Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I mean it when I say that GW2 is right up there with the current greats for MMOs, you have so much to bring to the table.

However your stance on raiding is incredibly tone deaf, you have many major competitors that bring Tiered Raiding to the table and it does nothing to take prestige away from Mythic in WoW, or Nightmare in SWTOR, or what ever passes for top tier in FF14.

Just throw out a toned down version that us PLEBs can zerg through for fun with just Champ bags like a Champ train, hell put it on a daily timer even so that normal Raiders can still do this for laughs and train newbies on castrated versions of the mechanics.

What’s the big deal folks, you pulled it off for Fractals right?

It’s not an article on dulfy… if you took some time to read the “source” part you’d find there is an actual thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Suggestion-For-Raids/first#post6403471

You already have said content in both BSF and ROF.

You can mindlessly zerg definetly not VG for a champ bag, and definitely not Sloth for a champ bag.

Additionally, what you call tone deaf is what others call great. Not every piece of content needs to be watered down to the point that it contradicts is design. Raids are designed to be the hardest content in the game such that it requires a bit more than average dedication. There’s nothing wrong with this, however there is a lot wrong with pandering to the perception that everything needs to be for everyone and that those players deserve equal rewards for minimal effort. Which is exactly why those other games raids are a joke.

TexZero.7910:

You already have said content in both BSF and ROF.

You can mindlessly zerg definetly not VG for a champ bag, and definitely not Sloth for a champ bag.

Additionally, what you call tone deaf is what others call great. Not every piece of content needs to be watered down to the point that it contradicts is design. Raids are designed to be the hardest content in the game such that it requires a bit more than average dedication. There’s nothing wrong with this, however there is a lot wrong with pandering to the perception that everything needs to be for everyone and that those players deserve equal rewards for minimal effort. Which is exactly why those other games raids are a joke.

90% of the rest of major MMO companies disagree, and a lot of them like SWTOR, FF14, and WoW each have million plus players spending money; just saying but I guess being poor while having less money for development is great if you have your extremely dated integrity on this matter.

I haven’t done a raid yet. I have no idea what is needed to do a raid. I have asked both guilds I am in about them and no one can give me a straight answer. I haven’t tried to join parties either in the areas they are in or googled the requirements so … believe me this isn’t a complaint ….. But I do want the legendary armor. I love crafting and would like a set for my Ranger. To unlock it you have to kill a raid boss. and so on and so forth …. People like me will only raid to get what they want …. but without a scaling system considering how long they have been out and no help so far from guildies, I dont see this happening anytime soon ( still not complaining) What I will say is that raids and legendary armor so far seem to be for the elite. I am ok with this …. even if it means I will never have legendary armor. If it is supposed to be the hardest content in the game and these players are tackling it and getting legendary armor and loot as a reward AWESOME! Not all content needs to be easily available to all players. Maybe Anet is trying to make sure raids dont end up like dungeons did idk …. I guess what im saying all around is every player has the ability to do ALL content in game including raids if you commit to the goals of doing them. Otherwise you can admire legendary armor and raid rewards on other players and shut it lol Raids dont appear to be for half-assers

Purgatori.3645:

I haven’t done a raid yet. I have no idea what is needed to do a raid. I have asked both guilds I am in about them and no one can give me a straight answer. I haven’t tried to join parties either in the areas they are in or googled the requirements so … believe me this isn’t a complaint ….. But I do want the legendary armor. I love crafting and would like a set for my Ranger. To unlock it you have to kill a raid boss. and so on and so forth …. People like me will only raid to get what they want …. but without a scaling system considering how long they have been out and no help so far from guildies, I dont see this happening anytime soon ( still not complaining) What I will say is that raids and legendary armor so far seem to be for the elite. I am ok with this …. even if it means I will never have legendary armor. If it is supposed to be the hardest content in the game and these players are tackling it and getting legendary armor and loot as a reward AWESOME! Not all content needs to be easily available to all players. Maybe Anet is trying to make sure raids dont end up like dungeons did idk …. I guess what im saying all around is every player has the ability to do ALL content in game including raids if you commit to the goals of doing them. Otherwise you can admire legendary armor and raid rewards on other players and shut it lol Raids dont appear to be for half-assers

Except for GW2’s major competitors that have tiered raids and over a million paying customers each; but I guess ANet doesn’t like money as much as their peers evidently.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Except for GW2’s major competitors that have tiered raids and over a million paying customers each; but I guess ANet doesn’t like money as much as their peers evidently.

Maybe ANet sees no future in featuring derivative content? Instead of trying to get a slice of the pie that’s made by others they instead bake their own.

Many mmos went out of business aping WoW… there’s no future or piles of money in stagnant development.

~EW

Gw2s competition also does gear grinds, level cap raises, non open world scaling, questing and other outdated things GW2 long since discarded. In fact many are starting to copy GW2 as evidenced by the latest WoW expac which has been a roaring success, partly because it is trying to capture what GW2 does right.

