Guild Wars 2

This a serious discussion, and not hostile tone.

But whats wrong with having raid dungeons in the game. It already has party dungeons with explorer mode.

Well whats hard about adding larger group raid dungeons with story and explorer mode versions as well to the game?

I dont see a problem. Raid Instances give PvE guilds another form of gameplay to play in PvE for large group, that is still in a control setting like all other instanced gameplay is.

the only argument I ever heard against it is the argument of item treadmill. But how is that different from the current dungeons?

its same thing, but with different fixed group sizes and different fights. Not sure how can one be a item treadmill and the other not.

Raid dungeons is the one thing about PvE I miss the most. Zone Event fights just havnt been well done, which I blame on the concept of them being open to all to fight, rather than designed on fixed group number rules like dungeons are. takes lot of fun out the large scale PvE gameplay we have.

I’d like to see them expand on the open world dragons with more encounters like them. Make them more challenging and up the loot drops a bit.

I’d rather see them concentrate more on the open world rather than have more instances.

Nothing, as long as the gear you get from them can be acquired elsewhere. I would love them in fact

Nothing is wrong with them. They tend to cause population segregation because an uncoordinated, averagely skilled group of players(PuGs) is usually unable to complete them. However, with difficulty progression like fractals, this becomes a non issue. The main problem with raids in GW2 wouldn’t be so much elitism and discrimination, but the issue of creating raid content for the majority of the player base which isn’t overly experienced and skilled, without turning the raid into a 10 or 20 man spamfest on easier levels. You can’t make the presence of every player count with easy or medium level difficulty without making it too difficult for the majority of the population to handle.

ANet has shown with GW:Factions that they aren’t averse to the idea of raids, and if this feature is requested often enough by players, I’m sure they will listen.

Creeper.9360:

I’d rather see them concentrate more on the open world rather than have more instances.

Basically this.

You’re wondering why raids aren’t in GW2? They don’t belong here, simple enough.

In a game that is supposedly advancing the MMO genre with open world events happening every where, Raids would go completely against that. Yes, let’s toss a bunch of players into an instance away from this ever-changing world that we created.

And yes, I know dungeons do this as well, but dugeons are small groups and small in scale compared to the content in the world. With a raid, you’re looking at large scale content with a bunch of players tucked away in an instance.

Then we will have an even more empty world with players again spamming in LA for raids cause it will be the only way to advance in the game. Currently you can earn the same rewards from dungeons that you can earn in the open world. With Raids, you would lock away new content in an instance, leaving no alternatives (just like FotM which was a mistake imo as well, but at least they are working on ways to put Ascended gear in the world).

Theres already raids…temples, mini dragons, etc so they are called group events.
Those are the raids of gw2.

Here’s my view on it.

At this point, they might as well release raids.

There’s also no reason they can’t release both more dynamic open world content AND instance dungeons. Just make the rewards the same for both avenues of play.

EDIT:
If they want to add unique rewards for raiding, they can always add fluff/cosmetic rewards like titles and cosmetic equipment (that have the same stats as what’s available outside).

I know for a fact that there are raiders out there that will run a raid just for the opportunity to wear a Unique Title.

Instead of having a raid per se, I would rather have an instanced map like Underworld of FoE. There you’ll find complex events and simultaneous objectives to complete and even large scale world boss fights. This map can take hours to complete and can even be returned later. You’ll only be able to return during the phase you left or an earlier phase, but not a later one, of course.

Edit: Just to elaborate. How this would work is to have three groups in the zone, when you join you’re thrown into one of these groups. Each group will have to take on different tasks and initiatives, because some event will occur at the same time, but on different parts of the map.

Instances are balanced to 5 people.

The larger the group, the less someone needs to actively contribute to the group and still succeed. See most zergs in the open world.

There are methods of having multiple teams of 5 in an instance though, which I would not be opposed to. Having 2 or more teams have to solve puzzles and/or fight bosses for either to pass…shuffling the team members as they progress through, and ending with a 10-20 man boss fight would be cool. But simply having instances where 20 people run straight through…you would need the trinity to make that challenging. And that is something we don’t really need.

Azjenco.9425:

Instead of having a raid per se, I would rather have an instanced map like Underworld of FoE. There you’ll find complex events and simultaneous objectives to complete and even large scale world boss fights. This map can take hours to complete and can even be returned to.

I think this could work in the game.

They have that its called Orr

Vorch.2985:

Instances are balanced to 5 people.

The larger the group, the less someone needs to actively contribute to the group and still succeed. See most zergs in the open world.

