Guild Wars 2

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

It’s an opinion based on long observation and it’s completely logical. You don’t have to agree with it, but it doesn’t make that opinion wrong.

I’m not even sure what there is to discuss. If you put only the best rewards behind certain content and people don’t like it, they’ll be unhappy. I can’t even imagine anyone trying to argue against that point.

So either more people like raids than I think (which I doubt is true), or people are doing raids for rewards. The less they like raiding the less happy they’re going to be. I’ve seen it in other games and now I’m seeing it here.

Again you don’t have to agree. But that doesn’t make what I’m saying wrong.

It’s easy to believe because you like raids that everyone doing them likes them as much as you. But I’ve often found people play stuff they don’t like to get rewards, burn out on it and leave games.

Lets look at some events in the past:

Dungeons on launch were super hard – ppl were unhappy
Orr maps on launch were super hard – ppl were unhappy
HoT maps on launch were grindy and super hard – ppl were unhappy
Precursor aquisation was extremly random or super expensive

Dungeons were nerfed – ppl were unhappy
Orr maps were nerfed – ppl were unhappy
HoT maps were nerfed and the gold ventiles were opened – ppl were unhappy
Precursor aquisation is not random anymore (and some are cheaper then before) – ppl were unhappy.

Pleasing everyone is impossible. Sure its good to listen to feedback
that the playerbase gives you. But if someone creates a product the primary focus is on the creators vision and wishes.

I’m not really sure of your point here. I mean what you say is obviously true, That said, I’m not sure that what I’m saying is reaching you.

It is my belief, and it’s been supported in what we know from other games, that only a small percentage of the community raid. A small percentage being some sort of minority. Surely you don’t believe most players raid or consider themselves raiders.

Resources are spent on this minority, not just to make raids, but to make rewards. There are definitely some people unhappy with the number of armor sets you can earn in game for example. If Anet takes time to make 3 new sets of armor, just for raiders, then people who don’t raid, who in my opinion are the majority, have the right to say something about it.

That’s what I’m doing. Saying something about it. You say people complain about everything. People didn’t complain nearly as much about dungeons when they were making profit doing them. I mean sure, some people complained but I think most of us can tell the difference between random well thought out complaints and people just complaining to complain.

I believe this is bad for the game because I believe more people will be annoyed by it than excited by it. Still just my opinion.

Which doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t correct. We’ll never really know.

I believe over time more and more people will go into raiding. You are right in saying most players will not be raiding.
Just like most players will not be pvp-ing.
And most players will not be wvw-ing.
And most players will not be fractal frequenters.
And most players will not be puzzle jumpers.

Every content that goes beyond farming, open world exploring and world bosses will only be done by a small subset of the complete playerbase. Why not invest in all these game modes?

I think the players that favor pve have the least ground to complain about resources not spent on their game mode. Its been stated over and over by now how many resources actually go into raids vs. the rest of pve. Why do you want to keep this myth of “waisted resources” alive?

Investing in all these game modes is fine. Making unique rewards in one game mode not duplicated in other game modes…not so much. Again in my opinion.

In your opinion investing in a game mode like raids means having THE best rewards in the game. But if raiding is a minority what’s the logic in appeasing a small percentage of players while risking alienating a larger percentage?

Is it even possible to objectively answer OP’s question? No, of course not. So I’ll just add my own opinion to the mix.

Imho, no, GW2 hasn’t lost its identity. It has changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and yeah, it has changed a lot…and not that much too. But yeah, as many have already asked, what is GW2 identity to begin with?

I’ve played MMORPGs for about 20 years, like many others. I’ve tried quite a few titles, begun with Wow, just before BC, and played it until mid MoP, but I’ve also tried many MMOs in the meantime. LOTRO, Rift, Aion, GW2 of course, DDO, WildStar, and TSW more recently,…

Among all those games, my best experience, by far, was LOTRO’s first expac, Mines of Moria. I’ve always loved LOTRO, it has such a unique ambiance, the combat is very complex and a little archaïc, even static, but it felt right and faithful to the books, and Mines of Moria introduced some awesome maps, and a true feeling of achievement.
But in the end, like almost all those MMOs, GW2 included, it could not keep my attention.

And yet, I’m here, playing GW2 still, when there are many other MMOs released and dying, as the public’s interest comes and goes, again and again… Why?

When I think about it, there are some reasons that piked my interest when I first tried GW2 (I have not played GW1, and probably never will, since I don’t think I’ll have the time/motivation to invest in such a large scale game anymore) :

- one of the big plus, which still holds quite true, was a very friendly economical model. Not only the “pay once, play forever” deal, a little broken with the introduction of paid expac, but more the “cosmetic and utility only in the Shop”, and, MOST importantly “you can buy Gems with Gold”. This feature is so rare, even nowadays, that I feel it’s important to remember that, if you invest time into GW2, you can buy anything in the Gemstore. Anything. And that is awesome.

- a PVE where other players are welcome, and not a threat or a nuisance. Still holds true, safe some fringe occasions. Individual loot, individual gathering nodes, dynamic scaling, hell YES. No more competitiveness into the cooperative part of the game, thank you!

- but the main reason, the one that makes me feel welcome in GW2 : non-obsolescence of content. Which strangely was only partially true at the beginning of the game, even if it was part of the intent. No increase of level cap, no endless gear increase, no progress resets. Of course, the season 1 of Living Story was a complete disaster for me, since I was testing and playing multiple MMOs at the time. But for the rest, it was always easy to come back after a break, even if said break lasted a year!

And I feel it’s GW2 current main strength, GW2 current identity, which was only partial at the beginning, but has been more and more defined as the game was changed :
whatever you do in GW2, whatever activity you invest time in, you won’t loose progress. Yeah, some new activities were added : fractals, living story season 2 and 3, and more recently raids and masteries. But they do not take away from the core game. When your character is full exo, you’re good to go for 95% of the content. In full ascended, it’s 100%. Unlocked a new skin? A new fractal level? Good, it’s forever. Getting bored of GW2? Take a break, go play other games. If you decide to come back, you won’t have to catch-up (or so little that it doesn’t bother me).

People will complain about “lack of content”, about “content drought”. I’ve played MMOs with lots of content added. Take a break, and you’re out. GW2 current pace of content release, with living story season 3 maps feels right. Not too few, not too many. And that is why I’ll keep coming back.

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not really sure of your point here. I mean what you say is obviously true, That said, I’m not sure that what I’m saying is reaching you.

It is my belief, and it’s been supported in what we know from other games, that only a small percentage of the community raid. A small percentage being some sort of minority. Surely you don’t believe most players raid or consider themselves raiders.

Resources are spent on this minority, not just to make raids, but to make rewards. There are definitely some people unhappy with the number of armor sets you can earn in game for example. If Anet takes time to make 3 new sets of armor, just for raiders, then people who don’t raid, who in my opinion are the majority, have the right to say something about it.

That’s what I’m doing. Saying something about it. You say people complain about everything. People didn’t complain nearly as much about dungeons when they were making profit doing them. I mean sure, some people complained but I think most of us can tell the difference between random well thought out complaints and people just complaining to complain.

I believe this is bad for the game because I believe more people will be annoyed by it than excited by it. Still just my opinion.

Which doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t correct. We’ll never really know.

I believe over time more and more people will go into raiding. You are right in saying most players will not be raiding.
Just like most players will not be pvp-ing.
And most players will not be wvw-ing.
And most players will not be fractal frequenters.
And most players will not be puzzle jumpers.

Every content that goes beyond farming, open world exploring and world bosses will only be done by a small subset of the complete playerbase. Why not invest in all these game modes?

I think the players that favor pve have the least ground to complain about resources not spent on their game mode. Its been stated over and over by now how many resources actually go into raids vs. the rest of pve. Why do you want to keep this myth of “waisted resources” alive?

Investing in all these game modes is fine. Making unique rewards in one game mode not duplicated in other game modes…not so much. Again in my opinion.

In your opinion investing in a game mode like raids means having THE best rewards in the game. But if raiding is a minority what’s the logic in appeasing a small percentage of players while risking alienating a larger percentage?

But this isn’t exclusive to raids. Its persistent to all the other game mode exclusive rewards that exist in the game.
Currently i have to do a lot of PVP (which i personally really don’t care for) to work my way through to the “PvP only” legendary backpack “ascension”. Thats a unique item that only exists in this (minority centered) game mode.

Let me ask you another question: In a five year old game – how do you get people interested in doing a new game mode. You give them an incentive. Thats logical. And from my perspective it looks like its working.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

At release, and for a good time after, participation was required to get the gift. Unless, of course, you just farmed the jumping puzzles.

I got a Gift of Battle bought from medals mostly from Achievement Chests,

Which happened a good time after release (around July 2013).

But there was that blissful period in between, 2013-2016, most of the game’s life, where Gift of Battle was available for badges. There were some moving goalposts, settled at Rank 14, which was easy to get.

