstate, but if they add a few here and there i think it can really add to the experience.
Maybe something to the effect of a “commander mob” that is present in most packs of mobs, and it enters a downstate and can potentially be rez’d by the other mobs.

I’m getting to this CDI a little late, I’ve been crazy busy this week… I must have missed a ton of info already and I’m not sure where we are in the conversation, but I still wanted to put forwards some ideas I had:

-In my mind, raids would be implemented as guild content as an upgrade the guild would unlock (similar to bounties, etc.) at a higher tier.

-The upgrade would allow the purchase of semi-timegated raid event consumables, purchased through influence, again similar to the activities guilds have now.

-The use of one of these consumables would allow an officer, as well as up to 25 other people (difficulty is balanced for 25, or perhaps there are two difficulty modes: 10 and 25), access to a raid instance for a certain amount of time (TIME LIMIT). I chose 25 because it might be smart to use the Commander Squad functionality with this somehow.

-Members of the guild officer’s party of 25 (or 10) do not necessarily have to be part of the guild, but rewards specifically for the guild would be determined based on how many guild member participated.

-The instance unlocked for the raid would make most sense if it took place in the Mists, but locked off areas in the real world with real world consequences/story would also be very cool.

-I do not think the instance should scale based on party size, it should have one or two difficulties set (possibly for 10 and 25) with different rewards/amounts of rewards.

-The easiest form of rewards would be various Raid Tokens (received from beating each boss, or even event if the difficulty is many many little baddies), to be traded for unique looking rewards of no higher power than ascended. Also, guild commendations as well as guild influence (from each boss) :P
More Tokens, influence, commendations for 25 than for 10…

-Obviously the MOST IMPORTANT THING about these raids are not that they are necessarily your standard raid structure of kill trash, go kill boss, repeat (similar to dungeons), but THAT THEY ARE DIFFICULT CONTENT. VERY difficult content.

I’m not sure how you guys are going to work that out, but hopefully Dave the AI genius is coming up with some awesome ideas of how to prevent mass rezzing from downed, overcome stacking, etc.

ALSO IMPORTANT is what to do about CONDITION STACKING… With this many people, 25 stack limits will make party comps very strict against condition builds… not great.

I forget the other stuff I wanted to say, but there ya go…

Arewn.2368:

Mizenhauer.6713:

I think a mix of mobs/bosses is best. Mobile enemies would be nice for encouraging cc and more mobile friendly play (ranged). Structural enemies/bosses defeat the purpose of precision and ferocity. Slow chunkers can be easily stacked up on and taken down. As long as there’s variety, it’s more interesting. I guess nobody liked them, but I really liked the toxic mobs. Downed states may be another interesting thing. Not that I’d love being finished by a monster, but what if certain enemies could resurrect others? Interrupt the rez?!

Good point on downed state.
I think it would be really annoying if every mob in the raid entered downstate, but if they add a few here and there i think it can really add to the experience.
Maybe something to the effect of a “commander mob” that is present in most packs of mobs, and it enters a downstate and can potentially be rez’d by the other mobs.

I did suggest in one of my earlier mechanic posts that mobs be given the ability to
-dodge
-downed state
-finish us
In raids to add an extra level of tension to the fights, it means you have to be that bit more careful.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Arewn.2368:

Mizenhauer.6713:

I think a mix of mobs/bosses is best. Mobile enemies would be nice for encouraging cc and more mobile friendly play (ranged). Structural enemies/bosses defeat the purpose of precision and ferocity. Slow chunkers can be easily stacked up on and taken down. As long as there’s variety, it’s more interesting. I guess nobody liked them, but I really liked the toxic mobs. Downed states may be another interesting thing. Not that I’d love being finished by a monster, but what if certain enemies could resurrect others? Interrupt the rez?!

Good point on downed state.
I think it would be really annoying if every mob in the raid entered downstate, but if they add a few here and there i think it can really add to the experience.
Maybe something to the effect of a “commander mob” that is present in most packs of mobs, and it enters a downstate and can potentially be rez’d by the other mobs.

I did suggest in one of my earlier mechanic posts that mobs be given the ability to
-dodge
-downed state
-finish us
In raids to add an extra level of tension to the fights, it means you have to be that bit more careful.

They’d have to be careful with giving enemies the ability to stomp us. A mob taking the time to stomp a player is almost akin to the mob being CC’ed, since it can’t take other actions for the duration. For that reason, I feel like it could be exploited.
Aside from that though, it would help mix things up if some mobs stomped instead of attacking downed players.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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.