I am by no means saying you are wrong in GW2 needing tiered raids, I am largely ambivalent on the subject and am fine with either method. However, what other mmos do is not necs relevant when raid set ups arent conclusively the sole reason for strong subs.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

TexZero.7910:

You already have said content in both BSF and ROF.

You can mindlessly zerg definetly not VG for a champ bag, and definitely not Sloth for a champ bag.

Additionally, what you call tone deaf is what others call great. Not every piece of content needs to be watered down to the point that it contradicts is design. Raids are designed to be the hardest content in the game such that it requires a bit more than average dedication. There’s nothing wrong with this, however there is a lot wrong with pandering to the perception that everything needs to be for everyone and that those players deserve equal rewards for minimal effort. Which is exactly why those other games raids are a joke.

90% of the rest of major MMO companies disagree, and a lot of them like SWTOR, FF14, and WoW each have million plus players spending money; just saying but I guess being poor while having less money for development is great if you have your extremely dated integrity on this matter.

90% of the rest of major companies don’t agree or disagree — they each try to do different things. Plus, one of the things that sets GW2 apart is that it doesn’t try to do what everyone else does simply because everyone else does it. If you went by “everyone else does it,” this game would have the Holy Trinity, competition for kills/nodes/loot, and less dynamic combat.

Further, you might want to brush up on the costs of raids. Creating tiered raids will end up diverting resources from some other part of the game while ending raids entirely won’t noticeably accelerate the development of other parts of the game. Raids are partly able to be released quickly because they aren’t trying to appeal to more than 10-20% of the community.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Plus, one of the things that sets GW2 apart is that it doesn’t try to do what everyone else does simply because everyone else does it.

So please tell me why they implemented raids at all? GW2 never meant to have raids but to provide challenging dungeons (later fractals) instead. They wanted to do it their way. With the implementation of raids, they did exactly the opposite of your statement.

Tekey.7946:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Plus, one of the things that sets GW2 apart is that it doesn’t try to do what everyone else does simply because everyone else does it.

So please tell me why they implemented raids at all? GW2 never meant to have raids but to provide challenging dungeons (later fractals) instead. They wanted to do it their way. With the implementation of raids, they did exactly the opposite of your statement.

The answer to your question is in your text I bolded. While they have NPC-given quests, they wanted to do it their way. While they have crafting, they wanted to do it their way. While they have skill bars, they wanted to do it their way. Same goes for every other component of GW2 that is marginally like other MMOs; raids are no different even if the game didn’t launch with them.

GW2 might have raids now, but they are raids done their way.

~EW

Tekey.7946:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Plus, one of the things that sets GW2 apart is that it doesn’t try to do what everyone else does simply because everyone else does it.

So please tell me why they implemented raids at all? GW2 never meant to have raids but to provide challenging dungeons (later fractals) instead. They wanted to do it their way. With the implementation of raids, they did exactly the opposite of your statement.

That’s like saying that GW2 can’t have dungeons, other races, or combat because other games do that.

The original idea was to make all of PvE accessible to everyone, all of PvP accessible to all PvP players, and all of WvW accessible to all of group-wide PvP players. Another original idea was to release temporary content every 2-3 weeks, never to return to the game. Another idea was evolve the world frequently, so that 2013 Tyria wouldn’t match 2014’s version that much.

Clearly ANet has evolved their thinking about what works best for the long-term success of the company and the long-term enjoyment of the community. Raids might not have been on the table in 2012, but ANet decided it would be important to provide other ways to appeal to players interested in challenging group content.

Just to be clear, I was glad that raids weren’t in the game originally. I was against ANet adding them to the game for the expansion. And I haven’t myself completing a single wing of the raids. All the same, I’ve changed my mind about them, because it’s clear that a lot of people really like them, because it’s attracted a lot of people to the game, and because it’s created a really interesting community of people interested in figuring out how to do them together (speed clearing as well as PUGging).

tl;dr ANet changed its mind about what the game needed. GW2 Raids aren’t done the same as in other games, so there’s no contradiction (implied or direct) between what I’ve said and the game.

Fun fact:

If you read some of the Core pre-launch interviews, the Devs talk about Raids in Guild Wars 2.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr ANet changed its mind about what the game needed. GW2 Raids aren’t done the same as in other games, so there’s no contradiction (implied or direct) between what I’ve said and the game.

Seeing the devs constantly changing their minds, they might as well open raids for the other 90 – 95% of players.

In general: GW2 has been different in the beginning, but soon Anet decided to appeal to players of other games (adding gear related progression, raids). Loyal GW2 players however left the game. Their focus on raids for an exclusive, small minority of players made others leave the game.

It’s not only that HoT didn’t provide a single dungeon or fractal but raids instead. They also decided to lock legendary armor and even mastery tracks and xp gain behind raids. GW2, known as the most casual MMORPG ever, refuses to open up this huge amount of content for the majority of players.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Clearly ANet has evolved their thinking about what works best for the long-term success of the company and the long-term enjoyment of the community

Makes me wonder about the financial reports of the last two quarters and hundreds of pages of dissatisfied players related to raids.