Now? Eh, I have no desire to go through that track the first time, let alone the 4+ times I’ll need for the legendaries I’m targeting. 40 track levels is a long time to spend bored.

Doesn’t matter as my entire point was that the game started off with requiring WvW in order to get badges. The game “changed its identity” when it included them with achievements chests and then went back to its “original identity” with the reward track.

That’s your argument for “identity”?

Oh noes, GW2 added QoL improvements again! It’s even more convenient! GAME CHANGING FOREVERS!

Sorry, but no.

That wasn’t a QoL improvement. Sorry but no.

I’m pretty sure that someone would argue that if the game had started out with badges coming from achievement chests, and then subsequently the gift could only be acquired from a reward track years later, people would say that the game’s identity changed. Kitten, they’re doing that right now despite how the game started out like.

Arguing Gift of Battle as an “identity” change at all is the flaw there. It’s so minor, that it’s hardly worth mentioning. And yeah, it was a QoL improvement. It improved mine by a lot! Conversely, it has gone back down now that it requires me to bore myself with Walk v Walk for hours on end to get one.

Oh well. I’m not slamming the game’s identity about that. In fact, GW2 has a bit of a reputation for forcing content on players, so.. I’d say it fits right in!

If you actually wanted to argue changes that signal identity shifts, look at the trait systems. The one at launch was fine enough, but Traits 2.0 was nearly universally loathed, even though it “gave GW1 players what they wanted”. They were chasing old glory and botched it up hardcore instead of designing for the game they made. And then, moving onto Traits 3.0, we see GW2 finally starting to come into its own, designing for the future instead of its past.

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

At release, and for a good time after, participation was required to get the gift. Unless, of course, you just farmed the jumping puzzles.

I got a Gift of Battle bought from medals mostly from Achievement Chests,

Which happened a good time after release (around July 2013).

But there was that blissful period in between, 2013-2016, most of the game’s life, where Gift of Battle was available for badges. There were some moving goalposts, settled at Rank 14, which was easy to get.

Now? Eh, I have no desire to go through that track the first time, let alone the 4+ times I’ll need for the legendaries I’m targeting. 40 track levels is a long time to spend bored.

Doesn’t matter as my entire point was that the game started off with requiring WvW in order to get badges. The game “changed its identity” when it included them with achievements chests and then went back to its “original identity” with the reward track.

That’s your argument for “identity”?

Oh noes, GW2 added QoL improvements again! It’s even more convenient! GAME CHANGING FOREVERS!

Sorry, but no.

That wasn’t a QoL improvement. Sorry but no.

I’m pretty sure that someone would argue that if the game had started out with badges coming from achievement chests, and then subsequently the gift could only be acquired from a reward track years later, people would say that the game’s identity changed. Kitten, they’re doing that right now despite how the game started out like.

Arguing Gift of Battle as an “identity” change at all is the flaw there. It’s so minor, that it’s hardly worth mentioning. And yeah, it was a QoL improvement. It improved mine by a lot! Conversely, it has gone back down now that it requires me to bore myself with Walk v Walk for hours on end to get one.

Oh well. I’m not slamming the game’s identity about that. In fact, GW2 has a bit of a reputation for forcing content on players, so.. I’d say it fits right in!

If you actually wanted to argue changes that signal identity shifts, look at the trait systems. The one at launch was fine enough, but Traits 2.0 was nearly universally loathed, even though it “gave GW1 players what they wanted”. They were chasing old glory and botched it up hardcore instead of designing for the game they made. And then, moving onto Traits 3.0, we see GW2 finally starting to come into its own, designing for the future instead of its past.

Adding badges to rewards chests isn’t a QoL change. If you’re looking for QoL changes then look at inventory/bank extensions, account bound scavenging tools, build templates, auto loot, and so forth. Loot from another source is not a QoL change. Of course we can call the new leather farm a nice QoL change if you’d like.

If it was so minor and hardly worth mentioning, why did you bring it up in the first place?

Carighan.6758:

To me the biggest loss of identity is maybe in the underlying shift in design focus.

At release, GW2 was all about the world, as a crucial element of an MMO’s design. About providing a consistent, self-sufficient (events bounce back and forth without us, living store happens whether we’re there to experience it or not) and vast world in which the players would get dumped with comparatively little guidance, able to explore and learn at their own pace.
This rather brutal approach was then in turn balanced by intentionally under-balancing the game to a significant degree, old Orr zones (again intentionally, I suspect) excepted.

Nowadays, it is about providing a continuing trickle of content and a mountain of boxes to tick to keep the players engaged and coming back. To this end, a lot of steps were taken to make players feel more in control, from significant power creep in HoT over more interrupt/active-counter centric PvE enemies to crafted/quested legendaries.

Nowadays, everything is about player agency. The original design didn’t even care much about it, it was about world consistency.

And frankly both are good designs, but the modern one is entirely unlike what I originally came to the game for

I feel like this deserves more attention. Again, I haven’t been around that long (but long enough for 9K AP, 165 mastery, lv 80 in every class), so I can’t really detect a true shift away from that concept. But yeah, the extent to which the game world turned without our direct input was hugely interesting to me. As much as I wish I could relive LS1 and Scarlet, I really, really, really appreciated that the game world had moved on while bearing the scars of that era. No other game I’d played or heard of would do such a thing.

If that was ever really a meaningful a game-development focus (making an active world that didn’t revolve around every single player being the Messianic Champion of Respawning Mobs and Never-Changing Environments), then it’s a shame that the game no longer seems to have that in its future.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

At release, and for a good time after, participation was required to get the gift. Unless, of course, you just farmed the jumping puzzles.

I got a Gift of Battle bought from medals mostly from Achievement Chests,

Which happened a good time after release (around July 2013).

But there was that blissful period in between, 2013-2016, most of the game’s life, where Gift of Battle was available for badges. There were some moving goalposts, settled at Rank 14, which was easy to get.

Now? Eh, I have no desire to go through that track the first time, let alone the 4+ times I’ll need for the legendaries I’m targeting. 40 track levels is a long time to spend bored.

Doesn’t matter as my entire point was that the game started off with requiring WvW in order to get badges. The game “changed its identity” when it included them with achievements chests and then went back to its “original identity” with the reward track.

That’s your argument for “identity”?

Oh noes, GW2 added QoL improvements again! It’s even more convenient! GAME CHANGING FOREVERS!

Sorry, but no.

That wasn’t a QoL improvement. Sorry but no.

I’m pretty sure that someone would argue that if the game had started out with badges coming from achievement chests, and then subsequently the gift could only be acquired from a reward track years later, people would say that the game’s identity changed. Kitten, they’re doing that right now despite how the game started out like.

Arguing Gift of Battle as an “identity” change at all is the flaw there. It’s so minor, that it’s hardly worth mentioning. And yeah, it was a QoL improvement. It improved mine by a lot! Conversely, it has gone back down now that it requires me to bore myself with Walk v Walk for hours on end to get one.

Oh well. I’m not slamming the game’s identity about that. In fact, GW2 has a bit of a reputation for forcing content on players, so.. I’d say it fits right in!

If you actually wanted to argue changes that signal identity shifts, look at the trait systems. The one at launch was fine enough, but Traits 2.0 was nearly universally loathed, even though it “gave GW1 players what they wanted”. They were chasing old glory and botched it up hardcore instead of designing for the game they made. And then, moving onto Traits 3.0, we see GW2 finally starting to come into its own, designing for the future instead of its past.

Adding badges to rewards chests isn’t a QoL change. If you’re looking for QoL changes then look at inventory/bank extensions, account bound scavenging tools, build templates, auto loot, and so forth. Loot from another source is not a QoL change. Of course we can call the new leather farm a nice QoL change if you’d like.

If it was so minor and hardly worth mentioning, why did you bring it up in the first place?

Why yes, those are also QoL changes! A+ on identifying them, even if most of them were gem store items. I don’t see why alt-loot makes it any different, since it lets one avoid annoyance or tedium in attaining a goal. Even the leather “farm” could be a QoL improvement. If it worked properly, instead of being a T5 faucet.

Granted, it’s a glorious faucet though. Spent a short while at the camp at the bottom, not even farming the stupid mountain, just the camp, and skipped away giggling with a handful of loot.

But, that’s not really related to “identity”, so why bring it up? Unless you consider mismanaged materials part of GW2’s identity. I know I do. ( Economy on the whole is still fantastic, though. That still makes me )

SkyShroud.2865:

I think I understand what you are saying.

Raid is inherently exclusive and not inclusive. Raid doesn’t sit well with guilds that focus on community as community consist of everybody regardless good or bad that is why we have raid guilds. Raid and community just don’t go well with one another.

Thank you.

The issue is obviously more complex, but your one short paragraph sums the issue up pretty well.