Correct. Thanks Gilgamesh.

Chris

So if I have a raid night where i have two groups – one of 15 and the other with the remaining 8 (as an example), they are going to have the same chances to beat the encounters if the players involved are at roughly the same skill level?

If that is true, then Im happy. That would be putting skill at a more important level than numbers.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Blaeys.3102:

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

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.

My point about normalcy is that people are both accustomed to and fully capable of dealing with it.
5 friends, only 4 can play L4D. 11 friends, only 10 can play League of Legends. 3 friends, only 2 can play Portal2.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill on something we can discuss LATER, and it’s derailing the thread.

Again, it doesnt matter what people are used to from those games.

By the same logic, We’ve been doing guild missions and living story for close to two years in GW2 without any restrictions on who gets to participate in guild events.

And, I would have no problem tabling the discussion if I thought it would actually be part of the conversation at a later phase – and not dismissed with single set raid sizes established as given from the beginning. Again, all Im asking is it eventually be part of the planned conversation. Unfortunately, that isnt the case. I dont want raiding to end up making into the game and me raising my voice then just to be told “you should have said something during the CDI.”

Again, asking for raid size and flexibility/accessibility to be part of the planned conversation – that is all. Without it, it doesnt really matter to some us what the actual content of the raids looks like.

Hi Blaeys,

I really appreciate and respect you collaboration and discussion and for that reason I am going to make this statement as I think it is the fairest thing to do.

For the purposes of this discussion we will only be talking about fixed Raid sizes or less than the set number with no scaling.

I hope you understand the reason for me making this statement as I don’t want to waste your time.

Chris

Are you planning to address the issue at a later time – hopefully in this thread?

Again, I dont even care about scaling – I just dont want to be put in the position of having to find 14 additional raiders to ensure no one is left out.

That could just as easily be done by balancing around 2 raid sizes (such as the 8 and 12 person models I postulated earlier). The point is, there are ways to address the issue without harming the difficulty of the raid. Its possible someone out there has an idea that is better than the ones I propose. Its worth the discussion at least (even if it is at a later point in the thread)

I apologize if my posts have harmed the flow of the discussion in any way. I just feel this is important enough to warrant some discussion – whether it is now or later in the process. Im really not trying to be difficult. I just want to be part of the discussion – with the related topics I find important enough to dedicate my free time to posting about.

With the argument that you put forth, basically, if there’s something in the game that I want, but the only way I can get it is by doing something I don’t want to (or don’t like doing), those things should not be in the game.

Yes, or conversely, there should be alternate ways of earning those things that you could do instead. Legendaries are not in a good place right now, but they are 90% gold, so you always have that option anyways.

I’m gonna apply this to Legendaries. A part of getting legendaries could be attributed to luck, but generally, getting a legendary is all about grinding. A long endless grind.
I don’t like grinding, I don’t care to waste my time grinding. So there should be no legendaries in the game.

No, there should just be better ways of earning them, and I totally agree with you on that, but it’s a separate discussion.

For example: I am not a PvP player. sPvP is really not my thing.
sPvP does have unique rewards, and I will never get them unless I go and play sPvP. I may not like sPvP much, or at all, so I can:
A) Suck it up and do it anyway. Maybe it’ll grow on me, or maybe I’ll hate every second of it. I don’t know.
B) Accept it and move on. There’s plenty of stuff to do that I do enjoy and that also gives unique rewards.

And that’s pretty much my point. You shouldn’t have to do A or B, there’s should be a C) do the things I enjoy doing and also be able to progress towards those rewards. I’m by no means saying that the current game is in a perfect state on that regard, so bringing up areas that currently don’t work is irrelevant, all I’m saying is that I don’t want to see raiding make it even worse, by adding a whole new area of the game that many players just will not enjoy, and locking more cool skins behind it.

Raids can be a lot of fun. Making them more fun should always be paramount.

And as I said, making them fun is a fine goal to have, but completely irrelevant from whether it has unique loot or not. Make them as fun as you can, just don’t bribe people into playing it even if they aren’t having fun because it’s just not for them.

In short – there are in the game now a wide variety of items that are tied to one specific area of content and that area alone.
To say that adding this to raids would be a mistake is nonsensical since we already have this and the game hasn’t imploded nor has anything happened because of it.

Exactly, and they need to fix that, so let’s not make it worse.

Encouraging people with some reward to get them to try new content is not a bad thing. I didn’t even WvW before the first season but got into it for a while because after a while it became somewhat fun.

