Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 has been the boldest MMO in a long time when it comes to trying new ideas and I know it has broadened my own stereotype on what an MMO can look like. The only thing I personally have felt lacking is the sense of community and purpose with a close knit group of people. I fear that when the honeymoon is over with Guild Wars 2 I will move on because I do not have that group of people that I’ve battled through thick and thin with over the past few years. With that being said I think that GW2 can solve this problem by focusing on implementing “raids” (large scale group PVE with a group of people that work together on a consistent basis to accomplish a difficult task) using some of the new ideas they have seen great success with.

One great success GW2 has had is WvW. The large scale group assault and defend feels so completely epic that I honestly don’t care as much about the reward and bettering my character as I do about the epic experience. For a game to do this to a seasoned MMO player is remarkable. If I were to design “raids” in GW2 I would focus on a great assault on an enemy stronghold that takes multiple nights to accomplish. Each keep would be a benchmark where the players in the raid could resume on a later night. Once resumed they would have to defend an enemy assault on the keep, and then take the fight to the enemy in a neighboring keep. Siege would have to be employed strategically to assault difficult keeps, and each keep would have a “boss” encounter once the walls are breached. The grand battle/assault would mimic the epic feeling one currently gets invading the walls of Stonemist Keep in WvW.

The problem with this set up is that human opponents in WvW make a siege less predictable and the tide can turn very quickly. This is where the second great strength of GW2 comes in. Dynamic Events have blown my mind in their ability to get me to care about things going on in the world of Tyria. Throwing off the grind of a predictable quest with an unpredictable giant stomping my face in, is a breath of fresh air in a world of cardboard cutout quests given in other MMOs. So, perhaps in GW2 raids there is a different enemy commander each week. Same scene, but the enemy commander could go from overly aggressive, to overly defensive, from seeking out the smallest fight to throw his forces at, to seeking out the largest one. The raid leader and raiders in vent will have to scout to watch for ambushing parties that may not have been there last week. One week a treb might be able to bring a wall down without taking a hit; the next week it may take every raider you have to defend that treb as it hits the enemy wall. Dynamic Events could play a great role in a raid if Arenanet makes them even less predictable then they currently are. Eventually a good raiding team will see patterns, but being able to twist the enemy commander’s strength and make it his weakness would be a truly awesome experience. Imagine having a scout that sees an overly aggressive enemy force and leads them directly down a ravine where you have multiple arrow carts prepared to ambush them and tear that column to shreds. Working with a system like this would make raiders feel like an army and a raid leader feel like an experienced general.

The plague of raiding is always finding the exact number of people to fill your well designed raid. I would suggest having a raid of 50 players where at least ten of them have to be from the guild that is running the raid. There would be a place in the interface where a player could sign up to go to a raid and guilds looking for additional players could hit a “fill” button when they have all their guildies and quickly acquire waiting players. When a player runs a raid they have done previously that week he receives a fraction of the reward much like the current dungeon system is designed. Guilds would receive guild perks for the week for taking their enemy keep, much like a server is rewarded for success in WvW. Within the raid itself guild members/officers would be able to assign waypoints and fill in raiders would be assigned to follow a leader assigned by the guild running the raid.

The gear acquired through raiding should not surpass the current exotics to maintain GW2 philosophy, however, perhaps it could provide an awesome set that takes half the time to acquire as a dungeon slog.

I think blending WvW and Dynamic Events into a raiding experience for GW2 would not only provide an amazing raiding experience never before experienced in the MMO genre, but I think it would also create the community that would keep this MMO active and healthy for many many years to come.

Thanks for Reading,

Ghost

Hmm very interesting in other words you’d want this to be like lets say the dragon events. Have it where its a chain event going from point a to b to c and so on till you hit the final stage. This could be very interesting as well fun I’d make it random of course on how like waves of mobs might come at you, as in the amount of monsters/creatures and when and where they might show up.

Though there was one thing I thought was very awesome in the BWE they had a special event in a zone/area was really fun everyone got into it. This would be nice to have like every week or whatever.
For those that don’t know what I’m talking about they had it where one huge area like the whole area of plains of ashford would be an event. It was a different event each time they did it so it kept you on your toes. Hopefully someone can do a better explanation on this part because I only was able to do one and was having a bit of trouble with the internet at that time. While the other one people were confused or being a-holes about it.

