Guild Wars 2

Clockheart has a lot in common with that boss already – you could just about copy-paste it into GW2. Auto-attacks you can block, assuming they’re slow enough. The egg mechanic could scale up by one player at a time rather than doubling – assume only one player can destroy all the eggs.

The thing with attempting something like that with five players is, each one of them needs to know exactly where they fit into the picture. It’s not just two tanks with the important jobs while the other 13 just play by the script.

What can GW2 bring to the table? Some have already said it -

- The dodge mechanic is something which can be useful within the context of the raid. Dodging makes it capable of allowing punishing attacks which can be slow or telegraphed and not just “thrown out at a whim” (See also “Plessy Waterbeam vs Plessy Hipcheck”)

- The mobility of having three dimensions also can be useful, so long as the raid is designed to exploit the idea of using all three dimensions instead of just two-dimensional behavior which rises or lowers on a Z-axis.

- Downed state making it possible to “die” when you would in other games but have a window in which to be rescued. This is not too unusual, as in some raids it is possible to sneak in a resurrection during the encounter.

- Instanced loot rewards vs “open loot”. This is moderately important if we assume loot is important in any fashion. It was certainly important back in UO

- To a lesser fashion, Achievements linked to activities is something which can be worked with. Especially since reward chests can now be tied into Achievements. This means it is possible to set up a reward structure which guarantees certain rewards for certain actions during the raid. (N.B – it is a poor idea to link this to actions which, if recklessly done, can cause the raid to fail. See: “Scarlet’s Marionette and the lane achievements”)

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

NoTrigger.8396:

Ben K.6238:

Most of the combat involving larger numbers of people simply comes down to stacking and DPS tests, which require less skill, not more. Hence my question – is there any way that bringing larger numbers into one fight can still require skilled play from every member, and do so in a way that you can’t replicate with a smaller group?

One notable exception is GvG combat, where the mechanics are completely different from 5v5 fights and you die very fast if you don’t know what you’re doing. Perhaps that might be a good source of inspiration – but it would require someone with more experience than me to explain the mechanics of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HisRpzL24B8

watch this and pay attention to the eggs. if you dont understand what is happening there i will explain it.
but you will never be able to put mechanics like that into smaller group content or dungeons.

All I see is 15-16 players meleeing a static boss while moving away from AoE. And players attacking Eggs that traps allies?

Now, a 5 man dungeon can easily do the same thing. Subject Alpha can trap players in crystals. Remove a few party slots, balance HP accordingly and you get a dungeon.

phase 1:
- dont get it by lasers, pretty obvious
if you get hit by a laser, it will deal 50%~ of your hp in damage to you and you will be slowed down extremely. means chances are high you will step into an aoe and die.
- smaller aoes
- the boss teleports behind one of the outer 6 pillars at the beginning of the fight and then every minute, until you push him to 75% hp. you have to interrupt the boss behind the pillar to make him teleport back to the middle. as long as you dont interrupt him, an aoe in the middle of the room will get bigger and bigger until everyone dies. the players behind the pillars get a dot. aoe and dot will disappear once the boss is interrupted.

phase 2:
- random aoes around the inner pillars
- smaller aoes
- big aoe:
you can hide behind 2-3 specific pillars. if you dont do that, the aoe will oneshot you.
- tank swap:
the tank with aggro gets hit with massive damage. the second tank needs to interrupt the boss. if you dont interrupt, the boss heals himself for 700k hp.
- Eggs:
one random player gets a corruption debuff and will be transformed into an egg.
to free the corrupted player, another player has to interrupt the egg. if you dont do that, the player in the egg will die and every other player will die after a short amount of time because of incoming damage. the eggs deal pulsating damage.
the player who interrupted the egg will get the corruption debuff too and will be transformed into an egg one minute later as well.
that means 1 egg -> 1 min -> 2 eggs -> 1 min -> 4 eggs -> 1 min -> 8 eggs -> 1 min -> if the boss isnt dead yet, game over. (basically the enrage timer)
if one player who is affected by the corruption debuff dies, the debuff will be carried over to another random player (domino effect, you wont stop this, game over).
if one player who is affected by the corruption debuff interrupts an egg, the corrupted player will immediately die and the domino effect will begin (see above, same counts if a player who is not affected by the corruption debuff interrupts 2 eggs).
the by the corruption debuff affected players and the players who will interrupt need to get in set positions every time the egg transformation happens, otherwise its just too much chaos (see reasons above). you typically use cardinal directions for this.
- the corruption debuff:
your outgoing damage is buffed by 200%. you have a dot dealing damage to you until the fight is over.

the average amount of wipes until guilds kill this boss for the first time is 100 or something.

just a little little bit more difficult than subject alpha people can kill first try even when they are new to the game.

logs for this kill:
http://www.wildstarlogs.com/reports/DFfHjtdvaAW9LRVx#fight=27

and i would like to see bosses like that in gw2 tbh.
actually you could put the same encounter easily in gw2 if you removed the hard hitting autoattacks and tuned the incoming damage so players can keep themselves alive by blasting water fields and using defensive buffs and boons.

Since the argument is

but you will never be able to put mechanics like that into smaller group content or dungeons.

While it sounds impressively hard, This still looks like this can be implemented in a 5 player dungeon. I can’t see how Wildstar devs can’t simply downscale it a little bit so that the difficultly matches a 5 man dungeon.

Please explain that.

runeblade.7514:

While it sounds impressively hard, This still looks like this can be implemented in a 5 player dungeon. I can’t see how Wildstar devs can’t simply downscale it a little bit so that the difficultly matches a 5 man dungeon.

in the case of a 5 man dungeon you would have max 2 eggs or if you change the mechanics 4 eggs, which is extremely easy to manage and coordinate.

you dont have to pay attention to where you go, where you stand, where you meet to interrupt. idk i could give you 20000 reasons why dungeon encounters will never reach the complexity and difficulty of raid encounters. but thats a different topic.

Donari.5237:

LostBalloon.6423:

Also, I know its not easy to get an exact number of people to do an activity at the same time, but that is not a challenge for the devs, but for the guilds. Scaling the content to different sizes of groups will really limit what the devs can do with the content they create. I really think that you need to pick a number that works well for smaller as well as larger guilds. (ex: 15 or 20 – no, I dont think they should cater to 5 man guilds (work with others) or large guilds that could just run multiple groups)

Scaling isn’t part of the discussion right now, I think we’re supposed to be talking raid mechanics (some of which are dependent on available manpower) and progression in and through raids.