In very small doses, sure. Very small. This is best done through achievements that are easy to complete once that offer a single unique reward. If they want to design a mechanism that causes players to attempt a raid once, and that does not require that the raid run flawlessly that first time for them to get their “hey, you tried it” reward, then that’d be fine by me. I mean, this season I got my WvW meta even though I don’t like WvW by just hopping on to EotM and running around for a half hour per week, that’s fine.

The concern I would have is if they add things like the Teq/Wurm ascended drops, where even dedicated Teq/Wurm players might not have the pieces they want after months of constant attempts. If they want to “bribe” players into trying out Raids on a very limited basis, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the goals should be realistic ones that they can accomplish in at most a few attempts, and then say “but this isn’t for me” and move on, not something they’d have to keep plugging away at for months in the hopes that they’ll get the thing they want out of it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hehe you are definitely not late. I can tell you from experience this CDI is going to last a long time which I am more than happy about.

The CDI group or only just starting to settle down into our first topics which is fine but you can gauge CDI time from that.

Chris

17 pages of Settling Down… WOW I can’t. how do you. reeaadd it all? New-found respect, Chris. New-found respect.

Boottspurr.9184:

17 pages of Settling Down… WOW I can’t. how do you. reeaadd it all? New-found respect, Chris. New-found respect.

No kidding eh.
Even participating in the thread, I end up skimming over a bunch of it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Blaeys.3102:

Arewn.2368:

Blaeys.3102:

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.

My point about normalcy is that people are both accustomed to and fully capable of dealing with it.
5 friends, only 4 can play L4D. 11 friends, only 10 can play League of Legends. 3 friends, only 2 can play Portal2.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill on something we can discuss LATER, and it’s derailing the thread.

Again, it doesnt matter what people are used to from those games.

By the same logic, We’ve been doing guild missions and living story for close to two years in GW2 without any restrictions on who gets to participate in guild events.

And, I would have no problem tabling the discussion if I thought it would actually be part of the conversation at a later phase – and not dismissed with single set raid sizes established as given from the beginning. Again, all Im asking is it eventually be part of the planned conversation. Unfortunately, that isnt the case. I dont want raiding to end up making into the game and me raising my voice then just to be told “you should have said something during the CDI.”

Again, asking for raid size and flexibility/accessibility to be part of the planned conversation – that is all. Without it, it doesnt really matter to some us what the actual content of the raids looks like.

Hi Blaeys,

I really appreciate and respect you collaboration and discussion and for that reason I am going to make this statement as I think it is the fairest thing to do.

For the purposes of this discussion we will only be talking about fixed Raid sizes or less than the set number with no scaling.

I hope you understand the reason for me making this statement as I don’t want to waste your time.

Chris

Are you planning to address the issue at a later time – hopefully in this thread?

Again, I dont even care about scaling – I just dont want to be put in the position of having to find 14 additional raiders to ensure no one is left out.

That could just as easily be done by balancing around 2 raid sizes (such as the 8 and 12 person models I postulated earlier). The point is, there are ways to address the issue without harming the difficulty of the raid. Its possible someone out there has an idea that is better than the ones I propose. Its worth the discussion at least (even if it is at a later point in the thread)

I apologize if my posts have harmed the flow of the discussion in any way. I just feel this is important enough to warrant some discussion – whether it is now or later in the process.

It’s ok Blaeys, you haven’t been disruptive and I understand your points. The answer is yes. Let’s allow for more foundational discussion and then we can discuss two raid group sizes in terms of pros and cons.

Does that sound ok?

Chris

That is all I needed to hear.

As long as the topic is intended to be part of the discussion and we arent simply assuming a single raid of 15 people (without the discourse), Im happy to participate in the foundational conversation (probably not tonight though – getting close to orange beer time).

Of course, know that I will be holding you to it before this CDI is complete ( ).

And Happy Halloween. As always, we respect the efforts you put into these CDIs – and in putting up with blowhards like me.

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time now. The stats/traits/skills balance in this game is horrible.
Not just for raids, but for all of GW2, this is a severe limiting factor in what you can do.

your " horrible balance " is the reason why the combat system keeps alot of people hooked in PvE.

the game was advertised with “this is a skill based game” and not “this is a facetank game”.

Fixing that won’t make this a facetank game, or less of a skill based game. In fact, it could make it more skill based. You’ve got to stop thinking in terms of A or B, when this is clearly not a binary question.

