Guild Wars 2

This is not a thread for people to post whether they are for or against raiding. If you don’t like raiding, go make your own thread talking about how much you hate it. This thread is for people who do like raiding, and would like to discuss how GW2 raiding could be done. Please keep an open mind. Thank you.

I have started threads like this in the past, and indeed so have others. But they always get shot down because people don’t read, and seem uninterested in intelligent discussion. Rather than discuss the pros and cons of raiding in general, I want to discuss specifically how raiding could work in GW2 and the best way it could be implemented in order to enrich the experience of GW2.

This means finding out a few things.
1. What aspect of GW2 would raiding best fall under?
2. What kinds of players might raid?
3. What kinds of rewards could a raid offer that the rest of the game does not offer?
4. Should a raid even have rewards that aren’t offered in other areas?
5. How hard should it be?
6. How many players can/should a raid involve?
7. What exactly would a raid be? (i.e. the activity)
8. What kind of mechanics should there be?

I’m sure there are many other questions, so feel free to post them if you have them. I shall post my personal opinions on these questions.

1. I think raiding would fall best under PvE, specifically guild activities. Ask anyone who does Triple Trouble frequently, you will find that a sense of community and organization go a very long way toward beating a large world boss. Raiding in past games has always been a strongly teamwork-focused activity. Given how easy it is to join a guild, and how guilds themselves lend to better organization, I think it’s only natural. Please see #7 for further clarification.

2. I’ve met many people who want more content like Triple Trouble, and are actually disappointed when patches tend to make the wurms easier to defeat. They like the challenge. They like the comradery. There’s a sense of fellowship that just doesn’t exist in a random megaserver zerg. When many players come together in an organized group, it feels far more fulfilling and important. It gives the content meaning. Players who raid want to feel like they are part of something bigger, yet that thing also must have meaning and a sense of accomplishment.

3. The rewards are a huge issue for this topic. I think most GW2 players will agree that they don’t want to feel forced to raid. This means rewards have to be tediously balanced so they the risk vs effort vs time vs reward are not imbalanced against other parts of the game. I think rewards should be something in line with current guild mission rewards, seeing as I’m personally suggesting they be an actual guild activity. Let’s say 2-3 guild commendations and 2 rares for completion? In addition I believe the boss chest should have a chance to drop an ascended chest, similar to Teq and the wurm.

4. This goes with number 3 really. Raid rewards in GW2 should probably not consist of anything outstanding that could not be obtained in some other way. Most rewards in the game “bleed over” in to other areas. It gives players options and keeps them from being forced in to certain content. I don’t think non-raiders should be forced to raid in order to get things like ascended gear. With that said, I don’t think it’s unfair to throw in exclusive vanity rewards like a tonic or minipet.

5. Raids should be hard. They should be somewhere ahead of normal dungeons. That’s not to say they should be prohibitively difficult, but the whole purpose of a raid is to give the high sense of teamwork and accomplishment. If the raid can be afk auto attacked, then you defeat the whole purpose.

to be continued…

Now we get more in to the specifics I would like to see.

6. I think raids in GW2 would work best with 8-10 players. Or at least have only 8-10 players in a given spot. 40 players split in to 4 groups could work. It becomes exceedingly difficult for groups to organize for Triple Trouble because it requires 90+ people. Then there’s megaserver issues which brings up a whole other discussion point (which I will clarify in #7). Smaller groups are easier to organize, but since this is a raid, we want to create a sense of larger scale struggle that can’t be achieved in the 5 man dungeon setting.

7. Here’s what I think the raid should literally be: A guild mission which (when activated) allows for X amount of participants to enter an instance. The instance is designed much like a dungeon, with a set path (or paths) and a series of 2 or 3 mini bosses before a final boss encounter. Each encounter requires the group to split up and perform specific tasks or roles in order to defeat it. Think of guild puzzle mechanics, and think of the phase mechanics of Teq and the wurm. This would not be something where you could shove the boss in a corner and FGS it down.

Edit: The reason for this to be instanced is to avoid megaserver issues. Currently for Teq and Triple Trouble, you have to “brute-force” your way in to the map because by their very nature, megaflows get hardcapped very fast. There is no option to chose a specific megaflow. There is no option to form a new instance. There isn’t even a proper queue system in place. Here is an example of what we have to deal with just because Anet has tried to make these bosses open world:

This is unacceptable. It is literally “waiting to have fun” which is against the core philosophy Anet had set forth for the game. Instances would solve this issue.