Tekey.7946:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr ANet changed its mind about what the game needed. GW2 Raids aren’t done the same as in other games, so there’s no contradiction (implied or direct) between what I’ve said and the game.

Seeing the devs constantly changing their minds, they might as well open raids for the other 90 – 95% of players.

In general: GW2 has been different in the beginning, but soon Anet decided to appeal to players of other games (adding gear related progression, raids). Loyal GW2 players however left the game. Their focus on raids for an exclusive, small minority of players made others leave the game.

It’s not only that HoT didn’t provide a single dungeon or fractal but raids instead. They also decided to lock legendary armor and even mastery tracks and xp gain behind raids. GW2, known as the most casual MMORPG ever, refuses to open up this huge amount of content for the majority of players.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Clearly ANet has evolved their thinking about what works best for the long-term success of the company and the long-term enjoyment of the community

Makes me wonder about the financial reports of the last two quarters and hundreds of pages of dissatisfied players related to raids.

u aren’t wrong

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Hey guys I mean it when I say that GW2 is right up there with the current greats for MMOs, you have so much to bring to the table.

However your stance on raiding is incredibly tone deaf, you have many major competitors that bring Tiered Raiding to the table and it does nothing to take prestige away from Mythic in WoW, or Nightmare in SWTOR, or what ever passes for top tier in FF14.

Just throw out a toned down version that us PLEBs can zerg through for fun with just Champ bags like a Champ train, hell put it on a daily timer even so that normal Raiders can still do this for laughs and train newbies on castrated versions of the mechanics.

What’s the big deal folks, you pulled it off for Fractals right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/52fxo1/ama_league_design_lead_greg_ghostcrawler_street/d7jwm98/?st=ivocegs2&sh=c80d5a04

There’s a difference.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Except for GW2’s major competitors that have tiered raids and over a million paying customers each; but I guess ANet doesn’t like money as much as their peers evidently.

Maybe ANet sees no future in featuring derivative content? Instead of trying to get a slice of the pie that’s made by others they instead bake their own.

Introduction of Raids suggest otherwise.

Sykper.6583:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Hey guys I mean it when I say that GW2 is right up there with the current greats for MMOs, you have so much to bring to the table.

However your stance on raiding is incredibly tone deaf, you have many major competitors that bring Tiered Raiding to the table and it does nothing to take prestige away from Mythic in WoW, or Nightmare in SWTOR, or what ever passes for top tier in FF14.

Just throw out a toned down version that us PLEBs can zerg through for fun with just Champ bags like a Champ train, hell put it on a daily timer even so that normal Raiders can still do this for laughs and train newbies on castrated versions of the mechanics.

What’s the big deal folks, you pulled it off for Fractals right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/52fxo1/ama_league_design_lead_greg_ghostcrawler_street/d7jwm98/?st=ivocegs2&sh=c80d5a04

There’s a difference.

Notice how he is saying that after a long time of not working on WoW (clearly indicating he doesn’t know about that design’s longtime consequences), he doesn’t actually question whether it was good for the game, and he supports the general idea behind Raid Finder (increasing accessibility). He is merely dissatisfied because he wanted raids to feel more epic.

So, his regrets about Raid Finder are not tied to any systemic problems with LFR, nor to it’s impact on the game, but due to aestethics. Which is highly subjective.

Astralporing.1957:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Maybe ANet sees no future in featuring derivative content? Instead of trying to get a slice of the pie that’s made by others they instead bake their own.

Introduction of Raids suggest otherwise.

No, it actually doesn’t. Read the rest of my post…. GW2 having raids is no different than them having skills, quests, etc… they’re not done like everyone else does them; at the minimum they apeal to a broader audience, and thus a larger (or different) pie. It doesn’t matter one lick that the game didn’t start with them.

edit: in other words, GW2 raids seem intended to create a new type of raider player base, made only in part from those that like to do raiding in other games… but not exclusively so. If they just tried to solely target the ‘omergerz raid or die’ audience, they’d absolutely fail.

~EW

Astralporing.1957:

Notice how he is saying that after a long time of not working on WoW (clearly indicating he doesn’t know about that design’s longtime consequences), he doesn’t actually question whether it was good for the game, and he supports the general idea behind Raid Finder (increasing accessibility). He is merely dissatisfied because he wanted raids to feel more epic.

We must have read two different things. Yes, he does want Raids to be more accessible, but the way Raid Finder did it, in his own development view, killed Raiding.

It doesn’t get much more final than that, the initial release of Raid Finder which did all the automatic grouping, reduced difficulty, etc. All the things you and others have clamored for was a massive mistake from the dev himself.

Astralporing.1957:

So, his regrets about Raid Finder are not tied to any systemic problems of that system, nor to it’s impact on the game, but due to aestethics. Which is highly subjective.