Ohoni.6057:

And that’s pretty much my point. You shouldn’t have to do A or B, there’s should be a C) do the things I enjoy doing and also be able to progress towards those rewards. I’m by no means saying that the current game is in a perfect state on that regard, so bringing up areas that currently don’t work is irrelevant, all I’m saying is that I don’t want to see raiding make it even worse, by adding a whole new area of the game that many players just will not enjoy, and locking more cool skins behind it.

In that case, I’d like C to be: Get rewards while doing my job, so I can make money and play the game at the same time.

Since I believe the current topic is being steered toward what we would like to see as meaningful encounters utilizing already existing mechanics in GW2… I thought of one such instance already that if tweaked could certainly be an interesting and challenging encounter.

I enjoy the Guild Puzzle Proxemics Lab. The final area is a maze where six randomly placed orbs spawn, and those orbs must be found and placed at the exit gate to open the final chest. Within the maze there are environmental traps as well as NPCs like Tom, a giant undying golem.

A tweaked version of this could make for a fine encounter within a raid.

It could break down like this…

• One part of the raid group breaks off to find/run the orbs. An added level of difficulty may be to have them ordered in such a way that you need to put these orbs in a particular order. You will need to dodge traps, cleanse conditions, and dps down barriers. Another member, if the particular order idea is added, would maybe also need to be at the exit to say which order of orbs is acceptable for the runners. Another level of difficulty may be to have the order change after each orb is added.
• Another part of the raid group would have to fight something similar to Tom, but with a few caveats…

1. “Tom” will guard the exit to the maze where the containers are kept.
2. You can’t put the orbs into the containers unless “Tom” is in active combat and pulled away from the exit.
3. You can’t obtain the orbs until “Tom” is in active combat and pulled away from the exit.
4. If Tom’s leash is broken, it will return to guarding the exit and reset the encounter (including any orbs left in containers)
5. Tom cannot die, otherwise the encounter resets, and Tom resurrects. Tom can die after the orbs are placed into the containers and his resurrection code has been commented out.

The encounter would exhibit good teamwork and organization in order to ensure success. It would also challenge the zerker meta as you couldn’t dps “Tom” down, but have to keep him active (slow dance tankier types to hold his attention), while also denying him from a certain area (crowd control and active combat).

So… something I’d like to see would have bundles, dodging (active defense), situations where other builds other than could have relevance with tanky slow dancers for “Tom” to enjoy (passive defense), situations where people have to work together in an organized manner to accomplish goals (under duress if you want to be a sadist and have a timer for the encounter), and puzzles.

Has it been established that the 5-person party system will still be used even within the raid group?
This is pretty important because of the AoE cap and how boons are dispersed. We’ll need to be able to organize ourselves so that we can properly distribute boons after all. This can come into play in some pretty major ways depending on the raid fight mechanics. For example: being able to have a spike team that stacks offensive buffs, and a defense team that stacks regen/prot/stability.
edit: I realize it’s not that difficult to stack all boons with high uptime, but there are still trade-offs to be had, and not all groups will be that meticulously put together.

Arewn.2368:

Has it been established that the 5-person party system will still be used even within the raid group?
This is pretty important because of the AoE cap and how boons are dispersed. We’ll need to be able to organize ourselves so that we can properly distribute boons after all. This can come into play in some pretty major ways depending on the raid fight mechanics. For example: being able to have a spike team that stacks offensive buffs, and a defense team that stacks regen/prot/stability.

As far as im concerned. This should be a given. Simply because of AoE cap and boon sharing restrictions. It makes things simpler and will avoid confusion. We dont want to confuse players by making group buffs and aoe caps work differently in a raid versus all other parts of the game. Consistancy is important.

Also with boon sharing if you dont keep sub groups of 5 then you may get some odd overlap of boon sharing. If you keep things in groups of 5 then buffs will prioritise on party members and will allow the raid group to fully control buff sharing equally among all members of the raid group. Basically each sub party would be responsible for their own boons and group buffs. Which i dont see any problem with and seems like the best system to me. It encourages spreading out roles into different sub groups.

Id be surprised if the developers disagreed with me and you on this point.

So my thoughts on it:
- Size:
Do Scale it for 5, 8, 10 People max, reason for this in my opignon is that with the GW2 gameplay there is enough teamplay to not go 25 man raids.. and to be honest the Impact of a Player in a 25 man raid is just to small in my opignon… to scale it so that nobody gets carried and that the rewards don’t get sold in the end will be really hard. I rather see smaller size raids like 8 People with proper scaling that all Need to do somthing.