However, while scaling isn’t a thing, in my opinion scale is. I’m in a small guild, we have yet to do enough guild stuff to unlock puzzles. I don’t know that we can muster 15 interested raiders, even! But there are guilds out there that do have massive numbers and have done amazing things with Teq and Wurm.

Maybe not the first created raid, while kinks are ironed out, but eventually I would hope for a number of raid options, including something meant for 150 coordinated people who get to choose who those people are. Sort of a progression of raids in size, as it were. There are quite a few dungeons, there are numerous ways to do WvW, I know sPvP folks want more styles, we can level up in PvE by many routes. Why not aim to have a number of types and sizes of raids? (By “raid” I mean “massive group coordination content” not necessarily “fighting bosses in big rooms.” Heck, there could be a JP raid a’la Zephyr Sanctum requiring people to navigate a 3D maze of terrain to disarm traps in the right order in a certain time frame).

I’ve done both small and large guilds, and the small ones coordinated with other small ones to take on the missions, that aside I think you missed most of the points made in my 3 post long opinion of raids. Watch on youtube a normally run raid in Destiny (more specifically @ how the players are spread out, regroup, split up, etc.) and imagine that with all the potential GW2 has to offer from its own mechanics and inner workings. Last thing I want to see is a big boring static boss and 15 people stacked together right on it or in range distance.

First Raid encounter should be Zaithan

reason is he already has a great build up with the PS secondly he is already designed and look awesome. Third reason the end of PS was a big disappointment and we all love a rematch with him.

Encounter with him in detail I’m not sure yet but i would love if player who be killed by him become his servants. Powerfull servants so that with every dead player the fight become much harder.

NoTrigger.8396:

you dont have to pay attention to where you go, where you stand, where you meet to interrupt. idk i could give you 20000 reasons why dungeon encounters will never reach the complexity and difficulty of raid encounters. but thats a different topic.

The thing is, you could pay attention to all that stuff simultaneously – even with 5 people. If we’re looking for fights where 5 people couldn’t do the same thing with adjustments to HP and DPS alone, it’s actually going to need more things to watch out for.

This doesn’t have to mean splitting the whole party into different areas, just putting more tasks in.

Perhaps you can do it by requiring very specific skills – for example, short-cooldown reflects, area stealth, boon and condition strips, knockbacks and interrupts, and periodic warbanners for good measure all in the same fight. More than 5 classes can do, but manageable with a well-planned team of 15. It doesn’t scale much past that though, as once you reach 40 you can have a bit of everything and still have 20 players who can read the news while they staff 1 through the encounter.

Or there could just be a bunch of things that require simultaneous action all over the boss room. Suppose there were platforms like Marionette, on short timers – but you can run between them, they’re just too far apart for the whole group to do them one-by-one. But maybe you don’t need to split into five – maybe it’s more effective to place a thief/mesmer pair at each one to soften them up while a high DPS group portals between them and finishes each one off.

However it happens, there are ways to give people more complex tasks than just watching the flashbang show we see in world-boss trains. Avoiding that, though, means adjusting the situation where all of your players are all attacking the same target 80% of the time.

NoTrigger.8396:

runeblade.7514:

While it sounds impressively hard, This still looks like this can be implemented in a 5 player dungeon. I can’t see how Wildstar devs can’t simply downscale it a little bit so that the difficultly matches a 5 man dungeon.

in the case of a 5 man dungeon you would have max 2 eggs or if you change the mechanics 4 eggs, which is extremely easy to manage and coordinate.

For a well-coordinated raid group, everything is extremely easy. I would rate this as moderate difficulty. But if this was in a Guild Wars 2 15 man raid, I would stay in a stack and let a warrior use Tremor to interrupt them all at the same time.

you dont have to pay attention to where you go,

Don’t stand under AoE.

where you stand,

Don’t stand under AoE. Stand under boss to melee.

where you meet to interrupt.

Close to each other while not stacking.

idk i could give you 20000 reasons why dungeon encounters will never reach the complexity and difficulty of raid encounters. but thats a different topic.

I agree that it is a different topic.

Xae Isareth.1364:

You can’t have a raid be doable with any build/class you want. Well, you can, but there’s no point doing that because everyone will end up using the most efficient setup anyways.

The only reason tanks and healers exist in MMOs is because the game specifically needs them in the solution. If you get rid of that enforced restriction, then we’ll just get a repeat of what we have now: everyone running the same full zerker builds.

On the point of the topic. It’s going to sound weird, but I don’t think the raid should be very challenging, at least not at same level as Wildstar or WoW.

Look at the game at the moment. There’s nothing preparing you for challenging content. There’s Arah P4 and Aetherpath but they are barely run, so to add a really difficult raid would be a complete curveball.

I believe that raids do have the capacity to be doable with any build/class you want. If not, a more diverse selection of builds will be viable/optimal than dungeons currently have.

The solution is to let mobs/boss do everything at once.

runeblade.7514:

For a well-coordinated raid group, everything is extremely easy.

no. take datascape in wildstar as an example. there are 3 guilds with 7/9 progress. nobody has even touched the endboss after months.

and the good thing about encounters like that, they are still interesting even when they are on farm, because one mistake can cause the entire raid to wipe.

runeblade.7514:

I would rate this as moderate difficulty.

second boss of the intro raid.
its already more difficult than everything we have in gw2.

runeblade.7514:

But if this was in a Guild Wars 2 15 man raid, I would stay in a stack and let a warrior use Tremor to interrupt them all at the same time.

which would cause your raid to wipe. domino effect.

runeblade.7514:

The solution is to let mobs/boss do everything at once.

when i look at this the first question that comes to my mind is
“does this guy even understand gw2s unique combat system and that we actually have more build diversity independent of gear than other games”.

other than that “let mobs do everything at once” is really bad game design and just for the sake of “encouraging more build diversity” (actually it would reduce build diversity) when we already have alot of build diversity that you simply dont seem to understand.

