Guild Wars 2

Torolan.5816:

IndigoSundown.5419:

- snip -

He called it the equivalent of raids from other games if I remember well, not that there would be raids in general.

I didn’t quote him as saying there would be raids. He said, “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.” Thus, yes, raid equivalents. This means that players who bought the game expecting raid-like content were justified in doing so.

Then the players who bought GW2 waiting for a raid did not really pay attention to the receptions it initially got:

GamesRadar’s Hollander Cooper wrote in his review:

“Everything a massively-multiplayer online RPG should be. It’s original, massive in scope, and wonderfully social, removing many of the gates that held back the genre in the past. Being able to play with friends regardless of level or class is a gigantic leap forward, and one that, when mixed in with all of the other innovations in the genre, make Guild Wars 2 one of the best MMOs currently available.”

Computer and Video Games Games Editor Andy Kelly:

“An entertaining MMO that combats the dreaded grind with smart design.”

Call it as you want, playing with your friends regardless of their abilities and/or level is pretty much the opposite of raids. Anyone wh played regularly while waiting 3+ years for a raid surely is much more patient than I am.

People played dungeons, fractals, and took breaks. Who do you think the guilds were who play-tested the raids? Also, one of those quotes does not address hard, instanced content, or any lack thereof. The other refers to down-leveling, which means that you can play with your friends in the open world, or in the dungeons. That a reviewer spoke in error does not surprise me. They do it all the time.

Torolan.5816:

The failure in this reasoning is that raids are intruders to the game, there was no justified waiting for raids. I may not remember every word and sound of it, but I really remember how excited I was when I heard that GW2 will be raid free and totally novel in its art of storytelling, including home invasion. Anet was forced to backpeddle quickly on point 2, but they stayed strong in point 1 until last year. And there was justified waiting for harder content, I agree with that. Anet also delivered said content, but people could not be brought to the idea to abandon their zerker toons and were slaughtered relentlessly by karka dishing out retaliation and ducking out of mega damage attacks. worst of all was though that they were forced to play with Joe Gamer, something no reputable pro gamer can actualyl do without being ashamed as it seems.

If this has brought good or bad things to GW2 is up to Anet, but I think the fact that raids have “intruded” the game can´t be disputed. Sadly the winner is writing history.

I don’t know what you’re on about. I enjoy raiding. My guild enjoys raiding. But none of us are elitists. How could we be? We aren’t even any good! We’ve only killed VG so far! We raid once a week, if enough people show up. It’s really no big thing.

Raids and raiders are not “intruders” in this game. I don’t dispute the fact that some players are obnoxious no matter what content they’re into, but this is not an issue specific to raiders.

AliamRationem.5172:

Torolan.5816:

The failure in this reasoning is that raids are intruders to the game, there was no justified waiting for raids. I may not remember every word and sound of it, but I really remember how excited I was when I heard that GW2 will be raid free and totally novel in its art of storytelling, including home invasion. Anet was forced to backpeddle quickly on point 2, but they stayed strong in point 1 until last year. And there was justified waiting for harder content, I agree with that. Anet also delivered said content, but people could not be brought to the idea to abandon their zerker toons and were slaughtered relentlessly by karka dishing out retaliation and ducking out of mega damage attacks. worst of all was though that they were forced to play with Joe Gamer, something no reputable pro gamer can actualyl do without being ashamed as it seems.

If this has brought good or bad things to GW2 is up to Anet, but I think the fact that raids have “intruded” the game can´t be disputed. Sadly the winner is writing history.

I don’t know what you’re on about. I enjoy raiding. My guild enjoys raiding. But none of us are elitists. How could we be? We aren’t even any good! We’ve only killed VG so far! We raid once a week, if enough people show up. It’s really no big thing.

Raids and raiders are not “intruders” in this game. I don’t dispute the fact that some players are obnoxious no matter what content they’re into, but this is not an issue specific to raiders.

I am not talking about elitists, that is another story. I am also aware that the raid team works independently of the other team.

Dungeons were supposed to be raids, with the explorer modes being the hard, instanced content people were asking for. That it did not work was both the fault of Anet in how they designed them and the fault of players to exploit that. The main selling point of GW2 was still that you could reach everything at your pace, avoiding the usual mills in many MMOs. Now take a look at how raids are supposed to work, even the most casuals of approaches ask you to train, train, train. Runs very contrary to the initial selling point of GW2 if you ask me.

Of course philosophies change over time, and Anet obviously chenged his mind over and over again. So raids were added at a much later time, intruding the casual approach of vanilla GW2 with a long training phase and a need for special equipment. You can also say this about fractals to a certain degree, they also nailed you down for about an hour initially. But the difference is that there are very, very easy fractals which enabled you to get the ascended backpiece even if you were basically playing with your nose instead of your hands.

Gilgamesh VII.8690:

BrotherBelial.3094:

But ANet dose not want you to take a brake. If you do you wont spend money in the gem store. I do enjoy people telling people to go play something else, if everyone did that GW2 would be quite empty. The lack of content is hurting everyone. But it’s probably hurting ANets pocket more.

Anet did this to them self’s because they couldn’t figure out what was the best way to deliver content and is still trying to figure it out 3+ years later, but that is up to Anet to find out. Maybe they are working on content to be drip feed into the game for a few months when LS3 arrives. I hope they figure out what’s the best balance of delivering content during LS3.

If Anet wanted me to spend real money for gems they got to try better with the gem store pricing.

I agree, some of the prices in the gem store are way over what I feel things are worth. When they had that big sale where prices where more reasonable, I jumped on the snow owl mail carrier when I was 35 gems, to me that is what it was worth, seeing as you see I for a few seconds when you send or receive mail. Not really worth the 300-400 gems they ask for.