8. The types of mechanics I would like to see in a raid are ones which don’t necessarily hinge on pure DPS. I like the fact that you need condi teams to deal with husks in triple trouble. I also like the way in which you need to stack explosives, gather toxins, or harpoon the wurm in order to make it vulnerable for a burn phase. These things allow for more than just pure zerker stack and kill gameplay.

Examples:
- Adds which routinely interrupt DPSers in melee and are too hard to kill. They would not have defiant. The best way to deal with them would be assign players to knock them back and keep them immobilized or slowed.

- Mobs which spawn far from the boss and try to reach him. If they get too close, the boss becomes stronger.

- A boss which requires you to play Twister in order to damage him. There would be a “disco floor” style arena with large colored squares, and he would periodically call out colors (or have the squares light up). There would be 3 squares at a time, 1 melee range, and 2 at long range. The group would need to split up evenly to fill the squares, or else the boss takes reduced damage, and deals additional damage to the square with the most people in it (damage proportional to the number of excess players).

I may add more ideas later.

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

I think you are tackling raiding from the wrong angle. We can see the sorts of open access events that are now being put into the game instead of raids. We now need the game interface to support those events fully. This means better communications, organization, and command. Lets take all events forward for everyone rather than take a step backwards to recreate raids for a minority.

Stooperdale.3560:

I think you are tackling raiding from the wrong angle. We can see the sorts of open access raid events that are now being put into the game. We now need the game interface to support those events fully. This means better communications, organization, and command. This means multilingual support for the EU servers. If we try to redefine raiding we are taking steps backwards instead of taking the obvious step forward.

There are already ways of communicating: map chat and voice chat programs. Also many servers have their own Mumble, TS, etc. If people don’t use those, no changes to the game will affect that. Change has to occur from the players side.

I do wish Commander tags were just something that you can buy but something earned.

Dusty Moon.4382:

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

People who complain about elitism in regards to raids need to give more detailed feedback on that subject. Otherwise I will continue to believe they don’t know what they are talking about. No one is suggesting raids in GW2 need be gated content.

The reason people are complaining about Teq and Triple wurm is because of their open world implementation, exacerbated by the megaserver system. Casuals and hardcores alike hate it because it is exceedingly difficult to organize a proper raid on those bosses. You can’t pick the instance. You have to brute-force your way in to the map by joining a ferry and right clicking a million times. It also requires an incredibly high number of people to do these bosses (90+) which is far more than a traditional raid, and far more than I or anyone is suggesting. This is also why I suggested that raids in GW2 be instanced like dungeons.

Edit: I deleted part of that because I felt it came off as hostile and I apologize.

Dusty Moon.4382:

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

That would be a problem is the raid was open world.

I would prefer instanced raids.

Xenon.4537:

Dusty Moon.4382:

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

People who complain about elitism in regards to raids need to give more detailed feedback on that subject. Otherwise I will continue to believe they don’t know what they are talking about. No one is suggesting raids in GW2 need be gated content.

The reason people are complaining about Teq and Triple wurm is because of their open world implementation, exacerbated by the megaserver system. Casuals and hardcores alike hate it because it is exceedingly difficult to organize a proper raid on those bosses. You can’t pick the instance. You have to brute-force your way in to the map by joining a ferry and right clicking a million times. It also requires an incredibly high number of people to do these bosses (90+) which is far more than a traditional raid, and far more than I or anyone is suggesting. This is also why I suggested that raids in GW2 be instanced like dungeons.

Finally, the first thing I wrote in my post was that this thread is to discuss specifics of raids themselves, not the general. If you don’t have anything specific to discuss, or simply don’t like raids, this thread isn’t for you.

It is simple – look at LFG for both Fractals and Dungeons. They are full of self-serving Elitism. Having played many games with RAIDS, WoW, Rift, etc. they tend to be magnets for the Elitists. I feel this would end up being the downfall for this game.

I don’t want instanced RAIDS in this game. If you want RAIDS, might I suggest Wildstar?

We have open world RAIDS and I prefer that because you cannot force anyone out of the area for the boss. There are good and bad points to this but it has more positives than negatives. Instanced RAIDS only have negatives.
“This is not a thread for people to post whether they are for or against raiding. If you don’t like raiding, go make your own thread talking about how much you hate it. This thread is for people who do like raiding, and would like to discuss how GW2 raiding could be done. Please keep an open mind. Thank you.”