Ben K.6238:

However it happens, there are ways to give people more complex tasks than just watching the flashbang show we see in world-boss trains. Avoiding that, though, means adjusting the situation where all of your players are all attacking the same target 80% of the time.

you shouldnt look at world bosses when we are talking about raid encounters.

there are 4 reason why people can afk 1111 in world boss trains.
1) too many people. if you have enough people you win.
thats actually why nobody who is smart enough to understand the big picture wants scaling in raids.
a prime example of masses = win is the champion abomination in the cursed shore.
how often have i seen players fail to solo the champion abo (its really easy, dont get hit, boss doesnt build up frenzy stacks, and all you have to do is run behind the boss while he does his extremely slow autoattack) but succeed once 50 other people helped, because masses can overcome 25 frenzy stacks easily.
2) encounters have to be easy because everyone can just jump in and start to fight.
open world content is for everyone, not for a group of like-minded organized, coordinated and skilled players.
3) people dont have a responsibility. if one guy fails, who cares, there are 149 other zerglings.
4) no real mechanics

well designed raid encounters will always be much more complex and require more coordination than any 5 man boss you could possibly design.

lets say the example is the egg mechanic in my video.
5 man dungeon = 2 eggs
10 man raid = 4 eggs
15 man raid = 6 eggs
150 man raid = 60 eggs

obviously its alot more difficult and needs alot more coordination to manage 60 eggs and 60 players who will interrupt the eggs compared to 2 eggs and 2 interruping players in a 5 man dungeon.

the goal here is to find a raid size that
- doesnt cause too many logistical problems
- smaller guilds can enjoy
- is able to handle more advanced and difficult mechanics (simply due to the larger party size) than 5 man dungeons.

now how is a bigger party size than 5 in a raid different from open world events? everyone has a clear task and responsibility.

NoTrigger.8396:

when people dont understand why, they are probably very uncreative and dont understand the big picture.

Comments like this are insulting and counterproductive to a balanced discussion.

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are un-creative or lack a level of understanding you have reached. It just means they disagree.

We really need to get away from this kind of mudslinging and get back into actual productive discussion.

Donari.5237:

I foresee logistical issues with saved progress. Specifically, that just adds to the number of sessions where you have to get all the same people together before you can continue what you were doing. If it doesn’t have to be the same people, then there is the problem of who “controls” the save? Who gets to continue deeper in the raid when they feel like it even if those who helped get that far are left out?

If we need to have longer and more complex scenarios that do take several sessions, then perhaps it should be in the form of unlocks rather than saved stages. Even then I can imagine a lot of divisions coming from leaving some behind. Or should it be like the LS where if you’ve made it to a certain point you can invite others along regardless of their progress? Though that assumes the ones who missed a session will be able to find a large enough group to continue. And that they’ll be welcome in later parts of the raid if they didn’t help in the middle parts.

The more people you have to gather to do specific content, the greater the problem in repeatedly gathering them.

I don’t know why Anet are so consistent on reinventing the wheel.Just to stick to what is working already.To make the same system for raid lock outs like the rest of the MMOs and that’s it.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

when people dont understand why, they are probably very uncreative and dont understand the big picture.

Comments like this are insulting and counterproductive to a balanced discussion.

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are un-creative or lack a level of understanding you have reached. It just means they disagree.

We really need to get away from this kind of mudslinging and get back into actual productive discussion.

its not insulting, its a fact. but you playing the internet police doesnt help either.
i removed that sentence and instead tried to explain why.
i hope you are happy now.

NoTrigger.8396:

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

when people dont understand why, they are probably very uncreative and dont understand the big picture.

Comments like this are insulting and counterproductive to a balanced discussion.

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they are un-creative or lack a level of understanding you have reached. It just means they disagree.

We really need to get away from this kind of mudslinging and get back into actual productive discussion.

its not insulting, its a fact. but you playing the internet police doesnt help either.
i removed that sentence and instead tried to explain why.
i hope you are happy now.

I’m not even sure what the context is, but if you like I will cop to being completely uncreative and impossibly dense, so that I cannot understand raiding in the slightest.

NoTrigger.8396:

when i look at this the first question that comes to my mind is
“does this guy even understand gw2s unique combat system and that we actually have more build diversity independent of gear than other games”.

other than that “let mobs do everything at once” is really bad game design and just for the sake of “encouraging more build diversity” (actually it would reduce build diversity) when we already have alot of build diversity that you simply dont seem to understand.

Necromancer, Thief, Ranger, Engineer has one optimal/viable build. Guardian’s other build is niche for fractals only. So basically 5 professions don’t have diverse optimal/viable builds.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Category:All_Dungeon_Builds

If you want to say I can go 3/3/3/3/3 and it is a completely NEW build, I can build for less optimal in other mmo as well, 33 points on that talent tree, 20 points in the other talent tree because it is a completely NEW build.

There are a few way that I will admit that my solution is wrong. If you can make the pvp 4/6/0/0/4 condi necro with corrupt boon feel more or equally useful than a zerk ele in every dungeons. Meaning: I should press Corrupt boon/Well of corruption effectively in every encounter and that my condi damage is doing more dps than a zerk. If you can make my shout warrior bring better utility to the table than a zerk guardian, then I would agree with you.

Otherwise, You’re wrong. It is not diverse.

On the subject of “Mobs do everything = bad design.” You read it wrong. Mob groups should do everything at once. One mob might have boons, and condi while another mob have reflect and a dangerous burst. However, when groups fights a mob group, they should expect that every danger is out there.

When all mob groups can do everything at once, not one profession can fill every role on demand, not every guild can have all the professions available. So, players can wait for hours to find someone to fill this niche. Or they can switch some utility and traits. Professional build makers will have to build so that this mesmer can get boon removal, reflect. But if someone fills that role already, then another build has to be made so it can do DPS. Maybe someone doesn’t have interrupt, and the build maker has to build for interrupts + boon removal. etc etc. Then, what happens if there are two of the same mobs but they are away from each other? Guilds will need to keep the the amount of each utilities equally balance.

If ANet wants to make mobs/boss unique, they simply have to change the application of how the boss/mob apply their interrupts/snares/condi damage/Burst/buff/etc. Change particle effects, This will calm down your ‘bad design’ worries.

• A Boss can use reflect a lot more but rarely use interrupts.
• Maybe this mob have a AoE heal skill while other mobs do not have a heal skill, so a interrupter should focus on that mob more so mobs can’t heal up. This other mob uses burst projectiles so a reflecter should get up on the mob’s face.
• Since no stacking is in my suggestion, It wouldn’t be effective to bring AoE boon removal/snares/reflect/other support stuff and, everyone else dps.

I do understand the situation better than a mudslinger.

runeblade.7514:

Ranger has one optimal/viable build.

. . . it does? I’m sorry, I don’t know about the other classes listed there but rangers are a little more prone to variation than that.

