Guild Wars 2

Going to come right out and say it, I miss raiding. It was and still is my favorite MMO activity. Getting with a group of friends, needing to plan every pull, learning mechanics, discussing strategy and when everything goes as smooth as clockwork and that pesky boss finally coughs up the shiny , it’s oh so satisfying.

Now, I know GW2 has plenty of group content, but… in my opinion, all of it falls short of a proper dungeon or raid experience. Note that it’s not difficulty I’m solely concerned about, but the experience as a whole.

General world Bosses, Maw, Shatterer, SB, Golem, Megadestroyer, Jormag , pretty much all of these are glorified loot pinata’s and more often than not, the loot is atrocious. Sure they have some mechanics to them, but most of them can still be done whilst you alt-tab to watch cat videos. I don’t bother with these unless they are dailies or I’m in the zone and one happens to pop nearby.

Worm/Teq. Teq and Triple Worm are a little better, needing a modicum of organisation and communication to down effectively, plus they have a better chance of dropping something that isn’t salvage fodder. Whilst Teq can be reliably done provided you’re in the map 40 minutes (so exciting and entertaining) prior to start so you aren’t shunted into an overflow map, the dedicated grouping needed to do worm is almost impossible , I’m in a pretty large guild with close connections to half a dozen other large guilds and I’ve seen one scheduled attempt at worm in three months.

Silverwastes meta event. Something worth doing! Not long enough to be tedious, rich rewards even if nothing super fantastic drops. Still no real need for dedicated co-ordination though, not anymore.

Dungeons and Fractals. A really poor substitute for the dungeon runner and raider in me. These runs boil down to Shadow refuge past everything to a boss and avoid the many instagib attacks the boss has. In cases where shadow refuge won’t work, hide round a corner and pray things get dps’d down before everyone dies. Almost every encounter is the same mess of players running around like headless chickens trying not to stand in the instakill fire that bosses throw everywhere. It’s eminently unsatisfying.

Couple this with the fact that, right now, speccing yourself for healing or survivability is wholly worthless, there’s no variety to how the game is played. DPS hard or go home. Having a specific, needed role actually makes some players feel valued rather than feeling as though any one of another hundred cookie cutter, clown costumed DPS junkies could take our spot in the party and no one would notice.

Hopefully heart of thorns fixes a lot of these issues as dungeon running and raiding are something a lot of MMO players do enjoy and GW2 is a severely sub par experience on that front right now.

Agree on all points.

They seem hell bent on focusing solely on open world content, which is weird. I understand having it and enjoy it sometimes, but it doesn’t replace dungeons and raids where small groups of players can organize and coordinate to fight their way through more immersive content in a role-type system.

Never confuse punishing for challenging when discussing difficulty. You’re also mixing a few separate issues that aren’t necessarily related, but only seems so due to common encounters.

If we focus on world group oriented stuff, Teq does well; save for one vital mistake….. the Tidal wave failure. Failing the battery phase pretty much ends the entire event. If there was an option to recover after that failure, I’d had a much higher opinion of the overall event design. Otherwise everything else about it is very well done. Statuses are easily monitored by all players, so they know where to shift resources. Turret operation, while critical to the event, are not overly difficult to understand. The ability to juggle the buffs with the spike and cleanse being a significant gain to the group is also a good example of improving efficiency in gameplay rather then punishing the event without it.

