Guild Wars 2

I’m still utterly baffled why Chris is upset about this thread. Can’t say I can find very many examples of bullying and immaturity – certainly not enough to warrant getting upset about by a long shot. Glad to see the CDI’s getting their own subforum though – I suggested this way back to prevent any problems occuring. Hopefully this will help it.

Top 3
1. Accessbility. Everyone and anyone should be able to access this. THIS is what stands GW2 above all others. Other MMO’s fail utterly here, GW2’s core principles should hold it up high as an example to others

2. Original mechanics. I have faith this will happen anyway. I am LOVING silverwastes and some of the recent LS2 mob mechanics

3. Rewards. SIlverwastes shows what you can do. Wurm shows how to get it very, very wrong (what’s the incentive for the average player to try?). It needs to be worth the time and effort – exclusive rewards are essential

added extra note;. Improvements to (UI?) – eg build templates/commander improvements/larger team sizes/map notes and pings for all raid group.

least important

1. Massively challenging content. In so much that it shouldn’t be difficult for the sake of being difficult. Fun and accessibility first. Or end up like the Wurm and shut out and frustrate too many players. Difficult? Yes. Completable by top 5% players? What will have been gained by that?

2. Story. I’d actually love a really good raid story, but let’s face it, raids work better as pure gameplay (imo). People just skip the story and it wont really fit a living world if you complete/repeat constantly. It’s not necessary to write much for it in my opinion

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Boot,

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

Thanks! Hmm, that’s a tough one… I guess:

1. Challenging and Instanced set for 5<people<30 where Knowledge>Skill>Comp

2. Interesting new mechanics, possibly embracing other fun aspects of GW2 (incl. jumping puzzles, siege, jumping, dodging, emotes, knowledge of LORE, etc.)

3. Unique rewards that don’t go further than Ascended/Legendary, but give a VERY compelling reason to complete such (what should be) ridiculously difficult content.

>
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4. Guild tie-in I list this 4th because the above points are technically more important to me, but I still have to mention it because it only makes sense that the raids be tied intrinsically to guilds. (but still be open for invites from the guild/officer to pugs)

Hmm.. I just thought of something. It might be interesting if a guild has to complete certain raids in order to unlock certain aspects of their Guild Halls :P

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Please list your top three priorities for raiding (Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative, Content)

Mine are:

1: Knowledge>
2: Skill>
3: Raid Group Setup

I will leave the thread open until folks have had a chance to put there top three forward and then I will put forward a proposal on behalf of the CDI group to the team.

Thanks,

Chris

1: Knowledge – Of the class your playing, the skills and traits for each encounter to make it efficient.
2: Skill – Not being able to simply face tank through the encounter. I think raids should make the best use of the active combat system.
3: Raid Group Setup- Unique encounters, use of combo fields, including those seldom used like Dark or Light. I would also like to see this linked in with Lore from Guild Wars 1, (Underworld, FoW, The Deep, Urgoz’s Warren, Mallyx etc. Underworld and FoW in particular)

• Roles/Coordination: I really like the design of Triple Troubles. It requires different roles and coordination of the whole map. I understand Roles come from the knowledge of the mechanics but that knowledge isn’t imperative for every participants. For example, a first timer can jump into the Wurm’s fight by following the zerg commanders. As he becomes more familiar with the fight, he takes up more specific/important roles like reflect or condi, etc. Coordination makes the content more engaging and also leads to the evolution of tactics. For example, Tequatl in EU and in NA are very different.

• Individual Skill Because it’s an endgame content. It also provides stimulant to practice and perfect. An example for Individual Skill would be GW1 Underworld speed run, where the group split tasks and the success of the whole group depends on each individual.

• Rewards Both progressive and RNG rewards. Progressive as in token-based system and RNG as in loots. They should be generous and enticing.

• Walk to run. Raids should start moderately challenging and get progressively more difficult. Rewards should progress along with the challenges.

• Rewarding. Raids should have unique rewards and raiding should be the most rewarding content in the game on a per-unit-time basis.

• Arbitrary-gate free. This is a catch-all for everything from Agony Resistance-checks to unskippable cutscenes. Let me do the content as fast as I can based on my, as Chris said, knowledge and skill.

• Challenge through combat mechanics.
  Liadri, Lupicus, and Clockheart are good examples, where the challenge was based around the combat mechanics. Boss blitz is a good example of what I don’t want to see in raids, where the combat was very much trivial and the challenge came entirely from coordination.

• The skills available to the player need to be important tools.
  Player skills have a wide assortment of mechanics such as projectile reflects, condition clears, crowd control, blocks, and thing of that nature. Instead of bundles being the main tools, put more emphasis on player skills, such as a phase where you need condition clears to survive.

• Combat that enforces active movement, not stacking.
  Measures need to be taken, such as lingering AoE, that enforces an active movement combat, not one where the best strategy is for everyone to huddle around the boss and stay in place.

Haven’t played steadily in over a year, tried out the new content yesterday, LOVED the new zone! On topic, here are my 3.
1. Accessibility: Others have said this but this content should be really easy to get into for all players at level cap. Wildstar wrecked this concept. No gating please.
2. Scaling difficulty and rewards similar to fractals: Replay-ability with tiers of cool cosmetic rewards. Stuff people really want. Easy to get into, difficult to master. Casual player friendly. Rewards should be full gear sets, weapons, pets, possibly mounts similar to the broom as well as plenty of other loot to make it well worth it. [I am also a huge fan of the gw1 style progression in which you obtained new abilities, please add this :P]
3. Roles: This could be a chance to make every class matter more, or bring out the best in tactics and strategy for players. Each class has unique abilities already, and you guys could really take this a good step forward with situations that can only be resolved by certain abilities that only specific classes/roles can solve. I don’t think you guys will take roles in the direction I’d like to see them go to progress this game, but I’ll take making the current classes have specials ways of beating certain challenges within the raids.