And, I know many will disagree with it – but, again, that is because they play the game for different reasons than I – and other like me – do.

For us, GW2 was an oasis in a desert of MMOs that cared little for guilds built around friendship and community. I dont want to see that aspect of the game go away.

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

I think I understand what you are saying.

Raid is inherently exclusive and not inclusive. Raid doesn’t sit well with guilds that focus on community as community consist of everybody regardless good or bad that is why we have raid guilds. Raid and community just don’t go well with one another.

Thank you.

The issue is obviously more complex, but your one short paragraph sums the issue up pretty well.

And, I know many will disagree with it – but, again, that is because they play the game for different reasons than I – and other like me – do.

For us, GW2 was an oasis in a desert of MMOs that cared little for guilds built around friendship and community. I dont want to see that aspect of the game go away.

Yes, the complexity involve how it may or may not change the mentality of certain percentage of the players for the better or for the worse in long term. It is common in real life, government or companies decide on policies that may or may not change and shape the society.

Personally, I am not so optimistic about the long term effects of raid on players towards community as I can’t see the direction anet is heading.

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

snip

I believe this is bad for the game because I believe more people will be annoyed by it than excited by it. Still just my opinion.

Which doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t correct. We’ll never really know.

I believe over time more and more people will go into raiding. You are right in saying most players will not be raiding.
Just like most players will not be pvp-ing.
And most players will not be wvw-ing.
And most players will not be fractal frequenters.
And most players will not be puzzle jumpers.

Every content that goes beyond farming, open world exploring and world bosses will only be done by a small subset of the complete playerbase. Why not invest in all these game modes?

I think the players that favor pve have the least ground to complain about resources not spent on their game mode. Its been stated over and over by now how many resources actually go into raids vs. the rest of pve. Why do you want to keep this myth of “waisted resources” alive?

Investing in all these game modes is fine. Making unique rewards in one game mode not duplicated in other game modes…not so much. Again in my opinion.

In your opinion investing in a game mode like raids means having THE best rewards in the game. But if raiding is a minority what’s the logic in appeasing a small percentage of players while risking alienating a larger percentage?

But this isn’t exclusive to raids. Its persistent to all the other game mode exclusive rewards that exist in the game.
Currently i have to do a lot of PVP (which i personally really don’t care for) to work my way through to the “PvP only” legendary backpack “ascension”. Thats a unique item that only exists in this (minority centered) game mode.

Let me ask you another question: In a five year old game – how do you get people interested in doing a new game mode. You give them an incentive. Thats logical. And from my perspective it looks like its working.

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals. You may want THAT legendary backpack, and that’s fine. There are still two legendary backpacks in the game. I didn’t get the PvP one, because that almost destroyed the game for me and I forced myself to stop even though I wanted it. I got the fractal one instead. I have a legendary backpack now, and I could have had one without PvPing.

You can’t give people an incentive to do something that in most games a minority of the population does. It’s not like raids is the most popular activity in most games, or even any games I can think of. What you’re doing is creating a divide in the communty which has been visible since launch. Infighting has existed in raid threads a lot.

The trick is to give unique rewards, but not unique reward types. If you give rewards that are “too good” you will end up “encouraging” people to do content they don’t want and they’ll have to make that choice….live without it, or do something I don’t like.

As I said, in the case of PvP, it almost drove me from the game. I went for that reward, didn’t enjoy it, forced myself to do it, got stuck on the very last 3 pips I needed, just couldn’t get them, and ran out of time.

It was very very close to leaving this game at this point As it is, I wasted hours doing something I disliked. Actively disliked. For a reward.

And I used to spend a lot of money on this game. I mean a lot. I have money and this was my main source of entertainment. Now I’m doing other things because this game is less entertaining to me. The PvP did that to me. It put me in that mindset.

I’m surely not the only one that feels this way. You want to encourage people to raid, give them an armor skin that doesn’t do something no other armor skin in the game does. Don’t call it legendary. Because at the end of the day, there are going to be less raiders than non-raiders and if 5% of the population or even 10% are walking around with legendary armor, and 90% of the population has to look at it and not be able to have it, that’s a recipe for dissatisfaction right there.

The more stuff you ask people to ignore the more people will leave. Because everyone has their own threshold of frustration.

SkyShroud.2865:

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

I think I understand what you are saying.

Raid is inherently exclusive and not inclusive. Raid doesn’t sit well with guilds that focus on community as community consist of everybody regardless good or bad that is why we have raid guilds. Raid and community just don’t go well with one another.

Thank you.

The issue is obviously more complex, but your one short paragraph sums the issue up pretty well.

And, I know many will disagree with it – but, again, that is because they play the game for different reasons than I – and other like me – do.

For us, GW2 was an oasis in a desert of MMOs that cared little for guilds built around friendship and community. I dont want to see that aspect of the game go away.

Yes, the complexity involve how it may or may not change the mentality of certain percentage of the players for the better or for the worse in long term. It is common in real life, government or companies decide on policies that may or may not change and shape the society.

Personally, I am not so optimistic about the long term effects of raid on players towards community as I can’t see the direction anet is heading.

Im definitely not optimistic. Raids, in the manner they chose to introduce them, have already started taking the game in a direction many players would rather not follow.

I think it is, at least partially, a result of lack of leadership at the top. They need a new game director. O’Brian, as good as he is at his job as CEO, probably doesn’t have the time or resources to fill that role – and the result is that the game is fairly direction-less. I dont mean that as an insult against Anet or anyone there – just as an observation.

When teams design in vacuums – as it seems the raid team is, with divergent (and, in this case, polarized) goals they lose sight of what is best for the game and its community. A ship needs a captain with a clear idea of where it is going – and then structure to make sure all of the teams stay on course. I truly believe that the ship is lost and in desparate need of that direction.

Vayne.8563:

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals.

They added multiple legendary backpacks because it’s easy for them to do so. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time to finish as we’ve already seen. Who is to say that they won’t add another method of acquiring Legendary armor (different skin) once the first one is out? It happened with ascended rings, it happened with legendary backpacks.

The problem here is how long it takes for them to finish one set of armor. If the reason this discussion even exist is because they don’t have multiple ways of giving out Legendary armor, then that has little to do with identity or direction and it’s all about the developer being so slow in creating armor skins.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals.

They added multiple legendary backpacks because it’s easy for them to do so. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time to finish as we’ve already seen. Who is to say that they won’t add another method of acquiring Legendary armor (different skin) once the first one is out? It happened with ascended rings, it happened with legendary backpacks.

The problem here is how long it takes for them to finish one set of armor. If the reason this discussion even exist is because they don’t have multiple ways of giving out Legendary armor, then that has little to do with identity or direction and it’s all about the developer being so slow in creating armor skins.

See you’re saying what I’ve said all along. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time (read resources) in addition to the resources of making raids, but only a small percentage of the population will benefit from it.

I’m not a game developer and maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about but this seems counter intuitive to me. In a game where fashion wars is the game, raiders just won.

I’m not sure how that can possibly be good for the game.

Vayne.8563:

See you’re saying what I’ve said all along. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time (read resources) in addition to the resources of making raids, but only a small percentage of the population will benefit from it.

I’m going to ask here, if there was another way of getting legendary armor would we be having these types of discussions? Because although we got two methods of acquiring a legendary backpack (Fractals and PVP) that didn’t stop any kind of complaints about them.

I don’t think making legendary armor takes loads of resources. I think it’s more that they do not allocate enough resources in the making of armor, and less about how hard it is to make some. Heart of Thorns itself was often criticized for having so few armor sets, so it’s not a problem specific to the legendary armor.

It’s either their engine, their armor creation process, the lack of enough people working on armors, or a combination of the above that’s the real problem. And like all problems, it should be fixed. Armor sets taking so many months to create is an excuse. If it takes so long, then hire more armor artists… like all those they had while armor sets were offered on the gem store (we got a new set every so often), or how many sets were included in the game at release.

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

I think I understand what you are saying.

Raid is inherently exclusive and not inclusive. Raid doesn’t sit well with guilds that focus on community as community consist of everybody regardless good or bad that is why we have raid guilds. Raid and community just don’t go well with one another.

Thank you.

The issue is obviously more complex, but your one short paragraph sums the issue up pretty well.

And, I know many will disagree with it – but, again, that is because they play the game for different reasons than I – and other like me – do.

For us, GW2 was an oasis in a desert of MMOs that cared little for guilds built around friendship and community. I dont want to see that aspect of the game go away.

Yes, the complexity involve how it may or may not change the mentality of certain percentage of the players for the better or for the worse in long term. It is common in real life, government or companies decide on policies that may or may not change and shape the society.

Personally, I am not so optimistic about the long term effects of raid on players towards community as I can’t see the direction anet is heading.

Im definitely not optimistic. Raids, in the manner they chose to introduce them, have already started taking the game in a direction many players would rather not follow.