As for TT….. I don’t know about you, but TTS hosts 2-3 Wurms a day on 4 days out of the week. Granted it does take Voice in order to make call outs fast enough, that shouldn’t prove any difficulty for a Guild. They host at least 1 map for Teq at each rotation; and eventually organize TT an hour before the event using the same bulk of pubbies. The organized team is not that big, and drawn mostly from the public group; which they train for 5-10 minutes at specific tasks. It takes them all of 33 out of ~120 to control the event to avoid failure. (Even having complete novices direct the events on Community night)

Each worm needs around:
5 Reflect (on team rotation)
5 Condie (for husk control)
and a minimum of 1 Commander Tag for the zerg to follow

Its far from impossible…. and it surprises me that a fully dedicated guild could have difficulty with it, when a bunch of well organized pugs do it on a daily basis. It also doesn’t punish players small for mistakes….. it just creates an infinite stalemate until the timer expires. This gives groups ample opportunity to double efforts in order to bounce back. (That I feel is how to best address high levels of difficulty)

I’m curious about what game you base your preference of Raid content on. Because TT has all the hallmarks of good coordinated, difficult (but not punishing) group content…. just without the private instance requirement.

Here is a response in reddit from Colin:

I think some of my point was either misunderstood or lost here, in particular reading Nikes comments on the youtube section so I’ll try and clarify more simply:
We like the way combat works right now, we really don’t plan to change it much other than add more options with elite specs. It works the way we intended: you can play control, support, and DPS actively. To folks who prefer to define by the holy trinity, Gw2 doesn’t force you to pick one of the three from heal, tank, or DPS and only do that – it blends a mix depending on your build and allows you to actively swap roles or soft play between roles. Our goal was to remove the forced singular role per you’re locked into, people often mistake this as saying gw2 has no trinity elements, that isn’t true – we just don’t believe in a forced role per for Gw2 for the reasons I covered in the live stream.
That said the point I really wanted to make in the live stream was the issue with the combat system in PvE isn’t the combat system. It’s that the mobs and encounters we have provided so far very rarely allow/encourage you to make use of the combat system as intended. There are some exceptions, but one of our goals with HoT is to help allow more room for players to experience the full range of the combat system in PvE. From the common world mobs up to the challenging group content we will talk about later, we are asking our design team to design encounters in PvE more focused on using the system we have built.
Hope that helps a bit! – CJ

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3czh8f/wooden_potatoes_guild_wars_2_new_maguuma_teaser/ct0zl4g

Hopefully they make the PvE in HoT to use the combat system

It’s not so much that raiding/dungeon running in any one MMO experience is wholly better than another, it’s the general feel I’m getting at. Almost every MMO I have played has a feel of a party of adventurers banding together to complete a specific goal for a specific reason, GW2 dungeons and world boss raids feel like a random group of yahoo’s on a drunken bender.

Also, I’ve not had a problem with Killing worm, the couple of times I have managed to get into a dedicated group, we took it down. It’s trying to find a proper dedicate group that’s the problem. Getting that many players together and coordinated is a pretty rare occurrence, at least during the hours I play.

Well every now and then gw2 has added some events that cause entire maps to actually try, kinda raid like. (not world bosses HA) If anyone played the one time only cursed shore release then seeing 150 people wipe and try again was the most fun iv even had in gw2. So its not like Anet doesn’t think like we do…………….. i think/hope/FAITH.

The bottom line is that content in GW2 is far too zergy, even when they attempt to make it not zergy. They’re doing what they can to fix this in HoT, but they don’t seem to understand that open world content is not a superior replacement to instanced content, it’s just a different experience.

It’s never going to feel as immersive or strategic. An MMO needs to have dungeons or raid content.

MasterKaon.4027:

Also, I’ve not had a problem with Killing worm, the couple of times I have managed to get into a dedicated group, we took it down. It’s trying to find a proper dedicate group that’s the problem. Getting that many players together and coordinated is a pretty rare occurrence, at least during the hours I play.

If the problem is putting together a dedicated group, is it your belief that your guild would be able to put a regular group together for an instanced raid where they rarely do for TT? If so, which factor(s) do you think make the most difference?

• Being able to control raid composition
• Rewards (if so, would it take exclusive loot and/or more guaranteed drops)
• Play styles (would it take dedicated, trinity roles; would a more-full use of the GW2 mechanics do; or don’t you know because you never or rarely experience what “full use of GW2 mechanics” would be like)

I suppose a shorter way to frame the question would be to ask how much room would there be for variation from the typical game’s norms. I ask because I’d like to see content like GW Elite instances, but would hate seeing a copy/paste of typical
raids.