And now we’ve come full circle. For months and months and months, certain posters filled this forum with rants about how they wanted an expansion. How they wanted raids. How they were willing to put up with long downtime of no content. And how they would stick around for those things.

ANet listened and gave them what they wanted.

Now here we are: Content drought. Raids. Expansions. Questions about whether the game is dying. If ANet’s forgotten their casual base. And those players who demanded this situation in the first place are nowhere to be found.

Has ANet forgotten their casual base? No, and they’re doing everything they can to regain them.

It remains to be seen if that happens.

Waiting for content is a habit in this game, you should be used to it now.

Only 3 months to wait to get one episode of the season 3 :’D

Torolan.5816:

Dungeons were supposed to be raids, with the explorer modes being the hard, instanced content people were asking for.

That one sentence about “raid equivalents” is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that dungeon explorables were to be the same thing as raids in other games. It means they were to take the raids place, but do it the Anet way. Just like the damage/control/support was the Anet equivalent of holy trinity, and pushing the sustain on each individual player regardless of class was their equivalent of healers.

If you look at the quotes, you will see that they still expected huge majority of their players to do this “hard instanced content”. They were never really meant to be anything like 5-man raids, that’s just a misconception some players had.

Torolan.5816:

That it did not work was both the fault of Anet in how they designed them and the fault of players to exploit that.

No, that it “didn’t work” that way, was the result of them never being intended to work that way.

Torolan.5816:

The main selling point of GW2 was still that you could reach everything at your pace, avoiding the usual mills in many MMOs. Now take a look at how raids are supposed to work, even the most casuals of approaches ask you to train, train, train. Runs very contrary to the initial selling point of GW2 if you ask me.

Indeed, and that is a great disappointment.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

And now we’ve come full circle. For months and months and months, certain posters filled this forum with rants about how they wanted an expansion. How they wanted raids. How they were willing to put up with long downtime of no content. And how they would stick around for those things.

ANet listened and gave them what they wanted.

Not quite. The people that wanted an expansion, and people that wanted raids were separate groups. With the second one not being that big compared to the first one. When Anet decided they could do an expansion, they also apparently thought that making it with the second group in mind will kill two birds with one stone. Unsurprisingly however, it turned out that the first group in general didn’t want raids, and wasn’t interested in too hard a challenge either. Nor were they really after mass zerg hour-long metas.

Anet have just completely misjudged their community. And, looking at their current activities, they continue to do so (even if they have started to realize that something is wrong, and even what some of those things are, as shown by the last changes to HoT zones).

Came here to support this message. I don’t know what GW2 is doing, but I know that they have 200 staff. If the only updates are still them finishing what they promissed with expansion pack, then that staff is not used efficiently.

I’m in FFXIV now. Patches, just like GW2 are every 3 months. Except that each patch 100% features:
- new dungeons
- new story (about 2H of it, so kind of similar what LS2 was like)
- new sidequests

then every 6 months we’re rotating between (every 3 months it’s casual content, every 3 months it’s hardcore content)

- casual 24 man raid (meant to be pugged)
- new hardcore raids (with easy mode equivalents for those of us that just want the story)
- new PvP mode

then every patch we also see them trying something new, so far from the small things in the new expansion we have gotten (the new expansion has launched only like a month or two before HoT BTW):
- Lords of Verminion (a strategy mini game, where you can use your minions to battle other peoples minions)
- Aquapolis (an easy mode dungeon that has a 50% chance to spawn from maps that you can gather. The allure is that it has 7 floors, but each floor is a 50%/50% chance to unlock. On each floor there’s some enemies and a chest. The chest rewards you with costumes, minions and crafting materials. As the loot table is random you can get very rare minions in there. I have some friends that are absolutely addicted to it.)
- Diadem. A timed map where you can enter with your 8-man party and either kill monsters, or gather. I love going there to fish.

and now we’re waiting for a mid patch (it’s not a full patch, but something that comes in the middle of patches. Tends to have some minor content such as a questline) as this time they’re essentially introducing solo fractals. That’s kind of what it is. It’s a dungeon that at the start will have 50 floors. You can enter it with friends or alone and the difficulty will scale. The primary reward are pretties (glowy weapons and the likes).

This MMO, while being sub based, has a smaller developer team (around 40 people that actually work on the game) and is less popular than GW2, but is capable of churning out far more content. It’s old school combat with vertical progression, so I can’t exactly recommend it to GW2 fans, however I wanted to make an example of just how much content they put in in comparison.

My whole guild outright quit on HoT. It was a major change in catering. And I don’t think we were the only ones. I honestly don’t know how they can fix this either. Suppose the next expansion pack focus on same content as vanilla and make HoT fully skippable. That’s the only way that I can see those that did not like HoT coming back.

No, they have not. Almost the entire game is casual-friendly. The most recent updates (raids) are an exception, and all ANET has done is finally given those who want difficult content something to do.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Vayne.8563:

But you’re also making the assumption that all casual players are cut from the same cloth. I can assure you they’re not. Some casual players like the stuff introduced in HoT. Some are still working on collections or achievements, or a legendary weapon.

One casual player in my guild refuses to buy mats on the trading post and simple gathers all the time on multiple toons to get the mats she needs for a legendary. She thinks somehow buying them is cheating. I don’t get it myself, but you know, to each his/her own.

Casual people may not raid, but some casuals do enjoy WvW occassionally (or Edge of the Mists) and they can enjoy that more now with more going on there. And yes, there are casual PvPers too, that can still PvP and enjoy changes there.

And on top of that there are plenty of little new events and achievements for casuals to bang away at.

Sure it’s not new zones. Sure it’s not the living story, which is coming.

But to say that there’s nothing at all for casuals to do…well there’s plenty of casuals in my guild who are here since launch that still have stuff to do simply because they haven’t even gotten to everything yet.