I think it is, at least partially, a result of lack of leadership at the top. They need a new game director. O’Brian, as good as he is at his job as CEO, probably doesn’t have the time or resources to fill that role – and the result is that the game is fairly direction-less. I dont mean that as an insult against Anet or anyone there – just as an observation.

When teams design in vacuums – as it seems the raid team is, with divergent (and, in this case, polarized) goals they lose sight of what is best for the game and its community. A ship needs a captain with a clear idea of where it is going – and then structure to make sure all of the teams stay on course. I truly believe that the ship is lost and in desparate need of that direction.

You make the same mistake ohoni made before he vanished. You try to speak for the whole community. You can only speak for yourself.

The direction never changed. They annouced dungeons as the raids of GW2 prior release, that the explorable mode could only be completed by organised groups. Dungeons failed those design goals. Fractals were their next attempt and it also didn’t provide what they wanted. Now after 3.5 years they released content that achieves those goals and everybody acts like they couldn’t see that coming.
There are open world events that can’t be done without proper organisation and builds. Try Triple Trouble with people that play only at their own playstyle. You won’t complete it and it got added much earlier than raids.
The desire to add organised group content that can’t be beaten by your average PUG was always there from ArenaNet.

Only because you don’t like the direction doesn’t mean there is a lack of a direction. It never changed they just took a lot of time to figure out how to present challenging content (open world/instanced, number of players etc).

Ayrilana.1396:

Keadron.9570:

In the beginning gw2 was advertised with no holy trinity. Every class had a way of healing so never a need for a dedicated healer. Play your way. Which is what drew me to the game to begin with.
Now we have a trinity, Anet even further increased the need for a dedicated healer in certain content by lowering the base healing of all classes across the board. Added raiding and after saying it wasn’t meant for everyone and nobody would be forced to play it added legendary armor exclusive to raids.
So yes I would say the game has lost its identity.

Healer is only ever needed in raids. It’s not anywhere else in the game. For those that don’t raid, they can play the game as they wish without needing to use the trinity.

There shouldn’t be a dedicated healer/support in any game mode. That isnt the way the game was advertised back before HOT and to change that is losing part of its identity to be just like other games with the trinity. Every class has it’s own way to mitigate/avoid damage and an ability to heal. Also see support in pvp

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals.

They added multiple legendary backpacks because it’s easy for them to do so. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time to finish as we’ve already seen.

In that case they should have made a legedary raid backpack, not armor set. If they can only create one armor, then it should be put in content that is more widely played. But no, they wanted raids to be special for some reason or another. And that decision is one that implies change in the direction of the game. This decision (and a few others like it) is what makes a difference between “raids are a side content meant for a minority of players, equal to other side contents in the game” and “raids are a special content that’s above all others”.

And that’s definitely a change of the game identity.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals.

They added multiple legendary backpacks because it’s easy for them to do so. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time to finish as we’ve already seen.

In that case they should have made a legedary raid backpack, not armor set. If they can only create one armor, then it should be put in content that is more widely played. But no, they wanted raids to be special for some reason or another. And that decision is one that implies change in the direction of the game. This decision (and a few others like it) is what makes a difference between “raids are a side content meant for a minority of players, equal to other side contents in the game” and “raids are a special content that’s above all others”.

And that’s definitely a change of the game identity.

Thats not correct. The choice to put a high tier reward into raids is totally logical.
Raiding is currently the hardest kind of content in guild wars 2.
The fitting reward for beating the hardest kind of content in the game should be the best kind of reward.
If i beat any kind of hard mode in another game i expect to get the shinniest of the shinniest. But not in this game? Why?

Looking at the history of high level rewards in this game you can surely expect another kind of legendary armor to be released down the line or another way to earn legendary insights to get to this one. There was a time where you could only craft ascended gear. Now pretty much every game mode has its own way of getting it and it drops in all kind of content.

This stuff is allways exclusive in the beginning – but gets broadend over time. So lets not panic

OniGiri.9461:

Thats not correct. The choice to put a high tier reward into raids is totally logical.
Raiding is currently the hardest kind of content in guild wars 2.
The fitting reward for beating the hardest kind of content in the game should be the best kind of reward.
If i beat any kind of hard mode in another game i expect to get the shinniest of the shinniest. But not in this game? Why?

Because other games have this content as center and endgame for their PvE part, so its pretty logical that they have best rewards.
Are we following that path? Fine, in that case stop telling us about “raids are just side activity” and give us everything that should be in game with a raid-centric gameplay – different difficulties, proper learning curve, ingame raid tactic manuals, proper raid tools and UI and so on.

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

Blaeys.3102:

SkyShroud.2865:

I think I understand what you are saying.

Raid is inherently exclusive and not inclusive. Raid doesn’t sit well with guilds that focus on community as community consist of everybody regardless good or bad that is why we have raid guilds. Raid and community just don’t go well with one another.

Thank you.

The issue is obviously more complex, but your one short paragraph sums the issue up pretty well.

And, I know many will disagree with it – but, again, that is because they play the game for different reasons than I – and other like me – do.

For us, GW2 was an oasis in a desert of MMOs that cared little for guilds built around friendship and community. I dont want to see that aspect of the game go away.

Yes, the complexity involve how it may or may not change the mentality of certain percentage of the players for the better or for the worse in long term. It is common in real life, government or companies decide on policies that may or may not change and shape the society.

Personally, I am not so optimistic about the long term effects of raid on players towards community as I can’t see the direction anet is heading.

Im definitely not optimistic. Raids, in the manner they chose to introduce them, have already started taking the game in a direction many players would rather not follow.

I think it is, at least partially, a result of lack of leadership at the top. They need a new game director. O’Brian, as good as he is at his job as CEO, probably doesn’t have the time or resources to fill that role – and the result is that the game is fairly direction-less. I dont mean that as an insult against Anet or anyone there – just as an observation.

When teams design in vacuums – as it seems the raid team is, with divergent (and, in this case, polarized) goals they lose sight of what is best for the game and its community. A ship needs a captain with a clear idea of where it is going – and then structure to make sure all of the teams stay on course. I truly believe that the ship is lost and in desparate need of that direction.

You make the same mistake ohoni made before he vanished. You try to speak for the whole community. You can only speak for yourself.

The direction never changed. They annouced dungeons as the raids of GW2 prior release, that the explorable mode could only be completed by organised groups. Dungeons failed those design goals. Fractals were their next attempt and it also didn’t provide what they wanted. Now after 3.5 years they released content that achieves those goals and everybody acts like they couldn’t see that coming.
There are open world events that can’t be done without proper organisation and builds. Try Triple Trouble with people that play only at their own playstyle. You won’t complete it and it got added much earlier than raids.
The desire to add organised group content that can’t be beaten by your average PUG was always there from ArenaNet.

Only because you don’t like the direction doesn’t mean there is a lack of a direction. It never changed they just took a lot of time to figure out how to present challenging content (open world/instanced, number of players etc).

Sources please, for things you claim to be.

Rednik.3809:

OniGiri.9461:

Thats not correct. The choice to put a high tier reward into raids is totally logical.
Raiding is currently the hardest kind of content in guild wars 2.
The fitting reward for beating the hardest kind of content in the game should be the best kind of reward.
If i beat any kind of hard mode in another game i expect to get the shinniest of the shinniest. But not in this game? Why?

Because other games have this content as center and endgame for their PvE part, so its pretty logical that they have best rewards.
Are we following that path? Fine, in that case stop telling us about “raids are just side activity” and give us everything that should be in game with a raid-centric gameplay – different difficulties, proper learning curve, ingame raid tactic manuals, proper raid tools and UI and so on.

Did Anet state that the gameplay is now raid-centric?
Besides:
- There already are different difficulties in raids,
- There are many sites to check for good raid tactics and
- there are some good dps meter tools out there that let you analize the encounter afterwards (anet gave the green light on those that have no gear checking)

Vayne.8563:

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

But you can get a legendary backpack from PvP or Fractals.

They added multiple legendary backpacks because it’s easy for them to do so. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time to finish as we’ve already seen. Who is to say that they won’t add another method of acquiring Legendary armor (different skin) once the first one is out? It happened with ascended rings, it happened with legendary backpacks.

The problem here is how long it takes for them to finish one set of armor. If the reason this discussion even exist is because they don’t have multiple ways of giving out Legendary armor, then that has little to do with identity or direction and it’s all about the developer being so slow in creating armor skins.

See you’re saying what I’ve said all along. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time (read resources) in addition to the resources of making raids, but only a small percentage of the population will benefit from it.

I’m not a game developer and maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about but this seems counter intuitive to me. In a game where fashion wars is the game, raiders just won.

I’m not sure how that can possibly be good for the game.