You can’t be subjective if you are the one who created it. Who else knows more about Raid Finder than him? And for the record, although he does comment that he has been away from WoW for a few years, his regret about what the essence of Raid Finder was, is the issue here.

And if the creator himself is dissatisfied with a main aesthetic of Raiding gone, how do you think those ‘Raiders’ before Raid Finder felt when it was released? Pretty sure it was not open arms.

Sykper.6583:

Astralporing.1957:

Notice how he is saying that after a long time of not working on WoW (clearly indicating he doesn’t know about that design’s longtime consequences), he doesn’t actually question whether it was good for the game, and he supports the general idea behind Raid Finder (increasing accessibility). He is merely dissatisfied because he wanted raids to feel more epic.

We must have read two different things. Yes, he does want Raids to be more accessible, but the way Raid Finder did it, in his own development view, killed Raiding.

Mind to point me where did he say anything like that? Because i can’t see it. All he said that it made, to him, raids less epic. Nothing more.

Sykper.6583:

It doesn’t get much more final than that, the initial release of Raid Finder which did all the automatic grouping, reduced difficulty, etc. All the things you and others have clamored for was a massive mistake from the dev himself.

“Massive mistake” because he didn’t like it, not because it hurt the game. That’s a very important distinction. In this, he is thinking like a player, not like a dev.

Sykper.6583:

Astralporing.1957:

So, his regrets about Raid Finder are not tied to any systemic problems of that system, nor to it’s impact on the game, but due to aestethics. Which is highly subjective.

You can’t be subjective if you are the one who created it. Who else knows more about Raid Finder than him? And for the record, although he does comment that he has been away from WoW for a few years, his regret about what the essence of Raid Finder was, is the issue here.

Of course he can, and is, subjective here – because his reasons for his regret are subjective and based on his emotions, not on any hard facts.

Sykper.6583:

And if the creator himself is dissatisfied with a main aesthetic of Raiding gone, how do you think those ‘Raiders’ before Raid Finder felt when it was released? Pretty sure it was not open arms.

Yeah, i do know very well how some of them (not all) felt. They were mightily disappointed because they weren’t so special anymore. The question however, is not whether it hurt their tender feelings, but whether it was good for the game. And that’s a question he didn’t answer. Apart from mentioning that it was a solution to the problem that had to be solved.

So, in the end, again, his sole reason for the regret is the wound to his feelings. He knew that getting more people into raids was a good idea, but he didn’t like the fact that more people into raids meant they were no longer as elite as before.

Your entire argument hinges on the premise that Ghostcrawler is making a subjective view of his own created system. He’s making a professional opinion about a solution he regrets now, that is what his post is saying.

That alone should trouble anyone wanting to emulate such a ‘Open the floodgates’ solution.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr ANet changed its mind about what the game needed.

Tekey.7946:

Seeing the devs constantly changing their minds, they might as well open raids for the other 90 – 95% of players.

They don’t “constantly change” their minds. They analyze the data, look at player feedback, and try to do what’s best for the game, which includes turning enough of a profit to keep NCSOFT from micromanaging the content.

Changing the nature of raids would cost a lot, would alienate some players, and probably would not attract all that many new players, so it hardly sounds like a no-brainer.

Tekey.7946:

In general: GW2 has been different in the beginning, but soon Anet decided to appeal to players of other games (adding gear related progression, raids). Loyal GW2 players however left the game. Their focus on raids for an exclusive, small minority of players made others leave the game.

First, the game has always had exclusive content including WvW, PvP, Fractals, or Dungeons — each of those appeals to different people, has their own learning curve, and not everyone can manage them.

Second, GW2 has only the most limited sort of gear-related progression and it’s been in the game for years, so I don’t see how it’s related to the topic of raids.

People were leaving the game before HoT and after for reasons that have nothing to do with raids — I don’t think the evidence remotely supports raids being the primary or even proximate cause, especially compared to the major impact of the content drought followed by the unexpectedly sparse content (according to critics) in HoT, followed by a change in the release cadence.

Tekey.7946:

It’s not only that HoT didn’t provide a single dungeon or fractal but raids instead. They also decided to lock legendary armor and even mastery tracks and xp gain behind raids. GW2, known as the most casual MMORPG ever, refuses to open up this huge amount of content for the majority of players.

Locking legendary armor — I’ll grant you that’s a weird decision to me, too.

And I’m not sure why they want people to unlock raid masteries to get spirit shards. However, raids don’t block people from getting them; they just gate a single source.

You can get full mastery of everything you need for post-HoT Tyria without raiding, i.e. masteries aren’t locked behind raids (raid masteryies only work in raids).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Clearly ANet has evolved their thinking about what works best for the long-term success of the company and the long-term enjoyment of the community

Tekey.7946:

Makes me wonder about the financial reports of the last two quarters and hundreds of pages of dissatisfied players related to raids.

There aren’t “hundreds of pages of dissatisfied players” — read the threads: there are a few people whose posts cover most of the threads. There’s no question there are people who think raids hurt the game, but the forum threads aren’t a good illustration of how many or how strongly they feel.