There are methods of having multiple teams of 5 in an instance though, which I would not be opposed to. Having 2 or more teams have to solve puzzles and/or fight bosses for either to pass…shuffling the team members as they progress through, and ending with a 10-20 man boss fight would be cool. But simply having instances where 20 people run straight through…you would need the trinity to make that challenging. And that is something we don’t really need.

Which really brings up another point in GW2 having raids:

Does Anet and the GW2 devs have enough experience and/or know-how to properly create, then tune and balance raid content? The 5-man dungeons the game was released with have their own issues with fun/meaningful encounters. Most of them really just feel like one-trick, bloated regular enemies.

They might need a bit of time to learn how to do meaningful dungeon encounters with the way GW2’s gameplay is set up.They’re tuning the big World Boss Encounters right? If anything, let’s wait and see how they do that first.

They need more people than a dungeon does. Having in mind how many split paths there is in every single dungeon and how hard it is to get a group sometimes, it would be even harder for a raid (LF12M raid dungeon X path Y).
Dungeons in the game right now are mostly about skill. Increase the number of players entering at the same time and the how much skill does every single individual has to have?

DandySlayer.7019:

Azjenco.9425:

Instead of having a raid per se, I would rather have an instanced map like Underworld of FoE. There you’ll find complex events and simultaneous objectives to complete and even large scale world boss fights. This map can take hours to complete and can even be returned to.

I think this could work in the game.

They have that its called Orr

Orr is instanced for multi group tasks…? O_o

I’m not sure you get my concept, especially since you missed the edited part.

Basically, there will be one map with simultaneous objectives and DEs that you need to complete, they’re quite complex, not to mention you can fail them. So it’s important to work together. The map will progress along phases, and when you complete the final phase, you receive a special reward.
Orr certainly is nothing like this.

Azjenco.9425:

DandySlayer.7019:

Azjenco.9425:

Instead of having a raid per se, I would rather have an instanced map like Underworld of FoE. There you’ll find complex events and simultaneous objectives to complete and even large scale world boss fights. This map can take hours to complete and can even be returned to.

I think this could work in the game.

They have that its called Orr

Orr is instanced for multi group tasks…? O_o

I’m not sure you get my concept, especially since you missed the edited part.

Basically, there will be one map with simultaneous objectives and DEs that you need to complete, they’re quite complex, not to mention you can fail them. So it’s important to work together. The map will progress along phases, and when you complete the final phase, you receive a special reward.
Orr certainly is nothing like this.

Actually that is Orr…….

DandySlayer.7019:

Actually that is Orr…….

Umm, no. I can complete most Orr events on my own, because most of the time it’s a ghost zone (no pun intended). The events just trigger randomly and you can do them over and over, or run around while no events are happening. The only groups are at temples and these are just zerg groups. There is nothing wrong with this, since that is how most zones function, but clearly you have no idea what I’m trying to get across.

The instanced events will be story driven and not to mention hard, and will need to be completed along with events happening at the same time elsewhere on the map. If one fail, they all fail and the phase will need to be restarted.
With the three parties of five players each, you’ll need to do dungeon level fights and co-ordinate battle strategies as you do battles across the map. Boss fights sometimes wont even need all three parties, as with some fights one group will need to do a task elsewhere will the other two groups engage the boss.

If this sounds anything like Orr to you, then there’s something very wrong with the Orr on my server.

Azjenco.9425:

Umm, no. I can complete most Orr events on my own, because most of the time it’s a ghost zone (no pun intended). The events just trigger randomly and you can do them over and over, or run around while no events are happening. The only groups are at temples and these are just zerg groups. There is nothing wrong with this, since that is how most zones function, but clearly you have no idea what I’m trying to get across.

The instanced events will be story driven and not to mention hard, and will need to be completed along with events happening at the same time elsewhere on the map. With three parties of five players each, you’ll need to do dungeon level fights and co-ordinate battle strategies as you do battles across the map. Boss fights sometimes wont even need all three parties, as with some fights one group will need to do a task elsewhere will the other two groups engage the boss.

If this sounds anything like Orr to you, then there’s something very wrong with the Orr on my server.

Your basically describing Straits of Devastation is what I’m getting here.

DandySlayer.7019:

Your basically describing Straits of Devastation is what I’m getting here.

Alright, let me create a scenario…

Three parties (Red, Green, and Blue) do the Ascalonian Ascension encounter. The all start in the middle of the map.
Phase One
Red goes to the ravine choke point where they need to battle incoming charr. Green goes to take care of the fire orbs, and Blue go battle the fire shaman, all groups spread out quite far across the map. The fire shaman has a fire shield, but whenever Green destroys an orb, the shield goes down to allow Blue time to damage the fire shaman.