Don’t you think its just a small subset of people interested in legendary armor? We have had legendary items for over 4 years now and maybe 25% of the playerbase has one (or more) of these items. So putting this high end reward in the high end end game content will alienate only a subset of the group of people that are interested in legendary items.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

See you’re saying what I’ve said all along. Legendary armor takes an insane amount of time (read resources) in addition to the resources of making raids, but only a small percentage of the population will benefit from it.

I’m going to ask here, if there was another way of getting legendary armor would we be having these types of discussions? Because although we got two methods of acquiring a legendary backpack (Fractals and PVP) that didn’t stop any kind of complaints about them.

I don’t think making legendary armor takes loads of resources. I think it’s more that they do not allocate enough resources in the making of armor, and less about how hard it is to make some. Heart of Thorns itself was often criticized for having so few armor sets, so it’s not a problem specific to the legendary armor.

It’s either their engine, their armor creation process, the lack of enough people working on armors, or a combination of the above that’s the real problem. And like all problems, it should be fixed. Armor sets taking so many months to create is an excuse. If it takes so long, then hire more armor artists… like all those they had while armor sets were offered on the gem store (we got a new set every so often), or how many sets were included in the game at release.

What do you mean it didn’t stop any complaints about them? It stopped my complaints. You assume because you see complaints, no complaints are stopped but that’s not a provable premise. I wanted a legendary backpack and was able to get a legendary backpack…just not the PvP one. I didn’t complain about it because I was able to get a legendary backpack.

Whatever the reason armor is slow to create is not really the discussion. If there’s a queue to create armor, then this process pushes back the queue. And if most people won’t be getting legendary armor, then that probably isn’t the best utilitization of resources.

I get it. You like raids. You want raids to have great rewards. I like the game. I want the game to continue to do well. I don’t believe, in my heart of hearts, that raids have helped that, no matter how many people are in that particular niche.

We’ve seen several people say that they believe the identity of the game changed, and those people are right to them. To those people the identity of the game has changed. And though raids all by themselves aren’t the cause of anything, they’re a very visible poster boy for the way the game is changing.

Some people like the change, some people don’t, but I think the tendency of most MMOs to get easier as time goes on, is because most people dont’ like difficult content.

OniGiri.9461:

Looking at the history of high level rewards in this game you can surely expect another kind of legendary armor to be released down the line or another way to earn legendary insights to get to this one.

This stuff is always exclusive in the beginning – but gets broadened over time. So lets not panic.

Probably the best set of statements on the topic.
While I’m not a fan of the “I do hard content therefore I’m entitled to unique rewards” attitude, I’m optimistic that ANet will release alternate ways to get legendary armor or alternate legendary armor. And I don’t really need it, though I could see it having its uses for someone who raids with different builds of the same profession or WvW, but it’s not that huge an advantage. So I’m okay with it being a raid reward (and yet another material sink).

It’s not the raid rewards that bother me about their inclusion, it’s the attitude problem and the constant push to violate the ToS in order to justify that attitude.

SkyShroud.2865:

Sources please, for things you claim to be.

http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dungeons/into-the-dungeons/

The official article about dungeons prior release, under Behind the curtain: Dungeon Secrets

The explorable mode, on the other hand, is set up to be a challenge worthy of an organized group of experienced players who coordinate their attacks. Given that the dungeons require more organized, focused groups, we get to work out some truly awesome boss battles that require teamwork and planning to overcome. There are a number of these scripted battles in each dungeon, and some of the bosses are truly massive in both size and power.
Dungeons are optional, but are a lot of fun for players who seek a challenge.

Dungeons were supposed to be a challenge for organised groups that pre plan. Raids so far are the only content that fullfil those requirements, yet this statement was made prior release.

OniGiri.9461:

Did Anet state that the gameplay is now raid-centric?

If not, then claim on “deserves best rewards” is wrong. Side activity cannot have best rewards in game and still be called such.

- There already are different difficulties in raids

Normal and hard, and on very few encounters.

- There are many sites to check for good raid tactics and
- there are some good dps meter tools out there that let you analize the encounter afterwards (anet gave the green light on those that have no gear checking)

And none of them are officially supported.

Miellyn.6847:

You try to speak for the whole community. You can only speak for yourself.

When I use phrases like “I think” it denotes opinion. These are my opinions, the same way your post is your opinion.

I think that the team approach they are using is a good idea, but that kind of approach only really works when there is strong leadership keeping all of the parts on track and on vision. I think that, without a strong dedicated development lead, the teams have lost track of that. Take the inclusion of the Saul storyline in the latest wing. While that may seem like a good and fun idea at the team level, it really isnt from a big picture perspective (in my opinion). A strong leader would have seen that where the team – which is focused on a sole part of the game – didn’t.

The same is true for the general direction of raids (I believe) and the impact they are having on the direction of the game.

I think as soon as the teams have dedicated developmental leadership, these issues will be more evident to them and they will have to address them.

The identity of the game, as it was sold, as it was mentioned from the very beginning, was that it would be a casual friendly game (atleast PvE wise) with some hardcore content for those who would enjoy it, saying that there would be no gear grind.

Then they added ascended gear and immediately lost my trust, on top of that buffing the legendary stats, making gear grind and going against what the original design was, you can get the best armour doing whatever content you want.

Then they changed what legendaries DO, adding the ability for legendaries to change their stats on the fly, granting a HUGE leap in power for players who have atleast one legendary.

Then they added fractals, which was another slap in the face, more content that casual players can’t access because of the loud minority’s need for more challenging content. I do have to praise Anet for providing difficulty levels for fractals though. While tougher than most content, there were still options to play at lower difficulties. That specific addition gave me hope.

HoT threw that hope and the casual focus out the window, opting for a much more challenging experience in the new HoT zones, the absolutely needlessly long grind for higher levels of masteries, adding raids, legendary backpack and an upcoming legendary armour set, just so many slaps to the face for any casual who wanted to keep enjoying the experience of GW2

All of this is unacceptable. The identity of the game has drastically changed from casual focused “play the way you want and get equal rewards” to hardcore “casuals will definitely have a much harder time, good luck!”.

If you want to appease the casual gamers, add easier difficulty modes to all instanced content without removing any shred of content, whether that is lore, enemy abilities, or even enemy ambushes. I’m not asking for insta-aoe killing grounds for difficult content, I’m asking for difficult content to be made more accessible to casual gamers.

Also, add casual-friendly ascended and legendary gear (all we need is one full set of weapons, armour and backpiece for both ascended and legendary) so that we’re not insta-kicked from group content for not having appropriate gear. Hell the casual legendary gear doesn’t even need to be all that shiny or have the special effects. Let casual players have casual friendly access to all forms of content, gear, lore, elite specs, enemies, masteries, instances (including fractals, explorable dungeons and raids) etc. while giving hardcore players the challenge that they desire through higher difficulty levels and reward them with unique skins, more loot and even the current legendary flair.

Let casuals have fun in your content devs! Stop making casual only content and hardcore only content as two separate things. Difficulty levels for all instanced content can only bring more players, if only at lower difficulty levels.

Rednik.3809:

If not, then claim on “deserves best rewards” is wrong. Side activity cannot have best rewards in game and still be called such.

Rhetoric. Quality of rewards has nothing to do with whether a activity is a “side” activity or not. Quality of rewards is almost always related to how big a accomplishment getting the reward is. Killing 150 raid bosses is a pretty big accomplishment.

- There already are different difficulties in raids

Normal and hard, and on very few encounters.
[/quote]
No the fights themselves are different difficulties. Xera and Matthias are extremely difficult. Escort however is about as difficult as a dungeon.

Vayne.8563:

What do you mean it didn’t stop any complaints about them?

The PVP forums had a lot of pve players who couldn’t get their shinny pvp backpack even though they had access to the fractal backpack. Same types of players also complain about how they changed the ascended acquisition method from pvp. They were pve players, not pvp players.

We’ve seen several people say that they believe the identity of the game changed, and those people are right to them. To those people the identity of the game has changed. And though raids all by themselves aren’t the cause of anything, they’re a very visible poster boy for the way the game is changing.

This goes to the phrase of the OP:

TLDR; What makes GW2 different than any other generic MMO right now?

All the things that GW2 did differently than other games somehow stopped existing because they added Raids?

Did they stop adding dynamics events and went to a traditional quest system? No.
Did they made it so you curse when other players are around and steal your mobs and your nodes? No.
Did they made the combat static with passive defenses? No.
Did they remove the ability to enter pvp and be at max level and have access to nearly everything? No. (Expansion excluded, you don’t have to level up, nor grind to be effective in pvp)

The identity of the game is still there and nothing changed. They added new things you can safely ignore and go focus on the things that you like. How can anyone say that the identity of the game changed when all the pillars of the game are still intact? I believe those that say that the identity of the game changed should go play some other mmorpgs for a while to REMEMBER what GW2 did better than those games, and still does.