-Rewards:
I really hope we see accountbound fix rewards for this Kind of Content similar to the SAB rewards ( wich are awesome imho) because they have some Kind of Prestige

-Achievments:
It be nice to have Achievments tied to it for doing it with Special instabilities / less members. Even if it is impossible People would try to 3 man a raid if there is an achievment and comming up with new strategies to do so as Long as there is a reason to do so

- Mechanics:
Please make sure that there are certain Points with mechanics where all Players have a SKILLCHECK . For example if one goes down all go down.
Use the kick System so that People Need to interupt a certain attak or the raid will wipe.
I look Forward to have mechanics be the deciding factor about bossfights and not healthpools:)

GL with the CDI and implementation

So, if I get it…knowledge>skill>numbers. I’ve seen this kind of “boss encounter” on a franchise I’m a fan of: Monster Hunter.
In this game, you can face a mission either alone or with a group up to 4 players, it’s a game where, from the beginning you are taught how to read what is happening int he combat and being able to adapt to circumstances. Even after having the most difficult/rare/powerful set of gear, you can still die from the most basic of enemies, and at the same time, you can beat the most powerful enemy, completely naked, armed only with (well, a weapon, that’s needed, or some items to do damage) your knowledge of its AI, its attack patterns and so on.

The problem I see with this is that, playerbases on MMOs tend to be very quick to figure out enemy AIs, so the “knowledge” isn’t really something of a personal progress, but rather a community effort, that can be shared. After that all you need is the skill to be able to do what needs to be done during the encounter.
Since this is my concern, and I would like a lot of replayability on this system, I think we should add a new layer, over Knowledge, should be Adaptability. This determines the depth of the content, if you can memorize a set of actions that will 99% of the time let you win, players will complain that the content is just another farm.

I picture a raid encounter like this (with a bit of storytelling):

A group of adventurers enter a (at this point, a known place on the game) dungeon, in this case, Ascalon Catacombs, where most heroes do missions (explorable paths), but rumors of an even lower level inside of the catacombs starts to spread, so this group tries to search for what is below the known paths of the catacombs, and they find a giant cave system beneath it, plagued with underground creatures that act like they are part of a hive mind (meaning, even if one alone doesn’t have such a smart AI, they work as groups, and the entire place reacts to what happen to the groups inside of it)

In this case, we have a swarm of gravelings, stronger than the ones we see on the normal paths of the dungeon, all commanded by a massive graveling known as The Broodmother. As they traverse the cave system, they have to beat smart packs of gravelings, that use the terrain in their favor. they call for reinforcements, or bigger creatures. As the adventurers reach the end of the cave system, they face the abyss in front of them, with a lake in the middle, where they can see a faint blueish glow in the distance. The waters of this lake are dark and filled with abyssal creatures, making extremely difficult to move by water, so they have to follow a path of rock that leads to the center of the lake, where they see the giant graveling.
Now this is the raid Boss, and with not just a huge health pool, it can wield some interesting mechanics, like summoning gravelings, spitting ghosts (which she eats, and have like parasites around its body). It moves quickly, and tries to follow the group, so stacking would make them just an easier target. In order to damage it, they have to destroy a ghostly layer of souls, which determines the first phase of the encounter. In this phase she (the graveling boss) will destroy parts of the island she is in, making the zone smaller the longer it takes you to beat her, she will shake off ghosts, that will blindly seek for anything near them to attack (be it other gravelings, or the adventurers), and they explode too, dealing damage and burning. In order to destroy part of the layer of ghosts on her, you have to focus your damage on a single part, because it will quickly regenerate (so you need to coordinate among the possible targets on her body, to do the most damage on a single point).
After you reach the layer of actual skin, she will do a loud howl, and all the ghost will vanish, as well as the smaller gravelings, this is phase 2.

As the ghost dissipate and run away onto the lake, some torches will light up, revealing the place a little bit more (it is very dark until that point) and the adventurers will see that some old siege that fell with pieces of the ruins is there. Particularly a ballista and some arrow carts (now this part is a blatant copy of what you can see on MH). In order to use this ballista, you need to get ammo, so there will be some baskets with ballista arrows around, and packs of arrows for the arrow carts. (Making it a resource will mean that not using it well, means you can fail the raid mission).
During this phase, she will be in rage mode, meaning that will seek to eat the players, and will move around pursuing the biggest offender, but won’t pay attention to the siege. As she walks, you will be instantly downed if you are caught under her path, so this means that there won’t be a set path for her movement, since it depends on the group attacking them, and also means that you will have to be constantly moving, so stacking or trying to stay behind a wall or rock won’t work here. I would also add some destructable objects around, that offer temporarily cover. In this phase, as her health drops from the attacks, she will try to swallow ghosts/players doing a cone attack, when she does this, ghosts will appear from the path of this cone, and she will eat them if players don’t kill them (so you need to prevent her from eating them, or eating players, as she will replenish her health with that).