Finally, the oft-mentioned financial reports. The evidence strongly suggests that raids aren’t the issue. (a) ANet has stopped the hemorrhaging of accelerated player attrition (sales were down from the previous quarter, but only a tad — not good news, but not bad either). (b) Gem Shop revenue is actually higher than expectations, which suggests that the game retains appeal among those currently playing.

The problem, therefore, are sales of the expac tanking and it’s much more likely that has to do with all the negative press & word-of-mouth that HoT has gotten (some deserved, a lot that wasn’t).

I get that some people don’t like the idea of raids nor the implementation into GW2. But that doesn’t mean that raids are the source of the game’s woes or that removing them (or turning them into the same broad-appeal content as the rest of the game) would benefit the game or ANet’s bottom line.

In a business sense, Raids are the most successful element in the game right now, in that they strongly appeal to their target audience and take up the least amount of dev time possible for instanced content. The problems are in how ANet is handling everything else, which in part seems to suffer from choices ANet made years ago. They are doing better in terms of more consistent content and mechanics changes, but probably have a long way to go.

tl;dr the game has issues; raids are one of the successes, not one of the problems.

(and I again, I say this as someone who doesn’t raid and didn’t want raids in the game to start with)

I’m sure it has been mentioned before but I’m too lazy to read everything here so here it goes…

There’s a big difference between those MMOs and GW2. In a game like FF14 and WoW where the entire endgame is about those raids it makes a lot of sense to make tiers. However GW2 has a 5 man raid team, compared to the massive amount of ppl that work on living world that’s nothing.

In order for GW2 to make tiered raids they’d have to make sacrifices somewhere else. Either we get a single wing a year which would not satisfy the raiding community, in which case it’s pointless to pursue raids in the first place because you’re not gonna keep those players. The other option is to pull ppl off other projects, but people are already unhappy with how fast new fractals are coming out, the state of pvp and wvw. The only thing that’s going well right now is LS, but since that’s anets main focus I don’t see them pulling ppl away from that part of the game.

I know you mention SWTOR as well, but it should be pointed out they had 0 new raids and very few new dungeons (I think only 1?) in their last xpac and it was all about casual LS – type episodes so it seems they have the same issues as GW2 tbh.

It is true that with raids they made some of their worst decisions for every non-raider:

1. Release with HoT and resources Dungeons were scrapped and the last fractals were released in November 2013. So what did they do? They released raids instead.
It took them almost 3 years (July 2016) to release a single new fractal. Don’t you think that the manpower of the raid team could have been needed in the fractal team instead?
We always hear Anet doesn’t have enough resources for that. We won’t get new weapon types, new playable races, new dungeons because they don’t have enough resources. Yet, they decided to provide a raid team for a game mode that currently appeals solely to a small percentage of players.

2. The split and exclusion of the community: With the whole attitude even the devs now showed, they stay to the exclusion of 95% of their playerbase.

No matter what caused the financial reports of the last 2 quarters, if you’re in Anet’s situation, you’re not in the right position to exclude the majority of your players from anything right now.

• They are excluded from obligatory mastery tracks, needed to get xp (and spirit shards) in HoT and LW3 areas. If you want to get xp again, you have to raid. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to do events and the living story, getting 50.000xp but they’re just gone? Your xp bar will forever stay at 0/0, no matter if you’re in Verdant Brink, Ember Bay or the new ice map, that has nothing to do with the Maguuma masteries.

• They are excluded from legendary armor. A project that would keep players busy for hundreds of hours. But if you’re sure you don’t have the time or the skills or the people to raid, you’ll just log out when you finished your daily routine. Maybe you’ll even take a break for months until the next episode of the Living world is released. That won’t increase the finances of Anet.

• Bobby Stein stated that Raids are not part of our Living World episodes; they are separate game elements.
  They broke that promise with the third raid wing, being the introduction to Bloodstone Fen. Non-raiders missed the plans of the White Mantle to revive Lazarus. They got to Bloodstone Fen and wooosh Lazarus appeared out of nowhere. Great job of providing raids as a separate game element that are not part of the Living World episodes.

All of those problems could be easily solved if they opened raids for everyone.

Tekey.7946:

1. Release with HoT and resources Dungeons were scrapped

Wrong, dungeons were dead aeons before HoT. They were only played for gold & speedclearing/records. Furthermore no dev has been working on them since years, no new stuff, no major bugfixing or any other related thing to dungeon development even though the community worked towards it and made big efforts to revive dungeons. Many many many bugs, little improvements and other stuff were collected in super duper perfect formats but only soakened up by the company and nothing happened.
Don’t forget: The original dungeon dev team was fired relative shortly after core game release.