Alright Top 3 Priorities, I think difficulty and skill being top priority are basically no brainers so I won’t touch on them.

1. Soft Raid Roles.

I think we had a very good an enlightening discussion in this CDI and what existing roles in Guild wars 2 could be expanded on. The reflect and condition damage roles in triple trouble are a perfect example of what I want to see. However in addition to these I think interrupts, Crowd control, boon striping and stealth should be added to the toolbox when designing raids (though for the later 2 an environmental item substitute may be required). Most class compositions should be able to complete a Raid but that doesn’t mean we can’t dust off the lesser used utility skills on our bars.

2. Different Reward Tiers/Difficultly

I think Anet will be fighting a losing war if they try to decide a difficulty level that’s perfect for everyone. Add some sort of reward tier system that makes the Raid harder if you want slighter better rewards or have a wide array of Raids that are different levels of difficulty. One man’s farm is another man’s Everest.

3. Scaling.

Alright here’s my controversial pick. We’ve said everything that can be said on this subject in this thread but here’s my final defense of scaling!

I know everyone’s top priority is difficultly but I think we could pull of scaling to a degree without sacrificing difficulty. Keep in mind this isn’t the open world, you can add players to a Raid and have it be objectively harder instead of easier and it would still be fair to the players. Think of more platforms opening up in the Marionette as you add more people, objectively it would be harder the more people you have because your adding more and more failure points but it’s still fair because you choose to open the Raid up to more people as the Raid leader.

Thank you for the opportunity to have this CDI discussion and thanks to everyone that I bounced idea with, I feel confident that Raids will be an excellent addition to Guild wars 2 if this is added. Well as long as you don’t copy-paste the reward system from Triple Trouble to Raids…. nobody likes that reward system…..

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

Yes, reread definately. And if you post from a phone, turn off autocorrect, as it can get you into a LOT of trouble….>.>

• Soft Roles
• Enemy AI/Raid Mechanics
• Raid Tools/maybe add to commander

scaling numbers for 8-15 people Too big groups would become a mindless zerg fast and the contribution of individuals would be very small. Too small groups won’t feel like an epic encounter.

interesting motivations/rewards imho dungeon-token rewards were great but could be accomplished by very rare drops like we see at Tequatl & Co. Also add something between: rare skins but not too rare, like 20% dropchance from a boss.

interesting epic storylines which don’t end at the raid-entrance A negative example would be fractals. Too closed structure imho, not much lore about specific fractals outside of the fractal.

Okay, my three priorities:

1. Mechanics that promote a variety of builds
Basically, something to push away from the zerker/stacking strat that is the normal for most dungeon encounters, I don’t think I’ve gone a single post in this CDI without mentioning Boon Removal, but it also can go to condi removal, condi damage, CC, boons, support healing, PVT/Nomad Meatshields, etc, etc. I think raids are one of the few places where you can ask a player to specialize, even for just one fight, in order to give a unique enounter.

2. Keep gear progression from rewards to a minimum
I would prefer keeping it completely horizontal, but if that doesn’t seem like enough of an incentive, the next best thing would to keep the increase small. I like how Ascended and legendary gear only have a small damage range and stat increase, over Exotic, with the biggest draw for Legendary weapons is the ability changing stats on the fly. If Legendary armor also becomes a thing, I would like to see something similar; That it would not desirable mechanics wise because it gives a significant advantage, but because it can be any stat you want.

3.Multiple raid sizes
Raids should be available for both large guilds/groups and small ones. Personally, I think it would be done best without scaling, and instead with hard tiers (whether that means multiple raid dungeons or as an option at the start of the raid) since scaling usually means increasing difficult with just more mobs and HP, and not new mechanics or strategies, though if you can get it to work, kudos to you.

1) Inclusiveness. Raids should not be limited to guilds or people with best-in-slot gear.

2) No gear creep. Raids should drop “better” gear, but not stat-wise.

3) Dynamic bosses. Bosses with static tactics become boring loot pinatas.

1. Variety in raid size, duration, scope, and difficulty. Something like saving citizens in an LA evacuation type raid might be easier to do, but more complex in terms of coordinating a spread to save the number you need to win. Then you have something like marionette, your single “big” boss. You might then have a linear raid – boss to boss, trash/puzzles/whatever in between (tower of nightmares as a rough example.) And then there’s the titanic zone raid which also involves multiple bosses and objectives, but which also involves choice in terms of boss order, and choice in terms of where the group wants to go. Beating everything brings you to the final battle, but certain areas can be tougher so there’s a sense of progression.

2. Variety in the weapons/skills/traits best advised to complete a raid encounter. One boss may have a lot of aoe to reflect. Another boss may have adds that need to be kept away from the boss or some special area. Another might require you to keep an npc alive (total nightmare!) Some bosses should be easily melee’d, others less so. Make conditions more useful. I’m sure the cap won’t change, so consider artificial means (like the fire on the tar guy in arah). Perhaps one boss’s move is disabled as long as he has weakness on him, or chill. Some may require you to switch in and out of range and melee. I dig the very clear aoe indicators on those bosses in Glint’s lair.