Some of them have only recently discovered fractals now that they’re so much easier and they do those for the first time.

Well I’m a realist and i can say with all certainty our guild has dwindled and we were 300 plus strong. You can defend the path they’ve taken and many have but lets be realistic the hardcore they spent weeks and months developing has always in every MMO had a minority of players using that content. If they would have spent all their time developing the same type of content that got people here in the 1st place we would be much better off. Anyone online can make a case for any point they choose but this is pretty bloody inescapable, the majority of players bought the game to play what was advertised and they didn’t sign up for developer of the day content.
Had this game stayed it’s course we would likely be deep into the 2nd expansion and had a sheep ton more area to explore, quests and bosses to go up against and a whole lot more players still playing.
One important thing to remember Vayne is this, you may still have the same amount of players in your guild, though i seriously doubt that but i have no way of knowing, but I’ve watched ours dwindle in half due to the course management took the game in. That is infuriating and was totally unnecessary had they stuck to the original manifest and concept i doubt highly most who stepped into this 3 years ago under it’s premise would have bolted. Raids have not worked in over a decade, certainly not for the majority of games produced, and that along with many other things should have been left where they belong. I guarantee for every raid player there are a hundred who only long for the content that made GW2 so appealing in the 1st place.

Presumably though you’re in a casual guild, rather than a hard core guild. So casual guild attendance falls (this happens to my guild too, until the new content comes out and like magic everyone shows up again) and hard core guilds, who had languished before start coming back to life.

But my guild had the same patterns every single time there was a content drought. People didn’t leave forever. They came back when there was content they want to play.

The problem is people believe MMOs should have enough new content for them all the time, and it’s not a reasonble expectation and no MMORPG I’ve seen, certainly no themepark MMO, has managed to do this.

You get 3-5 months out of a WoW expansion. I’m pretty sure those who played it got about that much out of HoT.

The fact that WvW got some much needed love and the fact that PvP now has some action is good for those groups of players. The fact that raiders got some love is good for them. It’s bad for me, and not particularly great for my guild.

But I can guarantee you as before, my guild will be playing full time when LS 3 comes out, because it’s what we do.

How do I know? Because I talk to people taking a break playing other games or doing house repairs or whatever.

Ryou.2398:

People are never happy with what they got are they? Yea I get you may not have time to raid and what not, but if you cannot set an hour or so to raid ever, then I dont think your ever going to find an mmo that can do that, to casual is just not meant for an mmo, its meant to last you, why do people feel the need to finish it within a week? Thats what single player games are for.

And it isnt hardcore, this is hardcore to you? Really? Because it requires groups? Thats not hardcore at all, that is simply an mmo design, the point of mmorpgs in the first place was for group content.

The very principle of GW2 was to be different and more casual-friendly then any other MMO on the market – dungeons instead of raids kitten called smaller group content, no trinity BS, living story and constantly changing world (see what they did promise few years ago in their ads about GW2)

Yes, raids are hardcore content because you need to fill specific roles like healer and kiter without those you are f-ed. You need to exacly know how to fight bosses otherwise you wont get picked to (or you will be kicked from) the group. You are forced to do max DPS all the time and one single mistake from anyone equals partywipe and because of that you wont take new and unfamiliar people to raids.

If I want hardcore content i feel more like playing my sealclubbing lvl 30 toon in DS2 against Lud and Zallen again just because if i’ll fail it’s only my own fault and not any other person. And even reward is better then in GW2…

They focused on raid (yeah its still only one) for 5 months now ? What about something less demanding so that people that don’t like to macro for 2h straight will also get, something new to do ? Nothing, better to design outfits and gliders and create content for 5% of playerbase.

Most of these complaints about HoT seem ill-informed.

The “zerg” is only a thing in the AB boss meta and Dragon’s Stand. VB and TD are strongly anti-zerg to the point where it’s more or less impossible to succeed this way. I believe the “poor scaling” on the boss events in these zones is a direct attempt to counter this mentality, in fact.

The event cycles leading up to the boss meta appear to have been toned down to solo content, for the most part. This even includes event cycles ending in legendary bosses, such as Jaka Itzel or Faren’s Flyer event chains in VB. The night cycle is still a bit tricky to solo (defending camps, for instance), but given that this is merely preparation for a boss that isn’t intended to be solo’d, it makes a bit of sense, doesn’kitten

If you’re going to complain about something, you should probably have at least put in enough time with the subject to understand how it works. These are not “zerg” maps, unfriendly to solo players and small groups. Only DS works that way. It’s time to stop the insanity with players who don’t spend any time in HoT complaining about it in terms that don’t make the slightest bit of sense.

It is a gimmick game based, play how Anet wants and u become a insta elite.
Gimmick equals to profit and wins.

Depends on your definition of casual.

Some casual gamers come and go from games depending on where the most new content is that interests them. But they’ll return to other games when they see content that interests them and they’re done with the game they’re currently playing.

That’s me. I play a variety of different games, most aren’t adding new content anymore (Sims 2, Sims 3, Dynasty Warriors 8, Mass Effect series). I just bought new content for Sims 4. So I’ve been playing that more often than not. I’ve also been playing Facebook games.

I log into GW2 every day. The daily log in rewards are useful to me. But I haven’t played in a while now. But they haven’t lost me as a customer yet. I’ve got enough other games that I play that I can patiently wait for them to release more content.

So maybe expand on just which casual gamers you mean.

Casual? Time available to play?
Casual? Degree of difficulty?

Squads help in both, you can jump in one a get’r done and/or if something is hard, do like you always did in Tyria, just zerg the content anywhere in the open world game. Can’t get any easier than zero risk with 100% guaranteed reward.

The fear of HOT is legendary here.