Don’t need raids in a PvP game.

if it was a pvp game there would be no pve content, don’t be so obtuse.

Would it be forward of me to say I think you’re acute?

That might be interesting— as long the encounters require more than just zerging it, then I might have some fun out of it. As far as finding people for your raid goes, I would assume the 10 from the same guild would be the “host” while the other 40 would be those willing to join in the fight. Knowing me, I’d probably end up being one of the 40. Although, I suppose ANet could bring back the so-called “Cooperative Missions” from Factions, where a team from one outpost attacks from one side while another team attacks from another side, and then the two will eventually converge into one. Vizunah Square is an example of one with the Foreign and Local Quarters.

Personally, I think 50 might be a bit too much as far as an organized raid goes— it might feel like WvW, only with NPCs instead with other Invaders/Defenders.

But then again, it might not if the encounter is designed to have a few tricks, gimmicks, and other strange things that requires some degree of coordination from the raid leader. Maybe a certain group has to use siege weapons, while another group deals with some adds, while another protects an NPC, while another has to step on a giant panel on the floor, while the main group goes after the boss. I’m sure there could be a variety of things to do besides avoiding red circles of death from a boss with a butt-freak-a-ton of HP.

If the fight has some complexities that makes it interesting, but still accessable by many players, I might actually enjoy it.

I don’t miss raids one bit.
Every single one of other MMOs have them and are focused around them. It’s fresh not to have them.

Ameepa.6793:

I don’t miss raids one bit.
Every single one of other MMOs have them and are focused around them. It’s fresh not to have them.

How long do you think the fun of those dungeons is going to last?

Evil.9061:

Ameepa.6793:

I don’t miss raids one bit.
Every single one of other MMOs have them and are focused around them. It’s fresh not to have them.

How long do you think the fun of those dungeons is going to last?

How would I know? That depends on the player. Someone enjoys doing something longer than someone else and someone doesn’t like something at all. I can of course make a wild guess based on other games. In those I’ve seen people running dungeons pretty much forever. Always some group looking for more.

As i understand raids are used in games to keep people playing by providing a possibility of receiving better weapons and armor. So in a game like Guild Wars, where all armor and weapons ( talking about lvl 80 stuff ) have the same stats, raids, in a classic sense, are pointless.
Whenever i join a typical world boss fight, after we kill it we get a chest. First 5 messages are ALWAYS “oh this sucks, i didn’t get anything good”. Now what do you think would happen if GW had raids? I’m guessing the exact same thing. You still wouldn’t be getting any better gear than you already have.
You have to face the fact that raids ( at least in the way they are in other games ) do not belong in GW. Oh yes i agree, it would be cool to have huge scripted missions that involved teamwork and all, but you would have to change the way they work. And then people would complain some more.

I think Ops idea sounds pretty fun.

Personally without some more involved content outside of PVP I may not play this game long. I expect Anet realizes there’s lots of PVErs in game and will be adding more PVE content soon.

Ameepa.6793:

Evil.9061:

Ameepa.6793:

I don’t miss raids one bit.
Every single one of other MMOs have them and are focused around them. It’s fresh not to have them.

How long do you think the fun of those dungeons is going to last?

How would I know? That depends on the player. Someone enjoys doing something longer than someone else and someone doesn’t like something at all. I can of course make a wild guess based on other games. In those I’ve seen people running dungeons pretty much forever. Always some group looking for more.

In those other games, most of the players were actually being rewarded though for running them. After you complete a dungeon set, milage will vary.

I agree Ops should be included in this game.

As for this being a pvp game only. That person need to take a long hard long at the game lol.

Some people would disagree with having Raids in the game. But hey IF people dont like raids DONT DO THEM, no one is forcing you to do them.

I’m just afraid that getting only cosmetic rewards from raids wouldn’t satisfy people for long and the next step would be people starting to demand better gear as rewards and after that more and more only raid content at the cost of everything else. That same old pattern.