3. Variety in rewards. I personally like a token system. If you go the guild route, commendations will do. Anything unique in the sense that it cannot be sold/traded could be limited to commendations plus a raid-specific endboss item (to prevent one from getting them through just bounties/rush/etc.) But if no one cares about the minis, or the sword of a thousand truths, or whatever special thing that comes from just a raid, also include obsidian shards, heavy crafting bags, materials, whatever!

1. Unforgiving NPC fights. Bosses and other enemy NPC’s should come just as well equipped and skilled as the players engaging them. The NPC’s primary goal should be to kill and finish players. NPC’s should work together and synergize extremely well in order to defend themselves and wipe groups of players.
2. Puzzles. Raids should be designed as puzzles that must be figured out. This includes both small scale puzzles per boss, section, area, etc… as well as an overall puzzle theme for the entire instance.
3. Knowledge

After catching up a bit on the CDI I just hope we can have a good CDI on GvG (I think that was the next one in line) and maybe learn a bit from this CDI. QoL and Guild Halls were GREAT! QoL was my personal favorite and I hope we can get back on track. I do have a question about the new locking “system” moving forward what exactly does that mean? If you act immature or are being very aggressive/disrespectful you will be locked out of the CDI thread?

Well my top 3

1. Challenge
2. Available to small groups/individuals
3. Around 25+ player raids (Basically not as small as dungeons not as big as world boss or WvW)

my top 3:

1. difficulty and challenge
make the raids hard. make them challenging. and most important make them fun.
as long as you can find a way to let the players know what they did wrong, even
wiping several 100 times at a boss will be fun.
the difficulty and challenge should revolve around knowledge, teamwork, playerskill and the active elements and core of gw2 combat system, such as active defense.

i know there needs to be something like a middle ground to make as many players as possibe interesting to raid and play the content.
but it is nearly impossible to achieve this by balancing the content around different player skill levels. so how could we achieve this?

i think the best middle ground from a player perspective is learning.
the best middle ground from a dev perspective is teaching your players how to play the game.

i feel the best way to do this when you release the first raiding content for gw2 is introducing something like an “intro raid” or “story mode” raid, that upon completion, unlocks the “real” raid.
in this “intro raid” instance there should be several bosses and events that will teach your players basic game mechanics and profession knowledge, as well as advanced stuff.
the difficulty of the encounters and events should be increasing from encounter to encounter, from event to event (but still be below the difficulty of the "real raid). additionally, you can add pop ups or an npc that gives players hints when they fail several times at mastering a mechanic or something like that.

i will cover another part of this in 3.

2 gear progression
please no gear progression stat wise. it can be visual progression, but one thing i hate the most is upgrading my gear several times to have better stats. ascended should be the best gear stat wise.

3 accessibility and saving progress
- saving progress should be tethered to guilds.
the best way to save progress and make raiding content more enjoyable especially for people who are short of time, but would like to raid, is an ID system.
this will allow people to save their progress and eliminates wasting time to beat all the encounters you have beaten already over and over again every single day.
the progress and raid instance should be resetted on a weekly basis.
and the easiest way to make an ID system work is simply adding it to guilds as a feature.

- accessibility should be tethered to guilds and there should not be a LFG option for raids.
when accessibility is tethered to guilds you can eliminate a lot of problems before they even arise with PUGs or different playerskill.
obviously raiding content should be too difficult to PUG. by tethering it to guilds, like-minded players will help each other to understand the content and mechanics better. this way, there wont be as much toxicity as we can see today in the LFG tool and PUG dungeon runs, thus you can prevent alot of negativity, unnecessary discussions about the difficulty of the content, players hurting each other and debates about how people should play.

- dont make it so guilds need to grind influence or guild merits to unlock raids. it should be unlocked from the start.

there are a few more things i would like to mention because i feel they are very important.

there is a chat command in wildstar for example:
/eval Apollo.SetConsoleVariable(“spell.visualSuppression”, 1.0)
this chat command will suppress projectile effects and other “unnecessary” visual stuff. that helps to have a clear vision and improves performance greatly.
if something like this exists in gw2, PLEASE give us access to it.
the LOD-effect option is simply not enough.

make boss encounters HUGE. if you design bosses, please keep in mind that human sized bosses like in caudecus manor for example, are simply too small to see exactly whats going on. boss size should be similar to lupicus.

instead of boss encounters in the form of a boss creature, you can design entire rooms that are bosses, without any creatures. like giant puzzles with jump and run elements. this would be really cool and lead to variety.

and now the most important thing.
i really would like you arenanet, despite your “we dont talk about anything” policy, to take this to your heart.
the best PvE content testers are your best PvE guilds and players. ive said it before and i will say it again.
ask your top PvE community to test stuff before you release it.
it doesnt matter how well your Q&A guys test things.
it doesnt matter if the sound effects, visual effects and animations are done for your alpha version of a boss encounter.
ask your top PvE players to test it. give them NDA access, port them from boss to boss with your gm/spectator account, let them fight early versions of encounters for a few minutes. ask them for feedback, ask them to fill out questionnaires.
this is the only way to make sure your content is as polished and as good as possible when you add it to your live servers.

thank you for this CDI.