If they manage to get her to the critical health, the final phase will start. In this phase, she will cry for help, and graveling borrows will appear randomly on the stage. Also, the stage will get smaller, as the rocky floor will be destroyed by this process. This has to have some degree of randomization, but you can also have some control over it. As the burrows appear, you have a chance to destroy them, if you do, the place where they appear won’t be destroyed, but if you don’t, after a lot of gravelings spawn from it, it will destroy the land where it appeared.
During this phase, the smaller creatures will jump onto her mother to protect her, doing something similar as the ghosts did during the first stage. But this time, as you hit her, and gravelings fall, you will have to deal with them too. Suddenly, a mechanic similar to the colossus rumblus will start, where you will have rocks falling from the ceiling. The ballista/arrow carts will still work during this stage, but you will have to make sure they don’t get destroyed along with the land they are on top, during the borrows part, also, as usual, keep monsters away from the siege operators.
If you get to the part where her skin is uncovered (after focusing damage on a single point), she will frenzy and run around stomping both players and gravelings, until it’s dead, and you can salvage the treasure of ascalon that so many ghosts were trying to protect, and that attracted her to that place.

Sorry for the long post, this is just an example

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

Fractals had ascended rings and beautiful fractal weapons but, I didn’t feel forced to play fractals.

So no. You’re wrong.

Symph.8407:

Ashen.2907:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Untradeable account bound rewards are an important part of raids for me,

The exact opposite is true for me.

If a given raid’s rewards are not appealing to a given player (weapon/armor skin appeal is very subjective) then that raid is not rewarding to anyone who shares his opinion about those skins.

Raid reward exclusivity works better in a game where the rewards are objectively appealing through stat increase than would be the case in a game supposedly focused on horizontal progression. Of course if eight or ten raids completely separate unique rewards were introduced simultaneously it might be at least somewhat more palatable.

I can see your concern. But this goes for many things in this game.
I for one think pretty much every legendary looks like stuff that would be censored if I wrote it. And on top of that, the few I actually like, weren’t weapons I really used alot, or they didn’t fit the character I used that weapon on, so for me the legendaries were not interesting. So I didn’t go for them.

Not sure that legendaries are a fair comparison because they are not the primary reward for any specific playable content in the game. You can get them essentially anywhere. Also they can be traded between players. My post was a reply to a poster opposed to raid rewards being traded.

Symph.8407:

So, what if a part of the playerbase does not like the unique rewards released with the first raid? Does that mean the raid should not be made? Or should not have unique rewards for those who do like the skins? Of course not.
It means that the raids should also have other rewards, stuff that can be traded, titles etc.
But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

My post was in response to another poster’s opposition of raid rewards being tradable between players. The point was that if such rewards cannot be traded they are useless to someone who dislikes them. If they can be traded then the player who does not like them can sell or trade them to someone who does. Being able to trade away drops that are of no use to me, for example, means that content with those drops as rewards can still be rewarding to me.

Ohoni.6057:

..
And that’s pretty much my point. You shouldn’t have to do A or B, there’s should be a C) do the things I enjoy doing and also be able to progress towards those rewards. I’m by no means saying that the current game is in a perfect state on that regard, so bringing up areas that currently don’t work is irrelevant, all I’m saying is that I don’t want to see raiding make it even worse, by adding a whole new area of the game that many players just will not enjoy, and locking more cool skins behind it.

In short – there are in the game now a wide variety of items that are tied to one specific area of content and that area alone.
To say that adding this to raids would be a mistake is nonsensical since we already have this and the game hasn’t imploded nor has anything happened because of it.

Exactly, and they need to fix that, so let’s not make it worse.

..
If they want to “bribe” players into trying out Raids on a very limited basis, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the goals should be realistic ones that they can accomplish in at most a few attempts, and then say “but this isn’t for me” and move on, not something they’d have to keep plugging away at for months in the hopes that they’ll get the thing they want out of it.

I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
In my opinion and experience, having no unique rewards in areas like this partially devaluates the content.
Luckily for me, it seems most people here share my point of view on this particular matter.

