Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet have said in an interview not long ago that they will do something similar to raiding. We don’t really know what it will be, but i can assume how it will look.
They will probably revamp/continue the Zhaitan fight to a raid instance and SPOILER Zhaitan didn’t really die at the end of the personal story. SPOILER

The new raid could first start at ground, Zhaitan flying above and undead swarming the battlefield. There’s cannons, ballistas, golems etc that you can use and different objectives to complete. For example protect the supplies to build ballistas and other weapons to take down Zhaitan, stop the undead armies of zhaitan to reach point A, collect B and load the asura beam gun with B to cause Zhaitan to land on the ground and be weakened for XX seconds and stuff like that.

There could also be ships above you can go to and shoot him from above, fight his smaller dragon minions etc, like how you could in the story and more.

With culling fixed in WvW and soon in PvE i think they can do something like this. Especially if they do a lot of different objectives, make it more intense and huge.

Hopefully they will do this raiding thing with all dragons and bigger bosses in the future.

Edit: They could even turn an entire zone into a raiding boss encounter. That would be really cool.

They’re adding better loot to Champions. I’d say that raiding will be more ‘open world’, gather a force and take down a Champion for a chance at some decent loot. 8 man instances is what a lot of people want though.

Torpian.9142:

They’re adding better loot to Champions. I’d say that raiding will be more ‘open world’, gather a force and take down a Champion for a chance at some decent loot. 8 man instances is what a lot of people want though.

Because those open world Champions have very poor mechanics. It’s very hard to balance out door world bosses for different amounts of people (and different skill/gear levels) while balancing instanced encounters is easier and also leads to far more interesting fights.

Torpian.9142:

They’re adding better loot to Champions. I’d say that raiding will be more ‘open world’, gather a force and take down a Champion for a chance at some decent loot. 8 man instances is what a lot of people want though.

Open world champions are very small bosses. The shatterer etc are not very big either, so those make good meta events. Elder Dragons though and gods have to be instanced, but the current fight with Zhaitan was too god kitten bad and not interesting or fun at all. Large scale raiding with many objectives can fix that.

I am totally down for raid style/difficulty encounters AS LONG AS they still only require five players. Trying to get a group bigger than that to do anything coordinated sucks.

HumaCarrionEater.8254:

I am totally down for raid style/difficulty encounters AS LONG AS they still only require five players. Trying to get a group bigger than that to do anything coordinated sucks.

It kinds of ruins the feeling of a large scale battle if there’s only 5 people.

8 man instanced raids in this game would be pretty awesome if they were properly designed around mechanics and not tank/spank with the occasional 1-shot dodge.

Here’s what raiding needs:
1. Players that use VOIP (vent, teamspeak, mumble, SOMETHING)
2. Bosses with clearly telegraphed abilities. Absolutely no random 1-shots. If hes gonna 1-shot, he better SHOW IT.
3. Interesting mechanics that require a coordinated group effort to execute, such as the lava vats in the dredge fractal, except a little more elaborate.
4. Rewards that make the time and energy spent well worth it.
5. Party size of 8-ish. It’s a number bigger than 5, so it creates a sense of a larger scale group effort to overcome a larger challenge. And it’s not too big (imo) so it won’t turn in to a mindless zergfest like guild bounties, temple bosses, dragon events, etc.

I’m really not invested in that style of immersion. The pain of trying to find reliable competent groups only increases every time the required number of players goes up.

Zoid.2568:

HumaCarrionEater.8254:

I am totally down for raid style/difficulty encounters AS LONG AS they still only require five players. Trying to get a group bigger than that to do anything coordinated sucks.

It kinds of ruins the feeling of a large scale battle if there’s only 5 people.