You want a discussion but not with any negative comments – that is no discussion. That is a flagpole polishing thread….

Dusty Moon.4382:

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

Elitism only happens when two groups of different goals and perspectives want to play together.

If the players who want efficiency play together, and the ones who simply want to play for fun play together (that is, groups of like minded people play together), elitism isn’t an issue.

It’s when peope try and force themselves into a group that they don’t want to play like, as though it’s some right they have, is when it becomes a problem.

I’ll comment on the topic at hand when I get home. I’m on a phone that’s a PitA to type large amounts on.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Xenon.4537:

Dusty Moon.4382:

People are already complaining about the Elitism in this game. Any Raid areas that would be put in this game would only make the elitism worse.

We already have World events like Tequatl and the 3-headed Wurm that takes Coordination and are super-raids.

We don’t need any more – people are complaining about those.

People who complain about elitism in regards to raids need to give more detailed feedback on that subject. Otherwise I will continue to believe they don’t know what they are talking about. No one is suggesting raids in GW2 need be gated content.

The reason people are complaining about Teq and Triple wurm is because of their open world implementation, exacerbated by the megaserver system. Casuals and hardcores alike hate it because it is exceedingly difficult to organize a proper raid on those bosses. You can’t pick the instance. You have to brute-force your way in to the map by joining a ferry and right clicking a million times. It also requires an incredibly high number of people to do these bosses (90+) which is far more than a traditional raid, and far more than I or anyone is suggesting. This is also why I suggested that raids in GW2 be instanced like dungeons.

Finally, the first thing I wrote in my post was that this thread is to discuss specifics of raids themselves, not the general. If you don’t have anything specific to discuss, or simply don’t like raids, this thread isn’t for you.

It is simple – look at LFG for both Fractals and Dungeons. They are full of self-serving Elitism. Having played many games with RAIDS, WoW, Rift, etc. they tend to be magnets for the Elitists. I feel this would end up being the downfall for this game.

I don’t want RAIDS in this game. If you want RAIDS, might I suggest Wildstar?

“This is not a thread for people to post whether they are for or against raiding. If you don’t like raiding, go make your own thread talking about how much you hate it. This thread is for people who do like raiding, and would like to discuss how GW2 raiding could be done. Please keep an open mind. Thank you.”

You want a discussion but not with any negative comments – that is no discussion. That is a flagpole polishing thread….

I don’t want to pay a subscription fee, I’m already heavily invested in GW2, and I hate just about every single aspect of Wowstar, from it’s combat system, to its housing, questing, and graphics. I wouldn’t play it, or any other MMO if you put a gun to my head.

I don’t want this thread turn in to a bigoted fight about elitism. Suffice to say I’m only suggesting raids in GW2 need not be gated against casuals, so long as they are at least willing to press that trait reset button and listen to a commander. If you actually read my suggestions, I pointed out that a variety of builds can and should be encouraged for a fun raid.

Discussion about “I want raids” vs “I don’t want raids” has been done to death. But no one has really discussed mechanics, implementation, or reward systems in depth. This isn’t a “flagpole polishing” thread. I’m trying to reach people who are willing to post more than just “OMFG ELITISM” because that doesn’t help anyone.

First question is what problem are we trying to solve; i.e. what gameplay are we trying to add with these raids. Difficulty? Larger groups? More guild-oriented content? It is easier to design them if we know the objective(s).

You can’t really say you want raids because you like raiding, because it’s too vague on what ‘raiding’ means. (A GW2 raid would never be like an AoC raid, or even a GW1 DoA group.)

There is nothing wrong with 20-25 man raid content which would actually make the whole experience much more enjoyable than the current “meta” which involves ferrying random players into your map while trying to drive out whoever is in the map but unwilling to attend the event.

We can all agree by now tequal, and even more so, the 3 headed wyrm is a mess and generally not worth the headache besides getting the achies done.

On top of it all, we have the extremely kittenty reward system in this game which needs to be addressed before any kind of raid content was put in.

If lets say, tequal and wyrm dropped a guaranteed ascended item, or an ascended item token, they would be taking MUCH more seriously by everyone.

“Raiding” in GW2 would have to fit a niche between open world mega boss type content and guild challenge level. It would have to be difficult enough that 1 party couldn’t do it, but not so difficult that it couldn’t be achieved by say 4-5 parties.