Well I am sure there will be some cheering, but, I’m not waiting. Found a few more MMO’s out there that are quite fun. Can’t say I’m gone for good tho, because, when the next expansion comes out, I’ll check it out, see if it’s worth coming back for, so I’ll poke in from time to time. Anyway, to all the people that love raids and the new direction of Anet end game, I hope that you all play and stay here for many, many, years to come, in fact, I hope you love it so much, that you never leave.

Haven’t really done metas after the big changes in April. However, I was suffering a 2-3s skill delay and couldn’t do WvW at all. So PvE it was.

After going through a single run of Auric basin, doing events, and killing the octovine, I found myself holding 30 exalted keys even after opening the ones from events and netted several hundred Aurilium.

Similar rewards for Tangled Depths; getting a lot of Chak acid and still endlessly opening the nodes.

It is just so much easier than before. Not complaining at all.

Yunielesca.2850:

Waiting for content is a habit in this game, you should be used to it now.

Only 3 months to wait to get one episode of the season 3 :’D

I hope that this story will be like invasions of Molten Alliance did in S1 or Scarlet’s invasion on LA ?
Those were best times in game so far, now instead of this we get constant dialog. (hearts of talk story ftw) Mission that lasts 40 minutes has 10 minutes of combat, 20 minutes of dialog and 10 minutes waiting for NPC to move their butts to next spot and as a bonus you get either DC or a bug forcing you to start this all over again.

June is nearly end and so far i didn’t see anything new and worthwhile added (those 1minute events not counted because its a one-time thing and noone anymore bothers with it) except one single raid…

Everything that has changed was about making little easier with couple events that came with HoT DLC but those are about 8 month old events – nothing new has been added for those who don’t give a squig about a raid (did i forget about Shatner ? Nah it’s just little changed Shatner still not worth doing – so moving on)

With the introduction and heavy focus on raids, they have changed the focus of end game in GW2 entirely.

I’m gonna get a little cynical here, but it is past time for it. The current direction of the game needs to change.

Where this was once a game that was focused on providing the ultimate ever changing experience for open world gamers (a living world), it is now focused on who can get the most damage out of ascended gear and builds.

It isn’t about building community any longer. It is about enticing raiders from other games to come to GW2 and build the same easy to maintain end game here that exist in those other games.

It isn’t about tearing down walls and giving everyone a fun community centered experience any more. It is about a “this is my part of the game and that is yours – now just go back to it and shut up” mentality.

In my opinion, the addition of raids has been anything but positive for this game’s community. The sad part is, they could have put the same innovative spirit into raids that they did with the rest of the game at launch, and they chose not to – solely to make marketing to raiders from other games easier (imo).

I think, before they even consider putting out another raid, they need to think hard about the way raiding fits into the overall GW2 picture. It can still be a positive influence on the game – it can still offer the difficult experience that many want – but it needs to take a different form (or better yet, multiple tiered forms) that fits with the community focus they instilled in the game day one (and for the 3 years that followed).

The alternative is potentially losing the interest of many many (potentially the majority of) players. I know that sounds alarmist, but the reality is the game was successful at launch primarily because it offered something different from those other games out there. The way raids were introduced is a huge step backwards and is offputting to many people.

webtoehobbit.4201:

Has ANet Forgotten the Casual Gamers

“Casual” is subjective but please remember the last 2 content additions also included the bandit bounties which are casual content that is actually a lot of fun!.

The greater problem i think they are not seeing is as they increase the difficulty of the raid content they divide the community into what I would call “Casuals” and Elitists" and to be honest it’s ripping apart some of the medium size guilds due to the “Clicks” of players who they refuse to allow into their raid parties solely based on the fact that they are unsure of a new comer’s experience.

Doam.8305:

Vayne.8563:

Think of it this way. For years they’ve focused on us and the hard core guys have gotten nothing. Content takes time to make. So they are filling in the blanks now. But next month, most likely. the LS begins again, a new fractal is coming, it just can’t all be done at once.

That’s neat and all but they’ve built and established a base of casual players over the course of three years the game literally grew and became a name due to those casual bits.

After waiting so long those that would leave the game over lack of hardcore content have left and those that remain and fought for it would have never left the game regardless after such a lengthy space of time.

Switching it up now doesn’t bring back the ones who grew tired of playing and it doesn’t retain those who spent years asking for it. It does however knock out a good portion of those who flocked to the game during the early years.

There are people that will leave and their are people who will take anything and remain the casuals have been catered to yes over the first three years so they had no legit reason to complain then everything changed for them with HoT. However they are not right now because Anet shifted their focus and experience something they want no part in fo the first time in this game many have left. The longer they are gone the higher chance they won’t return as is the case with anything when someone decides to take a break from it.

pretty much what the hardcore community use to have is dungeons and high level fractals but those arent really hard to begin with also i think the raid team is much more efficient at bringing out content cause the raid content isnt that much compared to a single Hot map but what makes it last is its toughness and at release the casual pve side got 4 new maps with a kitten ton of events might i add and the hardcore got raids which they just finished now. the hard core is just getting what was promised to them like casuals except for legendaries but that effects everyone

Vayne.8563:

Think of it this way. For years they’ve focused on us and the hard core guys have gotten nothing. Content takes time to make. So they are filling in the blanks now. But next month, most likely. the LS begins again, a new fractal is coming, it just can’t all be done at once.

I’m not going to defend the content drought, but to be fair, this is a good point. Been getting easy/casual content for 3+ years, can give the more hardcore something

Bringing raids into the game changed the community and how people interact with one another – and not for the better.

A lot of people are waiting to see what they do next – whether they continue to develop content that divides the population or they get back to the inclusion and community that made this the best MMO – and among the best video games – ever.

For many, the direction they go with future raid design will determine whether or not this is the right game for the communities they have built. I know that sounds alarmist – and that is on purpose. The further down the road of us and them (or “hardcore and casual” or “raider and non raider”) they go, the worse this will get.