If Red fails to hold the charr at the ravine, they’ll get through, where they turn into berserkers and kill Green and Blue. Green need to battle fire slugs while destroying the orbs, but if they take two long, Blue might die and the shaman will start to heal.

Phase Two
Once this is done, Blue must jump from rock to rock across boiling fire pits. Green will go join Red at the other end of the ravine. They must then delegate tasks, one battle the summoners, while the other group kill the archers. Red decides to battle the summoners, while Green kills the archers firing upon the exposed Blue group. If the archers kill Blue members they need to restart the phase. If Red struggles with the summoners, Green and Blue will be overwhelmed.

Phase Three
Red head around to the other side of the ravine where they need to destroy a door with siege weapons. Blue need to kill as many acolytes as possible while they’re busy with their ritual. Green need to jump down the side of a cliff, do a small part of the rock jumping puzzle, and go help Blue. Meanwhile, Red use siege weapons to batter a large door as they fight oncoming charr. The longer the ritual takes, the more damage Blue and Green endure. If they die, the phase restarts.

Phase Four
When Red breaks through the doors. The acolytes will go into a frenzy. Once they’re killed, the three reunited groups do battle with a large boss that appears. They need to attack three different points, though need to time it at different periods, or the boss will do heavy damage to another group. If one group dies, everyone dies, and the phase restarts.

Phase Five
The creature starts breaking apart. The groups now fight elemental creatures spawned from it. However, during parts of the fight, 4 to 8 randomly chosen valves will need to interact with by players at the same time. If not they die.

Upon completing the fifth phase, players will receive tokens, items, karma, gold, etc.

This is a quick and basic example, but as you can see, even this will have a lot more precision and mechanics behind it than Orr, and can only be properly pulled off in a closed off instance.

5targetAoEcap15chars

Mirta.5029:

They need more people than a dungeon does. Having in mind how many split paths there is in every single dungeon and how hard it is to get a group sometimes, it would be even harder for a raid (LF12M raid dungeon X path Y).
Dungeons in the game right now are mostly about skill. Increase the number of players entering at the same time and the how much skill does every single individual has to have?

Same amount of skill needed in party dungeons. Just more people and they need to have mechanics with that in mind. aka more environmental attacks and more dual tasking mechanics to the fight. Also lots of powerful AoE that need to be avoided or boss gets stronger and healed a bit. stuff like that makes the large scale fights harder than dynamic event boss fight, while still maintaining the large group focus of it.

Dynamic Events simply cant do this because its made for random number of players and skill levels, unlike instanced dungeons. Dynamic Event boss fights, for this reason, are not as fun for PvE as instanced raids would be.

Only way i see raid dungeons have chance to appear is with introduction of elder dragons. But we know that Destiniy’s Edge fighted Kralkatorrik, so it could even be possible to encouter elder dragons with 5 man group too. Time will tell…

Main problem with large raids is, that the battle system scales only badly.

We are already at the point, where several bosses have one-hit AoE attacks and “skill” (or what the 13 year old kiddies call it) is mostly reduced to dodging.

This is not going to be better with larger groups, the only difference would be, that you had more combos, more AoE heals and an ridiculous damage output.

Actually sending more than one group into an dungeon and asking them to play together (each group on a different path)? Forget about it, ingame communication is horrible in this game. Also they would just zerg again, because the broken fight mechanics usually reward large groups over a well organized, small team. (e.g. you will always have a combo field for every single combo finisher you create etc.)

In the end, you would just end up with ridiculous health blobs as bosses which randomly kill players. The lack of a trinity makes things even worse, everybody just rushes the boss and tries to survive on his own. And you don’t have much of a choice, the crappy game engine won’t be able to show more than 10 players along with a crowd of monsters at the same time, at least on average PCs.

As a raider from a guild in another game before GW2, I really miss raids and gear progression. I know that’s an unpopular point of view with most GW1 players, but… I guess that’s why I played this other game instead of GW1! I think I was a rare subset of the population of this other game, because I was fairly casual (raided about once-twice a week, and we could sometimes beat the current raid before the next came out) and I didn’t mind that there were gear and things out there that were unattainable for me and my playstyle. I felt like it gave me something to strive for, and those that made the sacrifice to get those things deserved them.

After a lot of thought on the issue, I’ve come to realize this: while I do miss the raids, what I am really missing is my guild camaraderie, and feeling part of a team. This is something that I don’t feel like GW2 does very well, for whatever reason. In my other game, I gave my all to my guild, forming friendships that lasted years, putting time in as an officer, and eventually being elected guild leader. I have joined a similar type of guild in GW2, but for some reason the X factor just isn’t there and I can’t seem to put my finger on it.

Creeper.9360:

I’d rather see them concentrate more on the open world rather than have more instances.