I mean, unless we just want to talk bearbow.

runeblade.7514:

Necromancer, Thief, Ranger, Engineer has one optimal/viable build. Guardian’s other build is niche for fractals only. So basically 5 professions don’t have diverse optimal/viable builds.

thats a profession design thing, not a gear thing.
its because alot of skills and traits dont make any sense because they are simply bad designed and have no real place.
lets take the guardian burning traits for example. why did the devs even put them in?
they could give us more and better options by reworking alot of stuff directly tied to the professions and independent of gear.

runeblade.7514:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Category:All_Dungeon_Builds

this page does not list every optimal build.
it lists 2 builds for guardian for example. there are more.
4-5-0-0-5 standard build with master of consecrations
4-5-0-0-5 standard build with condition removal instead of master of consecrations
4-6-0-0-4 slightly more dps
2-5-0-2-5 vigor + shout cooldown
4-6-2-0-2 max dps without spotter
5-5-2-0-2 max dps with spotter
6-6-0-0-2 scepter max dps for large hitboxes
6-6-2-0-0 scepter if you cant keep UC up
3-5-0-4-2 hammer + utility
5-5-0-4-0 hammer max dps
2-5-5-2-0 hammer aggro “tanking” to keep aggro of cliffside fractal endboss or ettin in the harpy fractal.
2-5-2-0-5 max reflect dps

also, every build covers the support that guardians can offer such as reflects, blocks, condition removal, fire fields, stability, blinds……

weapons depend on the situation. you can go
gs + s/f
gs + mace/f
gs + hammer
gs + scepter
hammer + s/f
hammer + mace/f

weapons are situational. food is situational. sigils are situational. traits are situational.
build diversity.

runeblade.7514:

On the subject of “Mobs do everything = bad design.” You read it wrong. Mob groups should do everything at once.
…….. snip for more text space……..

i understand.
but i have a question. why do people try to focus on
-give mobs conditions
-make mobs immune to x damage
-make mobs use cc
-make mobs have boons
-make mobs act like pvp players
-make mobs act like angry russian dad
-make mobs act like every other mob in outdated spreadsheet mmos

when you could put very interesting mechanics even behind trash fights that would make the encounters much more fun and exciting than the basic stuff from spreadsheet mmos or “gimmicky stuff”.

a few examples:
- one big trash mob with high health
- in a room with limited space
- has an instant attack that gives 5 players an aoe circle around them that deals a little bit of damage to them
- if another player touches one of the aoe circles, he will get an aoe circle around him as well. (like a virus that spreads from player to player you could say)

- you run into a room, then you will be blinded
- blind will go away and then 3 trashmobs positioned in a triangle will appear
- each trashmob has 4 defiance stacks and casts a big aoe that will oneshot every player if not interrupted
- players interrupt the trashmobs and then deal damage to them
- after a few seconds all of this repeats, mobs reposition slightly
- the 3 trashmobs have to die at the same time

- a pair of trashmobs
- trashmob A will go into ragemode for 20 seconds and has to be kited
- you can hold aggro of thrashmob A because of a buff randomly given to a player
(like in aetherpath the buff for the ooze puzzle)
- trashmob A reflects all damage back to the player
- trashmob B has a cone aoe, this is the autoattack and rotates about its own axis
- players have to run around trashmob B as it rotates and deal damage to it
- the rotating mob randomly changes the rotating direction.
- once it rotates clockwise, from one second to another counter clockwise
- after 20 seconds trashmob A and B switch their roles

- one trashmob with 2 abilities
- ability A casts and heals himself
- ability B summons alot of minions
- you have to interrupt either ability A or B
- each time you interrupt an ability, the trashmob will have one more defiance stack
- 2 interrupts needed -> 3 interrupts needed -> 4 interrupts needed -> and so on
players have to decide which ability they want to interrupt, cant interrupt both or the trashmob will have so many defiance stacks players will either wipe or cannot kill the mob because of healing

there are so many cool and unique things you can do with gw2s action based combat system i dont get why players dont think outside the box and insist on giving mobs boons that have to be removed etc……

apart from this i expect a little bit more than boon removal mechanics and stuff like that from real boss fights.
i expect real mechanics that not only need coordination, i expect the boss fights also to challenge every player individually and let the environment around the boss turn/fight against the players.

id like to mention my above listed examples also eliminate stacking without introducing toxic and bad game design such as “mobs spam 50000000 aoes and conditions when players stack behind a wall” or “mobs become immune when you stack behind a wall”

and the goal and job of raid content is not to turn play how you want builds into the next big kitten. raid content is not there for build or profession design.

the goal of raid content is coordination, fun, challenging every player in the raid individually, being unique, something you havent seen before, players playing good and becoming better to beat the content, optimizing their rotations to squeeze the last bit of potential out of their professions

Balsa.3951:

First Raid encounter should be Zaithan

reason is he already has a great build up with the PS secondly he is already designed and look awesome. Third reason the end of PS was a big disappointment and we all love a rematch with him.

Encounter with him in detail I’m not sure yet but i would love if player who be killed by him become his servants. Powerfull servants so that with every dead player the fight become much harder.

Yes, yes, so much yes! But it’s more likely that we will fight against Mordremoth or another dragon, possibly Kralkatorrik.

Proposal Overview
No to make it over complicated, it doesn’t need to require 10 – 20 people. i have been playing Destiny alot and doing the raid in it alot, it requires 6 people. and it is challenging enough to make it very fun. I’d like to see a 5—7 man raid in GW2, instead or the traditional 10 – 20 man raids of WoW and SWTOR. it makes getting a group together easier, makes planning and running the raid a lot easier and it also means that the raid can be built to make it friendly for 5-7 people. the mechanics could have some of the mechanics that are used in the dungeons, open world bosses and other aspects of the game.

Proposal Functionality

the way my proposal works with the current gw2 design is that a 5 – 7 man raid creates it an easy amount of people to get together for casual players, so it would be accessible to every player, but should also be hard enough that the hardcore players have a reason to play it. the rewards should be in line with completing a raid, I’d suggest ascended gear and weapons, with a decent drop rate though The story would be down to you guys to figure out

Associated Risks

The usual risks of making new content; bugs, exploits and cheesing bosses, as long as you guys get on top of any issues quickly it shouldnt be a problem.

Most raid boss mechanics are gimmicky by nature – they’re using effects that players wouldn’t normally have to react to purely as another hoop to jump through. You already see loads of that stuff in dungeons, and even the personal story for season 2 is introducing it now. I don’t see it as a failing, so long as it makes sense in its context.

And those suggested mechanics are great – having to make a decision on which skill to interrupt appeals to me particularly. But they work with any number of players, whether dungeon or raid scale.