NoTrigger.8396:

Bhima.9518:

If you make it too hard and too time consuming, your raiding end game could fall into the Wildstar trap of being way too frustrating for all but the elite raiding masochists. We all know how Wildstar is doing in terms of retention regardless of how many of the hardcore raiders in this thread want to move GW2 towards.

it would be nice if people like you would get their facts straight.
the people who left wildstar didnt leave because “the raid content is too frustrating”. they left because of bad design decisions outside of raids.
you probably havent even touched the game and yet you are trying to judge, thats not ok.

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.
GW2 could make it even better. but not if people are constantly crying because they want to faceroll through the content and get loot handed out for free.

this guy speaks the truth:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/29173s/getting_epics_is_too_hard/cignw1g

Bhima.9518:

If only a small percentage of the GW2 playerbase will actually enjoy that type of encounter, then the larger majority will ask: where’s MY content? The vast majority of GW2 players are casual gamers/hardcore-turned-casual-gamer

people who dont want to faceroll through content are asking “where is my content” for 2 years now. but that doesnt count right?
and who tells you that casual gamers cannot enjoy raid content?

hardcore players arent hardcore because they spend 8 hours a day to play dress up wars 2. they are hardcore because they spend it in combat.

the hardcore content vs casual content discussion is a complete waste of time.

I know enough about Wildstar as my friend was one of the server’s first to level cap. He and his guild got pretty far before people just started bailing out, with the typical guild drama that happens in a game that had a pretty brutal attunement process, loooong raiding sessions to beat your face against a boss for hours at a time hoping to at least get the boss to less health than the last attempt. I’ve been there before as well. Was in a guild that was the 2nd guild on the server to take down Chromaggus and Nefarion in Blackwing Lair. Casual MMO gamers could not do these things because they didn’t have the time to commit to do them. Its the reason why WoW has the LFR now and flex raiding. MMO gamers have gotten older, we no longer live off of a PELL grant while gaming in our dorm.

Guild Wars is dress-up wars with a few decent challenges in PvE but nothing like what us older MMO vets were used to. This is fine, as this game actually allows the entire community to complete the content while still holding down a full time job while taking care of your wife and kids. I think Wurm is a pretty challenging fight in a casual raid environment and I think that level of difficulty is about right for this game and the majority of the players.

If you want serious challenge in GW2… that takes hours of your day consistently, you should really just PvP or join a Tier 1 WvW server and do GvG in Obsidian Sanctum. Or go play WoD.

Caudecus’s Manor is actually an excellent example of another item to keep in mind when designing a Raid or dungeon instance of any kind. Comfort vs Awkward. Caudecus’s Manor is my all time favorite dungeon in this game(the mansion bit, not the outside bits). The narrow halls and low ceilings make for some very awkward camera angles and it throws off the general feel of the dungeon and the fights.

Not all rooms and halls need a mile of space in every direction. Sometimes weak encounters can be enhanced into fun encounters, without the need to modify mechanics, simply by narrowing or shrinking the space players have to work with. It is a solid option at times. This is all fine and dandy.

It’s an example of what a difference just a few feet added to(or subtracted from) the width and height of halls and rooms can do to improve enjoyment ten-fold.

Bubi.5237:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please list your top three priorities for raiding (Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative, Content)

Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative Content?

1.: PvP-based (not sPvP, PvP )
2.: for 15-20 players vs 15-20 players
3.: and name it “GvG”

That’s the raid I want.

This is actually how you give players the most challenging of encounters. NPC’s will never be as challenging as fighting another team of players that can adapt and change tactics based on the tactics your team is displaying. I think the Raid encounters need to be designed with this in mind to give it as real a challenge as possible.

Scryeless.1924:

Bubi.5237:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please list your top three priorities for raiding (Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative, Content)

Challenging, Instanced, Cooperative Content?

1.: PvP-based (not sPvP, PvP )
2.: for 15-20 players vs 15-20 players
3.: and name it “GvG”

That’s the raid I want.

This is actually how you give players the most challenging of encounters. NPC’s will never be as challenging as fighting another team of players that can adapt and change tactics based on the tactics your team is displaying. I think the Raid encounters need to be designed with this in mind to give it as real a challenge as possible.

Totally agreed, thought i don’t mind about people to get hardcore PVE content and divide “pvp rading/gvg” from pve raids.

1 : Challenge / Skill
2 : Teamplay
3 : Significant good rewards

1) Fight design that uses everything the GW2 combat system has to offer (and not just fragments of it like the actual meta – Conditions, boon stripping, crowd control etc. should have a purpose in PvE)

2) Reward design that is balanced with the existing content (Avoid the Fractal and TA aether abandon by players – give harcore players the tools to differenciate themselves from the common crowd – a mix of RNG and reward track is a good idea)

3) Difficulty scaling system, design the content so that everyone can experience it while few can get the most prestigious rewards (Fractals are excellent because of this : most people can enjoy the first 10 levels while only the very best can rise up to 50)

1) Challenging (meaning it should be difficult content, requiring Knowledge > Skill > Everything)
2) Team play, keeping close to the core mechanics of the game such as dodge, clever use of combos, aegis, blocks, reflects, and not going into the “one to tank them all” thing.
3) Rewarding, with some unique rewards comming as skins or special items, but not providing any stat advantage compared to someone that won’t do raids.

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

CC immunity periods, diminishing returns.