I have always been a raider but I’ve grown tired of that system. That’s what I ment that it is fresh not to have raids and that all content is free for all. There are plenty of games with the traditional focus on gearing up tier after tier. This one is something new, something different, at least for now.

If guild wars 2 is to survive challenging end game needs to be put in and a progression system as well because everyone loved lvl 1-79 because it was fun and you were progressing but then 80 comes and your like so what now I got what i want there’s nothing left to strive for……progression is needed in an MMO period.

Ameepa.6793:

I’m just afraid that getting only cosmetic rewards from raids wouldn’t satisfy people for long and the next step would be people starting to demand better gear as rewards and after that more and more only raid content at the cost of everything else. That same old pattern.

I have always been a raider but I’ve grown tired of that system. That’s what I ment that it is fresh not to have raids and that all content is free for all. There are plenty of games with the traditional focus on gearing up tier after tier. This one is something new, something different, at least for now.

That could very well be true to some regard. Some play to feel powerful— nothing wrong with that, but if that’s the case, they may not find that in this game since everyone is roughly on the same playing field with moderately challenging content. Some are even saddened (and mostly uninformed) that they can’t go back to lower level content and destroy it with a higher level character.

GW1 survived on this kind of philosophy for 7 years. If ANet plays their cards right, they might get GW2 to survive quite a bit and maybe even surpass GW1’s life span. If anything, I would imagine that instead of gear with higher stats, there could be other interesting stuff like exclusive crafting recipes, high-end crafting materials, superior runes and sigils, Black Lion goods, and maybe a modest amount of Gems for use in the Gem Store.

With that said, would a guild be able to gather a large enough group with a similar mindset when it comes to gear to join a raid? It’s an interesting subject to look into. I could only speak for myself when it comes to raiding, but when I raid, I generally do it because I enjoy participating in an organized gathering of large amounts of people. Sure the gear is nice to have, but I won’t feel bent out of shape if I don’t get anything decent. With GW2’s philosophy on loot, I would have absolutely have no reason to be bent out of shape because of loot (in theory). If I do get bent out of shape in raid, it would be because the raid decided to be bad one night and not progress anywhere.

With that aside, the raiding options doesn’t have to be restricted to level 80. If anything, they could open it up as early as level 30, just like the current set of dungeons. After all, a player’s level does scale with the content in question. Now the real question after that would be should all the mobs and bosses be level 30-ish and everyone downleveled appropriately; or will all players be jacked up to level 80 like in WvW?

If they structure the dragon lieutenant fights, I can see raids working.

World bosses + overflow system on that specific map-boss (max 20-30 ppl) = outdoor structured raids :P

They’d need to force teamwork for them to be challenging, aka structure them.

But they dont need to punish the solo unsocial players (like me)
They could make them challenging , forcing the solo players to join a guild :P

Dear God, please no. I was just thinking last night how much I enjoy being able to play when I want, not around a raid schedule.

And yes, I thought this last night when I decided I wanted to go to bed early, I just logged without having to explain to anyone why.

I don’t miss raiding, nor the mindset that accompanies it. There are plenty of games that focus on it.

Why oh why do you people keep trying to turn this game into one of those?

Domain of Anguish, Fissure of Woe, Underworld, Sorrow’s Furnace…. GW1’s equivalent of raids.

If they do that in GW2 then yes please.

WoW/Rift style raids? No thank you.

Raf.1078:

I don’t miss raiding, nor the mindset that accompanies it. There are plenty of games that focus on it.

Why oh why do you people keep trying to turn this game into one of those?

Because I want raiding but I also want guild wars 2’s amazing art, combat, support and community.

Raiding would ruin the whole idea of this game. They have big world events such as the ice dragon that everyone comes in and helps. That is as close to a raid in this game that i want. Nothing was worse than in wow having to join a big guild just to raid so you could see the content. Then guilds telling you you can’t go because we have enough “DPS” or our guild has two “tanks” we don’t need anymore.

I hated raids since they game out with WOW.

GW2 with no raids is the best way to go.

I don’t see the difference between raiding and dungeons, other than more people in the instance at once.

Are you just wanting checkpoints or locks added? Does having 50 people in an instance somehow make it more fun? Seems like it would make for a larger zerg-fest in this game IMO.