Tekey.7946:

…and the last fractals were released in November 2013. So what did they do? They released raids instead.
It took them almost 3 years (July 2016) to release a single new fractal. Don’t you think that the manpower of the raid team could have been needed in the fractal team instead?
We always hear Anet doesn’t have enough resources for that. We won’t get new weapon types, new playable races, new dungeons because they don’t have enough resources. Yet, they decided to provide a raid team for a game mode that currently appeals solely to a small percentage of players.

Also not correct. They had to revamp the fractal structure as a whole for HoT or better said: They did it when nobody asked for that! From a players perspective they didn’t have to but they included HoT stuff into fractals (fractal mastery).
So, in the end it was obvious that there hasn’t been any new fractal with the release of HoT due to the massive overhaul.

Raids were a different thing. There was no infrastructure and they could have been planned from the scratch. Additionally, if you compare a dungeon to a raid wing. It’s obvious that there are way more love, lore and details in a dungeon than in a raid.

Tekey.7946:

No matter what caused the financial reports of the last 2 quarters, if you’re in Anet’s situation, you’re not in the right position to exclude the majority of your players from anything right now.

Nobody is excluded. You exclude yourself from raiding if you don’t want to.

Tekey.7946:

They are excluded from obligatory mastery tracks, needed to get xp (and spirit shards) in HoT and LW3 areas. If you want to get xp again, you have to raid. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to do events and the living story, getting 50.000xp but they’re just gone? Your xp bar will forever stay at 0/0, no matter if you’re in Verdant Brink, Ember Bay or the new ice map, that has nothing to do with the Maguuma masteries.

That’s also wrong. You are able to max out every open world mastery track and you get enough points outside from raids. Moreover, you are just excluded from the raid mastery track which is not obligatory for open world content at all and the shards. Nothing else. The shard thing is a problem, I agree but you can play Escort (Raid wing 3 – first encounter) which is more an event than a raid encounter, and open the mastery for ya to obtain shards again!
If you are not willing to you could also buy a raid kill from an offering guild. Prices are not that huge nowadays.

Tekey.7946:

you’ll just log out when you finished your daily routine. Maybe you’ll even take a break for months until the next episode of the Living world is released. That won’t increase the finances of Anet.

That’s a problem of content drought and it’s not related or dependent on raids.

Tekey.7946:

Bobby Stein stated that Raids are not part of our Living World episodes; they are separate game elements.
They broke that promise with the third raid wing, being the introduction to Bloodstone Fen. Non-raiders missed the plans of the White Mantle to revive Lazarus. They got to Bloodstone Fen and wooosh Lazarus appeared out of nowhere. Great job of providing raids as a separate game element that are not part of the Living World episodes.

Also absolutely incorrect. The sidestory doesn’t give an valuable information to the main story. Even if you defeat all raid bosses you still have no clue about Lazarus and a possible appearance of him later on.

Repeating wrong statements don’t make them right!

You just picked my post apart, split my statements mid-sentence and changed their meaning. Great way to turn down an opposed point of view.

The problems I mentioned do exist. If you’re just closing your eyes, I won’t be able to explain it to you. And honestly, your post is nowhere near a constructive discussion, with statements like:

Nobody is excluded. You exclude yourself from raiding if you don’t want to.

The shard thing is a problem, I agree but you can play Escort (Raid wing 3 – first encounter) which is more an event than a raid encounter, and open the mastery for ya to obtain shards again!

If you are not willing to you could also buy a raid kill from an offering guild. Prices are not that huge nowadays.

The sidestory doesn’t give an valuable information to the main story.

• Suggesting to buy raids in order to solve a problem provided by Anet?
• Stating that no one is excluded from the hardest game mode, in the most casual MMORPG nowadays?
• Telling non raiders to do the first encounter of raid wing 3 in order to unlock masterys – knowing that you already need those masteries to do it?
• ignoring legendary armor completely

I’m sorry but that’s not helpful.

Going to make this clear yet again.

The raid story is not relevant to the main story.
The raid story is not required to understand the main story.

Stating that you are missing out on critical lore by not doing the raid encounters, which are irrelevant to lore purposes, is disingenuous at best. If Forsaken Thicket never existed and everything else was still exactly the same, even the notes you pick up in Bloodstone Fen with the references intact, it does not impact the main story whatsoever.

Stop using Lore as your scapegoat.

Tbh, I picked your complete post and split it into parts dependent on their content. Nothing what couldn’t separated was separated!

The first part was essential because that what you have stated is just simply wrong and was discussed here several times!
Nobody is negating the content drought we had in the past and it is still an issue but it’s not related to raids!

And sorry if you feel excluded but everybody who put effort in the past and was willing to raid has been successful. There are several examples in this subforum. So, if you want to exclude yourself, go ahead and do so but if you really want to raid, you won’t have a problem if you can adapt to team play and bring social skills with you.

In addition to that we already reminded the devs of the shard issue. I totally agree that they should hand out a bugfix/change on this. No question.

My suggestion to buy one single kill is for the ones who cannot wait because we know it can take “forever” until Anet is fixing something. It is a possibility, not a must.