This is something I wish GW2 had.. for monsters and players (as getting CCed to death in pvp has never, ever, been fun.) In Lotro, once you used a stun on a mob or player, after the stun wore off, they got a buff called stun immunity for a certain amount of time (10 seconds for mobs in pve, though bosses in raids weren’t CCable later in the game, in order to make encounters harder, BUT, Lotro is a holy trinity game.) In pvp there were diminishing returns, meaning each CC used on a player would have it’s duration be less and less.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

Raiding is definitely a touchy subject. Past discussions in this forum showed me this. However, this discussion was far more collaborative than I expected.

From day one I believed that this CDI was about more than just raids. I believed that it would be used to determine what endgame content design was acceptable for both casuals and hardcore and what was not acceptable. Of course, some casuals and hardcore tried to pull the blanket towards themselves but there were others who worked hard to find compromises.

As a personal feedback, it has been very difficult to do a summary for this. Splitting up suggestions by categories, while easy to read, is very slow and tends to destroy the coherence of an idea as a whole. Luckily, I think I got all the general concepts (given by DnT and TTS) by simply covering the first 5 pages.

I’ll proceed to translate the summary in French so this community is aware of what has been discussed here. I do not speak german nor spanish. While the two communities had their independant discussion about Raids, I’d like to share with them what has been discussed here. Help would be appreciated.

1: Scaling difficulty in your role where you can progressively take on more advanced/difficult roles as you learn what is happening.

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

2: Use the whole skillbar. I love the new underground mordrem, and how you have to adapt to them instead of just blasting everything you have. Also, you can pick what boss you have the best shot at, if you do conditions, there is a boss for you and so on.

3: Use the terrain. The visual spectacle is so important, and if you have to move, attack, coordinate and do it all in weird and unusual environments that makes things feel more special. This game has some of the coolest landscapes I’ve seen, use them!

Crystal Reid.2481:

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

I know we have moved on to summing up, but this has been a thing that’s been on my mind for a long time (used to play a GW1 mesmer and interrupts were my lifeblood).

Would it be possible to handle stuns/dazes on a party level?

For normal creatures, the skills work as normal.
For Defiant creatures, the skills will work as damage mitigation for your party.

An interrupt might mean that the big attack doesn’t get the knockdown effect for your party. A daze might mean a damage reduction while it lasts and so on. I have no idea about what the specific effects would be, or how this would affect balance, I just like the idea.

Why? Because this would encourage people to group up in parties that might have synergy with each other, and while your cc won’t completely destroy the boss, it will help your party to stay alive.

It would also fit very well into the whole avoiding damage spectrum:

Durability (toughness/vit/armour) – Healing (direct and regen) – Protection (protection/aegis/distortion) – CC (stun/daze) – Dodge

As things are now, these things are fairly balanced when it comes to all content but bosses where the CC is fairly useless unless the boss have adds.

Malin.2490:

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

To me Teq seems now also like easy content. Once people learned the trick the challenge was pretty much gone. There are a few roles (DPS, turret and turret defender) that is good but I would not say Teq was able to keep itself challenging overtime. Not that that is necessarily a problem but I would not use it as an example of being that.

Same for fractals btw. It mainly gets harder because of agony, you then earn better agony resistance and so get put on the same level again and that repeats until you get against the wall of having the max agony resistance you can get. When in the future that gets higher people will also be able to get a higher level. But the difficulty scale does not really change that much. The fact that a new player can not do fractals level 50 is for 75% because he does not have the agony resistance and has not much to do with how good he is. It is in essence a type of tier grind.

If you really want to keep things hard over time you make the fights in fact less about one specific mechanic (just for the record, I do thinks raid dungeons should use many mechanics) you need to learn but give it a better AI that uses a lot of randomizer in it’s code. That way there is no trick you can learn that then trivializes the content.

Devata.6589:

Malin.2490:

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

To me Teq seems now also like easy content. Once people learned the trick the challenge was pretty much gone. There are a few roles (DPS, turret and turret defender) that is good but I would not say Teq was able to keep itself challenging overtime. Not that that is necessarily a problem but I would not use it as an example of being that.

Same for fractals btw. It mainly gets harder because of agony, you then earn better agony resistance and so get put on the same level again and that repeats until you get against the wall of having the max agony resistance you can get. When in the future that gets higher people will also be able to get a higher level. But the difficulty scale does not really change that much. The fact that a new player can not do fractals level 50 is for 75% because he does not have the agony resistance and has not much to do with how good he is. It is in essence a type of tier grind.

If you really want to keep things hard over time you make the fights in fact less about one specific mechanic (just for the record, I do thinks raid dungeons should use many mechanics) you need to learn but give it a better AI that uses a lot of randomizer in it’s code. That way there is no trick you can learn that then trivializes the content.

I guess everything becomes easy once you know it by heart

After this, it’s a matter of forgiving vs unforgiving encounter design. Teq is very forgiving in this regard, while TT isn’t that much.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

This is true.

And another very good point to reading (previewing) your post before you post it, is to check if it’s easy to digest, and if it’s easy to see what you’re trying to say/propose.
In this CDI, I felt it started out pretty well, but already after the first 5 or so pages, people started writing huge essays with no concerns whatsoever as to whether their posts were easy to read.
I personally spent a long time formatting my posts with headers, sections, subsections and bullets etc. to make them as easy as possible to read, and I was sad to see so few do that same, as it made me skip more than half the posts on the past 15 pages or so, simply because I didn’t have the time to read all that text (real life you know).