GW1 veterans may remember Vizunah Square where parties of Canthan characters would cooperate with Tyrian characters to defeat mobs of Afflicted. In a way, this was a limited form of “raid”.
The only way I could see it being workable in GW2 would be a form of “Super Fractal”.

Naevius.3185:

First question is what problem are we trying to solve; i.e. what gameplay are we trying to add with these raids. Difficulty? Larger groups? More guild-oriented content? It is easier to design them if we know the objective(s).

You can’t really say you want raids because you like raiding, because it’s too vague on what ‘raiding’ means. (A GW2 raid would never be like an AoC raid, or even a GW1 DoA group.)

We’re not really trying to solve a problem. I like to think this is just for the benefit of “endgame” and to give us all something more to do. By the way I did give some specific suggestions… I realize it’s kind of a wall of text but that’s what happens when you try to be specific. I did my best to organize it.. >.>

Question is why do players want to raid.

There are those who like and want hard team based content but do not really care about rewards, then a 10/25 man fractal system could work (but please no grinding fractal level from 1 though). In fractals low level rewards are the same/similar as high level rewards and nothing exclusive is locked out to those who only do levels lower ones (skins are random from 10+ so no lvl 40 required for rewards).

Then there are those who like the feeling of superiority. For those people hard content is not enough and require some unique rewards/skins/titles to show off. If an easier version of content provides similar rewards as harder content, then these players will just keep doing the easier version, as they are not in it for the content but for the rewards.

It really depends on the playerbase. However looking at how few people do high level fractals i would say a majority of the players are in the latter group, which is really really sad. Also look at complaint threads for any difficult content. Push back from locking rewards behind hard content is huge.

Over the past 2 years, Anet has for the most part trained the playerbase that time not skill is the most important thing in distinguishing pve achievements. Any deviation causes a riot among the “casuals”

Xenon.4537:

3. The rewards are a huge issue for this topic. I think most GW2 players will agree that they don’t want to feel forced to raid. This means rewards have to be tediously balanced so they the risk vs effort vs time vs reward are not imbalanced against other parts of the game. I think rewards should be something in line with current guild mission rewards, seeing as I’m personally suggesting they be an actual guild activity. Let’s say 2-3 guild commendations and 2 rares for completion? In addition I believe the boss chest should have a chance to drop an ascended chest, similar to Teq and the wurm.

4. This goes with number 3 really. Raid rewards in GW2 should probably not consist of anything outstanding that could not be obtained in some other way. Most rewards in the game “bleed over” in to other areas. It gives players options and keeps them from being forced in to certain content. I don’t think non-raiders should be forced to raid in order to get things like ascended gear. With that said, I don’t think it’s unfair to throw in exclusive vanity rewards like a tonic or minipet.

Rewards would be a huge issue for the community. ANet’s demonstrated tendency so far has been to place the most desirable rewards into varied — rather than specific content. If raiders were content with guild mission style rewards, it would be one thing. However, raiding is closely associated in peoples’ minds with the gear progression found in other MMO’s. Even GW fans who did elite instances there had access to exclusive, very desirable rewards.

A good discussion about producing raid-style content in GW2 is going to have to center on whether raid fans are willing to settle for rewards that are not really better than what’s available to non-raid fans doing other (ostensibly easier) content. In other words, is the raid content by itself worthy of doing and repeating if the rewards aren’t up-to-par with what raids offer in other games? In still other words, can raid content be separated from exclusive and better rewards or are these two joined at the hip?

We already have great Raids mate, what else would you call Teq 2.0 and Evolved Wurm ?
Before we talk variety, what we really need is a way to control, spawn your own map, so only those invited in can actually get in, no pesky uplevels and such !!!

RAIDING is not a GW2 “thing”…..why try to make this game like another game?….go play that other game.

Xenon.4537:

This means finding out a few things.
1. What aspect of GW2 would raiding best fall under?
2. What kinds of players might raid?
3. What kinds of rewards could a raid offer that the rest of the game does not offer?
4. Should a raid even have rewards that aren’t offered in other areas?
5. How hard should it be?
6. How many players can/should a raid involve?
7. What exactly would a raid be? (i.e. the activity)
8. What kind of mechanics should there be?

1. PVE, although a wvw enabled one would be good.
2. The more organised pve players with an interest in instanced content.
3. Raid specific items, er tokens, unique skins etc.
4. Yes.
5. You could have a range of difficulties depedant on the specific raid. It would be nice to see “hard” ones though.
6. There should be no lower limit to how many can try it, but I guess 10-40 or so. Again you can vary it based on the specific raid.
7. Could be anything from a big old dungeon romp to a large “open” map filled with content. I must add though, they don’t all have to be insanely long affairs, difficulty and taking six hours to do are not the same thing.
8. Er, fighting and stuff!