Crinn.7864:

Rhetoric. Quality of rewards has nothing to do with whether a activity is a “side” activity or not. Quality of rewards is almost always related to how big a accomplishment getting the reward is.

In that case, calling something like that “side activity” will be a lie. Side activities are not receiving attention and development time more than all other instanced PvE content put together for 3 previous years.

No the fights themselves are different difficulties. Xera and Matthias are extremely difficult. Escort however is about as difficult as a dungeon.

Where is different difficulty modes for Xera and Matthias? Where is hardmode Escort? “Easy and difficult encounters” raid model is outdated, dead and dropped for years already in any decent raiding MMO.

Rednik.3809:

In that case, calling something like that “side activity” will be a lie. Side activities are not receiving attention and development time more than all other instanced PvE content put together for 3 previous years.

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Where is different difficulty modes for Xera and Matthias? Where is hardmode Escort? “Easy and difficult encounters” raid model is outdated, dead and dropped for years already in any decent raiding MMO.

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Miellyn.6847:

SkyShroud.2865:

Sources please, for things you claim to be.

http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dungeons/into-the-dungeons/

The official article about dungeons prior release, under Behind the curtain: Dungeon Secrets

The explorable mode, on the other hand, is set up to be a challenge worthy of an organized group of experienced players who coordinate their attacks. Given that the dungeons require more organized, focused groups, we get to work out some truly awesome boss battles that require teamwork and planning to overcome. There are a number of these scripted battles in each dungeon, and some of the bosses are truly massive in both size and power.
Dungeons are optional, but are a lot of fun for players who seek a challenge.

Dungeons were supposed to be a challenge for organised groups that pre plan. Raids so far are the only content that fullfil those requirements, yet this statement was made prior release.

Really….
Why would you think game companies or any companies would make a impactless or not so exciting statements? Do you actually think they are gonna write something like the dungeons can be done easily without much organisation and work? Come on. Also, where is the part that says gw2’s version of raid?

Furthermore, this is just answering your dungeon claim. How about your fractal claims?

Crinn.7864:

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters has existed long before the first MMO, so you might want to use a different reason.

Difficulty options allow a greater number of people to enjoy that content, that ALONE is enough reason to make use of difficulty modes.

castlemanic.3198:

Crinn.7864:

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters has existed long before the first MMO, so you might want to use a different reason.

Difficulty options allow a greater number of people to enjoy that content, that ALONE is enough reason to make use of difficulty modes.

Unless you are making content that you don’t want everyone or even the vast majority of the population, to be able to complete. That ALONE is reason enough to not make use of difficulty modes.

Fatalyz.7168:

Unless you are making content that you don’t want everyone or even the vast majority of the population, to be able to complete. That ALONE is reason enough to not make use of difficulty modes.

While true, why would an MMO of all games have content that most players can’t complete if their goal is to retain a player base?

How do you retain a player base? Give them more content that they can play.

If there is content that players KNOW they won’t be able to complete, they won’t even try that content. That reduces the number of playstyles available to players, those playstyles then fall into disuse for the vast majority of players, and developers develop content that the vast majority of players won’t be able to complete.

Why? If your game follows a niche like dark souls, then it’s the entire point of the game. It’s the reason why the game was built, it was designed, marketed and sold as a niche game, but GW2 of all mmos was designed from the ground up as a casual friendly experience. You know what’s casual friendly? Difficulty modes.

Yeah, times change and developers opinion on what the game should be change too, sure, and that’s the whole point of this thread. This game lost it’s identity from being casual friendly to enforcing high difficulty content onto the playerbase with it’s expansion.

How do you fix that? Difficulty modes. Hardcore players enjoy their challenge while casual players get to experience the same content at a lower difficulty. Having MORE options harms no one. It ONLY can provide a fun experience for more players. Does it take more developer effort? Sure, but again they’re opening the doors to a much larger number of players, who’d be able to play and enjoy the content that developers surely want players to experience while also helping to maintain the playerbase that MMOs need to, well, stay alive.

There’s no downside to providing players the ability to experience all content at a difficulty that they can enjoy.

However, before anyone jumps the gun on what that might look like, let me explain something. I realise that asking developers to restructure anything already released (dungeons, explorable dungeons, fractals and raids) to include easier modes is a lot of developer time that could be spent developing future content. Would I like to see it? Absolutely, no doubt, 100% I feel it needs to happen. Am I expecting developers to actually follow through with restructuring and redesigning all instanced group content they’ve ever released? Hell no. In a perfect world, yes, but this isn’t a perfect world, this is reality. Thus the recommendation is: for all future raids, incorporate an easy difficulty mode from the beginning of the design process so that casual players can experience the content.

How on earth can that be a bad thing to ask?

castlemanic.3198:

There’s no downside to providing players the ability to experience all content at a difficulty that they can enjoy.

That would require 1000 difficulty versions. I can think many downsides of that

You can find lots of info and discussion on the subject of Raid difficulty by reading the appropriate threads. Last I checked this isn’t about that. Now this is getting completely off topic, or rather there are more threads on the topic of Raid difficulty that have a proper discussion, repeating the same arguments here won’t help anyone.

maddoctor.2738:

That would require 1000 difficulty versions. I can think many downsides of that

You can find lots of info and discussion on the subject of Raid difficulty by reading the appropriate threads. Last I checked this isn’t about that. Now this is getting completely off topic, or rather there are more threads on the topic of Raid difficulty that have a proper discussion, repeating the same arguments here won’t help anyone.

In a perfect world, 1000 difficulty versions would be amazing. However, I’m realistically only asking for an ‘easy’ mode.

Last time I checked, I also mentioned dungeons, explorable dungeons and fractals as problematic. Also it IS appropriate to the thread, since raids are now a part of GW2’s identity. People rightly have the ability to comment on a thread about the identity of this game and what additions have changed the games identity. Raids fall into that category.

Silent The Gray.3091:

Let’s cater to the casuals again, just as the game always does, THAT is what is making this game lose it’s identity. Candy Crush looks hard core in comparison to Guild Wars 2.

This game was designed, marketed and sold as being casual friendly, until HoT came out. Asking for difficulty modes is not making GW2 ‘easier than Candy Crush’ (seriously, THAT’S your argument?). Instead, it allows casual players to have access to content, while giving hardcore the challenge they need.

There’s nothing wrong with building hardcore content. The problem is building exclusive hardcore content and forcing challenge on casual players playing a game that was marketed as casual friendly.

@Vayne Oh how I want to be in your casual guild. I am 100% with everything you said above. My guild is turning into a raid guild, and that just doesn’t interest me much. I want to wander around, be mesmerized, beat up some big stuff, and laugh in chat a lot. I spent ten minutes dancing in LA this morning to some minstrels randomly playing there, then went and knocked out a couple fun achievements solo. It would have been more fun with friends and maybe we’d hit a dungeon and see how long we could last. Anal toon building? Screw that, I already have a day job that I call WORK. This is a game, I want to play it on my terms, wear things I think look cool and maybe tell some jokes in chat while we wait for the dead guys to run back from the TP. Contribute to a guild hall. Go on dangerous mining expeditions for ores, whatever. As soon as it becomes math, and anal commanders kittening about speeds and builds and what armor I have (despite managing to live to 30+ mastery levels so far doing it my own way without their expert input) it becomes a job, and that’s not why I’m here at ALL.

castlemanic.3198:

Fatalyz.7168:

Unless you are making content that you don’t want everyone or even the vast majority of the population, to be able to complete. That ALONE is reason enough to not make use of difficulty modes.

While true, why would an MMO of all games have content that most players can’t complete if their goal is to retain a player base?

How do you retain a player base? Give them more content that they can play.

If there is content that players KNOW they won’t be able to complete, they won’t even try that content. That reduces the number of playstyles available to players, those playstyles then fall into disuse for the vast majority of players, and developers develop content that the vast majority of players won’t be able to complete.

Why? If your game follows a niche like dark souls, then it’s the entire point of the game. It’s the reason why the game was built, it was designed, marketed and sold as a niche game, but GW2 of all mmos was designed from the ground up as a casual friendly experience. You know what’s casual friendly? Difficulty modes.

Yeah, times change and developers opinion on what the game should be change too, sure, and that’s the whole point of this thread. This game lost it’s identity from being casual friendly to enforcing high difficulty content onto the playerbase with it’s expansion.

How do you fix that? Difficulty modes. Hardcore players enjoy their challenge while casual players get to experience the same content at a lower difficulty. Having MORE options harms no one. It ONLY can provide a fun experience for more players. Does it take more developer effort? Sure, but again they’re opening the doors to a much larger number of players, who’d be able to play and enjoy the content that developers surely want players to experience while also helping to maintain the playerbase that MMOs need to, well, stay alive.

There’s no downside to providing players the ability to experience all content at a difficulty that they can enjoy.