Just a little point to help the flow in the future

My top 3 priorities:

1. Challenging Content with the “knowledge > skill > setup” philosophy
2. Unique, Exclusive Rewards preferably with a lesser version (as the PvP armor)
3. Accessibility: fixed size, progression limited only by 1. and not by time

My top 3:

Accessibility – I love that Gw2 currently leaves you free to play however you want, what ever you want. Ideally gear shouldnt be a major factor in raids so that we dont end up in a situation that if you wish to partake in the content you have to gear up in the best possible gear for your role.

Sociable – Primary raids should be a drive for team play within a guild and beyond. I’d like them to be more in line with something like silverwastes then a dungeon encounter in that its not just 1 small specific focus task but something of a long term goal for co-operative play.

longevity – One thing that turns me off raids typically is they have no real longevity. They’re generally learn the encounter and once you do it becomes a farm until the next option comes available. They should be difficult and require learning (difficulty would be priority 4 if we had gone that far) but it also should have variety where replaying it wouldnt mean simply doing the same thing again. Prehaps they could involve some emergent game play or some element of randomness i dont know. Just would love to want to go back because of the game play not because it has the best rewards.

Hello. Thanks for taking part in the CDI, Chris and Chris.

As a conclusion to this CDI, here are my top 3, all of which are intertwined:
- Challenging, for every players, i.e. two difficulty levels, one for hardcore raiders and one for casual raiders. Requiring from each attendant to develop skills and knowledge of game mechanics, class mechanics and encounter mechanics, to become proficient in each and everything that their class has to offer, not just DPS (at their own pace thanks to difficulty level)
- Accessible, to every player, whether they are part of a guild or not, whether they have class X or not (i.e. mechanics that allow for every class to fullfill all roles, such as my bundle suggestion), whether they are few or many (with a limit on both ends)
- Diversified, 1/ so as to require players to become excellent at playing their class in all possible ways, not only stacking DPS and 2/ enjoy a variety as large as possible of encounters that reuse as well as go astray from the canons.

My top 3

Challenge I would like a raid that takes people a reasonable amount of time before world first is accomplished. I feel like if it is beaten day one of release it would a missed opportunity for the community to coalesce around a challenge and sense of competition.

Progression I would like a raid that fostered a sense of progression. this is somewhat tied to the above point about challenge, but the sense of accomplishment when a boss or leg of the raid you had never passed is achieved is a wonderful feeling. It is an important factor separating dungeons from raids, a raid with no boss progression is basically a long, large scale dungeon. A long, large scale dungeon with good rewards wouldn’t be the worst thing ever, but it would be a missed opportunity for something special. While it’s painful, wiping on a boss at 1% when you’ve spent hours working on it is even a great feeling. Because it makes the eventual kill so much sweet. Old school progression tears would be a wonderful things.

No dead weight tuning the raids will be a big development challenge. Ideally, for me, raids would be tuned so that all players in the raid have to be playing reasonably well (and geared/traited reasonably well) to succeed. Having then undertuned to the point where people can be carried should be, at least initially until good strats/guides are known. It is inevitable that eventually the raid will become “pug friendly” as the encounters are learned, the same way Arah has become relatively pug friendly or fotm 50. Since it is inevitable that pugs will be able to complete the content eventually it would be pleasing if it was tuned that that a pug wouldn’t be able to do it immediately unless they were stone cold masters. A lot of raiding is when doing it after it comes out is simply learning the mechanics and the tells, and wiping to the things you don’t understand. It should indeed take some time before the average joe on the LFG is comfortable with the encounters. in a related desire there should be tangible and good rewards for a partial raid clear. So pugs might still find a benefit in being able to learn the first boss without being able to pug a full clear.

-Nike [DnT]

Top 3 priorities:

Easy to learn, difficult to master: it should be doable by a lot of players and it should be a challenge to the best, so make different tiers of difficulty

Absolutely no vertical progression: I think it is obvious what I mean by this

Variety: I somehow do not want a small number of different raids added that from then on always feel the same; can we have something more dynamic, that at the same time is not PvP?

1. Challenge and fun (read: not annoying, gimmicky, punishing, etc.)
2. Variety (both mechanicaly and aesthetic wise)
3. Replayability (including rewards, achievements and the things above)

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

A thought that might streamline the conversation -

Would it be technically possible/realistic to limit the number and size of posts during the first 48 hours of a CDI. So, for example, each player would be allowed one post of no more than 300 words in the first two days of the thread.

After 2 days, the thread could open up to longer posts and back and forth discussions – after everyone has had the chance to get their initial thoughts out – and limit alot of the knee jerk reactions and conversations heading off on tangents.

Just a thought. Dont want to derail the “3 ideas” discussion. If this post impedes that or you feel is in the wrong place or innappropriate, feel free to delete.

VodCom.6924:

Devata.6589:

Malin.2490:

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

To me Teq seems now also like easy content. Once people learned the trick the challenge was pretty much gone. There are a few roles (DPS, turret and turret defender) that is good but I would not say Teq was able to keep itself challenging overtime. Not that that is necessarily a problem but I would not use it as an example of being that.

Same for fractals btw. It mainly gets harder because of agony, you then earn better agony resistance and so get put on the same level again and that repeats until you get against the wall of having the max agony resistance you can get. When in the future that gets higher people will also be able to get a higher level. But the difficulty scale does not really change that much. The fact that a new player can not do fractals level 50 is for 75% because he does not have the agony resistance and has not much to do with how good he is. It is in essence a type of tier grind.