They really need to introduce more “hard” content via instances where you can have more control over who you are grouped with.

Xenon.4537:

Now we get more in to the specifics I would like to see.

6. I think raids in GW2 would work best with 8-10 players. Or at least have only 8-10 players in a given spot. 40 players split in to 4 groups could work. It becomes exceedingly difficult for groups to organize for Triple Trouble because it requires 90+ people. Then there’s megaserver issues which brings up a whole other discussion point (which I will clarify in #7). Smaller groups are easier to organize, but since this is a raid, we want to create a sense of larger scale struggle that can’t be achieved in the 5 man dungeon setting.
(snip)
8. The types of mechanics I would like to see in a raid are ones which don’t necessarily hinge on pure DPS. I like the fact that you need condi teams to deal with husks in triple trouble. I also like the way in which you need to stack explosives, gather toxins, or harpoon the wurm in order to make it vulnerable for a burn phase. These things allow for more than just pure zerker stack and kill gameplay. (snip)

Okay, so I’ll start by saying that if early on in GW2 if someone had said raid to me I would have thrown a potato at them. I used to raid lead in thegamethatshallnotbenamed and what finally killed it for me was the gear grind (I had a personal policy of not caring how well geared my raiders were – we were there to have fun and new people were always welcome. Made it much more enjoyable. But then the new expansion came out and the idea of grinding up again to just survive killed me a little on the inside.). Anyway, GW2 has no obligated gear grind (emphasis on obligated). That said I would be totally down for 10 man raids.

Except I think we should stop calling them raids so that people don’t get hung up on the word.

Why not call them Guild Dungeons?

It could work like you said – a guild builds up a queue like a bounty or whatever and then activates it. Non-guildies can join if the guild is too small to finish by themselves. There are other things that can be done to make sure it is not gated to those in small guilds. The purpose is to engage in content that has a higher difficulty than current dungeons with more varied mechanics that allow for a variety of specs so that people can play their favorite class the way they prefer to play. You prefer zerk? Great! Condi more your thing? That’s fine. You’d rather be support? There’s a place for you too.

Loot: Loot is a game-wide problem. I think that discussion deserves it’s own… encyclopedia. Textbook. Documentary. For content like this to work effectively the reward needs to absolutely match the effort while not punishing those who don’t enjoy doing it. In my opinion loot across the game needs to be adjusted. The finer details of this are up to debate and we can all have a (civil) discussion on what that might look like. Part of the problem, in my mind, stems from the issue that gold is a huge focus on end game. It feels easier to farm gold and buy stuff off the tp than to farm up the stuff myself. I would personally rather go get the stuff but it feels like it takes a lot longer than spamming some easy dungeons.

Raid gear: this is what tends to turn people off. Raiding is often associated with a gear treadmill but it doesn’t need to be. Raiding can simply be engaging in a complex event that requires more people than a dungeon group. And in a game like GW2 that is all it should be.

Brother Grimm.5176:

RAIDING is not a GW2 “thing”…..why try to make this game like another game?….go play that other game.

My counter would be that Teq has the same complexity as a 25 man raid in other games. We just aren’t calling it a ‘raid’ because there is no gear check and anyone can join. However it is, at its core, a raid. Which is fine! Raiding is not innately evil. It is not innately toxic. The parameters we put on raiding is what makes it toxic. What is being suggested (at least from my understanding) is a different type of event from what is currently available that is not gated and that anyone can get in on. We have no gear check in GW2 and I hope we never do – because that is one contributor to toxicity in other games.

The point is that there is an opportunity to create something more complex and require a greater group effort than dungeons, but smaller and more precise than Teq and THW. And there’s nothing wrong with that so long as it stays by GW2’s initial core philosophies on pve events – no gear treadmill, no gear check, everyone in to have fun.

For those saying “I don’t want raids go away” why not instead explain what it is exactly about raiding that you do not enjoy? And please be civil – we’re human and it isn’t nice to hurt other people’s feelings. We are all passionate about this game or we wouldn’t be here talking about ways we’d think would make it even better.

Fenrir.3609:

They really need to introduce more “hard” content via instances where you can have more control over who you are grouped with.