However, before anyone jumps the gun on what that might look like, let me explain something. I realise that asking developers to restructure anything already released (dungeons, explorable dungeons, fractals and raids) to include easier modes is a lot of developer time that could be spent developing future content. Would I like to see it? Absolutely, no doubt, 100% I feel it needs to happen. Am I expecting developers to actually follow through with restructuring and redesigning all instanced group content they’ve ever released? Hell no. In a perfect world, yes, but this isn’t a perfect world, this is reality. Thus the recommendation is: for all future raids, incorporate an easy difficulty mode from the beginning of the design process so that casual players can experience the content.

How on earth can that be a bad thing to ask?

Exclusive difficult content was always supposed to be a part of this game, they just failed to deliver on that at launch, and for a good while after.

Also, are you willing to give up open-world updates and the other events that they run to get more development on raids, and turn this into a raid-centric game?

castlemanic.3198:

This game lost it’s identity from being casual friendly to enforcing high difficulty content onto the playerbase with it’s expansion.

This is where you have a mistaken identity about this game. It’s still a very casual friendly game. Casual does not mean “bad player” kitten many on this forums are wont to infer. This game was not meant to cater to players who either can’t or won’t play better, it was always supposed to provide a challenge, they are just starting to deliver on that promise.

So yes, those that bought into the game because it was perceived as easy (read casual, still don’t know why people equate easy with casual) will see that it’s identity is changing. Those of us that read into the product we were purchasing, we are just now being delivered the content in the game that was always supposed to be there, the challenge.

You can argue that they want to appeal to as many players as they can, and I can argue that they are, just not with raids which was clearly advertised as Challenging Group Content. So far they have delivered on that. Only time will tell, but I’m pretty sure that this was a well thought and intentional shift in design to meet the original goal of the game. Yes that even means that it was known beforehand that a subset of the players would be disenfranchised by that, quite possibly enough to want to quit playing, and they willing pulled the trigger on it anyway.

Silent The Gray.3091:

maddoctor.2738:

castlemanic.3198:

There’s no downside to providing players the ability to experience all content at a difficulty that they can enjoy.

That would require 1000 difficulty versions. I can think many downsides of that

You can find lots of info and discussion on the subject of Raid difficulty by reading the appropriate threads. Last I checked this isn’t about that. Now this is getting completely off topic, or rather there are more threads on the topic of Raid difficulty that have a proper discussion, repeating the same arguments here won’t help anyone.

Let’s cater to the casuals again, just as the game always does, THAT is what is making this game lose it’s identity. Candy Crush looks hard core in comparison to Guild Wars 2.

What is your definition of casual?

castlemanic.3198:

maddoctor.2738:

That would require 1000 difficulty versions. I can think many downsides of that

You can find lots of info and discussion on the subject of Raid difficulty by reading the appropriate threads. Last I checked this isn’t about that. Now this is getting completely off topic, or rather there are more threads on the topic of Raid difficulty that have a proper discussion, repeating the same arguments here won’t help anyone.

In a perfect world, 1000 difficulty versions would be amazing. However, I’m realistically only asking for an ‘easy’ mode.

Last time I checked, I also mentioned dungeons, explorable dungeons and fractals as problematic. Also it IS appropriate to the thread, since raids are now a part of GW2’s identity. People rightly have the ability to comment on a thread about the identity of this game and what additions have changed the games identity. Raids fall into that category.

Silent The Gray.3091:

Let’s cater to the casuals again, just as the game always does, THAT is what is making this game lose it’s identity. Candy Crush looks hard core in comparison to Guild Wars 2.

This game was designed, marketed and sold as being casual friendly, until HoT came out. Asking for difficulty modes is not making GW2 ‘easier than Candy Crush’ (seriously, THAT’S your argument?). Instead, it allows casual players to have access to content, while giving hardcore the challenge they need.

There’s nothing wrong with building hardcore content. The problem is building exclusive hardcore content and forcing challenge on casual players playing a game that was marketed as casual friendly.

What is your definition of casual?

Fatalyz.7168:

Exclusive difficult content was always supposed to be a part of this game, they just failed to deliver on that at launch, and for a good while after.

Also, are you willing to give up open-world updates and the other events that they run to get more development on raids, and turn this into a raid-centric game?

Then they added ascended gear, upping the stats for legendaries too, then they added fractals WITH DIFFICULTY LEVELS.

It’s at best hilarious to say that if they make difficulty modes for raids, they can’t focus on other content because THEY HAVE THE TECH AVAILABLE ALREADY. just implement it into a raid and bam, you have difficulty modes. It’s not like they have to do something TOTALLY new like they did when they introduced fractals, they already have tech available to do it. Just work with the available tech, import it into raids with fewer levels, adjust numbers accordingly and bam. Also it’s NOT that huge a leap of development effort if they design a raid from the get go to have difficulty levels. It’s not worth the effort of adding difficulty levels to already present group content as I have already mentioned, but for future raids, design them from the beginning with difficulty options hat already exist in the game, and you won’t need to cut back on other content.

This is where you have a mistaken identity about this game. It’s still a very casual friendly game. Casual does not mean “bad player” kitten many on this forums are wont to infer. This game was not meant to cater to players who either can’t or won’t play better, it was always supposed to provide a challenge, they are just starting to deliver on that promise.

So yes, those that bought into the game because it was perceived as easy (read casual, still don’t know why people equate easy with casual) will see that it’s identity is changing. Those of us that read into the product we were purchasing, we are just now being delivered the content in the game that was always supposed to be there, the challenge.

You can argue that they want to appeal to as many players as they can, and I can argue that they are, just not with raids which was clearly advertised as Challenging Group Content. So far they have delivered on that. Only time will tell, but I’m pretty sure that this was a well thought and intentional shift in design to meet the original goal of the game. Yes that even means that it was known beforehand that a subset of the players would be disenfranchised by that, quite possibly enough to want to quit playing, and they willing pulled the trigger on it anyway.

I have NEVER implied that ‘casual’ means ‘bad’. Easy modes offer aid to both casual AND bad players. But the aim of easy modes is for casual players mostly, because easier modes means shorter time completions, not as long looking for a group/being kicked out of groups that don’t think you hold up to their standards and therefore must return to looking for a group to play the content, fewer attempts and failures. Those things aid casual players in their ability to enjoy content, because they can spend more time in other forms of content instead of spending hours that they don’t want to/have on difficult content that takes a long time to complete.

Also, there is a noted reason why ‘casual’ can equal ‘bad’ for some people. Because casual players don’t spend as much time in the game as hardcore players, they don’t have as much time spent in the game and thus are seen as not as experienced. While objectively true, it doesn’t take into account a players actual abilities, such as the ability to easily understand the systems of a game, and thus NEED less time than others to become hardcore level ‘good’ at the game. It also doesn’t take into account WHAT that player does with their time in the game. A casual player could very well use a level 80 booster to instantly be geared and leveled for raid content and immediately spend all their time in raids, doing no other content except spend the time getting to the raid portals.

Having easy modes can give casual players the ability to more easily play and get through content with what limited time they have, because they don’t need to die an infinite amount of times to understand and beat a boss. It also, conveniently, helps players who have disabilities or some other reason that they aren’t ‘as good’ as other players. Giving those players a bone by having a difficulty option that presents atleast the ability for them to try raids and still have a chance of completing it is a good thing, because disabled players, or players not as naturally attuned to gameplay like GW2 has, also deserve love in the form of content they can participate in.

OniGiri.9461:

Thats not correct. The choice to put a high tier reward into raids is totally logical.
Raiding is currently the hardest kind of content in guild wars 2.

So? It’s not like it being harder is somehow inherently better. Not everyone is interested in this kind of content.

Also, as Rednik said – are Raids front-and center content at the top of everything, or are they a side content? Because if they are the former, then everything that was said in this thread about game identity change is completely true.

OniGiri.9461:

If i beat any kind of hard mode in another game i expect to get the shinniest of the shinniest. But not in this game? Why?

There are games that revolve around difficulty and beating it. GW2 was not one of those. Now it is. That’s what i am against.

OniGiri.9461:

Looking at the history of high level rewards in this game you can surely expect another kind of legendary armor to be released down the line or another way to earn legendary insights to get to this one.

I’m not content to wait 2-3 years (or more) for the first one to happen – that’s why i am all for either easy mode (with rewards) or an alternate acquisition option. Though, again, i’d rather not wait years for that to happen.

OniGiri.9461:

There was a time where you could only craft ascended gear.

Ascended gear being more easily available is solely an effect of players voicing their dissatisfaction with the original implementation. If most players were okay with rings and backpacks being locked behind fractals, then most likely all the ascended gear now would be obtainable only as drops from high-end content (and we’d likely have even stronger tiers now, as Anet didn’t hide then that they did plan to engage in gear progression). Turns out players were really angly about both those ideas, and were very vocal about it, and thus Anet had to adjust their original plans.

