Guild Wars 2

I’m in the guild Attuned. We kill Triple Trouble wurm and Tequatl multiple times every week, as well as guild missions and other activities. We recently killed Claw of Jormag in less than 5 minutes. I don’t write this to brag, but to illustrate how invested our community is in large-scale challenging group content. We are a friendly group who has come together because we love killing big world bosses together. We have been craving more challenge for a long time, and we aren’t the only community like this.

Now the following is my personal idea regarding Raids in GW2 (this is not necessarily the view of everyone in Attuned).

GW2 is obviously a very different game from other MMOs like WoW, ESO, Wildstar, or Rift. GW2 has many combat mechanics, reward systems, and player interests which vastly differ from those games. I want to explain how I think Raiding can fit the GW2 model, and how it is something everyone can potentially enjoy as a natural next step in the GW2 world.

Mechanics

I’ll be using TT wurm as an example because it is the most challenging world boss to date, and the mechanics are solid.

TT wurm has the following properties which I really like:

1. Zerg Splitting – Great because it cuts down on the lag, and requires coordination. Coordination is essential to an engaging multiplayer experience, and the formation of strong guilds.
2. Non-DPS mechanics – Great thing because it adds flavor and breaks up the monotony of stacking and grinding the boss’s health bar down.
3. Non-Berserker-Vulnerable Enemies – Excellent because it breaks up the “zerker meta” and gives other builds a purpose.
4. A unique mechanic for each group – Each wurm head has a different Non-DPS mechanic. This is awesome for keeping the boss interesting, adds more flavor, and further complexity which makes the fight interesting each time you participate.
5. Multiple Phases – This is yet another thing which adds flavor to the fight while adding another element to coordination. It also adds a sense of urgency which intensifies the experience and makes it that much more fun. For example when the 3 wurms are decapitated, you only have 2 minutes to kill them. The sense of urgency gets your blood pumping and greatly increases the payoff of winning.
6. A Strict Failure State – This is absolutely essential. TT wurm is relatively unforgiving in it’s failure states compared to other bosses. There are timers and all 3 heads need to be decapitated at the same time. Without this, the fight would be too easy, and the whole purpose of organizing a group goes down the drain. Most other world bosses are too simple. If half the group dies, they can just waypoint and run back and keep auto attacking. There are few, if any auxiliary mechanics to deal with. It’s just stack and burn. It’s very hard to actually fail most world bosses because the failure state is so lax. Without the threat of failure, there’s nothing at stake, and the payoff of victory is severely diminished.

(cont…)

Gear Requirements, or lack thereof

As I said earlier, GW2 is very different from traditional MMOs. This means it’s raiding structure doesn’t have to be anything like those games. Right now the only content in GW2 with a strict gear check is Fractals. I say we keep it that way. Granted, TT wurm greatly incentivizes everyone to be in Exotics or better. However, Exotics are honestly not that hard to come by. You can run a few dungeons over the course of a week and get most of your gear casually. A player who saves their karma while leveling can get a full set of armor and trinkets by the time they hit 80.

Most of us who run TT wurm each week are in exotics, and everything works out just fine. Ascended gear is only about 5% better. In the spirit of keeping content open and accessible to players, I see no reason to change this.

Gear checks and DPS meters are the biggest fears I hear from players when the word “raid” is mentioned. The GW2 community in general wants to keep toxic elitism at a minimum. There’s no need for any of that in GW2, certainly not in raiding.

Reward Structure

This is important for long-term player activity and interest. I would think most people play games for fun, but they don’t necessarily play them for very long if there’s nothing interesting to work towards in-game. Here is the structure I believe would make sense for GW2.

1. Each raid boss should have a chance to drop something unique. A mini pet or unique armor skin are perfect examples. Unique drops give players a reason to participate in a wide variety of content rather than congregating on one small section of content (see CoF farming right after launch).
2. Raids should have a chance to drop great rewards like exotics, ascended chests, and materials. There are many things in the game which already shower you in rewards. Raids should have an appropriate reward for the time and effort invested in defeating the boss.
3. Dungeon tokens could be used as raid currency. We have all of these different currencies available, but they have very specific uses. There could be a raid related to Ascalon Catacombs which rewards around 500 tokens for winning. Extend this to other dungeon themes. This creates more variety in ways to earn gear.
4. Dungeon vendors should start selling ascended gear, or ascended crafting materials. Why not give people more options in upgrading their gear? Vendors could sell a bolt of Damask for 1000 tokens, or whatever price sounds reasonable. With these last two points, dungeon vendors would double as raid vendors. This would allow raid rewards to fit right in with other reward structures, while keeping raid rewards from being completely exclusive.

Conclusion

We already have content in GW2 which qualifies as a raid on a basic level (TT wurm). I, and many others, simply want more of this. Ultimately what we want is a stronger PvE endgame, and something fun and challenging for PvE guilds to do.

I completely agree with this, more content that is Difficult, with appropriate rewards to balance difficulty vs incentive.