Generally I agree but we have to keep in mind the balance between having control and gating people out of content. I’m sure that there is an inbetween there somewhere though. The player base is quite savvy with these things so I’m sure we’d be able to figure something out.

Stooperdale.3560:

I think you are tackling raiding from the wrong angle. We can see the sorts of open access events that are now being put into the game instead of raids. We now need the game interface to support those events fully. This means better communications, organization, and command. Lets take all events forward for everyone rather than take a step backwards to recreate raids for a minority.

I can understand your sentiment. I have not ever led a squad so I don’t know what the UI looks like but I get the impression we need a general overhaul for open world events.

As I said above, I think there is a way to implement raids in a manner that is consistent with the rest of GW2 and it’s core philosophy in a robust and healthy way. Perhaps the greater discussion we should be having is what sort of future events we’d like to see and in general what else we’d like to see implemented in the game as well as how that implementation should take place?

There is no use of Raids in PVE until the “Living” world doesn’t adapts.
Whole of basic Tyria designed to be a solo easymode, so there are no mutch design-work on them.

1. Proper raiding would have to be instanced PvE, you need to choose who is going with you. I’d also like them to bring back PvP raids, where you race a second party to gets to claim the loot, but they seem to be against that.

2. Depends really. On other games, although the top tier of raids are pretty much the toys of the elite 5%, you also have easy raids to introduce the general playerbase into the art of raiding.

3. Stuff like high chances at ascended chests, titles, unique skins, T6 materials. I’d be a bit careful about precursors because ArenaNet has never made a proper raid before and thus I don’t think they’d nail the difficulty of it right for that the first time.

4. Definitely. Raid loot isn’t just for stats. Having raid loot sets you apart, it makes you a raider, and you get you wear that raid loot with pride. To me, raiding is a rite of passage and thus you should be marked as having gone though that rite.

5. I don’t quite like the 4+ hour raids you get in some games. The window to organise them between guildies gets real slim and not everyone gets to play 4 hours straight. I’d think something which lasts <1 hour in a good group should suffice.

6. 10-20. Anything beyond that and you got organisational issues, and the raid starts to turn into a FFA mess.

will finish later.

Sort of a cop-out answer, but aren’t the large-scale world bosses and guild missions sort of ArenaNet’s answer to “raiding” in GW2? Most MMOs are founded on the assumption that the ultimate in content is gear-gating and fighting in an instanced environment, but GW2 is largely not about this at all. It embraces alternative styles of gameplay, encourages community and open-world events, and is pretty casual-friendly. Simply making a new series of dungeons for 10 players and up would not cut it.

I feel like the people who want large-scale raiding would not be satisfied unless it were exceedingly challenging, required a lot of group coordination, and maybe even pushed things in a more traditional “holy trinity” reminiscent approach to party roles. Everyone would just be comparing it to World of Warcraft raids, and if it didn’t emulate those memories accurately enough people would say it “failed.”

And of course, there’s the obvious barrier to entry that comes with requiring larger party sizes and PUGs. One of the top reasons I barely ever got to do any raids in WoW was simply numbers. I also suspect that the majority of people who were drawn to GW2 are strongly drawn away from raids.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Sort of a cop-out answer, but aren’t the large-scale world bosses and guild missions sort of ArenaNet’s answer to “raiding” in GW2? Most MMOs are founded on the assumption that the ultimate in content is gear-gating and fighting in an instanced environment, but GW2 is largely not about this at all. It embraces alternative styles of gameplay, encourages community and open-world events, and is pretty casual-friendly. Simply making a new series of dungeons for 10 players and up would not cut.

I feel like the people who want large-scale raiding would not be satisfied unless it were exceedingly challenging, required a lot of group coordination, and maybe even pushed things in a more traditional “holy trinity” reminiscent approach to party roles. Everyone would just be comparing it to World of Warcraft raids, and if it didn’t emulate those memories accurately enough people would say it “failed.”

And of course, there’s the obvious barrier to entry that comes with requiring larger party sizes and PUGs. One of the top reasons I barely ever got to do any raids in WoW was simply numbers. I also suspect that the majority of people who were drawn to GW2 are strongly drawn away from raids.

They’re an answer, but there’s 2 problems:

1. You’re limited as to what you can do on those because you can’t control who comes in by design (note: by design, not in reality). If a simple raid like Tequatl is causing widespread failures, imagine a ‘proper’ raid in the open world.