The exclusionary nature of raids has split the PVE community – and many guilds – in ways that simply are not good for the long term enjoyment of this game (or at least the game many of us bought 4 years ago).

I’m not saying the game will die – just that it is no longer being developed for the same audience that made the game a success – and that is sad.

Frediosz.2718:

Moving from easy content to hardcore content is moving from one extreme to another. They’ve made a terrible mistake by not finding “the golden middle” between those. And its a bridge that they’ve crossed and burned behind them.

This topic shows what its only the tip of the iceberg – two different sides, one small and demanding hardcore stuff and second little bigger demanding stuff that is normal.
ANet simply lack resources to satisfy both simultaneously and focusing on one will result a kittenstorm from other + decrease of playerbase.

Well done.

Agreed, I definitely feel like there was a big jump between core Tyria and even Dry Top/Silverwastes. Then add HoT maps to the mix.

Frediosz.2718:

Ryou.2398:

People are never happy with what they got are they? Yea I get you may not have time to raid and what not, but if you cannot set an hour or so to raid ever, then I dont think your ever going to find an mmo that can do that, to casual is just not meant for an mmo, its meant to last you, why do people feel the need to finish it within a week? Thats what single player games are for.

And it isnt hardcore, this is hardcore to you? Really? Because it requires groups? Thats not hardcore at all, that is simply an mmo design, the point of mmorpgs in the first place was for group content.

The very principle of GW2 was to be different and more casual-friendly then any other MMO on the market – dungeons instead of raids kitten called smaller group content, no trinity BS, living story and constantly changing world (see what they did promise few years ago in their ads about GW2)

Yes, raids are hardcore content because you need to fill specific roles like healer and kiter without those you are f-ed. You need to exacly know how to fight bosses otherwise you wont get picked to (or you will be kicked from) the group. You are forced to do max DPS all the time and one single mistake from anyone equals partywipe and because of that you wont take new and unfamiliar people to raids.

If I want hardcore content i feel more like playing my sealclubbing lvl 30 toon in DS2 against Lud and Zallen again just because if i’ll fail it’s only my own fault and not any other person. And even reward is better then in GW2…

They focused on raid (yeah its still only one) for 5 months now ? What about something less demanding so that people that don’t like to macro for 2h straight will also get, something new to do ? Nothing, better to design outfits and gliders and create content for 5% of playerbase.

Having to play roles from classes isn’t hardcore period, have you wver played city of heroes where you had tons of classes with specific roles? That game was more casual then this one, you really should rethink that statement, filling roles and working together has nothing to do with hardcore.

BrotherBelial.3094:

They have added super casual content with the Krytan bandits bounties, and the layline events. How more casual do you want it? Buy yeah, I get what you mean.

That barely qualifies as “content” and you know that.

Want casual content? Play Central Tyria.

Frediosz.2718:

Moving from easy content to hardcore content is moving from one extreme to another. They’ve made a terrible mistake by not finding “the golden middle” between those. And its a bridge that they’ve crossed and burned behind them.

This topic shows what its only the tip of the iceberg – two different sides, one small and demanding hardcore stuff and second little bigger demanding stuff that is normal.
ANet simply lack resources to satisfy both simultaneously and focusing on one will result a kittenstorm from other + decrease of playerbase.

Well done.

The golden middle in other games is usually something like dungeons/fractals, which we saw how anet has treated those since release, even more poorly at the start of the expansion.

As well as for open areas that are usually separated by levels, but in gw2 you’re thrown from silverwastes to verdant brink, it’s not an easy transition for casuals especially if the content was designed with elite specs in mind and yet players don’t have access those as soon as you enter it.

I think they needed to take the extra step of making VB more of an introduction zone, ramp up the difficulty near the end of it into AB and TD. They built the entire base game to be casual friendly, and now they want to switch it up and go more difficult, fine, but you need to ease your players into it through content. Your fresh 80’s should be spending time in dungeons and fractals before getting raids shoved to them.

It’s obvious that Anet is not good at multi tasking, they’ve thrown 70+ devs into the next expansion, 6 into raiding? which is about the only content coming out lately, like 5 into living story but only just recently not at the start of the expansion which they should have done, a handful on wvw, a handful in spvp, a handful on fractals probably. Now the casual content which was basically living stories is suffering.

P.S before someone says it, I had no problem with the difficulty, played games like everquest which this game is a cakewalk to, plus my reaper ripped everything to shreds.

In Marvel Heroes a Dev just posted that only 2% of the playerbase ever touches
their raids, and that they will not create any more raids, and instead think about
to bring out solo versions of the old raid instances so that all players will be able
to have a look on that content.

But hey .. ANet always did quite the opposite then everybody else, and when other
games cancel raids they suddenly think its a good idea to go all for raids, while NOT
having them in the beginning was something that attracted quite alot of players.

Or maybe NCSoft just told them : hey .. Wildstar is such a big success .. do what they
do or you are fired :p

They reason they have been focusing so much on the “hardcore” audience as of late is because there was next to no content for them to begin with, so they had to fill that hole from top-to-bottom. However, now the entire raid is complete, so they should get back to providing content for their dominant player-base.

I don’t see a content drought because the April patch has made a number of areas of the game I never had any interest in … interesting. But I’m a filthy casual and didn’t grin & bear it in the weeks after HoT released to burn through that content.

Ryou.2398:

Having to play roles from classes isn’t hardcore period, have you wver played city of heroes where you had tons of classes with specific roles? That game was more casual then this one, you really should rethink that statement, filling roles and working together has nothing to do with hardcore.

Yeah, especially that one single mistake either from healer, tank or not high enough dps equals partywipe/fail. (seen this now at least 50 times when one mistake and playtime’s ogre – even on 100% organised runs)

And yes, i’ve played D&D Online for a very long time i know how this stuff works, even too well – no thanks.

