Did GW2 lose its identity?
It’s funny how everyone says that a very small percentage of the playerbase raids. Just one look at the lfg and you will find that raids are the most popular thing after fractals and i’m not even talking about weekends. Rest is usually map metas, hot/sw/dt etc.
Not to mention the guild runs that dont appear on lfg….
The people you see listed in LFG are by no means a majority of the players. The majority are still stuck not doing even dungeons because there is still no matchmaking. GW2 needs automated group formation for instanced content, period.
The issue is the lack of “raid difficulty” solo content. I can’t even practice, without needing 9 other people. The content is either easy, like open world. Where at most, enemy AI have some kind of gimmicky trick (like the snipers or pocket raptors), once you understand the gimmick then the content is easy. Essentially, enemies in open world are one-trick ponies, figure out the trick and you win. Or its more challenging content, which without exception are all designed for a group (Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids). With HOT specs, you can kill bosses in decent time solo in Dungeons. In Fractals, its a pain to solo as T4 bosses are massive damage sponges. And raids, its just ridiculous.
I don’t mind challenge content purely for the challenge. For example, in Fallout 4 Survival I would try to beat the game, fists only, no armor, rush the Nuka DLC at lvl 3. Sometimes I would make mistakes that would cause me to lose up 3 hrs of progress, I would learn from it and get better. I can’t even start the learning progress for raids, because I need other people to even start learning. I am mentioning this, as a common excuse from raiders is that most people “do not want to put in the time” or “gear properly”. The biggest issue, at least for me is accessibility. I want content that relies only my abilities and dedication. With that kind of content, there is no toxicity as there is no one to scapegoat or blame (only yourself). No chance of getting carried either. Its like a academic test, you know your stuff or you don’t. If you don’t pass, come back again.
Completing something with minimal effort?
I get that people want to be rewarded but kitten . Is that really what the gaming industry has come to?
Then do them in challenge mode and leave the rest to ragtag groups.
Don’t know what you are talking about.
Been playing since launch and most of the stuff is still the same.
Raids are less toxic then dungeons where back in the days. The raid community also
has improved a lot over the last year. Its much more open and friendly then many of these post will have you believe.
PvP is as toxic as ever.
WvW is as neglected as ever (even though it got worse over the years)
The issue is the lack of “raid difficulty” solo content. I can’t even practice, without needing 9 other people. The content is either easy, like open world. Where at most, enemy AI have some kind of gimmicky trick (like the snipers or pocket raptors), once you understand the gimmick then the content is easy. Essentially, enemies in open world are one-trick ponies, figure out the trick and you win. Or its more challenging content, which without exception are all designed for a group (Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids). With HOT specs, you can kill bosses in decent time solo in Dungeons. In Fractals, its a pain to solo as T4 bosses are massive damage sponges. And raids, its just ridiculous.
I don’t mind challenge content purely for the challenge. For example, in Fallout 4 Survival I would try to beat the game, fists only, no armor, rush the Nuka DLC at lvl 3. Sometimes I would make mistakes that would cause me to lose up 3 hrs of progress, I would learn from it and get better. I can’t even start the learning progress for raids, because I need other people to even start learning. I am mentioning this, as a common excuse from raiders is that most people “do not want to put in the time” or “gear properly”. The biggest issue, at least for me is accessibility. I want content that relies only my abilities and dedication. With that kind of content, there is no toxicity as there is no one to scapegoat or blame (only yourself). No chance of getting carried either. Its like a academic test, you know your stuff or you don’t. If you don’t pass, come back again.
Sounds to me that you are looking for a single player game
Man there was a game that came out with multiple difficulty in raids, even a lower difficulty so that casuals could run it and get to see and experience all the end game raids, even the lfg for it was easy. Man, what game was that again, I can’t quite remember. Was about seven years ago they did it, even before gw2 came out. /snaps fingers, man what game was it, it’s at the tip of my tongue.
Another derailing post. ^^
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
A story mode (easy mode) was not intended for raids. This is explained in the dev post.
There’s a ton of things in the game that weren’t originally intended. Raids themselves are a good example. So, “not originally intended” is a weak argument nowadays.
This attitude of it’s not hard for me so it’s not hard is one of the things that make people resent raiding so much.
This.
But making an easy mode is the worst possible way to make the game mode more accessible.
Why? Because you think so?
The sense of love and enjoyment and feeling of success that comes from overcoming raids at their current level of difficulty is so satisfying.
For those that are overcoming them at the current difficulty, perhaps. For the first few times, anyway (later on it’s just “the same as usual”). You forget however, that the difficulty is not an universal factor. Things difficult for one, are easy for another and impossible for some.
Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
For me GW2 have recovered GW identity not lost.
At the launch of the game i was reall disapointed with it, its was way too easy, changing your build didnt feel that matter, because any build could clear everything in the game really easy. This is why me and many friends quitted not much time after the launch and only came back when HoT was announced
In guild wars 1 you couldnt, you needed to change your build to be able to survive. For example if you had a heavy enchantment build you wouldnt make in a place with many mobs with enchantment hate.
With raids and T4 we finally feel that changing builds is necessary and have an impact on the encounter, so now Guild Wars 2 finally have the Guild Wars 1 identity back where every class has more than 1 build and you need to change it based on the encounter, and it feel really impactfull.
Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.
Same goes for every other game mode.
If you cant win a single pvp game because YOU are not good enough – do expect the game mode to change? I, personally hate competetive play, thats why i avoide pvp. So if i don’t like the essence of something – why do it?
I understand the cry for a “story mode”. But raids were meant to be “challanging group content”. If you add a soloable easy mode you remove the “challanging” and the “group” out of its purpose.
Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.
Same goes for every other game mode.
If you cant win a single pvp game because YOU are not good enough – do expect the game mode to change? I, personally hate competetive play, thats why i avoide pvp. So if i don’t like the essence of something – why do it?I understand the cry for a “story mode”. But raids were meant to be “challanging group content”. If you add a soloable easy mode you remove the “challanging” and the “group” out of its purpose.
And yet in Guild Wars 1 they had normal mode and hard mode for every dungeon. They had a story mode, normal mode and hard mode for some of them.
You don’t have to offer the same rewards. No one went through the story of Oola’s Lab and get the Hard Mode rewards for it. Saying it’s not possible, only fuels non-raiders dislike of raiding and what it does to a game.
This is hard content. It’s meant to exclude some people. It’s meant to exclude you. If you can’t do it, you don’t deserve the reward. You don’t see how this sounds to people who bought a game without raids, and never had to deal with that in PvE to get pretty much any reward they want? And it’s not just about reward.