Goin back to “exclusion” – I have seen people raiding from whom I have never thought they were able to when I met them ingame before. The fact that you don’t need special team compositions, the fact that we have low-man runs with 3 people and usually you go in with 9 buddies clearly shows that raids aren’t hard at all.
But it’s your mind set – if you don’t want to I won’t see any chance for you to achieve your goal to play raids successfully.

According to your last point: You don’t need the mastery to do escort. You need one single person to run through the cave. I haven’t seen it by a player without the second raid wing mastery, so that’s 1 out of 10 players. The usual pug escort have enough of those ppl so it’s no problem that there are several players without the mastery. Pls inform yourself better!

Sykper.6583:

Going to make this clear yet again.

The raid story is not relevant to the main story.
The raid story is not required to understand the main story.

Stating that you are missing out on critical lore by not doing the raid encounters, which are irrelevant to lore purposes, is disingenuous at best. If Forsaken Thicket never existed and everything else was still exactly the same, even the notes you pick up in Bloodstone Fen with the references intact, it does not impact the main story whatsoever.

Stop using Lore as your scapegoat.

I quoted Bobby Stein’s statement: Raids are not part of our Living World episodes; they are separate game elements.
The fact that they contain lore related to the White Mantle (+ bandits) shows that they are part of the Living World and not a separate game element.

It doesn’t matter how much it is, raiders experienced more lore than non raiders.

Tekey.7946:

The fact that they contain lore related to the White Mantle (+ bandits) shows that they are part of the Living World and not a separate game element.

It doesn’t matter how much it is, raiders experienced more lore than non raiders.

The Living World ala, Main Story of GW2 does not hinge on the Raid. You are welcome to believe it does, that does not make it a true statement.

You are not losing any lore relevant to the Living Story in raids. That’s the hard truth.

Sykper.6583:

The Living World ala, Main Story of GW2 does not hinge on the Raid. You are welcome to believe it does, that does not make it a true statement.

You are not losing any lore relevant to the Living Story in raids. That’s the hard truth.

That’s false. There’s quite a few odds and ends you can interact with in wing 3 that do give some minor lore and insights into the White Mantle. In truth, most people would consider these inconsequential, but you can’t say that a player isn’t missing out on anything relevant to LS3.

Jahroots.6791:

Sykper.6583:

The Living World ala, Main Story of GW2 does not hinge on the Raid. You are welcome to believe it does, that does not make it a true statement.

You are not losing any lore relevant to the Living Story in raids. That’s the hard truth.

That’s false. There’s quite a few odds and ends you can interact with in wing 3 that do give some minor lore and insights into the White Mantle. In truth, most people would consider these inconsequential, but you can’t say that a player isn’t missing out on anything relevant to LS3.

The odds and ends you can investigate in full in a cleared instance?

Furthermore, the prevalence of White Mantle has existed since launch, with a personal story path. Should all characters have access to that human personal story because they might miss out on White Mantle lore?

Let’s go a bit further on this warpath for lore. There are several in-game references to Guild Wars lore in general, in the form of real-life books. Should we start demanding the full lore of these books, put into the game because we don’t want to pay real money for the books themselves?

…Sorry, that was plenty divergent of the point from me. The point I am trying to get at is that the inconsequential tidbits you bring up like the notes, the intractables…all of these things have no impact on what a player interested in lore and continuity would care about.

It is why Bobby went with ‘Side-Story’. The entirety of the events in the Forsaken Thicket could have been a book, because of how absolutely unrelated to how things are playing out in the Living Story when ‘links’ are trying to be made.

I remember a time when people who really cared about lore in games, played the games.

It is a shame how the culture of games has shifted to playing to the game to demanding the game change to fit you as a person instead.

TexZero.7910:

I remember a time when people who really cared about lore in games, played the games.

It is a shame how the culture of games has shifted to playing to the game to demanding the game change to fit you as a person instead.

No I demand it be changed to fit the audience that played during Core Tyria, the ones that grew up and lost the free time to be part of a raiding guild so they could run short 5 mans in GW2 instead, they could get a placebo raiding experience from Open World Zergs instead, You know kitten well they could provide a repeatable story version of the raid and gut the bosses for us Plebs, looks at Vale Guardian in BSF and Sloth in EB, they don’t need new assets for the Raid Map itself as it already exists.

I do not needs the Ascended pieces that drop, nor do I want the armor precursors because frankly Legendaries are two expensive to bother when I can get something just as flashy off of the Gem Store for $10.

I’m already planning on buying something next Tuesday to reward them for giving us content, now if they gave us story mode raids I might consider making my contributions bi weekly again.

TexZero.7910:

I remember a time when people who really cared about lore in games, played the games.

It is a shame how the culture of games has shifted to playing to the game to demanding the game change to fit you as a person instead.

It’s not a shame, because that has never happened. The games at that time fit the people playing them the same as they do now – it’s just they were meant for a much smaller population. When your target for a major game was in tens of thousands of players at best, you could make them as hardcore as you wanted. When that target increased however, the gaming studios soon found out that there simply weren’t enough players that were interested – and that if they wanted more, they had to make those games more inclusive.