I also like the idea of raid tokens, as this would allow us to acquire unique gear that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

I wouldn’t mind possibly selling this completed gear to others for profit, and the only way to access it is by having a certain degree of player skill. The rest of the players who do not possess such skill/time should have to compensate those who do.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I completely agree with this, more content that is Difficult, with appropriate rewards to balance difficulty vs incentive.

I also like the idea of raid tokens, as this would allow us to acquire unique gear that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

I wouldn’t mind possibly selling this completed gear to others for profit, and the only way to access it is by having a certain degree of player skill. The rest of the players who do not possess such skill/time should have to compensate those who do.

Only if said cosmetics/rewards are account bound and as every other game when the 1% are done chasing the carrot its gradualy lowered so in the end everyone will be able to get their cosmetics ( while said 1% are chasing their new carrot ofcourse hehe )

I rather they focus on world boss’s that every one can participate in none of this 5% BS
it’s a wast of time and money if you want raids plenty of games out there
TT is a good example of the Casual-ness of this game that fight is not hard at all simple scripts and yet 99% of pugs will fail

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first has 34 pages of dev/community discussion on how raids might work. It was long enough ago that it may have had significant impact on things coming in HoT.

Something HoT promises (with zero details on what it means) is “Challenging Group Content.”

This Thursday’s blog will be on “something big” that is not another specialization.

So maybe you’ll see something really cool that directly addresses your interests in just three days. Or maybe not, it could be Guild Halls or surprise-everyone-gets-in-beta-today … who knows?

Valky.2574:

I rather they focus on world boss’s that every one can participate in none of this 5% BS
it’s a wast of time and money if you want raids plenty of games out there
TT is a good example of the Casual-ness of this game that fight is not hard at all simple scripts and yet 99% of pugs will fail

If 99% of pugs fail, then it’s not exactly casual is it? I’m not asking for some mind-blowing complex boss. I am in fact asking for something which everyone can do if they want.

For the record, when Attuned runs TT wurm, we usually have half or more of the zerg made up of pugs. We usually have maybe 30-40 [Att] and 50+ pugs. We welcome them to join us, we provide food buffs and Teamspeak. It’s a wonderful community-building experience for everyone involved.

Additionally, just because a boss exists in a multiplayer game does not entitle every single individual in the game to the rewards without making the marginal effort to talk to other players and coordinate. You act like it takes some herculean effort to follow a commander and maybe hop on Teamspeak.

It is absolutely not a waste of time or money to improve the game. Improvements give customers more reason to invest time and money in the product. Adding more challenging world bosses will give guilds something interesting to do in PvE which will only strengthen the community and the endgame.

I believe I speak for a lot of people when I say I want difficult content not in the sense that open world events like Silverwastes Breach is sometimes difficult, due to zergs not knowing mechanics and not being organized.

I want content that’s difficult for an organized group in the sense that it’s mechanically challenging to all players involved.

Altair.8402:

I believe I speak for a lot of people when I say I want difficult content not in the sense that open world events like Silverwastes Breach is sometimes difficult, due to zergs not knowing mechanics and not being organized.

I want content that’s difficult for an organized group in the sense that it’s mechanically challenging to all players involved.

the only way to do that is instanced content.

Linken.6345:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I completely agree with this, more content that is Difficult, with appropriate rewards to balance difficulty vs incentive.

I also like the idea of raid tokens, as this would allow us to acquire unique gear that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

I wouldn’t mind possibly selling this completed gear to others for profit, and the only way to access it is by having a certain degree of player skill. The rest of the players who do not possess such skill/time should have to compensate those who do.

Only if said cosmetics/rewards are account bound and as every other game when the 1% are done chasing the carrot its gradualy lowered so in the end everyone will be able to get their cosmetics ( while said 1% are chasing their new carrot ofcourse hehe )

No, just no. Let’s not WoW this game up. There is no need to make content easier as time passes devaluing the work of people who completed it. We do not have powercreep to force people to regear and asthetics are a huge part of endgame.

Devaluing them would be a huge factor.

Yes to the account bound idea. No reason to introduce more over expensive hard to get items to the TP. Taking legendarys out for new HoT legs was a first step.

Mentioning raids in a game based off of instant gratification, isn’t going to go well.

NoTrigger.8396:

Altair.8402:

I believe I speak for a lot of people when I say I want difficult content not in the sense that open world events like Silverwastes Breach is sometimes difficult, due to zergs not knowing mechanics and not being organized.

I want content that’s difficult for an organized group in the sense that it’s mechanically challenging to all players involved.

the only way to do that is instanced content.

Not true. TT wurm is a perfect example. Again, my guild [Att] runs it every week with more than 50% pugs, and we kill it 99% of the time because we have great commanders and use Teamspeak.

Which guild are you in again? I couldn’t tell.

Joking aside, I also hope that HoT brings big bosses with changing mechanics that are challenging even with an organizer group. Ideally it would be nice if it was contained to a limited number of people, smaller than a Zerg but larger than a group; a squad of 15 would be great.