They changed the personal story so you don’t have to group with someone to beat it. Then they add story to raid, which goes between the stories we play and the stories we play after. How anyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
The basic story should be easy enough for most people to get through on their own and they’re making story transitions and putting them into raids.
I get that you want challenging content. I’m not sure how putting in a story mode would affect that, since obviously it won’t make the raid less challenging.
But it would allow people who aren’t as good, or aren’t on good computers, or who aren’t in places where the net is good, to experience the story.
Face it, a lot of casuals play games predominantly for the story. You take away parts of them from them and they will express their displeasure. Anet made the decision to include story transitions in raids.. I believe it was a bad decision.
Now, I don’t know anymore, it just feels like all those things are just there in the background, with GW2 now focusing on raids, and the community shifted massively with this change. That old content is still there ofc, but it’s just that, old content, that…it’s there.
Where is this focus on Raids?
They released more Fractals since LS3 started than during any other time in the history of the game (aside from their release), they also heavily tweaked one fractal so it doesn’t even play like the old one, and tweaked other fractals to make them more fun and engaging.
They introduced more maps with LS3 than at any other point in the game’s history.
They released 2 pvp maps and changed another one, we’ve had 2 pvp seasons (one is underway).
They released multiple new legendary weapons, way more than the zero amount of legendary weapons we got between release and heart of thorns.
Overall in the time frame of LS3 they released more permanent content in the game than at any other point in its history, on nearly all game modes (WvW got a redesign of the Desert Borderlands and that’s it)
So I ask again, where is this “focus on Raids”?
I’m not sure how putting in a story mode would affect that, since obviously it won’t make the raid less challenging.
It diverts resources. A good part of the value of Raids as a game mode is that it doesn’t take a lot of developers, in part because it’s a one-size-fits-all model, appealing to a smaller fraction of the community.
If ANet can spare a few people for story mode for raids, I’d rather those few people work on anything else other than raids. I’d be happier with another current event story in the open world.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.
Same goes for every other game mode.
If you cant win a single pvp game because YOU are not good enough – do expect the game mode to change? I, personally hate competetive play, thats why i avoide pvp. So if i don’t like the essence of something – why do it?I understand the cry for a “story mode”. But raids were meant to be “challanging group content”. If you add a soloable easy mode you remove the “challanging” and the “group” out of its purpose.
And yet in Guild Wars 1 they had normal mode and hard mode for every dungeon. They had a story mode, normal mode and hard mode for some of them.
You don’t have to offer the same rewards. No one went through the story of Oola’s Lab and get the Hard Mode rewards for it. Saying it’s not possible, only fuels non-raiders dislike of raiding and what it does to a game.
This is hard content. It’s meant to exclude some people. It’s meant to exclude you. If you can’t do it, you don’t deserve the reward. You don’t see how this sounds to people who bought a game without raids, and never had to deal with that in PvE to get pretty much any reward they want? And it’s not just about reward.
They changed the personal story so you don’t have to group with someone to beat it. Then they add story to raid, which goes between the stories we play and the stories we play after. How anyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
The basic story should be easy enough for most people to get through on their own and they’re making story transitions and putting them into raids.
I get that you want challenging content. I’m not sure how putting in a story mode would affect that, since obviously it won’t make the raid less challenging.
But it would allow people who aren’t as good, or aren’t on good computers, or who aren’t in places where the net is good, to experience the story.
Face it, a lot of casuals play games predominantly for the story. You take away parts of them from them and they will express their displeasure. Anet made the decision to include story transitions in raids.. I believe it was a bad decision.
Yes they bought Guild Wars 2 knowing it had no raids. They bought the expansion knowing raids are a big part of that expansion. Raids didn’t change any of the other game modes.
I understand you feel like you are missing out on story – but everything that is story related in the raids can be experienced by entering a cleared instance. The only thing you miss is the fight and during that fight there is nothing story relevant happening (i guess with the newest raid thats not totally true anymore). You could really remove everthing story wise in raids and it wouldn’t loose much.
A story mode (easy mode) was not intended for raids. This is explained in the dev post.
There’s a ton of things in the game that weren’t originally intended. Raids themselves are a good example. So, “not originally intended” is a weak argument nowadays.
A ton of things such as? i’ll give you raids even though I don’t remember them commenting about it in the past.
So “not originally intended” is a weak argument. So that means, by your reasoning, we can now have mounts, new races, race change, heroes, soloable dungeons/raids/fractals, cheap legendaries, and so much more. After all, even if Anet never intended any of this, it could potentially change in the future. Sorry but no. Just because something has the potential, however small, to change doesn’t mean that it will happen. Unless you can provide evidence that something is likely to change in the near future, the “not originally intended” argument still stands.
Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.
Same goes for every other game mode.
If you cant win a single pvp game because YOU are not good enough – do expect the game mode to change? I, personally hate competetive play, thats why i avoide pvp. So if i don’t like the essence of something – why do it?I understand the cry for a “story mode”. But raids were meant to be “challanging group content”. If you add a soloable easy mode you remove the “challanging” and the “group” out of its purpose.
And yet in Guild Wars 1 they had normal mode and hard mode for every dungeon. They had a story mode, normal mode and hard mode for some of them.
You don’t have to offer the same rewards. No one went through the story of Oola’s Lab and get the Hard Mode rewards for it. Saying it’s not possible, only fuels non-raiders dislike of raiding and what it does to a game.
This is hard content. It’s meant to exclude some people. It’s meant to exclude you. If you can’t do it, you don’t deserve the reward. You don’t see how this sounds to people who bought a game without raids, and never had to deal with that in PvE to get pretty much any reward they want? And it’s not just about reward.
They changed the personal story so you don’t have to group with someone to beat it. Then they add story to raid, which goes between the stories we play and the stories we play after. How anyone thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
The basic story should be easy enough for most people to get through on their own and they’re making story transitions and putting them into raids.
I get that you want challenging content. I’m not sure how putting in a story mode would affect that, since obviously it won’t make the raid less challenging.
But it would allow people who aren’t as good, or aren’t on good computers, or who aren’t in places where the net is good, to experience the story.
Face it, a lot of casuals play games predominantly for the story. You take away parts of them from them and they will express their displeasure. Anet made the decision to include story transitions in raids.. I believe it was a bad decision.
Yes they bought Guild Wars 2 knowing it had no raids. They bought the expansion knowing raids are a big part of that expansion. Raids didn’t change any of the other game modes.
I understand you feel like you are missing out on story – but everything that is story related in the raids can be experienced by entering a cleared instance. The only thing you miss is the fight and during that fight there is nothing story relevant happening (i guess with the newest raid thats not totally true anymore). You could really remove everthing story wise in raids and it wouldn’t loose much.