Bit if you think it’s easy then run me through next time you are going on raid, i’ll be gladly a burden for you to bear – i dare you.

Next thing you’ll tell me that its achivable to solo raid ?

Anyway this doesn’t change fact that in last 8months there was nothing added except for raid – one single raid.

Frediosz.2718:

Anyway this doesn’t change fact that in last 8months there was nothing added except for raid – one single raid.

Your fact is not factual.

Xenesis.6389:

~snip~

It’s obvious that Anet is not good at multi tasking, they’ve thrown 70+ devs into the next expansion, 6 into raiding? which is about the only content coming out lately, like 5 into living story but only just recently not at the start of the expansion which they should have done, a handful on wvw, a handful in spvp, a handful on fractals probably. Now the casual content which was basically living stories is suffering.

P.S before someone says it, I had no problem with the difficulty, played games like everquest which this game is a cakewalk to, plus my reaper ripped everything to shreds.

If you are going to throw around guesses on number of Devs working where, at least try to make them believable.

There are 120 Devs working on live game, 70 Devs on expansion 2, and 30 Devs on core teams that support both.

They should have committed the same resources to writing Hard Mode.

Valento.9852:

Want casual content? Play Central Tyria.

or better yet.. some other game!

Frediosz.2718:

Ryou.2398:

Having to play roles from classes isn’t hardcore period, have you wver played city of heroes where you had tons of classes with specific roles? That game was more casual then this one, you really should rethink that statement, filling roles and working together has nothing to do with hardcore.

Yeah, especially that one single mistake either from healer, tank or not high enough dps equals partywipe/fail. (seen this now at least 50 times when one mistake and playtime’s ogre – even on 100% organised runs)

And yes, i’ve played D&D Online for a very long time i know how this stuff works, even too well – no thanks.

Bit if you think it’s easy then run me through next time you are going on raid, i’ll be gladly a burden for you to bear – i dare you.

Next thing you’ll tell me that its achivable to solo raid ?

Anyway this doesn’t change fact that in last 8months there was nothing added except for raid – one single raid.

How is that hardcore? And if you organize it right you will be fine, you can make mistakes just not allot. And I didnt say anything about dnd online, but your point about having class roles is not valid in this point.

Blaeys.3102:

Bringing raids into the game changed the community and how people interact with one another – and not for the better.

A lot of people are waiting to see what they do next – whether they continue to develop content that divides the population or they get back to the inclusion and community that made this the best MMO – and among the best video games – ever.

For many, the direction they go with future raid design will determine whether or not this is the right game for the communities they have built. I know that sounds alarmist – and that is on purpose. The further down the road of us and them (or “hardcore and casual” or “raider and non raider”) they go, the worse this will get.

The exclusionary nature of raids has split the PVE community – and many guilds – in ways that simply are not good for the long term enjoyment of this game (or at least the game many of us bought 4 years ago).

I’m not saying the game will die – just that it is no longer being developed for the same audience that made the game a success – and that is sad.

There’s no exclusion going on in my guild. If you want to raid, you can raid. We aren’t progressing quickly (only VG down so far!), but nobody cares. If we have enough people who want to raid, then that’s what we do. Casual raiding at its best. Find yourself a casual guild that raids. Problem solved.

If you have no interest in raids and simply can’t abide development toward areas of the game that don’t interest you, then please remember that this isn’t YOUR game. It’s OUR game. And a lot of us appreciate the addition of raids.

Having said that, I think we could be on the same side here. Ultimately, what I’d like to see is development toward areas of the game I personally have interest in, as well as areas that aren’t my cup of tea. Why? Because this game would be pretty lonely if I had to play it by myself!

This “us vs. them” mentality gets us nowhere.

AliamRationem.5172:

Blaeys.3102:

Bringing raids into the game changed the community and how people interact with one another – and not for the better.

A lot of people are waiting to see what they do next – whether they continue to develop content that divides the population or they get back to the inclusion and community that made this the best MMO – and among the best video games – ever.

For many, the direction they go with future raid design will determine whether or not this is the right game for the communities they have built. I know that sounds alarmist – and that is on purpose. The further down the road of us and them (or “hardcore and casual” or “raider and non raider”) they go, the worse this will get.

The exclusionary nature of raids has split the PVE community – and many guilds – in ways that simply are not good for the long term enjoyment of this game (or at least the game many of us bought 4 years ago).

I’m not saying the game will die – just that it is no longer being developed for the same audience that made the game a success – and that is sad.

There’s no exclusion going on in my guild. If you want to raid, you can raid. We aren’t progressing quickly (only VG down so far!), but nobody cares. If we have enough people who want to raid, then that’s what we do. Casual raiding at its best. Find yourself a casual guild that raids. Problem solved.

If you have no interest in raids and simply can’t abide development toward areas of the game that don’t interest you, then please remember that this isn’t YOUR game. It’s OUR game. And a lot of us appreciate the addition of raids.

Having said that, I think we could be on the same side here. Ultimately, what I’d like to see is development toward areas of the game I personally have interest in, as well as areas that aren’t my cup of tea. Why? Because this game would be pretty lonely if I had to play it by myself!

This “us vs. them” mentality gets us nowhere.

I think we probably are on the same side here. I think raids can be an ongoing part of the game – but they need to be developed with a broader audience in mind. No other successful MMO incorporates raiding with such a limited scope. They understand that a range of difficulties or entry points is needed to properly give PVE players the raiding experience.

I also think you may have taken the “us vs them” comment incorrectly. What I’m saying is that we – both in the game and on these forums – are already seeing this happen. Just look at this very thread. You have someone – just a few posts before yours – saying that players looking for a casual experience should “play a different game.” That is the “us vs them” attitude and atmosphere that raiding in its current form has brought to GW2.