Or you know, you could take your guild and make a ‘raid’ night on w/e days of the week, all go into WvW and try to take the whole map. It will take much more strategizing than a WoW style raid. Incredibly fun too =P

sharpcircle.8276:

if it was a pvp game there would be no pve content, don’t be so obtuse.

Rocksors.7830:

Would it be forward of me to say I think you’re acute?

Neither of you are right.

Without meaningful endgame content at lvl 80 lots of players will get bored and prob leave. Maybe some players don’t care because they don’t like raids, but I bet Anet cares.
As it is, there’s no further progression at lvl 80. Guess you could get some cosmetic gear. Zzzzzz.. WvW… /yawn

As long as the game doesn’t turn into another gear grind mmo and raid gear isn’t any better than the things that can be obtained from all other activities it wouldn’t really bother me but I don’t really think it’s needed prefer the world event style where all can join like ANet are already doing. Plenty of other raid centric mmos out there,it’s nice to have a game that caters for a different type of player to be honest.

Anyone arguing that capping challenging PvE content at 5 players is a good idea is short sighted.

It’s not about gear, it’s about epic, meaningful challenges. This is an area where GW2 is lacking.

Gohlar.3671:

Anyone arguing that capping challenging PvE content at 5 players is a good idea is short sighted.

Agreed, especially since there is already a squad mechanic in game.

People with this whole “keep you’re raids out of my GW2” argument without reading what some of us are asking for shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the topic. Sure, keep old school “WoW” raids out of it, but there are some good ideas that’ll feel very GW. Maybe they shouldn’t call them raids at all.

The OP for instance has a solid point.
What if they do something like Underworld or Fissure of Woe. Add large instances where groups of around 10 to 25 can join. But instead of normal raiding, there can be events and chains that require a certain level of teamwork. For instance, two or three events can occur at the same time in different spots, requiring the players to split up in order to achieve the goals.

This sort of instance can even tell a long storyline. There can be bosses, like Shatterer, but unlike those large scale world bosses, these can be constructed more carefully, since the amount of players can be better controlled. In that sense it will require players to even have specific “roles” in the fight. For instance, four players mount cannons to shoot fliers that bombard the battlefield. Two groups of players need to battle limbs that pop up, while the rest battle adds. At times a head may pop up, which require a few designated players to charge in and deal damage.

There can be lots of ways to promote large group instancing without reverting to the normal raiding mentality.

As things stand now…anyone, regardless of level, experience or gear can join any group or DE (outside of dungeon instances)…no questions asked.

When you start letting someone else make the call on group make-up using whatever determining factors they’ve come up with…then you’re a raid and group dynamic becomes exclusive rather than inclusive.

This mindset is what so many of us can’t stand. And, as I understand it…what ANet is striving to get away from.

I’m very much in support of making challenging large group PvE content that exists in the world. Revamping some of the larger-scale meta-events to include components that require organization and strategy would work wonders for getting that “raid” feel, but putting it where it belongs, in my opinion, the world. I don’t like the idea of shuffling players into instances to take care of these world threats, only having them emerge from their dungeons to show off their shinies in town. The world grows stale and unused in these circumstances, and it quickly becomes apparent you are playing a LAN game with 10-20 of your friends, and not an MMO with a population of players in your universe trying to save it.

These suggestion have already been made:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Scale-Dynamic-Event-Difficulty-on-Success/first#post101866

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/We-need-Outward-Scaling-not-just-Upward/first

We already have a few raids, ie. The dragon events. There’s no reason they can’t expand on that foundation.

On the WvW enviroment I really don’t see it happening. People already complain about the mobs there, imagine if A.Net decides to introduce huge PvE events over there?

Now for the PvE side of the game, as long as there is no gear treadmill involved other than cosmetics, A.Net can implement as many raids as people want them to. Extra content is never too much.

Although I agree with the person who said I don’t believe people will feel inclined to raid just for cosmetics.

Raf.1078:

As things stand now…anyone, regardless of level, experience or gear can join any group or DE (outside of dungeon instances)…no questions asked.

When you start letting someone else make the call on group make-up using whatever determining factors they’ve come up with…then you’re a raid and group dynamic becomes exclusive rather than inclusive.