Okay wait a second. So I buy a game. I play a game for 3.5 years. I invest time and money into that game, and energy. I play the game because I like the game and want to continue to play it. I didn’t invest time and money and energy to stop playing when the first expansion came out.
The options were don’t buy the expansion, or buy the expansion. Obviously if you want to continue playing EVERYTHING is in the expansion. Want to glide. That’s in the expansion. Want to use new weapons. That’s in the expansion. Want to continue the story, that’s in the expansion. Basically buy the expansion or stop playing the game. Do you think that’s better somehow for raiders? Cause I don’t.
Just because I bought the expansion doesn’t mean I have to like everything about the expansion, nor does it mean I have to support everything, or remain silent about the things I don’t like. Yes, I bought the expansion because it was my only option to keep playing a game I genuinely like.
Honestly if there were another MMO that checked as many boxes as this one, I’d consider moving to it. There’s not…yet. By the same token revenue is down since the expansion and it’s raids. Clearly someone didn’t buy or, or clearly some people are no longer spending money in the cash shop.
If I’m less happy with the game (and I am) then I will spend less money in the cash shop. I’m not miserable about the game. I don’t hate the game. But I’m not as enthused as I used to be.
Raiding hasn’t been good for my guild. It hasn’t been good for the community as far as I can tell, and I don’t think they belonged in the game.
…
I never said that mesmer is the best damage dealer overall but at this specific boss that counters your argument that mesmer deal no damage at all.
Ranger and Revenants have also only one damage build and Revenant has only one competetive build at all.
…
Even Blizzard said that the conversion rate from LFR to normal is bad. Stop making things up. LFR didn’t to wonders and it is needed as WoW has mostly raid patches, nothing else. Unlike here where most patches are actually Living World.
Why so hostile? I was speaking to what I saw as a player. And in my experience and others I played with, LFR opened up raids to a large group of people that had never done them before. I was someone that raided before and after LFR was introduced, it was a pretty eye opening change.
This thread is still boiling down to Raid Hate. I will bet you if they did add an “easy mode” to raids but that mode prevents you from working toward legendary armor the argument will no longer be “but I wanted to experience the story” but “but I wanted to get legendary armor”.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Okay wait a second. So I buy a game. I play a game for 3.5 years. I invest time and money into that game, and energy. I play the game because I like the game and want to continue to play it. I didn’t invest time and money and energy to stop playing when the first expansion came out.
The options were don’t buy the expansion, or buy the expansion. Obviously if you want to continue playing EVERYTHING is in the expansion. Want to glide. That’s in the expansion. Want to use new weapons. That’s in the expansion. Want to continue the story, that’s in the expansion. Basically buy the expansion or stop playing the game. Do you think that’s better somehow for raiders? Cause I don’t.
Just because I bought the expansion doesn’t mean I have to like everything about the expansion, nor does it mean I have to support everything, or remain silent about the things I don’t like. Yes, I bought the expansion because it was my only option to keep playing a game I genuinely like.
Honestly if there were another MMO that checked as many boxes as this one, I’d consider moving to it. There’s not…yet. By the same token revenue is down since the expansion and it’s raids. Clearly someone didn’t buy or, or clearly some people are no longer spending money in the cash shop.
If I’m less happy with the game (and I am) then I will spend less money in the cash shop. I’m not miserable about the game. I don’t hate the game. But I’m not as enthused as I used to be.
Raiding hasn’t been good for my guild. It hasn’t been good for the community as far as I can tell, and I don’t think they belonged in the game.
I disagree whole heartedly here. You are really not in the place to claim what has been good for the community and what not. Revenue drops have many different factors and you cant draw a corrolation between raids and revenue – that is just fictional.
Again. If you want to play everything in the expansion you can do that. There is nothing but yourself stopping you from doing it – just because it doesn’t apply to your selfmade requirements for playing.
I never disagreed that people will like a game mode and not like another. But maybe its time to accept that instead for calling for changing a game mode over and over again.
Id never call for pvp to be less competetive because i don’t like competition in a game.
This thread is still boiling down to Raid Hate. I will bet you if they did add an “easy mode” to raids but that mode prevents you from working toward legendary armor the argument will no longer be “but I wanted to experience the story” but “but I wanted to get legendary armor”.
Thats exactly what will happen
Okay wait a second. So I buy a game. I play a game for 3.5 years. I invest time and money into that game, and energy. I play the game because I like the game and want to continue to play it. I didn’t invest time and money and energy to stop playing when the first expansion came out.
The options were don’t buy the expansion, or buy the expansion. Obviously if you want to continue playing EVERYTHING is in the expansion. Want to glide. That’s in the expansion. Want to use new weapons. That’s in the expansion. Want to continue the story, that’s in the expansion. Basically buy the expansion or stop playing the game. Do you think that’s better somehow for raiders? Cause I don’t.
Just because I bought the expansion doesn’t mean I have to like everything about the expansion, nor does it mean I have to support everything, or remain silent about the things I don’t like. Yes, I bought the expansion because it was my only option to keep playing a game I genuinely like.
Honestly if there were another MMO that checked as many boxes as this one, I’d consider moving to it. There’s not…yet. By the same token revenue is down since the expansion and it’s raids. Clearly someone didn’t buy or, or clearly some people are no longer spending money in the cash shop.
If I’m less happy with the game (and I am) then I will spend less money in the cash shop. I’m not miserable about the game. I don’t hate the game. But I’m not as enthused as I used to be.
Raiding hasn’t been good for my guild. It hasn’t been good for the community as far as I can tell, and I don’t think they belonged in the game.
I disagree whole heartedly here. You are really not in the place to claim what has been good for the community and what not. Revenue drops have many different factors and you cant draw a corrolation between raids and revenue – that is just fictional.
Again. If you want to play everything in the expansion you can do that. There is nothing but yourself stopping you from doing it – just because it doesn’t apply to your selfmade requirements for playing.
I never disagreed that people will like a game mode and not like another. But maybe its time to accept that instead for calling for changing a game mode over and over again.
Id never call for pvp to be less competetive because i don’t like competition in a game.
No, it’s not time to stop and say that you think a feature makes the game less enjoyable for you. There’s never a time for that. I think raids make this game less enjoyable to me.
Since a good portion of all posts on reddit are raid or PvP related, a good portion of those posts don’t concern me directly (even though I’ll read some of them). The game becomes less for me in my mind, and the minds of players are the only thing that matters.
Surely you must have noticed there are a group of people who think even HoT is too difficult. And they complain. Why? Because they don’t like it and they don’t feel it’s for them. They feel disenfranchised. It’s their right to complain, even though I don’t agree with those complaints.