Honestly though, whether a design needs a certain number is irrelevant. It’s the “challenging every player in the raid individually” bit I’m most interested in. That can be done by requiring a diversity of builds, but can also be done with requiring organised actions and movement. Knowing which 4 players hit an interrupt skill is a great start.

The one suggestion I’d make is that it’s not a whole lot smarter than stack-and-spank if only one or two players need to move at a time. So long as each player has to think, it’s going in the right direction. (And ideally, not all think the same thing.)

thx to VoD for his summary thread, very helpful
the idea to bring the old events back are awesome, the marionette, the breachmaker, the evacuation of LA were awesome events and i would love it to see them coming back. Even when its not enough for raids, some option to pla again would be nice. Like a time travel to go back and be a part of the event, just in the mists or such. the players would be teleported to the map and play.

to the discussion whether open world or instanced
what about open world, but only the raider can attack? like if a guild let the karka queen spawn and only the guild can attack, for others – outside the guild, the karka is marked as kind of ally.

as rewards, each profession gets an own style okay, but then a thief should be able to wear ranger skins and ele to wear necro skins.
Imagine the Skins of Engineers looks unbelievable awesome and the other medium classes cant wear it. Would be terrible.

the raid should be hard and the rewards attractive. For me would be attractive to see a ascended box as a rewards, i like the idea of pvp progression track. After x amounts of successful raids i can get a cool reward, maybe when the raid was faster we get more points. when we were slower we get a bit less points, but the progression needs to be big enough to feel that to work for it is rewarding.
Maybe we have one track and at the end an omni ascended box. From this box we can choose if we want an accessory, an armor or a weapon box and from such boxes we can choose again what stats we want. As site rewards we can get mithrillium and such.

to guild only or for all players: alliances. small scale guilds can alliance with big guilds and will be able to play raids without the feeling small guilds are in disavantage

an orr raid would be a nice idea, but zhaitan is dead, but left are the hundreds of minion dragons flying around over orr. to kill multiple tequatl with different abilities would maybe an option

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

about progression I want to ask you (players as well as devs) a question:

How do you feel about the agony resist system from fractals? Do you see any cons to this system? What are they and how do you think these could be fixed?

I really like the concept of agony, having an impact on the fractals only and no use outside of these mini-dungeons. I could imagine that this system would work fine in raids as well.

Honestly, I think Agony was a bad idea. It’s not a test of skills, it’s a test of how much Agony Resist you grinded. I’d much rather have encounters focused on testing our combat skills than hitting us with an unavoidable partywide debuff.

about raiding:
- getting larger groups/raid mode to be able to see life of other guys, and not be limited to 5 people.
- instead of having boss with a lot of HP, it is far enjoyable having boss with mechanics by phase aka, e.g. aetherblade dungeon, requiring a lot of movement. Because then players have to play as a group and not as individuals.
-Exploring boss mechanics that needs from player to have different builds in order to use more skills that aren’t used right now.
-maybe add mechanics by lvl of difficulties (add levels like fractal), e.g. at lvl 5 some mechanics, lvl 10 new harder mechanics add to bosses, and between 5 and 10 improvement of damages from the boss. But not too much lvl because then it is just farm… Nothing really enjoyable. (maybe 20 levels max)
-it will be by far more interesting to have something instanced: better coordination → you are able to design bosses with better mechanics, than just hp bags.

about the rewards:
-it is raid content, that’s why green or blue can’t exist in a raid purpose, because it needs to be epic, players have to feel the epicness of a raid content, and it will attract more players with exotics rewards and high lvl craft components. And maybe get a chance to have ascended armor from the last boss.

TPenny.5071:

..

10 – 15 Small guild sized raid

Pros:

• Small amount of members leads to each individual player having more of a role and feeling significant.
• Organization is easier and communication faster.
• Encounters and mechanics can be balanced easier around smaller groups.

Cons:

• Less inclusive, specially to larger guilds
• While having ones role mean significantly more it also means if they fail its more likely to cause a wipe.
• Higher pressure to perform well, emotions may flare when something goes wrong.

I consider the bolded part pros to be honest.
As for the other sizes you put forth, I don’t really consider those sizes feasible in GW2.

I strongly disagree with no trigger on the topic of build diversity.

Among the list of builds for guardians he presented, I can only see two archetypes of builds : GS+something or Hammer+something.

All GS builds followed the same core basis with small variations to adjust a particular encounter. Same for hammer builds.

To make an analogy in GW1 :
The ele in GW1 have 2 meta builds in PvE :
http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_general_builds

Yet if I follow your reasonning, I could claim that the ele has at least 10 different meta builds (the variations around the infuse bonder and the searing flame ele). See what I mean ?

Back to GW2:
True diversity means at least that conditions builds are a viable alternative to direct damage builds. They are not at this moment for multiple reasons that have been discussed time and again.

This is why some contributors suggested to include mobs that are vulnerable to conditions to give conditions a use in PvE.

VodCom.6924:

I strongly disagree with no trigger on the topic of build diversity.

Among the list of builds for guardians he presented, I can only see two archetypes of builds : GS+something or Hammer+something.

All GS builds followed the same core basis with small variations to adjust a particular encounter. Same for hammer builds.

To make an analogy in GW1 :
The ele in GW1 have 2 meta builds in PvE :
http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_general_builds

Yet if I follow your reasonning, I could claim that the ele has at least 10 different meta builds (the variations around the infuse bonder and the searing flame ele). See what I mean ?

Back to GW2:
True diversity means at least that conditions builds are a viable alternative to direct damage builds. They are not at this moment for multiple reasons that have been discussed time and again.

This is why some contributors suggested to include mobs that are vulnerable to conditions to give conditions a use in PvE.

making condition damage as good as normal damage in pve is the job of the devs who are responsible for this stuff. not the job of the content itself. and i guess everyone agrees that condition damage needs changes.

also, it wasnt my point to bring the build diversity stuff up. my point was to make people realize that gear is not the main factor for build diversity in gw2 pve.
and thats not a subjective thing you can disagree with. its a fact.

and i have yet to find a mob that is invulnerable to condition damage.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I am watching how the conversation moves, over almost 20 pages now and there’s still this concept being clung to that there can be no such thing as a “casual raid”.

Hey Tobias.
Just to clarify my stance. I’m all for casual raids, I’m only against easy raids (as in, the only limiting factor of how far you can get is your skill (and the team’s), not time).

Guys, I think we’re derailing again…

We should be discussing how to make build diversity more viable through discussions on how the encounters could play around the core mechanics of GW2.
Not discuss what builds are and are not currently viable in the game at the moment..

Alternatively, we should discuss progression.