This mindset is what so many of us can’t stand. And, as I understand it…what ANet is striving to get away from.

Yep I agreed.

Gohlar.3671:

Anyone arguing that capping challenging PvE content at 5 players is a good idea is short sighted.

It’s not about gear, it’s about epic, meaningful challenges. This is an area where GW2 is lacking.

Regardless, GW2 doesn’t need “Raids” in the traditional sense. They can up the count to 8 players like in GW1 and implement more elaborate scenarios.

Wow, thanks for all the input on my post here guys. Both sides of the issue bring up some good points.

I do agree that GW2 does not need the same style raids as WoW has. I have been part of a full clear heroic mode WoW raiding guild and I don’t think that is the direction that GW2 should go. If you make raiding about gear progression then you destroy it’s optionality. If the best gear comes from raiding, then you have to raid to be the best, therefore everyone who raids is good and everyone else is bad. It breaks down the balance GW2 wants to achieve.

Raids would have to have a different incentive to succeed. Because the focus of the raid is bringing guilds together and giving them direction and purpose I would suggest that raids benefit them in the greatest way. If I were designing the raid I would have each raid start at a Guild Hall. When the guild starts a run that is where everyone they invite to the raid meets, gets stocked up, and gets ready to invade the enemy stronghold of the week. Each Guild Hall would start as a small palisade or fort, but as the guild completes runs that they orchestrate they upgrade their Guild Hall so that the best guilds have an amazing castle with banners and tournament grounds. Let’s be honest, in the end, good raiders and good players like nothing better than to show off to lesser more inexperienced players. A Guild Castle would allow them to do just that without destroying the gear balance GW2 strives to achieve. It’s not the only idea, but it’s one.

I agree that certain things in a raiding environment need to be challenging in order to avoid being boring. I think the trick to this would be to have planning on the guild’s part to be the difficult bit, and fighting on the visitor’s part the easy bit. If the guild officers lead their troops into a ambush, or throw them all against a wall without proper siege techniques, then those troops will die. I would rather have the battle plans be difficult than the fate of your raid depending on whether a single visiting raider “gets out of defile” or not. This is also a method where guilds could become famous and well known on a server. If they lead the best and cleanest raids then the server will love them for it.

Perhaps there could be some optional bosses/keeps that are not part of the primary objective reserved for those guilds which want a greater challenge. These bosses could have more difficult personal challenges and provide unique rewards.

Raids should be something that players “want” to do, not something they “have” to do. It should be an epic experience that can provide a challenge to the orchestrator, while not putting so much weight on each individual that the average player feels intimidated to attend them. Food for thought.

Thanks for commenting,
Ghost

There are already a dozen of raid bosses in GW2, they just need to be made harder.

Im also one of those people who thinks the game overall is great. Its just missing that large scale challenging content for guilds. I like the idea of adding larger group sizes to the dungeons myself (10 / 20 man for example) because they would allow for non raiders to experience the content. I also agree we dont need the gear grind we just want something to challenge for us that we can organise a couple of nights for.

However I wouldnt mind some other alternative for this. Either the idea for instanced dynamic events or the op’s idea sound pretty cool. If they made it really hard. Im still not sure of they can actually make the open world stuff as hard as we would like it to be. Arenanet seems to want anybody to come along and be able beat an open world boss.

Any raiding must offer the same level gear as any other content and preferably offer that content to smaller groups. That way no one is forced to raid, its another option for people who like that form of content.

Like others in this thread my guild doesnt really have anything challening to do in PVE that doesnt require us to split into 5 man chunks.

The benefit to Arenanet in all this is a higher retention rate for some players and a added incentive for guilds to move games to GW2 allowing for a larger revenue stream. Without effecting the people who dont want to participate.

I wish GW2 had big, difficult, instanced zones designed for larger groups. There were several awesome zones in GW1 that were very challenging. The Underworld and Fissure of Woe kept people busy for a long time.

The challenging content in GW2 is dungeons and it’s only challenging because we’re all more or less dps classes with crappy utility. It’s only hard because we don’t have the tools for the job. Yes you can run around and kite and trade agro, but that’s not a good kind of difficulty imo.