I worked in the publishing industry for quite a few years, and I’m telling you there is little that is more dangerous to a readerbase than changing something suddenly mid-stream. You’ll lose readers that way. The same thing applies to gamers.
Anet created an easy game, with very little hard core or difficult content by percentage. That game attracted a lot of very casual players, who play the game because that’s how they like their games.
Changing that without warning is going to cost the game people, probably a lot of people. If you don’t think raids are a part of that, that’s okay. You’re entitled to that opinion.
But the combination of harder core elements has definitely lost players from this game whether you want to believe it or not. Long before the expansion came out I said this would happen, not necessarily directly because of raids, but because of the perception of casual players who were going to feel disenfrachised. Believe me I’m not happy to see that what I thought was going to happen actually seemed to have happened.
Where is this focus on Raids?
They released more Fractals since LS3 started than during any other time in the history of the game (aside from their release), they also heavily tweaked one fractal so it doesn’t even play like the old one, and tweaked other fractals to make them more fun and engaging.They introduced more maps with LS3 than at any other point in the game’s history.
They released 2 pvp maps and changed another one, we’ve had 2 pvp seasons (one is underway).
They released multiple new legendary weapons, way more than the zero amount of legendary weapons we got between release and heart of thorns.
Overall in the time frame of LS3 they released more permanent content in the game than at any other point in its history, on nearly all game modes (WvW got a redesign of the Desert Borderlands and that’s it)
So I ask again, where is this “focus on Raids”?
4 wings > 2 fractals. Also raids are WAAAAAY more stuffed with rewards than anything anet did before and after.
Kiijna, Xast, Satis Ironwail, Sekhaina, Shira Forgesparkle, Sfeno, Nasibi, Tegeira, Rhonwe…
25 charracters
25 charracters
I disagree whole heartedly here. You are really not in the place to claim what has been good for the community and what not. Revenue drops have many different factors and you cant draw a corrolation between raids and revenue – that is just fictional.
Again. If you want to play everything in the expansion you can do that. There is nothing but yourself stopping you from doing it – just because it doesn’t apply to your selfmade requirements for playing.
I never disagreed that people will like a game mode and not like another. But maybe its time to accept that instead for calling for changing a game mode over and over again.
Id never call for pvp to be less competetive because i don’t like competition in a game.No, it’s not time to stop and say that you think a feature makes the game less enjoyable for you. There’s never a time for that. I think raids make this game less enjoyable to me.
Since a good portion of all posts on reddit are raid or PvP related, a good portion of those posts don’t concern me directly (even though I’ll read some of them). The game becomes less for me in my mind, and the minds of players are the only thing that matters.
Surely you must have noticed there are a group of people who think even HoT is too difficult. And they complain. Why? Because they don’t like it and they don’t feel it’s for them. They feel disenfranchised. It’s their right to complain, even though I don’t agree with those complaints.
I worked in the publishing industry for quite a few years, and I’m telling you there is little that is more dangerous to a readerbase than changing something suddenly mid-stream. You’ll lose readers that way. The same thing applies to gamers.
Anet created an easy game, with very little hard core or difficult content by percentage. That game attracted a lot of very casual players, who play the game because that’s how they like their games.
Changing that without warning is going to cost the game people, probably a lot of people. If you don’t think raids are a part of that, that’s okay. You’re entitled to that opinion.
But the combination of harder core elements has definitely lost players from this game whether you want to believe it or not. Long before the expansion came out I said this would happen, not necessarily directly because of raids, but because of the perception of casual players who were going to feel disenfrachised. Believe me I’m not happy to see that what I thought was going to happen actually seemed to have happened.
Of course you can keep complaining how bad raids are for this game (even though you don’t have any real evidance for that) and eventually stop playing the game. All you do here is hurting yourself for stop playing a game which for 95% you still enjoy. But that 5% (meaning raids) is turning you off so much (even though you could just not play it) that youd rather stop then adapting to it and find a way to still enjoy it.
As far as i am concerned i couldn’t care less about people whining if HoT is too hard for them. I have no sympathy for people who stop doing something because its too hard. This is a mentality that sets you up for losing – in game and in life.
YES the game has changed and its a good thing – nothing stays the same forever
To answer that question, you first have to establish what that identity was and whether the needs of its players have changed.
Identity is something unique and what made GW2 unique among generic koreans – no raids and no trinity, no gear restricions and easly accesable content and anykind of gear for everyone to enjoy.
People doesn’t have easy acces to raid and what it offers, they are restricted to have specific gear and require basically a healer and kiter so yeah, game changed it identity.
Yes they bought Guild Wars 2 knowing it had no raids. They bought the expansion knowing raids are a big part of that expansion.
First off:
Expa… ekhm… payed DLC was forced by moving everything about guilds or rather moving whole guilds – boosters, influence, bank and guild vendors – into it therefore forcing everyone that wanted to use said boosters and stuff to obligatory DLC – PvPers, WvWers and even PvE.
PvP needed to buy because everything that came with DLC was bound to become a meta for competetive play as it was and still is overpowered compared to what base game offered.
WvW needed to buy because of reasons identical to PVP + there were WvW guilds that run only WvW and to stay competeive they needed DLC.
PvE because of AP hunters and to be able to continue guild expanding + those who wanted to contine the story.
People had no choice but to either stop playing or pay FULL-darn-price AGAIN for what base game was offering from the 1st day of it’s launch plus overpowered stuff and that was a scam.
Anyhow, if there would be option to purchase raids as separate DLC and not HoT DLC then AN would not even bother to do it because it would not sell on a large scale, raids were never a selling point – it’s a fatclub content and even AN knows that casual players are fuel for the game and not the fatclub – hell, even promised new legendary weapons had more fans then raids.
Raids aren’t even done in a good manner – they use most BS and outdated things to crank-up the difficulty level. It’s like getting a sheet of paper with “turn me, something awesome on the other side” written on both sides level of entertaiment, but if that is what people want then pack your bags and abandon ship – this game is doomed…
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
There is no loyalty without betrayal. -Ann Smiley
There is no loyalty without betrayal. -Ann Smiley
sorry but no, there are 2 different formats, PvE and PvP, the PvP format is depended on the enemy moving (mobile) a lot of different pvp guilds have made it their job to specialize the current meta, and some1 place it as meta (The same goes with GvG, like I am in one, and build is totally different from pvp and pve and ofc PvE) I have been in the most prestige running PvE guilds that tested your ways to encounter lupi, what kind of food, if you took invigoration precision (think it was called something different back in the day)but that healed part of your outgoing dmg, that was the weak way etc /PvP where we trained 3 times per week, we werent the greatest but mic and fight 1v1 is a must….. and GvG now, which you probably already know what requires.