And to be honest, when I started catching up today, I skipped alot of posts, because so many of them seemed to deviate from the topics Chris currently wants us to discuss.

Also, a note to those it concerns: (those who like to write their proposals as long text heavy stories)
It’s all cool that you want to explain your ideas in full. But I think it would help tremendously if you would be so kind as to make headers, paragraphs, bullets etc. It just makes it so much easier to read what you’re proposing, and to catch every point of it.

NoTrigger.8396:

Zoso.8279:

Personally I feel death should result in restart of the whole raid even if your in zone 5 etc. Just my 2c and again i’d really recommend the taking time to listen to the podcast.

lets say you have beaten 5/7 bosses and want to progress at the 6. boss now. if you die, and you will because you wont kill bosses first try, you have to start all over again?!

this “death = restart the whole raid” idea is something people havent really thought about for more than one second.

Well i would say a full normal raid (exclude like overkill take your time raids) shouldnt take more than an hour.

how about… beating the raid without full wipe gives better rewards, or unlocks something special.
Or you have an additional mode available after beating it, no full wipe mode.

other possibilities, retries on full wipes are something you earn in the raid, or find in the raid.

There is a ton of interesting things that happen when its all on the line though. I remember people kiting through the whole huge raid areas, while other players ressurected and stalled for ressurection weakness, and reset fights for success.

i suppose they could put an overall time limit on the raid, so you actually feel some urgency for victory.

just dont think unlimited tries with no limits on time or anything is really the way a raid should be.

theres got to be negatives and positives other than just trying over infinitely.

Symph.8407:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I am watching how the conversation moves, over almost 20 pages now and there’s still this concept being clung to that there can be no such thing as a “casual raid”.

Hey Tobias.
Just to clarify my stance. I’m all for casual raids, I’m only against easy raids (as in, the only limiting factor of how far you can get is your skill (and the team’s), not time).

I’d like to chip in that I’ve no problem with casual (low playtime) raids either.
I think the issue is that Casual is being thrown around with 2 different meanings.
1. Low playtime
2. Low skill
It’s more about the difficulty, when people hear the word casual they automatically assume easy mode. As long as thats not the case casual is fine.
(We were also asked not to use the word so maybe we should stick with low playtime and low skill as descriptors for the two above cases).

On Builds
(I’m using build to include your gear and traits)
Any competent build should work, bearing in mind that’s a relatively small list.
I.e A burn guardian or PvP D/D burst ele should not be viable means of completing it.

If your build is “good” at its function , high support, high DPS, High condi, High minion spam then that’s fine. If it’s just a bad build that’s not used because it’s bad then it should obviously not succeed.

On Difficulty
I would like to point out that content that would be deemed “Hard” by a top tier player is likely to be “impossible” to some of the other groups. So there may be a limit to inclusivity (apparently not a word).

On Length
I would like to see Raids being a fair bit longer than dungeons, dungeons are great for a I have 15-20 mins to kill. But sometimes it’s the weekend you have a block of time free and you want to put a dent in the global population.
Even then 1-3 hours (I made a suggestion on the first page for a small save system using a buff). Is all I’d be expecting which is around the same length as the elite areas from GW1 and still much shorter than a traditional.

i’ll be honest with you.

i don’t like dungeons in their current form for one reason: the trash mobs.
a) trash mobs are a waste of time
b) trash mobs are skipped because they slow down the completion time of the dungeons.
c) bosses are the fun part

why are trash mobs built into dungeons to begin with?
a) the dungeons are built in large landscapes, so something has fill up the landscape in between boss rooms, right?

i propose
a) raids will have smaller landscapes than dungeons
b) minimum number of trash mobs (preferrably none)
c) make the raids focus on the boss encounters
d) trash mobs should only be part of boss encounters or mini boss encounters, because most groups skip non-boss trash mobs anyway

if i were to illustrate what i mean with a raid from another game, it would have to be from Lord of the Rings Online’s Ost Dunhoth raid. this raid had good design for trash mobs (and they couldn’t be skipped.) incoming wall of text in the spoiler tag

TL;DR
trash mobs (like in the GW2 dungeons) are boring. make trash mob encounters fun and interesting or leave them out of raids.

I think we all need to get away from the difficult vs easy discussions.

If raiding ever makes it into the game, that doesn’t mean every fight has to be melt-your-face torture or walk-you-through-a-story easy. I would expect their goal would be to eventually have a range of raid instances interspersed between those two extremes, much like dungeons can be (are). There is a big difference between the first time you ran Twilight Arbor Up/Up and the first time you ran Twilight Arbor – Twilight Assault Path, for example – yet both are still in game.

I think there is only one group of people they should be considering when developing raids for GW2 and that is “people who play GW2 and want to raid” (which is probably a pretty big group ).

If we stay on track and focus on core mechanics and systems, those tools can be used to create a wide spectrum of raid experiences. There is no reason to (and Im sure Anet wouldnt) limit that potential to one extreme or the other.

To that end, I really like NoTrigger’s feedback regarding trash mob complexity/mechanics (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/21#post4532328).

I may take some time later today to brainstorm how it could apply to the theorycraft raid concept Im fleshing out to provide my core mechanics feedback (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/18#post4530789 ; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/20#post4531758)

Symph.8407:

TPenny.5071:

..

10 – 15 Small guild sized raid

Pros:

• Small amount of members leads to each individual player having more of a role and feeling significant.
• Organization is easier and communication faster.
• Encounters and mechanics can be balanced easier around smaller groups.

Cons:

• Less inclusive, specially to larger guilds
• While having ones role mean significantly more it also means if they fail its more likely to cause a wipe.
• Higher pressure to perform well, emotions may flare when something goes wrong.

I consider the bolded part pros to be honest.
As for the other sizes you put forth, I don’t really consider those sizes feasible in GW2.

The other sizes were merely for comparison, I personally prefer 10 – 15 members non scaling. But you can see how that would hit larger guilds and communities.

The scale seems to be tipping towards small closed raids against large or scaling raids.

Weighing potential quality and challenge Vs inclusivity and accessibility.

I honestly hope people think very hard about what they type and don’t let emotion get in the way because this CDI is very important to the game. Raids imo is the missing piece to the GW2 puzzle and if done right (everyone or most are happy) with LS expansions GW2 will be perfect imho.

Blaeys.3102:

I think we all need to get away from the difficult vs easy discussions.