If you really want to keep things hard over time you make the fights in fact less about one specific mechanic (just for the record, I do thinks raid dungeons should use many mechanics) you need to learn but give it a better AI that uses a lot of randomizer in it’s code. That way there is no trick you can learn that then trivializes the content.

I guess everything becomes easy once you know it by heart

After this, it’s a matter of forgiving vs unforgiving encounter design. Teq is very forgiving in this regard, while TT isn’t that much.

This is exactly why I brought up Teq. At the time I was very hesitant about large group content and had no interest in it, but thanks to the fact that it was accessible even to people unused to it (as long as there were people giving orders and knowing what to do) made me preserver, and now I love it. Had TT been the first thing I tried, I doubt I would have stuck with it…

I think what I mean is that we need both simpler raids and more challenging ones, otherwise it’s gonna split people into those who loves raiding and those who never dares to try.

Malin.2490:

VodCom.6924:

Devata.6589:

Malin.2490:

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

To me Teq seems now also like easy content. Once people learned the trick the challenge was pretty much gone. There are a few roles (DPS, turret and turret defender) that is good but I would not say Teq was able to keep itself challenging overtime. Not that that is necessarily a problem but I would not use it as an example of being that.

Same for fractals btw. It mainly gets harder because of agony, you then earn better agony resistance and so get put on the same level again and that repeats until you get against the wall of having the max agony resistance you can get. When in the future that gets higher people will also be able to get a higher level. But the difficulty scale does not really change that much. The fact that a new player can not do fractals level 50 is for 75% because he does not have the agony resistance and has not much to do with how good he is. It is in essence a type of tier grind.

If you really want to keep things hard over time you make the fights in fact less about one specific mechanic (just for the record, I do thinks raid dungeons should use many mechanics) you need to learn but give it a better AI that uses a lot of randomizer in it’s code. That way there is no trick you can learn that then trivializes the content.

I guess everything becomes easy once you know it by heart

After this, it’s a matter of forgiving vs unforgiving encounter design. Teq is very forgiving in this regard, while TT isn’t that much.

This is exactly why I brought up Teq. At the time I was very hesitant about large group content and had no interest in it, but thanks to the fact that it was accessible even to people unused to it (as long as there were people giving orders and knowing what to do) made me preserver, and now I love it. Had TT been the first thing I tried, I doubt I would have stuck with it…

I think what I mean is that we need both simpler raids and more challenging ones, otherwise it’s gonna split people into those who loves raiding and those who never dares to try.

I agree with that, but that means having multiple content, not one thing that you can scale or base around one mechanic that people will learn, making that content trivial.

Top 3:

1: Raid tools: raid will be nothing if the base tools for raid/group management aren’t in place and are frustrating to work with

2: Skill/Challenge: Would like to see some very challenging content that can’t be simple powered through by a dps check. Challenge the player base with unique encounters, puzzles, divide and conquer strats, rolls for each class. Make us think and work for it!

3. No Vertical Progression: Raids should be available to anyone who would like to give it a shot without having to work about a gear treadmill or being shoehorned into a specific class. Make sure all classes are viable in some way.

Tuomir.1830:

1. Cooperation
2. Coordination
3. Challenge

Yes, alliterative appeal is nice.

This would be my list, along with:
Interesting mechanics (I think that can be a subset or clarification of “Challenge.”)

My personal Top 3:

1) Raid Types
Please just don’t focus only on “one single” thing of a Raid System.
Bear in mind, that everyone has a different taste and different “raid preferences”, when it comes down to playtime, difficulty, and game performance, what is also something that gets influenced by the amount of players involved in Raids, Screen Clutter and so on. Thats why I focused my proposal on coming up with 5 unique different Raid Types, so that there is just somethign for basically mostly everyone, each Raid Type being different and allowing for coming up with lots of unique ways to improve the whole game in many various ways and not just only in one single way.
improving GW2 with Raid Systems of various different types would and should make the best usage of the potential that lies in Raid Content and it offers also somethign to improve the game on a long term basis, if adding directly 5 different Raid Types would be too much effort, then you can stretch this out on a longer timeline and add step by step more different Raid Types.
I think the best Type with that ANet should begin with is with something like my proposed Heroic Fractals to improve also with Raids the Lore Side of the Game, as this type gives Anet the most creative freedom to come up with Raid Content from all my proposed Raid Types.

2) Character Progression
Whatever you implement, please use this Content also to finally do alot more for Character Progression in a ratio like 80% Horizontal, 20% Vertical (with the 20% Vertical being linked to stuff like more Trait Points to increase Build Variety (for begin +5 more would be absolutely enough), new Weapon Skills (Combat Stances to change Weapon Skill Sets), new Utility Skills, new Traits, new unlockable Weapon Types becoming usable for the Class, Ascended Runes/Sigils (get in finally Jeweler/Chef 500 also too, Jeweler 500 would be so predestined for makign the special Craftiting Job for all Ascended Runes/Sigils), Legendary Accessoires/Back Item Upgrades/ Armor, Exotic/Ascended/Legendary Aqua Breathers, Masterwork/Rare/Exotic/Ascended Infusions – there need to be more uses for Infusions and rarer more valuable ones should also reduce the insane AR Grind > nearly 33000 Infusions just for a maxed Infusion is insane. Not to forget the nearly 500 gold it takes just to make 1 from all the reagents
Character Progression is 100% stagnant since 2 years now… what has become out of the Character Progression CDI? Can we see in the near future some fruits coming out of it please? Reminder @ Chris Whiteside > Don’t forget my Sub Class CDI :P ^^ – You proposed to do one So why not hit 2-3 birds here with 1 stone???