TL/DR: there was never really a case where players changed to fit a game.

Astralporing.1957:

TexZero.7910:

I remember a time when people who really cared about lore in games, played the games.

It is a shame how the culture of games has shifted to playing to the game to demanding the game change to fit you as a person instead.

It’s not a shame, because that has never happened. The games at that time fit the people playing them the same as they do now – it’s just they were meant for a much smaller population. When your target for a major game was in tens of thousands of players at best, you could make them as hardcore as you wanted. When that target increased however, the gaming studios soon found out that there simply weren’t enough players that were interested – and that if they wanted more, they had to make those games more inclusive.

TL/DR: there was never really a case where players changed to fit a game.

Exactly remember when Ghostcrawler had the audacity to try doing that during WoW Cataclysm, there was this blog he wrote called Heroics Are Hard; they relented and thus Raid Finder was born.

Here’s the link to this ancient piece of MMO nostolgia, it was Ghostcrawler’s Watereloo.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/2053469/wow-dungeons-are-hard

You all still keep ignoring the fact that WoW’s endgame is entirely based around raids while in GW2 it’s just a rather small side-project.

cranos.5913:

You all still keep ignoring the fact that WoW’s endgame is entirely based around raids while in GW2 it’s just a rather small side-project.

A small side project that happens to be the only path to Legendary armor, while I don’t care about that stuff my self I do believe that making it the only path to get that armor makes Raids anything but a side project.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

cranos.5913:

You all still keep ignoring the fact that WoW’s endgame is entirely based around raids while in GW2 it’s just a rather small side-project.

A small side project that happens to be the only path to Legendary armor, while I don’t care about that stuff my self I do believe that making it the only path to get that armor makes Raids anything but a side project.

It doesn’t, and that doesn’t matter anyway. If they make easy modes you can be sure it won’t give LI anyway.

Astralporing.1957:

TexZero.7910:

I remember a time when people who really cared about lore in games, played the games.

It is a shame how the culture of games has shifted to playing to the game to demanding the game change to fit you as a person instead.

It’s not a shame, because that has never happened. The games at that time fit the people playing them the same as they do now – it’s just they were meant for a much smaller population. When your target for a major game was in tens of thousands of players at best, you could make them as hardcore as you wanted. When that target increased however, the gaming studios soon found out that there simply weren’t enough players that were interested – and that if they wanted more, they had to make those games more inclusive.

TL/DR: there was never really a case where players changed to fit a game.

This has what to do with lore exactly ?

Either you want the lore and you’ll play the PvE content that has it, or you play the forum game.

I know which one has lore, and where i go for it … Do you ?

TexZero.7910:

This has what to do with lore exactly ?

People that were interested in lore of those games fit those games already. People that didn’t fit them, were not interested in lore because they didn’t play the games at all. In the end, noone changed because of the game, and no game expected any players to do so.

So, that shift you were talking about? That never happened.

GW2 has a higher percentage of players raiding than other MMO’s because other MMO’s offer a balance of things for players to do. Anet creates a mode then abandons it the fraction of players doing anything doesn’t matter to all that because if people quit WvW and other modes for lack of upkeep and lowers the pool of course the precentage of raiders would go up.

They have a really nasty habit of focusing on only one group at a time.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

No I demand it be changed to fit the audience that played during Core Tyria,

I don’t think you’ll get very far “demanding” change. Further, what audience are you talking about that played Core Tyria? Some of them raid, some don’t. Some of them are no longer playing GW2 (for a large variety of reasons).

The health of any game depends both on veterans enjoying the game in all of its modes and new players coming in to ‘replace’ those who have moved on.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

You know kitten well they could provide a repeatable story version of the raid and gut the bosses for us Plebs, looks at Vale Guardian in BSF and Sloth in EB, they don’t need new assets for the Raid Map itself as it already exists.

They could do all sorts of stuff; that doesn’t automatically mean it’s good for the game or the community.

I wonder if you might consider taking a few steps back from your posts, gathering your thoughts, and giving yourself some room to think about what it is that actually concerns you. Is it really the existence of Raids in the game? Is it really the small fraction of devs assigned to producing Raids? Or is it the (apparent) lack of similar progress in other parts of the game? Or perhaps it’s ANet’s unusual decision to gate the game’s only legendary armor behind raiding (even if you could pay others to do the raids for you)?

I don’t know if you’ll change your mind about Raids, but I’m fairly certain it will give you an opportunity to rephrase your argument and avoid using rhetoric that tends to get others to dig in their heels. At the moment, I don’t think there’s any possibility that folks might change their minds after reading your post and it seems to me that you’d like them to at least consider doing so.

So many things wrong with the idea of the OP, not even sure where to start. I’m just glad that Anet doesn’t think the same way. I quite enjoy the fact this isn’t just another WoW clone.