I will put an example, the format to PvE and PvP is completely different. While as an ele in PvE fire/air is the requirement, either staff with fire/air/staff with fire or dagger/Wh with fire air (depends on how big boss are) then its completely different in PvP and GvG, GvG requires you to take earth/water while PvP requires you to take air/earth…..
In conclusion…….I have learned through personal interaction with some of the best in each of their respected groups(pvp,gvg,pve), that even though they might look at each other, they are each testing out the best ability based on their respected play, or they simply would lose since others are not following the format of PvE when in GvG.
ohh and that the best way to learn “specializations” as they are called now, is to solo bosses in arah…for me at least, it really shows the exact dmg output, life gain etc you get from each of them, its almost like it shapes out each and every aspect of the minor/majors you use, and how far you can get with them (what really works best with each individual boss).
I don’t think you actually understood my post.
Nowhere did I say PvE and PvP have the same meta. There will always be a meta on some level. The question is how strong those optima are relative to their corresponding sub-optima.
Right now, there’s very little room for movement based on the inherent design of the professions.
And the elite specs being poorly-designed has no effect in PvE because monsters aren’t sentient and can’t complain about un-fun mechanics.
Formal Thief Elite Spec proposal:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
To answer that question, you first have to establish what that identity was and whether the needs of its players have changed.
Identity is something unique and what made GW2 unique among generic koreans – no raids and no trinity, no gear restricions and easly accesable content and anykind of gear for everyone to enjoy.
People doesn’t have easy acces to raid and what it offers, they are restricted to have specific gear and require basically a healer and kiter so yeah, game changed it identity.
Raids are a very small part of the game. Offering it to players that want a challenge isn’t suddenly changing its identity. Raids are very accessible if you’re willing to put in the effort. Gear restrictions are player imposed. Healer and kiter are two roles out of 10 slots.
People had no choice but to either stop playing or pay FULL-darn-price AGAIN for what base game was offering from the 1st day of it’s launch plus overpowered stuff and that was a scam.
Anyhow, if there would be option to purchase raids as separate DLC and not HoT DLC then AN would not even bother to do it because it would not sell on a large scale, raids were never a selling point – it’s a fatclub content and even AN knows that casual players are fuel for the game and not the fatclub – hell, even promised new legendary weapons had more fans then raids.
When buying the expansion, you’re only buying the expansion. If you’re applying it to a F2P account then it gets unlocked. Perhaps you should create a F2P account and see for yourself everything that they’re getting for free and what actually is limited to them. Of course if you still find it unfair, you can do the same as them and apply the expansion code to a new or F2P account.
It’s funny though that you first start off by saying that raids changed the identity of the game and now state not many people would purchase it if it were sold separately. How can something that only interests very few players be game identity changing for the rest of the players who do not raid?
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
GW2 wanted to be different, so it’d be more like a vegetarian place offering meat, or a nice clean place adding a smoking section.
In a way, GW2 did lose its identity. GW2 was that MMO a lot of people didn’t know what to do with due to its lack of traditional concepts and having no endgame. Raiding changed that. For those that don’t follow the game, MMOs with raids are generally focused on raiding, so by simply mentioning raids, people will assume the game is a generic raid grinder. From the perspective of a guild from other MMOs however, it’s obvious why raids were added, as the lack of an endgame is why most people quit. When they returned to try HoT however, there was simply no point in raiding without vertical progression. Assuming ArenaNet was trying to target those players, but substituting vertical progression with legendary armor, I wonder if they’ll try again using actual progression.
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
Apparently, the new Peking Duck is only available if you order in advance and serves 10, so it’s impractical for people in a small group. Also, the waiter ‘finishes’ it at your table, the only such dish that gets this special treatment.
(I actually used to frequent a restaurant in which something nearly exactly like that happened. I am not aware that the establishment lost any of its older customers; it did, however, get a lot of newer, hipper customers.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
From the perspective of a guild from other MMOs however, it’s obvious why raids were added, as the lack of an endgame is why most people quit. When they returned to try HoT however, there was simply no point in raiding without vertical progression. Assuming ArenaNet was trying to target those players, but substituting vertical progression with legendary armor, I wonder if they’ll try again using actual progression.
Well I wouldn’t say there was no end game for gw2, there is spvp for arena pvp players, there’s wvw for bigger group open world pvp, there’s dungeons, fractals, world bosses and even living story for pve end game.
Problem was the first couple years anet spent most of their time on living story, revamps, and little else, they abandoned dungeons at release, they pretty much abandoned wvw for long periods of time, they released fractals and update it every once in a while, spvp finally got it’s turn in the sun and has seasons setup now but still isn’t where players want it to be.
They released raids because they wanted to attract those players into the game, it’s the last market they hadn’t tapped into, and at this point anet is known for going after new customers over maintaining their core.
You’re right any raider that came from other games like wow would shake their and wonder what’s the point of raiding if there’s no progression. Just for cosmetic skins? legendary skins which a year and half after expansion release haven’t even made it into the game as yet?
Kinda hard to ask players to keep playing the same ole content for 4 years. I’m sure dungeon and fractal runners would love a few new maps every year, make sure their rewards are updated. Wvw players would like some population fixes and new maps that are more like the two core ones at release, not the gimmick filled pve ones. Spvp would like tournaments, better and more frequent balance. Raids should probably get their legendary armors before this decade is up.
The other top notch mmo’s are releasing 2-3x more content for all parts of their games every 2 years or so. Anet needs to get back to updating the released features for the core game, and stop abandoning content to chase after new shinies.
Another derailing post. ^^
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
North Keep: One of the village residents will now flee if their home is destroyed.
“Game over man, Game Over!” – RIP Bill
(edited by Xenesis.6389)
The game changed in one major way. I used to think the developers cared about WvW years ago. There might even be a few left who do, but either they aren’t given the time to do much with it or the higher ups said let it die. Otherwise, the game has had alterations of how the living story gets released, but it has had the living story releases on a semi regular basis for years. PVP gets some love with tournaments and trinkets. WvW gets the shaft.
That’s true. If ANet cared they would have made at least one new map after launch, put in reward tracks, added a separate section of WvW for overflow players, started balancing for WvW, held polls to ask for WvW players to vote on whether to try new things out and then added the items that were voter approved, and attempted to fix population problems by merging players from low population servers to higher population servers. Since they did none of this we can conclude that ANet is ignoring WvW and letting it die.
I didn’t say they haven’t done anything. You also mention everything they’ve done since launch. Your list is miniscule given the years the game has been out.
So, your white knighting has been noted. To bad the excuses won’t help them actually dedicate time and resources like they have to the PvP, PVE and Raid contents.