3) Reward Structures
Must simply feel also rewarding. If Raids don’t feel rewarding, nobody will do the content anymore after some time, after the hype waves are over of the initial new content. Rewards do feel then rewarding, when the thigns that you receive are actually really useful, when they can reduce the grind for something for you or quicken somehow for you the progress for something, when they are unique towards those Raid Systems and so interesting and desireful, that you always want to return to the Raids to get more of it because of beign able to turn the rewards in for something even more useful like Black Lion Ticket Scraps/Tickets, Black Lion Keys, Permanent Service Contracts, unlocking Ascended Runes/Sigils (if you don’t want to craft them).

Rewards are the Alpha et Omega, if you fail already here, then the whole concept of Raids will fail as just nobody will do the content, if the rewards are bad and not worth the efforts you put into the game content.

1 Randomization of the environment
2 Variation of goals
3 Coordination, Puzzle solving with random solutions, Jumping puzzles and traps

And of course the mob fights

I just wanted to pontificate on an idea that I might have subliminally read on the forums:

Just add a “raiding” option to the LFG tool. Let the “host” (whoever initiates the search) limit his/her group size from 5-24. Like I said before, consider balancing the risk/reward. The more people you go into an area with, the easier it will be and the more greenies and blue drops you come across. The less people you have, the sweeter the treasure that’s dropped.

Keep the good ideas rolling!

1. Large, coherent content such as story driven campaigns split into individual operations/missions.
I think 2-3h+ is an unhealthy raid duration and could be circumvented with saved progress like in the living world journal.
Still 5h but instead of having to sit through the whole thing you could do 5×1h every day or 2×2h +1h
You could also save the most juicy parts for the weekend and difficulty doesn’t have to be created by exhausting players.

2. different roles people can switch in an out, similar to the fragile state, which is kind of “most zerker”.
give some players “runner” roles and help speeding up courier jobs by adding the aspect crystals for faster movement.

I think “great at jumping” could be valued the same as “having the best build & equipment”. and providing players with jobs that might require slightly more defensive armor can improve the zerker meta issue.
More complex movement such as using the dash, jump and leap in combination could provide a different and skill based challenge.

and on to the more crazy, more specific ideas, mostly underwater related:

3. magic carpet combat
over a sea of quick sand

or

4. climbing onto or chasing down a boss with the help of aspects could be fun.
first one/two/three in the group to catch up/meet requirement-x will stop the boss for everybody to pound on.

Naval and air(ship) combat would be interesting as both offer large enough platforms for large groups to have specific tasks.

I think that the underwater areas are some of the most beautiful in gw2 and should be used more often. Without underwater combat perhaps, have us talk to npcs underwater instead or create “bubbles of air” on the floor to have ground combat.

Doesn’t have to be on the ground either, those air pockets could ascend/descend, think of it as negative floating rocks underwater providing free fall instead of something to stand on.
Or “follow the bubbles” to descend more rapidly, falling most of the time without having falling damage
(ascend maybe as well?)

or maybe you could improve underwater combat in general by using currents to channel players and enemies into a smaller space, restricting/forcing vertical or lateral movement.

Just don’t abandon it, maybe use it for traveling if the ground ever gets too dangerous to walk on.

Oh, and submarine-tanks

My top 3:

3. Transparency

as long as you can find a way to let the players know what they did wrong, even
wiping several 100 times at a boss will be fun.

While there might be satisfaction of finally understanding a not so obvious mechanic, it unnecessarily changes the balance from depth to complexity as there is no depth if you don’t know what’s going on. An example would be the room in cm where you at first might think that your randomly die while in reality you just take damage as you move.

2. Accessibility
I agree with NoTrigger, that this is best to be achieved by implementing simpler raids to ease players into the experience. I consider it psychologically important that these are not stigmatised as something inferior. They are just like your “proper” raids – only easier.
The thought process is analogous to that of the new player experience in the last feature patch: it is important to lay a foundation for the years to come, and if raids are gonna be a thing eventually, it will trade-off if 3 out of 15 raids served the whole purpose of bringing in a healthy audience. It would also help accessibility if raids were not to exceed 2 hours.

1. Replayability
The item I consider utmost important: lay the foundation for raids to be replayable.
Provide rewards that let you show off how often you beat that specific raid via cosmetics. IMO this can be done with the least dev-time via a dungeon specific armour/weapon whose shiny effect scale with the number of completed raid runs. Be it automatically, via “style infusions” or a reward track but make it scale really high. There might be people that will have beaten the raid 137 times – let them show it.
But people only do something so often if they have fun doing it. One requirement for this is having a decent skill-challenge ratio (cf. attachment). As it is unlikely that the skill level stays the same over the course of 137 runs there needs to be a way of scaling the difficulity individually and the best way to achieve this is per increasing the reward as the raidgroup consists of less people. I say it is the best way because it requires no dev time while providing very small steps of possible scaling. To me better loot means increased progress to the next level of shiny that your armour can have. If we use the reward track as an example this would mean 105% progress if 14/15 raiders, 110% if 13/15, etc.
Legitamize playing the same content with a handicap further through the means of achievements.