If raiding ever makes it into the game, that doesn’t mean every fight has to be melt-your-face torture or walk-you-through-a-story easy. I would expect their goal would be to eventually have a range of raid instances interspersed between those two extremes, much like dungeons can be (are). There is a big difference between the first time you ran Twilight Arbor Up/Up and the first time you ran Twilight Arbor – Twilight Assault Path, for example – yet both are still in game.

I think there is only one group of people they should be considering when developing raids for GW2 and that is “people who play GW2 and want to raid” (which is probably a pretty big group ).

If we stay on track and focus on core mechanics and systems, those tools can be used to create a wide spectrum of raid experiences. There is no reason to (and Im sure Anet wouldnt) limit that potential to one extreme or the other.

To that end, I really like NoTrigger’s feedback regarding trash mob complexity/mechanics (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/21#post4532328).

I may take some time later today to brainstorm how it could apply to the theorycraft raid concept Im fleshing out to provide my core mechanics feedback (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/18#post4530789 ; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/20#post4531758)

My view on what you said would be that raids the first time around would be “bang your head against the keyboard” type, but as you complete checkpoints or the whole raid, levels & perks (or w/e you want to call them) makes them a lot easier (tl;dr some progression and being able to feel powerful coming back to the first raid)

That would give the hardcore what they are looking for and make it easier for them to bring casuals through the content later as they have those perks (and a higher raid level)

Also checkpoints would reward casuals because they dont need to complete the whole thing to progress or be rewarded and they could continue where they left @ a later time with a new team or the same one.

For progression, why not do what is done in fractals? Every time you beat the raid, you can apply for the next stage of difficulty, increasing rewards, etc?

That way, organized groups can get increasingly harder challenges, and pug groups can still form and enter.

Serophous.9085:

For progression, why not do what is done in fractals? Every time you beat the raid, you can apply for the next stage of difficulty, increasing rewards, etc?

That way, organized groups can get increasingly harder challenges, and pug groups can still form and enter.

I’m not overly a fan of the fractals level system being converted for raids, it has 4 “dead” levels each tier which are doing nothing, if you were to do a system like that I’d remove dead tiers I.E

Difficulty 1 = F 1-10
D2 = F 10-20
D3 = F 20 -30
D4 = F 30- 40
D5 = F 40-50

A clear move up in difficulty each time.

Serophous.9085:

For progression, why not do what is done in fractals? Every time you beat the raid, you can apply for the next stage of difficulty, increasing rewards, etc?

That way, organized groups can get increasingly harder challenges, and pug groups can still form and enter.

I feel like each raid should be intrinsically as difficult as can be to begin with. If you simply scale up the difficulty (hp + damage) after beating it, it’s a lazy substitute to a well designed base raid.

It would be cool if you unlock a harder different raid after beating the first one, but I’m not sure it would be good if it just scales.

Well I had a few ideas overnight so i thought id shove them in, hopefully they dont get in the way. When it comes to challenging encounters, mobility is definitely important, but i dont think that that should be reduced to simply dodging or moving into better spots for shooting. An idea I had that followed this was an encounter where a check will be run every 30 seconds or so, and depending on where the party is standing a different effect will be placed on the enemy. To picture this better imagine a star constellation. If the party was standing in the same spots as say the chariot, then a swarm of arrows would rain from the ceiling. In short fights should also take advantage of where youre standing, as well as where your moving to in order to have environmental effects. This can also be used to have “moving bosses”. In a similar vein to the claw of jormag, you could have a boss that “flees” to random rooms in a raid, and the party can either chase it down, or station people at various points in order to pin its movements and control it. No need to have encounters stay in one place, feel free to have them run.

In terms of conditions, i had the idea where instead of say a stack of bleed will be applied, there could be a meter of sorts for larger mobs. if 25 stacks were hit by the party, then the mob would recieve a debuff “heavy bleed” which would do a certain amount of %health damage as long as it stayed. The idea behind this is that smaller parties could time their conditions together rather than spam them, so that their combined efforts and co-ordination have more of an effect. If done right, you can also make it so that if a party is capable of say 35 stacks of bleed, the stack of heavy bleed will then allow new bleeds to be applied, and the party could co-ordinate so that the highest condi dealer could apply theirs last, to improve the damage dealt.

As for rewards and progress, I dont see why we cant have a seperate track for raids. Not stat wise or anything, more for beating certain bosses or raids, players get tokens to spend on outfits or something i havent seen guild wars implement, an aura effect or animation. Something like for defeating an ice raid, someone can get tokens to get an idle animation that forms a chair of ice for the character to sit on.

If any of these ideas have been mentioned already i apologise. Ive only skimmed the cdi a little with my free time. Hope these suggestions spark up some ideas from others.

Proposal Overview:
Enemy encounters that require greater player attention and adaptation to changing situations.

Goal of Proposal:
Create meaningful encounters no matter what situation. In other words, each fight has to be treated like a champion level fight in terms of skill and tactics (even though champion level enemies aren’t necessarily present).

Proposal Functionality:

1. Raids enemies where each enemy type (E.G: wolves, bandits, pirates, centaurs) can have half or one-third of their skills randomly picked from a large list. The reason: facing the same enemies over and over again with the same skills gets boring really quick. At least with an element of semi-randomness in the form of a small amount of randomly picked skills, enemy grunts (trash mobs) and various veteran, elite, and champion enemies will require a greater degree of attention and adaptation in almost every run.
2. Bosses that can change form (with a model change and maybe even a whole new animation set) and gain different attacks, minions, and environment effects with each different form. In fact, the GW1 Krait and the enchanted mirror creatures found in the Desolation are exactly the mechanic that come to mind. That being said, I hope to see raid bosses have the ability to change between multiple forms at will rather than at set health intervals to keep me and my team on their toes.
3. Crowd control skills must actually mean something against these raid bosses and if someone already crowd controlled the boss, I don’t want to have a team to spam crowd control just to be able to crowd control the boss later. This is a design pattern that should be avoided at any cost. Anything that does this should not be present in the raid bosses as I expect the three pillars of GW2’s combat system to be fully required in some shape or form.

Associated Risks:
Requirement of rapid communications outside of typing for some players that have no access to proper equipment (microphones come to mind).

This thread is growing far too fast for any normal human being to keep up with. Chris, do you think it’d be appropriate at this point to ask slightly more focused questions? As somebody who pops in every day or so, I’m finding there are a few pages covering five topics whenever I come back. By the time I catch up, it’s typically too late to contribute. :-(

I’d also love to see more of the devs thoughts about this, not only ours. How was agony received by them, after looking at the live-environment. Do they feel that the rewards we currently have from hard content (fractals, dungeons) are perceived as satisfying? (I’m asking because we currently talked about RNG with a dev where perceptions seemed to be quite different: magic find makes a huge difference VS. makes very little difference).