Ashen.2907:

My post was in response to another poster’s opposition of raid rewards being tradable between players. The point was that if such rewards cannot be traded they are useless to someone who dislikes them. If they can be traded then the player who does not like them can sell or trade them to someone who does. Being able to trade away drops that are of no use to me, for example, means that content with those drops as rewards can still be rewarding to me.

Of course you should be able to do something with them. You should just not be able to sell them to anyone who had not completed the required content. If by some means the game could differentiate between players in this way in regards to trading items, that would be nice, but I don’t think that’s realistic. So a complete untradeable policy is necessary.
The items could however have better vendor value than the meager 1g ascended pieces have at the moment. They could be salvageable etc.
Also, the exclusive skins should obviously not be the only drops from the raids. The raids should also drop lots of other stuff, that could be traded with other players.
You just have to understand, that the uniqueness of such items, and the direct coupling to achievement they have, is immediately lost if they can simply be bought with gold on the TP, which would completely ruin them.

runeblade.7514:

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

Fractals had ascended rings and beautiful fractal weapons but, I didn’t feel forced to play fractals.

So no. You’re wrong.

If they weapons + rings where only avialable only in the 51 lvl Fractal , i would love to hear your opinion at that time :P
And in order to reach you 1 extra lvl , you have to maxed out with full accendant gear . a character :P
But if want every boss to drop that ‘’beautiful gear’’ and not exclusive the last boss , i am ok with that :P

Few ppl doing Raids = in the near future = less suport + longer time to create new Raids .
You need ppl , but if the problem is loot … i dont know what to say
In PvP side there was a moto : ‘’as long as there are athletes , ppl will fill the stadium’’ . And atm the stadium is still bhalf empty ….

Symph.8407:

You just have to understand, that the uniqueness of such items, and the direct coupling to achievement they have, is immediately lost if they can simply be bought with gold on the TP, which would completely ruin them.

Rare items may lose some value or prestige over time as they become more common, but such is generally the case with non-tradable items as well. That loss of prestige is not just a function of how the item was acquired so much as how many of them are in circulation. A rare item is rare regardless of how it was acquired so its, “uniqueness,” is not affected by having the ability to trade it. The number of the item in circulation is not increased by the ability to trade it.

The direct coupling to achievement is also not inherent as actual achievement is not necessarily required. Did the player get the item on their first run when they were being carried by the veterans in the party ? Did they pay to be carried (such as in Arah) ? Etc.

Some of your other suggestions seem reasonable so long as the return for vendoring undesirable drops is sufficient to offset the greater investment generally required of raiding than is the case in other forms of content. The key is to avoid reducing the play value of the content from a rewards perspective by making the rewards undesirable or making repeats of those rewards undesirable. “Wow this is my fifteenth copy of the Untradable Sword of Awesomeness !”

If salvaging such untradable rewards was introduced kitten a means of making them valuable to those who dislike the skin or who have it already I would hope that the materials so gained would be both valuable and tradable themselves.

Ashen.2907:

Symph.8407:

You just have to understand, that the uniqueness of such items, and the direct coupling to achievement they have, is immediately lost if they can simply be bought with gold on the TP, which would completely ruin them.

Rare items may lose some value or prestige over time as they become more common, but such is generally the case with non-tradable items as well. That loss of prestige is not just a function of how the item was acquired so much as how many of them are in circulation. A rare item is rare regardless of how it was acquired so its, “uniqueness,” is not affected by having the ability to trade it. The number of the item in circulation is not increased by the ability to trade it.

The direct coupling to achievement is also not inherent as actual achievement is not necessarily required. Did the player get the item on their first run when they were being carried by the veterans in the party ? Did they pay to be carried (such as in Arah) ? Etc.

Some of your other suggestions seem reasonable so long as the return for vendoring undesirable drops is sufficient to offset the greater investment generally required of raiding than is the case in other forms of content. The key is to avoid reducing the play value of the content from a rewards perspective by making the rewards undesirable or making repeats of those rewards undesirable. “Wow this is my fifteenth copy of the Untradable Sword of Awesomeness !”

If salvaging such untradable rewards was introduced kitten a means of making them valuable to those who dislike the skin or who have it already I would hope that the materials so gained would be both valuable and tradable themselves.

I agree with Symph on this matter unique untradeable rewards are the way. Yes Rarity is directly related to the amount of an item in circulation (just need to look at legendaries and how common they are now). But Prestige is directly lined to the inability for it to be acquired by alternative means or traded. The entire value is on the basis that the person MUST have completed the content themselves and that the content is an impressive feat to complete.