2. It actually separates the community even further.

In other games, if you don’t raid, you don’t raid. You know when the devs make a raid, it’s not for you, so raiders and others can co-exist by just doing their own things.

GW2 this is a huge problem. The ‘raid’ content made is for everyone, Anet expects everyone to give it a go. What that means is that on the extreme ends the raiders come in with their disciplined and organised mentality, prepared to listen to orders and obey orders. The extreme casuals come in just wanting some fun, they don’t want to be ordered around, they don’t want to follow rules as if they’re in a military drill.

And those two mindsets clash. It leads to frustration, it leads to annoyance, and it leads to your taxis, your gold pavs, and ultimately defeats the point of that solution.

Raids… Really want to be able to run instanced content with groups larger than 5 (my guild). I suggested this very thing many times but people tend to ignore it. The current world bosses aren’t really what we want as it requires way too many people for us… We enjoy the current guild missions but wish they were instanced so other guilds can’t complete it for us… Or be rude and just leach or troll.

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too. All content should have unique skins, mini pets, tonics and titles.

So, add a new guild mission type, guild dungeon that allows 6-40 people and scales to the size.. And make it and all guild missions instanced. Except trek.. I can see that being a nightmare to “instance”.

callidus.7085:

Raids… Really want to be able to run instanced content with groups larger than 5 (my guild). I suggested this very thing many times but people tend to ignore it. The current world bosses aren’t really what we want as it requires way too many people for us… We enjoy the current guild missions but wish they were instanced so other guilds can’t complete it for us… Or be rude and just leach or troll.

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too. All content should have unique skins, mini pets, tonics and titles.

So, add a new guild mission type, guild dungeon that allows 6-40 people and scales to the size.. And make it and all guild missions instanced. Except trek.. I can see that being a nightmare to “instance”.

It’s because raiding seems to have this taboo associated with this stereotype of raiders being extremely antisocial elitists who rains insults on anyone who dares to step a toe out of line or performs one wrong action.

Xae Isareth.1364:

callidus.7085:

Raids… Really want to be able to run instanced content with groups larger than 5 (my guild). I suggested this very thing many times but people tend to ignore it. The current world bosses aren’t really what we want as it requires way too many people for us… We enjoy the current guild missions but wish they were instanced so other guilds can’t complete it for us… Or be rude and just leach or troll.

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too. All content should have unique skins, mini pets, tonics and titles.

So, add a new guild mission type, guild dungeon that allows 6-40 people and scales to the size.. And make it and all guild missions instanced. Except trek.. I can see that being a nightmare to “instance”.

It’s because raiding seems to have this taboo associated with this stereotype of raiders being extremely antisocial elitists who rains insults on anyone who dares to step a toe out of line or performs one wrong action.

You see.. What’s funny about that is my guild ran missions last Saturday and another guild shows up, harasses one of our members because that member was performing poorly and once we got through that part that other guild ran ahead leaving our members (and some of theirs) behind.. We portaled everyone past though our members and theirs alike.. But.. We shouldn’t have to deal with harassment or have our challenges completed for us (they finished the rest while we were making sure everyone was keeping up).

Let me instance this.. I don’t want to play with jerks and I don’t want my content done for me. We did report the people that harassed our members though.

They can try to create some bosses/encounter that require 150 ppl to be killed (current model-open world-low lvl areas) .
And if they are ’’killed’’ they fall back and show up (splitted/each on their own) in various higher lvl areas , where the overflow map cap is 15-25 ppl.
And an item in the Guild Roster that let you create an overflow . For example 5 min before the boss shows up , you can place a guild teleporter . In the 6th min your overflows goes in a ‘’open state’’ and tries to find more ppl to fill the cap – if you are missing any1
Althought with this teleporter you get less rewards for killing the boss and less chance for items , you can inmprove your guild influense and unlock something else

EDIT: you can imporve the diffuculty for increases rewads+chance to drops the items , but if you are missing some1 and your ’’istance’’ is not full , the difficulty goes back to normal and tries to find some random players

Let me say that i personally hate raiding, so i won’t play a game anymore where i am forced to raid because you only get the best stuff with raiding.

So i’m fine with what you said here :

4. This goes with number 3 really. Raid rewards in GW2 should probably not consist of anything outstanding that could not be obtained in some other way. Most rewards in the game “bleed over” in to other areas. It gives players options and keeps them from being forced in to certain content. I don’t think non-raiders should be forced to raid in order to get things like ascended gear. With that said, I don’t think it’s unfair to throw in exclusive vanity rewards like a tonic or minipet.