SBI
However, I always thought raids were a bad idea. There’s just no way anyone can expect to keep players if you make content for 1% of the playerbase. I’m not against group content, I’m against group content being accessible to the majority.
That’s the thing, raids have two key problems:
- The combat mechanics and design aren’t intended to work for 10 players tight-balanced content.
- GW2, on the PvE-side, is all about a rather casual way of playing a MMO. Not necessarily an easygoing one, but the HoT maps showed amiably well that you don’t need weak enemies to make something friendly to casual play. Raids are totally not the same type of gameplay, and just muddle the strengths of GW2 in this “please like your game”-desperate motion to appeal to everyone.
- Bonus! The combat balance is quite bad in GW2, which is mostly due to the slow speed at which balance updates happen. And when they happen they do very little, moving a few CDs around, merging and effect here or there, never doing any “big” reworks. This makes it very difficult to design tensely balanced content in the first place.
Overall, raids could work.
They just need to be designed for GW2. The ones we got feel more like something taken as directly from other MMOs as possible.
Precisely. Raids cannot function without the trinity. HoT kinda went there, but it’s not enough. At the end of the day, this has been an ongoing problem with gw2. Gw2 still has the ‘soft’ trinity—control, damage, support.
Now, when I say trinity and roles, I know that players will reflexively recoil in disgust. Still, hear me out. The trinity has nothing to do with classes but with combat roles. It’s simply a way of structuring combat. Roles are about tradeoffs and dependency. They add a sense of challenge. However, it’s also important that people should not be limited in their roles by class or profession, only that the roles exist.
At the end of the day, I’m vehemently against raids. Gw2 IS casual; meaning that it’s for the majority and the mainstream. It’s nothing to do with being “easy” or “hard”. However, HoT changed that a bit with the release of raids. Raids are content for a minute minority of players. IMO, they should have never been released.
(edited by JTGuevara.9018)
The game changed in one major way. I used to think the developers cared about WvW years ago. There might even be a few left who do, but either they aren’t given the time to do much with it or the higher ups said let it die. Otherwise, the game has had alterations of how the living story gets released, but it has had the living story releases on a semi regular basis for years. PVP gets some love with tournaments and trinkets. WvW gets the shaft.
That’s true. If ANet cared they would have made at least one new map after launch, put in reward tracks, added a separate section of WvW for overflow players, started balancing for WvW, held polls to ask for WvW players to vote on whether to try new things out and then added the items that were voter approved, and attempted to fix population problems by merging players from low population servers to higher population servers. Since they did none of this we can conclude that ANet is ignoring WvW and letting it die.
I didn’t say they haven’t done anything. You also mention everything they’ve done since launch. Your list is miniscule given the years the game has been out.
So, your white knighting has been noted. To bad the excuses won’t help them actually dedicate time and resources like they have to the PvP, PVE and Raid contents.
Actually, except for the part about the EotM it’s a list of what new things they’ve done in the last 16 months.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
However, I always thought raids were a bad idea. There’s just no way anyone can expect to keep players if you make content for 1% of the playerbase. I’m not against group content, I’m against group content being accessible to the majority.
That’s the thing, raids have two key problems:
- The combat mechanics and design aren’t intended to work for 10 players tight-balanced content.
- GW2, on the PvE-side, is all about a rather casual way of playing a MMO. Not necessarily an easygoing one, but the HoT maps showed amiably well that you don’t need weak enemies to make something friendly to casual play. Raids are totally not the same type of gameplay, and just muddle the strengths of GW2 in this “please like your game”-desperate motion to appeal to everyone.
- Bonus! The combat balance is quite bad in GW2, which is mostly due to the slow speed at which balance updates happen. And when they happen they do very little, moving a few CDs around, merging and effect here or there, never doing any “big” reworks. This makes it very difficult to design tensely balanced content in the first place.
Overall, raids could work.
They just need to be designed for GW2. The ones we got feel more like something taken as directly from other MMOs as possible.
Precisely. Raids cannot function without the trinity. HoT kinda went there, but it’s not enough. There aren’t really any dedicated roles. At the end of the day, this has been an ongoing problem with gw2. Gw2 still has the ‘soft’ trinity—control, damage, support.
Now, when I say trinity and roles, I know that players will reflexively recoil in disgust. Still, hear me out. The trinity has nothing to do with classes but with combat roles. It’s simply a way of structuring combat. Roles are about tradeoffs and dependency. They add a sense of challenge. However, it’s also important that people should not be limited in their roles by class or profession, only that the roles exist.
At the end of the day, I’m vehemently against raids. Gw2 IS casual; meaning that it’s for the majority and the mainstream. It’s nothing to do with being “easy” or “hard”. However, HoT changed that a bit with the release of raids. Raids are content for a minute minority of players. IMO, they should have never been released.
Explain why everything in a game has to be catered to casual players? Is WvW casual? Is PvP casual?
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
Explain why everything in a game has to be catered to casual players? Is WvW casual? Is PvP casual?
The problem with the term casual is that is has multiple meanings, one being limited time, the other being effortless. GW2 was meant to be casual-friendly in the sense that your time wasn’t being wasted. WvW and PvP is casual in the sense that you can simply hop in and play.
Not everything needs to be casual, but the more content that isn’t, the more you’re going to lose. WoW’s solution to raiding was LFR, where you simply queue in and (eventually) win, which allowed raiding to tap into the majority and easily justify further development. GW2 was never intended for the majority however, as the solo difficulty is far above that of other MMOs, yet still more casual as there’s really no punishment for failing.
(edited by Healix.5819)
I disagree whole heartedly here. You are really not in the place to claim what has been good for the community and what not. Revenue drops have many different factors and you cant draw a corrolation between raids and revenue – that is just fictional.
Again. If you want to play everything in the expansion you can do that. There is nothing but yourself stopping you from doing it – just because it doesn’t apply to your selfmade requirements for playing.
I never disagreed that people will like a game mode and not like another. But maybe its time to accept that instead for calling for changing a game mode over and over again.
Id never call for pvp to be less competetive because i don’t like competition in a game.No, it’s not time to stop and say that you think a feature makes the game less enjoyable for you. There’s never a time for that. I think raids make this game less enjoyable to me.
Since a good portion of all posts on reddit are raid or PvP related, a good portion of those posts don’t concern me directly (even though I’ll read some of them). The game becomes less for me in my mind, and the minds of players are the only thing that matters.
Surely you must have noticed there are a group of people who think even HoT is too difficult. And they complain. Why? Because they don’t like it and they don’t feel it’s for them. They feel disenfranchised. It’s their right to complain, even though I don’t agree with those complaints.