If we players would get information about Anets reality, it would be much easier to discuss certain topics imho.

Boottspurr.9184:

Serophous.9085:

For progression, why not do what is done in fractals? Every time you beat the raid, you can apply for the next stage of difficulty, increasing rewards, etc?

That way, organized groups can get increasingly harder challenges, and pug groups can still form and enter.

I feel like each raid should be intrinsically as difficult as can be to begin with. If you simply scale up the difficulty (hp + damage) after beating it, it’s a lazy substitute to a well designed base raid.

It would be cool if you unlock a harder different raid after beating the first one, but I’m not sure it would be good if it just scales.

I agree that just scaling would be boring, and there would need to be something in place to prevent the dead levels.

On dead levels, my thought is that a player can enter at any level they want. Let’s keep it at a difficulty of max 10. So if a well organized group is ready for 10, they can hop on in. But let’s still include the personal loot system, but one change. In order to increase personal loot level, you get an item at the end of the raid that gives enough to go up one level. An example for this would help better.

Lv 1: rewards 500. You need 500 to go to lv 2 personal loot.
Lv 2 rewards 1000. You need 1000 to hit lv 2 personal loot.

The player now has an option. If he can’t find a level 2 group, he can do two lv 1s to hit lv 2. Then four for lv 3, etc. That way if there isn’t enough people in one level at that time, progress isn’t haulted, but slowed. Now, to prevent people who hit 10 and just farm 1 for the best rewards, the rarest of rewards should stick to the requirement of difficulty 10 with loot of 10.

Now, as for mobs just getting more HP and DMG, I agree that is boring. Upon reaching a certain level or point, mobs should be gaining an additional skill or another condition should be added to the event. Example would be a boss that didn’t aoe before, now aoes.

Would it be possible, instead of scaling such as we see in certain events, to have two individually balanced settings for the raid.

1) 8 characters
2) 25 characters

Obviously a bit dev more work than a single setting but could address the small guild vs megaguild concern and might be better tuned to the individual settings if balanced individually for their respective group size.

Perhaps even a dungeon and a raid version of the content

1) 5 characters
2) 25 characters

Crystal Reid.2481:

Nick.6972:

Just please top with all this Casual vs Hardcore.
Just because I’m able to play few hours in a week doesn’t mean I like hand holding and hate challenging and punishing content.
Likewise, I could be playing 12 hours/day for 2 years straight role playing and exploring without even touching dugeons, fractals, spvp or wvw.

I’m a few pages/days behind, but I would like to bring up this post again for the sake of keeping things on track.

I’ve seen the terms casual and hardcore thrown around a bunch in this thread. Those terms are too loaded and are going to have different meanings for different players. This thread is about brainstorming what raids could be in GW2.

Instead I propose we stick to using our own experiences as a gamer with regards to skill and play time when it comes to raiding.

Crystal! While you are here i would like to ask something.
Regarding to raids players would make bigger efforts to be succesfull, but what about time investment? Do you find it acceptable that raids are at least 1 hour long or you (ANet) wish to tailor it for casual players who has less playtime a week?
Oh another one. Weekly resets? Maybe only gate the rewards so players who run it for challenge or whatever they can still run through the content and practice.

Proposal Overview
Provide large zone sized raid maps that are opened to guilds as guild raids. These raid zones are map instances owned by guilds and are started through guild missions. The zone has areas and objectives that can be accessed by anyone and areas and objectives that can only be accessed by the guild that started the guild mission.

Goal of Proposal
The goal of this proposal is to provide difficult raid content that members of a guild can own and progress through and in the process create content for players that are not interested in instanced raiding.

Proposal Functionality

Gating
The raids will be gated behind GW2’s guild mission system. The time gating should also involve the current guild mission system.
There will be no level, armor tier or any other kind of gating involved.

Initiating raids
The raid will be initiated under the guild mission system of GW2. Each guild will have their own raid zone and unlike current guild missions the objectives and the zones will not be shared among different guilds.

Raid Size
Each raid will support a flexible number of players.For example, 10-15 or 60-80. As much flexibility as possible will be provided without watering down the raid encounters. There will be no hard minimum number of players forced by the game systems.

Fixed raid sizes encourages competition between guild members and create an environment that goes against GW2’s current design philosophy.

Rewards
The rewards will be Unique, but will avoid the label of being the “Best rewards”. If any content is labeled as being the best reward then to many players this means that is the only content “worth” doing in the game. This goes against current GW2 design.

The end rewards will be purely cosmetics. The rewards could only be crafted and will not be dropped directly through the raid. Doing the raid will provide crafting materials that will work similar to mawdrey scavenger hunt.

The entire scavenger hunt will be inside the raid zone and crafting materials required will need to be enhanced before use. For each raid run only one item can be enhanced (per player), therefore, multiple runs will be needed to create the item.

Furthermore, there can be different crafting materials attached to different objectives in order to encourage the players to work on all objectives.

There can also be special rewards for objectives like killing more than 90% of mobs in the raid instance.

In practice this system will have the advantages of a token system (Guaranteed reward), but will not have the biggest disadvantage of the token system (boring reward system).

Difficulty and length of raid
The raids will be more difficult than any content currently in GW2.
The length of each raid will vary, but it will on average take more than 4 hours to complete after being on farm status. This also means that a guild should have the ability to save raid progress.

Failure penalties
It should be possible to wipe on raids. It should be easy to restart after a wipe, but only for a limited number of time. Continued failure should result in complete raid failure and should require restart of raid instance.
This also means that use of way point should be strictly limited and in most cases players should be forced to revive each other.

Raiders Creating content for Non raid players
When a guild starts a raid mission the raid zone becomes available to all players (up to map cap). This will work similar to current guild puzzles except that Raid zone will be a separate map. Only guild members will have access to actual raid content on the map and other players will have no influence on the guild progress. On the other hand the guild’s progress in the raid will have an impact on content that is available to players that do not belong to the guild.

Associated Risks

- Most players will not find the raid content accessible to them. This can result in GW2 losing some of those players. This can be mitigated by the reward structure and also by allowing eveyone to at least enter the raid zone once a guild has started a guild mission.

- Large and accessible guilds like TTTS and TTX will not be suitable for these type of raids.

- Gating content behind guild missions will keep players who prefer pick up groups out of raids.

- The raids can have a negative impact on GW2’s community by encouraging competition in PVE.