However, i think in the end that will maybe just create content that nobody uses, since in the end most people i have met in raid-centric games always said : why do we should do all that “hard work” if we can get the same stuff easier ?

And also here we go with what it mostly will turn out :

callidus.7085:

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too.

However .. if they are tradeable its maybe ok. I’m still used to those raid-games where everything is bind on pickup .. so if you don’t raid no chance to get it.

Beldin.5498:

callidus.7085:

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too.

However .. if they are tradeable its maybe ok. I’m still used to those raid-games where everything is bind on pickup .. so if you don’t raid no chance to get it.

I don’t see what’s so bad about making them not tradable. This game has enough buyable shinies as it is, heck, legendaries are buyable if you got enough money. We need more skins to display achievement.

If you don’t raid, why should you get it? It’s a skin so you don’t need it for progress.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Beldin.5498:

callidus.7085:

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too.

However .. if they are tradeable its maybe ok. I’m still used to those raid-games where everything is bind on pickup .. so if you don’t raid no chance to get it.

I don’t see what’s so bad about making them not tradable. This game has enough buyable shinies as it is, heck, legendaries are buyable if you got enough money. We need more skins to display achievement.

If you don’t raid, why should you get it? It’s a skin so you don’t need it for progress.

The problem is exactly that you then feel forced to raid, even if you hate it if the skin are nice looking. And in a game where skins are endgame its nothing else to lock them behind raids, then lock more powerful gear behind raids in other games.

Also i already see that the next step is that for others also those skins are not enough and they want more powerful gear since thats whats raiding all about in every other MMO-

And thats exactly the reason why i play GW2 since here i’m not forced to raid.

I’d love to have instanced raids. Make it like in WoW of late: casual anyone-can-join-raids, i.e. Open World. And instanced (maybe on the same map but different server-instance) for guilds who want more challenging and more rewarding encounter. With this system everyone gets what he/she wants.

I got to participate in a successful Triple Trouble event because I happened to be in the right instance at the right time (I was trying to level up an alt).

Now, instanced WoW-style raiding isn’t my thing. I’ve tried it, and while the encounters are sometimes fun, sometimes it’s just a lot of waiting around and a lot of nonsense and a lot of people who aren’t having fun, but are compelled to participate because of gear upgrades.

However, I like that the bosses in GW2 occur in the main world, because people like me who don’t want to devote an entire day to prepping for it can sometimes be in the right place at the right time and get swept up into something cool.

Please don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I want to leech or that I’m not a team player—I’ve pulled 8-24 hour shifts guarding keeps in WvW—I’m just not interested enough in PvE raiding to devote time to it. There are many people who are not interested enough in WvW points-per-tick to spend hours guarding keeps, but they still want to participate in fights. I understand this and I’m okay with it, and I ask for some understanding on the other side of this as well.

I like that there’s a chance a major boss fight can fall into my lap. I will participate in it if that happens. I do not want private instances for raid encounters for these reasons. It takes some of the life out of the world, and considering that “living world” is kind of a big deal here…

Might I suggest that you come up with a different term than “RAID” simply to disassociate this suggestion from “that other game”?

Allaraina.8614:

Why not call them Guild Dungeons?

I like this. I vote for Guild Dungeons.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Beldin.5498:

callidus.7085:

I think I agree with pretty much everything the OP said.. Except for rewards I’d like to add that unique skins would be nice too.

However .. if they are tradeable its maybe ok. I’m still used to those raid-games where everything is bind on pickup .. so if you don’t raid no chance to get it.

I don’t see what’s so bad about making them not tradable. This game has enough buyable shinies as it is, heck, legendaries are buyable if you got enough money. We need more skins to display achievement.

If you don’t raid, why should you get it? It’s a skin so you don’t need it for progress.

100% agree with you. You don’t do dungeons.. you shouldn’t get dungeon skins. You don’t do WvW.. you shouldn’t get WvW skins. You don’t do PvP.. you shouldn’t get PvP skins. You don’t do jumping puzzles.. mini dungeons.. Living Story.. Guild Missions.. All categories of the game should have exclusive skins. Maybe some skins are able to be acquired through all mediums but there should be exclusive skins in all as well. Skins through the gem store and on the TP is nice and all.. you can either buy it with real money or gold.. but there should be things you need to ACHIEVE.