Compare that to the atmosphere in the months after the game’s launch – and for most of the game’s life, and I don’t think you can say that raiding – in its current form – has been good for the game.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard (seen) ‘play a different’ game a lot, and most of it before Raids were introduced. It seems to be a stock reply when opinions are not aligned.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Xenesis.6389:

~snip~

It’s obvious that Anet is not good at multi tasking, they’ve thrown 70+ devs into the next expansion, 6 into raiding? which is about the only content coming out lately, like 5 into living story but only just recently not at the start of the expansion which they should have done, a handful on wvw, a handful in spvp, a handful on fractals probably. Now the casual content which was basically living stories is suffering.

P.S before someone says it, I had no problem with the difficulty, played games like everquest which this game is a cakewalk to, plus my reaper ripped everything to shreds.

If you are going to throw around guesses on number of Devs working where, at least try to make them believable.

There are 120 Devs working on live game, 70 Devs on expansion 2, and 30 Devs on core teams that support both.

Ok thanks for pointing that out and making it look even worse. All that dev power and they bring out wings every 2 weeks.

They stopped living story jan of last year, the rest of the year was basically to work on the expansion with a couple events. Then the expansion comes out and they had no one on living story for 6 months until the legendary team got shifted to it in april. A huge chunk of their staff is working on the next expansion before this one is even done.

So am I really wrong in saying they can’t multi task properly?

What? Raid wings every two weeks?? No one working on Living Story until the 6 Devs from Legendaries were shifted there?? So, you are saying only 6 Devs (out of 120 + some fraction of 30 at times) are working on Living Story? Wow! I don’t know where you get your inside information, but it would be great if you could share some links.

Blaeys.3102:

Bringing raids into the game changed the community and how people interact with one another – and not for the better.

A lot of people are waiting to see what they do next – whether they continue to develop content that divides the population or they get back to the inclusion and community that made this the best MMO – and among the best video games – ever.

For many, the direction they go with future raid design will determine whether or not this is the right game for the communities they have built. I know that sounds alarmist – and that is on purpose. The further down the road of us and them (or “hardcore and casual” or “raider and non raider”) they go, the worse this will get.

The exclusionary nature of raids has split the PVE community – and many guilds – in ways that simply are not good for the long term enjoyment of this game (or at least the game many of us bought 4 years ago).

I’m not saying the game will die – just that it is no longer being developed for the same audience that made the game a success – and that is sad.

Pretty much this. Thank you for posting.

I’m in a guild with over 250 people. A select few run the raids and even they hate the way the game is going with this direction. It really has pulled our guild somewhat apart as people feel excluded. It’s hard to co-ordinate 10 people every week at certain times due to work, commitments, or life in general.

Yes, I understand that a lot of things in the game require commitment, but this one makes it feel exclusionary. I do see that Anet is trying in all aspects to appeal to a player base, but this game mode is very unpopular – at least in the 5 guilds I am involved with.

I think a good method is introducing legendary armor in wvw – IE do triumphant armor reward tracks + other WvW things as a precursor. It requires time, but it also allows for people to commit something that they can immediately jump in. God knows that WvW has the worst rewards and badly needs more things.

That’s just my 2 cents and I know I’m meandering from the main focus now. While I appreciate the design and time they put in the raids, it is frustrating as a semi casual player to see that game mode being given the most attention and also having what will be the only current way to get legendary armor. Arenanet should be aware that legendary weapons and legendary armors are what players value the most in a vast majority of games and with raids being the only way to get legendary armors, it feels very isolating.

Here is also a weird story, but I think pertains to the topic on hand.

We have two very respected officers in the guild. Let’s just call them Sylvia and Erik. Erik is involved with raids regularly and co-ordinates it. Sylvia on the other hand is a bit more casual and leads other events such as World events but loves to WvW. Both are patient, kind, and respectful except for one instance and that involved raiding.

We were running Sabetha for roughly an hour and a half. We were doing well and Sylvia made multiple mistakes throughout. She knew it and we all knew it. Erik was not happy and made a comment that was fairly benign, but Sylvia knew it was directed at her. She broke down in tears on teamspeak. We all felt super bad and Erik apologized. Unfortunately, the damage was done. Sylvia was afraid to talk to him and was super disappointed in letting us down. One could say that Sylvia should have grown thicker skin, but this instance temporarily hurt Sylvia to the point that she would rarely raid anymore and always without Erik leading it.

I do not want this to happen, but I have heard of similar stories. Yes, you can see this in all game modes, but I just wanted to put this out there.

Not sure I’d consider myself casual, as sometimes I do tend to have those all-nighters of trying to grind something.

Yet the recent focus on raids is certainly pushing me away from GW2. I actually started playing GW1 again, lol.

I tried raids a few times and only cleared wing one, afterwards I quit. I haven’t wasted so much time playing a game before as I have trying to clear raid bosses in this game. Furthermore, the majority of toxic players I’ve met, over my thousands of hours playing, has been while doing raids. Yuk.

I really think Anet needs to focus on individual play and derive new group content experiences from that – instead of the obvious other way around.

More content like the Queen’s Gauntlet.

Blaeys.3102:

AliamRationem.5172:

Blaeys.3102:

Bringing raids into the game changed the community and how people interact with one another – and not for the better.

A lot of people are waiting to see what they do next – whether they continue to develop content that divides the population or they get back to the inclusion and community that made this the best MMO – and among the best video games – ever.

For many, the direction they go with future raid design will determine whether or not this is the right game for the communities they have built. I know that sounds alarmist – and that is on purpose. The further down the road of us and them (or “hardcore and casual” or “raider and non raider”) they go, the worse this will get.

The exclusionary nature of raids has split the PVE community – and many guilds – in ways that simply are not good for the long term enjoyment of this game (or at least the game many of us bought 4 years ago).