The carried and bought issues are both problems I’ve thought about, unfortunately the devs have already taken a stance of not taking action against path sellers so theres nothing we can do about that. (despite the fact I consider it on the same level as win trading in Pvp). We can make it more difficult using the hard locks on progressing through a raid (I.E you must kill each boss in order, can’t hop in to the last one) to discourage it.

On carried players, this can be addressed and my suggestions on split points in raids where each group must survive / complete a task in their subgroup would assist that. It makes it harder to hide a flagging player and insures that they must either bring their skills up to par or fail.

Edit: and as we covered in the discussion on this earlier, salvaging or high vendor value is a good way to maintain re-playability value, an alternative means was just having good other drops throughout the raid too (T6, Unids or Ectos) that way its still worth your time even after you have the unique rewards.

That is why the suggestion of prestige items being obtained from a vendor at the end of the raid should be repeated. The raid loot would be unique mats which are only obtained in the raid but they can be traded. The unique cosmetic items purchased with those materials are account bound and can only be bought from the vendor which is available at the end of the raid.

It solves both sides of the arguement. Drops are always rewarding because you can trade the unique raid materials. But you have to do the content to get the prestige items because the vendor is only accessible inside the raid and once you have killed the final boss. If you dont need any of the prestige items then you can just sell the mats. So it will always be rewarding.

Yeah players can skip a few runs by buying all the mats before hand. But thats probably only going to be doable for insanely rich players. Its a similar system used for FoW armour in gw1. And that armour always remained prestigious right till the end of the game.

Naetell.3815:

Ohoni.6057:

And that’s pretty much my point. You shouldn’t have to do A or B, there’s should be a C) do the things I enjoy doing and also be able to progress towards those rewards. I’m by no means saying that the current game is in a perfect state on that regard, so bringing up areas that currently don’t work is irrelevant, all I’m saying is that I don’t want to see raiding make it even worse, by adding a whole new area of the game that many players just will not enjoy, and locking more cool skins behind it.

In that case, I’d like C to be: Get rewards while doing my job, so I can make money and play the game at the same time.

Such a possibility already exists in this game – the gems to gold exchange.
Also, congratulations, not everyone has a work they enjoy.

I was wondering what people think of the idea of Group Combat State
Basically, while you’re in the raid, you’re whole group is put “in combat” as soon as any one member gets in combat. This could be raid wide, or just party wide.

This would increase the value of healing by getting rid of questionable practices such as dropping combat to heal, and things like dead allies waypoint without fully reseting the boss.

I’ll also put forth the idea of turning off out-of-combat auto healing while inside the raid instance.

spoj.9672:

That is why the suggestion of prestige items being obtained from a vendor at the end of the raid should be repeated. The raid loot would be unique mats which are only obtained in the raid but they can be traded. The unique cosmetic items purchased with those materials are account bound and can only be bought from the vendor which is available at the end of the raid.

It solves both sides of the arguement. Drops are always rewarding because you can trade the unique raid materials. But you have to do the content to get the prestige items because the vendor is only accessible inside the raid and once you have killed the final boss. If you dont need any of the prestige items then you can just sell the mats. So it will always be rewarding.

Yeah players can skip a few runs by buying all the mats before hand. But thats probably only going to be doable for insanely rich players. Its a similar system used for FoW armour in gw1. And that armour always remained prestigious right till the end of the game.

I’ll be honest, as selfish as it is , I’d like there to be nothing new for a farmer or gem traders in Raids. They’re already the two most rewarded (over rewarded) groups due to the shear amount of tradeable items. Plus removing them from the equation on this content puts top players back on track for feeling their time is valued without them having to compete against those two groups for shear number of unlocks.

So my ideal situation would be only T6’s, Ectos, Unids, giants eyes , or other typical high value standard items as the currency generation from raids.
I’ll compromise on some raid mats being tradeable as long as (as you suggested) There is a clear set of items obtained purely and solely by raiding (the vendor at the end which is achievement locked and can only be interacted with if you personally have killed every boss in the raid).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Evening All,

Relics of Orr podcast about the CDI below:

http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=3403

‘In this special episode we chat with guest host Soren of Gaiscíoch about the Raiding CDI and how Guild Wars 2 could create unique raids.’

Chris

P.S: Thanks Relics of Orr and Soren for your feedback.

Nice. Thanks for the link.