But you can’t have openly accessible encounters in the open world that are also challenging. If they are supposed to be beatable by random PuGs then the encounters simply can’t be all that complex or demanding.

They also tend to be fail-safe like the Dragon encounters.

The reason why people kitten so much about possible raid content is because they can’t discuss it without also thinking of gear-treadmills, item progression, raiding guilds, raid schedules, progression, dedication, theorycrafting, DPS meters and performance evaluations.

But they can’t see past the fact that many of those raid associations were/are specific to WoW/Rift and don’t have to be the same in Guild Wars 2.

I for one think raids would work great in this game if they ironed out some of the mechanics.

[quote=1248153;Knighthonor.4061:]

I really hope they bypass the entire raid and gear treadmill nonsense.

GW2 has enormous possibilities and for this game to be forced onto the railroad tracks of another game is ridiculous.

Let GW2 be GW2 and develop and evolve in it’s own way, on it’s own path.

Copying other games isn’t the only way for GW2 to grow.

Really, so far, the player base that I have met in this game are far above those I’ve met in another game. I would hate to see that nastiness/greed/selfishness bleed into GW2 because they suddenly started offering the same features.

I vote no to raids, no to gear treadmills. Just no.

As some have suggested just bring back the UW/FoW 8-12 style gw1 zones and make a special armor like Obsidian armor which was in gw1 equal to the current armor rating which was 70 if I remember right.

this would in my opinion be amazing it would be a nice skin and people can work towards it, it would be a lot of mats to make like gw1 and this would mean people casual and hardcore can work towards it.

It’s difficult to balance large scale encounters off every class being strong and having a purpose. Any implementation of raid encounters is best left in the open world, and made specifically difficult forcing players to use Terrain in the encounter, and proper positioning. I really wouldn’t mind hard encounters.

Now I know the second anyone mentions WoW they get shot around here, but it has good fights that mechanics would be good to consider.

Imagine if you will, a rather sizable cave.

In the center we have a clutch of Basilisks being basilisks. but wait. They’re corrupted. Well now it’s our business. The Legendary Basilisk of insert dragon here.

This rather large beast stays near the center of the room. Targetting his closest target. He’s not terribly intelligent. Just for the sake of making the encounter have purpose. The dredge are riding this thing into battle firing cannons at everyone but the Basilisk’s Main target. Let’s say only at the sides and back of the beast. Again, not huge damage. just sustained and forcing people to duck away. Occasionally the Basilisk will also charge up and fire It’s beam in a straight line with It’s current target player.

He will do a periodic jump, stomp in the center which will deal damage in a wide enough distance that you don’t have time to run out. Let’s say roughly 1000. You must dodge this, but again. Long wind up time Easy to predict etc.

After every slam, chunks of the ceiling will fall down with very little warning in a ring around the Basilisk. Having one of these blocks land on you will Launch you and force you to either slowly get up, or pop a stun breaker.

The Basilisk will then fire it’s Beam in a line and rotate it around the room at a relatively fast speed. Players will be forced to either rotate with the Basilisk at the middle, or hide behind cover.

Lastly, a simple control mechanic that will screw with people enough to force encounters to be harder with the server population.

Smaller elites or champion Basilisks being spawned. They just so happen to be the children of this monster. Killing one of these within line of sight will build up a buff on the boss, which it can expend at random intervals to release an energy wave that destroys all ceiling blocks.

At 10% health the Basilisk will begin attacking twice as fast with it’s single target ray. Rocks will begin floating in patterns around the room as this thing starts bringing in power. This will form a simple jump puzzle up to the center of the ceiling where one large jutting rock remains. Players must break it with sufficient damage before everyone on the ground is petrified.

Breaking this will cause the rock to slam down and crush our beast. Regardless of what amount of health He’s at. If nobody is within range for the Boss to attack, he will begin petrify beaming people at ranged at an almost constant interval.

Ps. Being petrified doesn’t kill you, but you cannot be revived until out of combat, or take a waypoint. The active waypoint will be outside the boss chamber, and be blocked by a group of invulnerable dredge holding up shields who are technically blocking line of sight to avoid mesmers jumping through.

Sorry for that.

Anyway, this will force a huge amount of coordination and most people will hate it. Especially when people start griefing. Large encounters have a place in the world, but not inside instances.

Also, don’t give them massive as hell health pools. The fight with people playing properly shouldn’t last more than 10 minutes. This is the same kind of thing as the Dragon encounters. They have a place in Gw2 so long as the rewards are worth it.

Azjenco.9425:

DandySlayer.7019:

Your basically describing Straits of Devastation is what I’m getting here.

Alright, let me create a scenario…

This. This soooo much.