OniGiri.9461:

Now pretty much every game mode has its own way of getting it and it drops in all kind of content.

Yes. Because then players did not remain silent.

Crinn.7864:

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Then how we got 0 dungeons, 2 fractals and 4 raid wings?

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Emm, what? Difficulty modes serves for widening raid audience and keeping mid and high-end raiding community saturated with fresh blood. Otherwise old model with different difficulty of encounters during a single raid would be enough.

Astralporing.1957:

…

I don’t understand how there can be any debate on “If you complete the biggest challange – you get the biggest reward”.

What does the reward have to do with the position of the game mode?

You realize legendary armor is inheretly exclusive! They will never, ever, ever be availabe for the broad playerbase. Just like every other legendary item. We had legendary items for about 5 years now. If you check statistics for players who own at least one legendary item you will see its about 25%.

You are arguing like raids will lock away very demanded items. They are not.
So the people on this thread demanding a change in raids or the system to make it easier for them to get to this item – you belong in this small subset of players who want this new legendary item and who don’t want to raid.

Still think its reasonable?

Rednik.3809:

Crinn.7864:

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Then how we got 0 dungeons, 2 fractals and 4 raid wings?

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Emm, what? Difficulty modes serves for widening raid audience and keeping mid and high-end raiding community saturated with fresh blood. Otherwise old model with different difficulty of encounters during a single raid would be enough.

Bringing up dungeons is just a joke since they stated that their won’t ever be any new dungeons.

You do realize that one fractal has about 5 different levels. You have to adjust 5 different difficulty settings, instability composition, mobs, bosses, agony calculation, etc.
A raid wing has 3 to 4 encounters. Most of them are just huge monsters who stand in the middle of an arena and wait for you to hit them.

Id say its pretty clear why its easier to spit out new raids then fractals.

OniGiri.9461:

Astralporing.1957:

…

I don’t understand how there can be any debate on “If you complete the biggest challange – you get the biggest reward”.

What does the reward have to do with the position of the game mode?

You realize legendary armor is inheretly exclusive! They will never, ever, ever be availabe for the broad playerbase. Just like every other legendary item. We had legendary items for about 5 years now. If you check statistics for players who own at least one legendary item you will see its about 25%.

You are arguing like raids will lock away very demanded items. They are not.
So the people on this thread demanding a change in raids or the system to make it easier for them to get to this item – you belong in this small subset of players who want this new legendary item and who don’t want to raid.

Still think its reasonable?

This is my argument, so I claim to speak for no one else.

But

Legendary gear should NOT be exclusive, not the way legendary gear is right this moment.

This is what legendary gear was like when the game was first released:

Same stats as the widely acquireable exotic gear, fancy graphics.

It was cosmetic. Purely. Cosmetic.

That’s how legendaries were made, designed and placed in the game world.

That’s acceptable, that’s even favourable to what we have now, because the legendary gear did not affect gameplay.

The game did NOT have gear treadmills. Everyone could be just as strong as the next person, only some people would have something shiny that others didn’t have.

THEN, ascended gear was released. One of the worst decisions ArenaNet could have made. They made a gear treadmill. They buffed the stats of legendaries and now, there were stats that were out of the reach of the vast majority of players.

There’s a caveat at this point, in that legendaries were STILL fancy shinies of acquireable gear, they were NOT superior to ascended gear.

Now we have the state of legendaries as they are now. Where legendaries can have their stats changed on the fly at no cost.

That’s kittining horrible. The worst. Even worse than the ascended gear disaster. Now legendaries are superior to every other form of gear available to players, including ascended.

But it didn’t REALLY matter, since so few players would have this massive quality of life improvement. At this time they were still only weapons. Having ONE equippable item be legendary, be able to change your stats on the fly, was not too big of a deal, as the changed stats would still require a ton of other replacement gear for whenever you changed your build.

Then the legendary backpieces were released. NO, this is the worst. This quality of life improvement should be available to everyone.

And now they’re adding a FULL set of legendary armour.

Are you KITTINING ME?

Now, we have a full set of gear that’s able to change stats on the fly if a player changes builds on the fly.

Legendaries were always exclusive. What they did was not. Now they’ve made a gear treadmill, they’ve added one more category of gear that needs to be had to be able to be the ‘best’ in the game. That’s pure bull. Complete. Utter. Bull.

So, unless all players are given the ability to swap stats on their gear, legendaries ARE a huge problem.

Just because other games get away with this kittiny design does NOT make it right.

The biggest rewards should be shiny, not improved ability to play the game. That’s where the problem lies.

OniGiri.9461:

Rednik.3809:

Crinn.7864:

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Then how we got 0 dungeons, 2 fractals and 4 raid wings?

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Emm, what? Difficulty modes serves for widening raid audience and keeping mid and high-end raiding community saturated with fresh blood. Otherwise old model with different difficulty of encounters during a single raid would be enough.

Bringing up dungeons is just a joke since they stated that their won’t ever be any new dungeons.

You do realize that one fractal has about 5 different levels. You have to adjust 5 different difficulty settings, instability composition, mobs, bosses, agony calculation, etc.
A raid wing has 3 to 4 encounters. Most of them are just huge monsters who stand in the middle of an arena and wait for you to hit them.

Id say its pretty clear why its easier to spit out new raids then fractals.

Then Rednik’s point stands. Raids ARE receiving more development time. Objectively so.

castlemanic.3198:

It’s at best hilarious to say that if they make difficulty modes for raids, they can’t focus on other content because THEY HAVE THE TECH AVAILABLE ALREADY. just implement it into a raid and bam, you have difficulty modes. It’s not like they have to do something TOTALLY new like they did when they introduced fractals, they already have tech available to do it. Just work with the available tech, import it into raids with fewer levels, adjust numbers accordingly and bam.

You don’t have any idea what it is like to develop for their engine or how much effort it would take. You can guess all you want, you still don’t know. So you are in no position to suggest that it would not be a stretch.

castlemanic.3198:

Also it’s NOT that huge a leap of development effort if they design a raid from the get go to have difficulty levels. It’s not worth the effort of adding difficulty levels to already present group content as I have already mentioned, but for future raids, design them from the beginning with difficulty options hat already exist in the game, and you won’t need to cut back on other content.

You are right, that if designed from the start, it would be easier to implement (we still don’t know how much easier, only that it would be easier) levels. However, they were never designed or intended to offer difficulty levels, and I agree with that design decision. If you only have one experience that you have to design for, it’s that much easier to make sure it is the best experience you can create. And before you can say it, even with a tiered difficulty setting, it is still easier to design a really great experience, when you only have to design it once.

This is where you have a mistaken identity about this game. It’s still a very casual friendly game. Casual does not mean “bad player” kitten many on this forums are wont to infer. This game was not meant to cater to players who either can’t or won’t play better, it was always supposed to provide a challenge, they are just starting to deliver on that promise.

So yes, those that bought into the game because it was perceived as easy (read casual, still don’t know why people equate easy with casual) will see that it’s identity is changing. Those of us that read into the product we were purchasing, we are just now being delivered the content in the game that was always supposed to be there, the challenge.

You can argue that they want to appeal to as many players as they can, and I can argue that they are, just not with raids which was clearly advertised as Challenging Group Content. So far they have delivered on that. Only time will tell, but I’m pretty sure that this was a well thought and intentional shift in design to meet the original goal of the game. Yes that even means that it was known beforehand that a subset of the players would be disenfranchised by that, quite possibly enough to want to quit playing, and they willing pulled the trigger on it anyway.

Also, there is a noted reason why ‘casual’ can equal ‘bad’ for some people. Because casual players don’t spend as much time in the game as hardcore players, they don’t have as much time spent in the game and thus are seen as not as experienced. While objectively true, it doesn’t take into account a players actual abilities, such as the ability to easily understand the systems of a game, and thus NEED less time than others to become hardcore level ‘good’ at the game. It also doesn’t take into account WHAT that player does with their time in the game. A casual player could very well use a level 80 booster to instantly be geared and leveled for raid content and immediately spend all their time in raids, doing no other content except spend the time getting to the raid portals.

Having easy modes can give casual players the ability to more easily play and get through content with what limited time they have, because they don’t need to die an infinite amount of times to understand and beat a boss. It also, conveniently, helps players who have disabilities or some other reason that they aren’t ‘as good’ as other players. Giving those players a bone by having a difficulty option that presents atleast the ability for them to try raids and still have a chance of completing it is a good thing, because disabled players, or players not as naturally attuned to gameplay like GW2 has, also deserve love in the form of content they can participate in.[/quote]

Yes, having easier content can be helpful for those people who have issues. But it is OK to provide an experience that does exclude them. That may very well be where we differ, I think that exclusivity is OK, and apparently there are those that don’t. In which case, we will just have to play the waiting game, as I firmly believe that providing niche content is healthy.