I worked in the publishing industry for quite a few years, and I’m telling you there is little that is more dangerous to a readerbase than changing something suddenly mid-stream. You’ll lose readers that way. The same thing applies to gamers.
Anet created an easy game, with very little hard core or difficult content by percentage. That game attracted a lot of very casual players, who play the game because that’s how they like their games.
Changing that without warning is going to cost the game people, probably a lot of people. If you don’t think raids are a part of that, that’s okay. You’re entitled to that opinion.
But the combination of harder core elements has definitely lost players from this game whether you want to believe it or not. Long before the expansion came out I said this would happen, not necessarily directly because of raids, but because of the perception of casual players who were going to feel disenfrachised. Believe me I’m not happy to see that what I thought was going to happen actually seemed to have happened.
Of course you can keep complaining how bad raids are for this game (even though you don’t have any real evidance for that) and eventually stop playing the game. All you do here is hurting yourself for stop playing a game which for 95% you still enjoy. But that 5% (meaning raids) is turning you off so much (even though you could just not play it) that youd rather stop then adapting to it and find a way to still enjoy it.
As far as i am concerned i couldn’t care less about people whining if HoT is too hard for them. I have no sympathy for people who stop doing something because its too hard. This is a mentality that sets you up for losing – in game and in life.
YES the game has changed and its a good thing – nothing stays the same forever
Well that’s the thing. You don’t personally care if people find it hard or people leave the game because of raids, but it affects everyone including raiders if it happens to enough people. I didn’t say I’m leaving the game, but I did say the game feels less like it’s “my” game. That means I’m more likely to leave in the future, because I’m less invested in it. That’s how it happens.
Everyone has different thresholds of whats acceptable. Someone made this thread because they felt, that the game had lost its identity. You dont’ care about it, but I guarantee you Anet does. If enough people feel like this is can tank the game. It’s already had an affect financially.
Whether any individual player cares what other players feel or not matters, it should matter to everyone. Enough people have issues where it’s affected the bottom line. You can bet Anet cares about that.
(edited by Vayne.8563)
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
Apparently, the new Peking Duck is only available if you order in advance and serves 10, so it’s impractical for people in a small group. Also, the waiter ‘finishes’ it at your table, the only such dish that gets this special treatment.
(I actually used to frequent a restaurant in which something nearly exactly like that happened. I am not aware that the establishment lost any of its older customers; it did, however, get a lot of newer, hipper customers.)
Luckily enough I can continue to order and receive the dishes I have liked in the past as well as new dishes of a similar sort without ever having to touch, taste, or experience those that I do not care to experience (never have cared for duck). All the while other people, who might have tired of the same old same old dishes can try something completely different without having to take their business away from my favorite restaurant to do so.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
GW2 wanted to be different, so it’d be more like a vegetarian place offering meat, or a nice clean place adding a smoking section.
In a way, GW2 did lose its identity. GW2 was that MMO a lot of people didn’t know what to do with due to its lack of traditional concepts and having no endgame. Raiding changed that. For those that don’t follow the game, MMOs with raids are generally focused on raiding, so by simply mentioning raids, people will assume the game is a generic raid grinder. From the perspective of a guild from other MMOs however, it’s obvious why raids were added, as the lack of an endgame is why most people quit. When they returned to try HoT however, there was simply no point in raiding without vertical progression. Assuming ArenaNet was trying to target those players, but substituting vertical progression with legendary armor, I wonder if they’ll try again using actual progression.
Some interesting points there. People seeing a reference to raids may very well react, not so much to raids as they actually exist here, but rather to their memories of raids elsewhere.
Keep in mind that, though Anet tend to want to be different, they also said that GW2 was meant for players who love MMOs (while also being meant for players who dont).
This thread is still boiling down to Raid Hate. I will bet you if they did add an “easy mode” to raids but that mode prevents you from working toward legendary armor the argument will no longer be “but I wanted to experience the story” but “but I wanted to get legendary armor”.
What’s wrong with that? Just make the premade one drop more materials. Why does it require watering down the experience? There doesn’t need to be an “easy mode.” They can already design world bosses for random groups, why can’t they apply the same to the raids for a story mode with 10 randomly grouped players?
My problem with raids is exactly what I see in this thread: “I want something that others can be excluded from.”
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.
Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.
Formal Thief Elite Spec proposal:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
Guild Wars 2 has spoiled me on all other games, with its set gear and level cap (And apparently quality tiers as well), always-active world, reasons to return to lesser-used maps, auto-loot, cleaving all the mobs in action combat, and auto-cooperative PvE.
Heart of Thorns was sort of a misstep, but clear what they were going for and a logical progression from the Living Story seasons (The HoT maps have a structure that’s a balance between Silverwaste’s “Play at your pace until big bosses” and Dry Top’s “Work the map on a cycling time limit to reap 1337 rewards!” I think the developers realized they went TOO far on the “Have everyone on a map cooperating to achieve a great goal” angle – which is probably fun the first few times, but gets tedious after a while, and conflicts with playing at our own pace.
Living Story seems to be course-correcting back toward letting people play toward their own goals.
As far as raids go – They’re a small, active team that probably functions so productively because of their tight constraints for scaling (They know what they’re dealing with – 10 people in near-max gear). Unlike other games, though the raids are pretty ‘evergreen’. And, there are only 1.3 raids at the moment – other games have dozens of raids. But, you don’t need to raid at all – it just gives nice skins and a little bit more lore.
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.
Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.
Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.
Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.
Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.
But the raid team only designs raids. General balance and polish pays direct attention to the results of raid viability and often balances professions solely on this basis.
Most of the big changes we’ve seen since HoT have been a direct reaction to raid viability, because most of them would be otherwise unjustified, or should have seen reworks entirely rather than numbers changes.
Even a substantial portion of LS references raid content/raid story.
Formal Thief Elite Spec proposal:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
It’s amazing to me that people still think raids have taken away development resources from the rest of the game.
WvW hasn’t had its update/overhaul because it’s a very complex problem/slew of problems to address.
Fractals are continually being updated and revamped.
Raids are being updated every few months.
LS3 every few months.
Bug fixes and QOL fixes every patch.
Balance somewhat infrequently (only place they could move more quickly in tbh).
Constant work on the next expansion in the background.
EDIT: TOTALLY forgot to add in a new PvP season every several months with lots of changes and re-vamps.
What more do you want that the game doesn’t STILL give you?
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.
Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.
Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.
But the raid team only designs raids. General balance and polish pays direct attention to the results of raid viability and often balances professions solely on this basis.
Most of the big changes we’ve seen since HoT have been a direct reaction to raid viability, because most of them would be otherwise unjustified, or should have seen reworks entirely rather than numbers changes.