I’m not saying the game will die – just that it is no longer being developed for the same audience that made the game a success – and that is sad.

There’s no exclusion going on in my guild. If you want to raid, you can raid. We aren’t progressing quickly (only VG down so far!), but nobody cares. If we have enough people who want to raid, then that’s what we do. Casual raiding at its best. Find yourself a casual guild that raids. Problem solved.

If you have no interest in raids and simply can’t abide development toward areas of the game that don’t interest you, then please remember that this isn’t YOUR game. It’s OUR game. And a lot of us appreciate the addition of raids.

Having said that, I think we could be on the same side here. Ultimately, what I’d like to see is development toward areas of the game I personally have interest in, as well as areas that aren’t my cup of tea. Why? Because this game would be pretty lonely if I had to play it by myself!

This “us vs. them” mentality gets us nowhere.

I think we probably are on the same side here. I think raids can be an ongoing part of the game – but they need to be developed with a broader audience in mind. No other successful MMO incorporates raiding with such a limited scope. They understand that a range of difficulties or entry points is needed to properly give PVE players the raiding experience.

I also think you may have taken the “us vs them” comment incorrectly. What I’m saying is that we – both in the game and on these forums – are already seeing this happen. Just look at this very thread. You have someone – just a few posts before yours – saying that players looking for a casual experience should “play a different game.” That is the “us vs them” attitude and atmosphere that raiding in its current form has brought to GW2.

Compare that to the atmosphere in the months after the game’s launch – and for most of the game’s life, and I don’t think you can say that raiding – in its current form – has been good for the game.

I’m not sure I agree. Not because I can only tolerate gameplay suited to my particular tastes, but because I’ve seen other MMOs ruin raiding with multiple difficulty levels (WoW).

Creating additional difficulty tiers will not cure these issues, but intensify them. Rewards will still be locked behind higher tiers of difficulty and friction over skill/experience/gear requirements will still exist along with the perception of elitism. This would also exacerbate the issue of raid development vs. development in other areas, as creating additional difficulty tiers will greatly increase development resource requirements for raids.

Raid content for all sounds great, but what you end up with is a system where all players want the rewards, but are now forced to grind through multiple tiers of the same raid rather than just the one tier.

I suppose if there were some way to prevent that, I could get on board. But I think it was an absolute disaster over in WoW.

Edit: To put it another way: What’s worse than progression raiding? Progression raiding after you’ve already beaten all the bosses on easy mode!

Ryou.2398:

How is that hardcore? And if you organize it right you will be fine, you can make mistakes just not allot.

That’s how.

AliamRationem.5172:

I’m not sure I agree. Not because I can only tolerate gameplay suited to my particular tastes, but because I’ve seen other MMOs ruin raiding with multiple difficulty levels (WoW).

On the contrary. What ruined raiding in WoW was raiding itself . That, and people growing up and finding they’re no longer able to keep up with their former playing regime.
Yes, some decisions Blizzard made certainly contributed to this, but LFR wasn’t one of them. If anything, it only delayed the dying process.

AliamRationem.5172:

Raid content for all sounds great, but what you end up with is a system where all players want the rewards, but are now forced to grind through multiple tiers of the same raid rather than just the one tier.

The solution is to make rewards in raids good enough that noone is feeling a fool for doing them, but not ones that would make people do raids just for them alone. Only then noone would feel like they are grinding through raids.

Just to point this out – I’m part of that group of players that stayed with GW2 for 3 years waiting for this harder content. Many have returned – many others will come.

Just because GW2 didn’t have hardcore content at the start doesn’t mean its entire player base is casuals that dislike that. We’ve waited – and now our day is here.

I don’t think removing raids is the answer. But raiding has changed the nature of the game and it is definitely not for the better.

GW2 is no longer the friendliest community in MMO gaming – something the developers bragged about at one point. If anything, it is now one of the most toxic environments in gaming. That is evident both on these forums and in the game itself.

And, that is because of how they chose to implement raids. When you build PVE content for segments of your population based on difficulty (with no provisions for the rest of your PVE community), you can’t then be surprised when the community fractures into opposing factions based on those segments.

Yes some of this existed with dungeons before, but the current toxicity around group (and even guild) kicks and elitism can be traced back to the introduction of raiding in its current form. Enrage timers (with no other form of raiding) and other similar artificial barriers only serve to punish diversity and limit strategic choices. This causes people to single out those who do not conform to a specific meta or playstyle. In fractals and dungeons (even the hardest ones), these lines were still there, but they were much grayer. In raids, because of enrage timers, its often now “play my way or GTFO.”

Every other raiding MMO out there sees this and makes provisions for it. Whether they use multiple raid tiers (preferred solution) or natural content obsolescence through gear and level treadmills (no a good solution for GW2), they realize (or came to realize over time) he importance of including all PVE players (especially where story is involved). And Astralporing is definitely right about LFR (and more recently flex raiding) in WoW – it didn’t kill game interest. If anything, it justified continue investment in raids – and, based on what my friends say, actually saved the game.

I will say it again. Raiding has changed GW2 – and not for the better. That doesn’t mean raiding (even at its current or higher difficulty) doesn’t have a place in the game.

It just means that locking one aspect of PVE away and saying “this is where the big kids play” is (of course) going to create (actually has created) cliques in the game in ways that other content approaches never did.

GW2 went from one of the friendliest communities around to one where certain groups of player now feel superior to others and are happy to call attention to that through insults, nasty posts on the forums, exclusionary behavior in game and many other ways.

I want the GW2 community we had in the first few years of the game back – and Anet can make that happen. Stop with the walled off content – build a game for everyone and then look at how you can add in tiered difficulty (through levels, challenge motes, achievements, etc) to ensure the game remain engaging for all.