MasterKaon.4027:

It’s not so much that raiding/dungeon running in any one MMO experience is wholly better than another, it’s the general feel I’m getting at. Almost every MMO I have played has a feel of a party of adventurers banding together to complete a specific goal for a specific reason, GW2 dungeons and world boss raids feel like a random group of yahoo’s on a drunken bender.

Also, I’ve not had a problem with Killing worm, the couple of times I have managed to get into a dedicated group, we took it down. It’s trying to find a proper dedicate group that’s the problem. Getting that many players together and coordinated is a pretty rare occurrence, at least during the hours I play.

You are right on the spot here.There is a huge difference between 40/80/120 people and 10/15/20.In the 2nd groups you socialize more.This is what raiding in a smaller groups brings.lets take for example TT which requires minimum 120 premade.Well there is no way i can no everyone.If the group was smaller for instance 25 man raid the you will feel more cohesive.

I hate the huge zergs that is the current PVE content – Tequatl,TT,SW,World bosses.
Even guild missions can’t bring the social aspect that raiding brought.It made me feel conected to the group/guild.When you raid with the same 15 people 3 nights per week x 2 hours each night you get to know the players.There is a HUGE difference between 15 man premade and group of 80.

Einlanzer.1627:

The bottom line is that content in GW2 is far too zergy, even when they attempt to make it not zergy. They’re doing what they can to fix this in HoT, but they don’t seem to understand that open world content is not a superior replacement to instanced content, it’s just a different experience.

It’s never going to feel as immersive or strategic. An MMO needs to have dungeons or raid content.

I would say its more about scalability. You can have things designed around large groups of people; But in order to keep individuals engaged you need task delegation. Most WoW dungeons work (from what I’ve seen) at least partially on zerg DPS and partially on Puzzle mechanics. With distinct parts where you need to split people into designated groups so they either split up for tasks, or more commonly for “Support Cells” to deal with healing upkeep requirements.

GW2 open world tries to be scalable between 10-100 people. Its only in the reworked boss fights do you actually conscious task delegation in order to deal with fight’s mechanics.

I’d argue that Teq is actually poor implementation because its designed to wipe groups too easily. Some call this challenging, but in reality its just “punishing”… which is why frustration levels are so high if things aren’t perfectly smooth.

Triple Trouble on the other hand is a lot better about this concept. Coordinating 3 large groups, with each group having 3 tasks that need to be dealt with, and making sure their timing is at least half way in sync. Rather then wipe, the event is a perpetual state of stalemate with the players. So if one group falls behind, or runs into problems, the other groups can easily stall to let them catch up. More importantly, theres the ability to “buy time” during the Decap attempt, to deal with the event’s only significant failure window. If the group isn’t strong enough as a whole, then the event fails on timer. As an approach, this is a great way to do open world content…… The big down side however is the hard cap on maps. The event is designed to run with ~120 people, which incidentally is also where the map limit is hit.

starlinvf.1358 @

I agree with you to some extent.
Scaling is not good for balance.To exist fine tuned encounter you need instanced content with fixed group size.Blizzard on purpose removed the 10/25 split.It was hell to balance.Some fights were easier on 25 man difficulty other fights were easier on 10 man.The scaling is the same.You can’t balance encounter in the range of 20-150 people.

Open world content can’t creat a proper encounter until the bosses can scale.For good balance you need 1 group of fixed size.

I just want to let you know that you absolutely do not need to be on a teq map 40 minutes early to succeed. I often go 10-15 minutes early and it’s just fine. There is no overflow since megaserver. Once a map is filled, another starts, and another, and so on. In my experience you do not want to be on a map that early as there is a higher risk of people being afk or people on the map who have no intent to kill teq (map completion). If you have little faith in your map, open up the lfg tool and join one of the teq taxis.