Even a substantial portion of LS references raid content/raid story.
You can access that raid story and content in the LS and experience it in a cleared raid wing if you really want to.
Balance ALSO has a lot to do with PvP.
Arguably PvE content (outside raids and fractals) doesn’t need balance as it’s really doable in any gear/build.
This thread is still boiling down to Raid Hate. I will bet you if they did add an “easy mode” to raids but that mode prevents you from working toward legendary armor the argument will no longer be “but I wanted to experience the story” but “but I wanted to get legendary armor”.
What’s wrong with that? Just make the premade one drop more materials. Why does it require watering down the experience? There doesn’t need to be an “easy mode.” They can already design world bosses for random groups, why can’t they apply the same to the raids for a story mode with 10 randomly grouped players?
My problem with raids is exactly what I see in this thread: “I want something that others can be excluded from.”
Given that:
- Story mode dungeons were basically a waste of developer time.
- Story dungeons do not drop the tokens needed for dungeon armor.
- Tying specific rewards to content serves ANet’s purpose.
- A lot of the rewards the game offers are tied to exclusive content within one of the three basic game modes.
- Slowing the development of other content for various game modes is risky
- ANet has designed some raid encounters that are much easier than others. Someone who wants an easier raid can do those and get rewards.
- Some raiders want to enlarge the pool of raiders. This is why we see some raiders willing to start training groups.
- Easy mode raids that offered L. Armor components would reduce the pool of potential new blood for regular raids.
- People tend to follow the path of least resistance. If they can get L. Armor doing easy mode raids, there’s no motivation to move to the harder mode.
If you want L. Armor in PvE outside of the existing raids, you’re more likely to get what you want if you ask for ANet to offer a different set tied to some other PvE content.
I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.
As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.
This.
My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.
This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.
Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.
Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.
But the raid team only designs raids. General balance and polish pays direct attention to the results of raid viability and often balances professions solely on this basis.
Most of the big changes we’ve seen since HoT have been a direct reaction to raid viability, because most of them would be otherwise unjustified, or should have seen reworks entirely rather than numbers changes.
Even a substantial portion of LS references raid content/raid story.
You can access that raid story and content in the LS and experience it in a cleared raid wing if you really want to.
Balance ALSO has a lot to do with PvP.
Arguably PvE content (outside raids and fractals) doesn’t need balance as it’s really doable in any gear/build.
And that’s the thing; so much of the balance adjustments have seemingly been developed as a result of PvE normalization. It doesn’t make sense, but if you look at a lot of the big-nature changes that have gone down (thief AA, ele damage, rev healing and alacrity, druid/pet tweaks, chrono wells and alacrity, and so on, they’ve been based largely on PvE performance.
And raids don’t directly influence attention elsewhere; however, ANet is and has been quick to dismiss the developers on other major tasks (like Tyler Bearce on WvW) to send them to other content while leaving the raids team intact. And at the end of the day, most of WvW and sPvP’s problems are due to the imbalances and lack of diversity in builds keeping players from being interested in playing. Even server lag in WvW is explainable from a failure of profession design based on old info provided by developers regarding server lag and some studying of the WvW community.
It’s a far-reaching problem that’s been exacerbated by the attention Raids have received and how they’ve been upheld as such prominent content, but not a direct result of raids themselves directly shrinking resources.
Formal Thief Elite Spec proposal:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
Okay so a lot of people seem to think the addition of raids is disliked because of a lack of resources for other things in the game. This is not my contention.
However, we have seen raid balance affect open world PvE balance. Suddenly someone is doing too well in raids and so everyone who doesn’t so raids (which is most of us) has to deal with the consequences.
In addition to that, more posts on raids and PVP means less casual people finding this game by going to social media sites. It means less casual people joining the game. But it’s my understanding that there’s always been more casual players that hard core players.
I’ve seen posts on reddit where people read what’s there and think this game might not support a casual player, and that’s a major problem. Because I don’t believe there are enough hard core players to support this game. I think this game needs casuals.
At the end of the day, raids have divided the community and they’re so visible, they take players who already have experienced raids in other games and they drive them away. They attract the kinds of people I’m not necessarily interested in playing with (and who probably aren’t interested in playing with me).
In my own guild there are a handful of people who want to raid, but fielding 10 people is very hard, even though there are 300 people in the guild. So we created a raid team, o which I am a part. We haven’t had the same 10 people show up for our once a week raid since we started. There’s always some replacement who isn’t ready, isn’t up to speed, isn’t geared. Because there aren’t really enough people in my casual guild who are into the idea of raiding.
Some people want to raid because of achievements or completionist tendencies, some for legendary armor, but it’s really not there. Not for our guild. But this has put some pressure in our guild. There are people who aren’t necessarily good enough to raid, and they want to raid. Which means we have to tell them, for the first time ever, sorry we’re already selected our ten and our backups.
It’s not only not good for this game, it’s not good for my individual guild. And I’ve seen other posts by people who have seen their guilds die under similar circumstances.
This isn’t the game I bought or came her to play. It’s divisive. It causes conflict. And I don’t really think that in a game that was geared as a casual game for 3 years, it’s welcome by the majority of the player base.
Someone used an analogy of a restaurant which added a dish. This is more like a vegetarian restaurant that suddenly decided it’s no longer going to be a vegetarian restaurant. I mean it will continue to serve vegetarian stuff, but it’s going to increasinglyi put meat dishes on the menu.
Vegetarians probably will stop eating there, not because they don’t have the dishes they used to eat. But because the feeling of what had been theirs is no longer theirs. And that feeling, like all feelings, is valid. You can logically say it doesn’t matter, and it won’t change a single thing because people, most people anyway, spend money emotionally, not logically.
Someone used an analogy of a restaurant which added a dish. This is more like a vegetarian restaurant that suddenly decided it’s no longer going to be a vegetarian restaurant. I mean it will continue to serve vegetarian stuff, but it’s going to increasinglyi put meat dishes on the menu.
Sorry, it’s nothing like that. You’re ascribing a morality to a raid-free game that is soiled by adding raids.
It’s fine to say you don’t like raids. It’s fine to say your guild doesn’t have the 15+ people interested enough to raid (since RL will prevent some from showing on any given night). It’s even fine to say you don’t think it will ultimately have a positive impact on the community.
But please don’t try to make the argument that raiding is somehow inherently wrong for ANet’s franchise.
It’s a design choice and like any design choice, it has positives and negatives; some will embrace it, some will turn away from it. That would have happened if GW2 hadn’t offered an expac or didn’t add raids; it just would have been a different subset embracing or turning away.
edit: grammar
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)